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Non-US Encryption Is 'Theoretical', Claims CIA Chief In Backdoor Debate (theregister.co.uk)
Iain Thomson, writing for The Register: CIA director John Brennan told U.S. senators they shouldn't worry about mandatory encryption backdoors hurting American businesses. And that's because, according to Brennan, there's no one else for people to turn to: if they don't want to use U.S.-based technology because it's been forced to use weakened cryptography, they'll be out of luck because non-American solutions are simply "theoretical." Thus, the choice is American-built-and-backdoored or nothing, apparently. The spymaster made the remarks at a congressional hearing on Thursday after Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) questioned the CIA's support for weakening cryptography to allow g-men to peek at people's private communications and data. Brennan said this was needed to counter the ability of terrorists to coordinate their actions using encrypted communications. The director denied that forcing American companies to backdoor their security systems would cause any commercial problems.
This guy is smoking some premium shit.
He realizes that many of the Nordic area countries in Europe have some really talented crypto people, and that it would take all of about 2-3 years for some seriously competing cryptographic solutions to hit the commercial space, right?
What will his precious 3-letter agency do when everyone stops sitting on inertia, and is compelled to create cryptography outside their control, while all the people in the US are forced to use the shitty crap he insists on-- you know, where the rest of the world can actually keep secrets secret, but his own country now cant, and foreign governments the world over just backdoor the shit out of everything, resulting in a powerful asymmetry in effective intelligence gathering?
What a fucking douche.
Hold up there a minute, Mr SpyMaster. I think GnuPG (open-source implementation of PGP) is German. Or at least: " g10code GmbH, the legal entity employing some of the GnuPG hackers" is German.
My company has been using GnuPG for ten years.
See https://gnupg.org/ .
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
The name of the algorithm behind AES is Rijndael -- a combination of the names of the Belgian cryptographers who developed it.
His utterings are in the running for either biggest lie of the year, or most ignorant.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This halfwit is the best that the US can come up with to head their "intelligence" apparatus?
You wouldn't come up with the same excuse given the following information:
1. You're standing in front of a group of people who consider you the expert.
2. You stand to gain a lot from forced backdoors and the job for your agency becomes far easier.
3. You have almost zero chance of being punished for lying through your teeth.
What would you have said? Personally I would have come up with the exact same thing and sugar coated it by saying all terrorists use all American technology.
Seriously why?
I find that the Brits generally do a better job covering the US than the US news does.
Time to offend someone
actually i would say he was telling the 100% truth. The target for backdoor is compliant American citizens that would only purchase approved and not legally blocked soft/hardware. This has nothing to do with terrorists, corporations or any one with any knowledge at all.
Android itself is open source. Anyone can download it. It's mirrored extensively outside the US. In terms of actual devices, by far the largest providers of those are non-American companies.
Android itself uses a linux cryptography library. Those libraries are likewise open source and extensively mirrored. Of the ones that could actually be said to have a particular nationality, most of them are not the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Seems like Android is an excellent example of how this guy is wrong.
The two Senators from my state plus Ron Wyden got emails from me on this issue before I posted on Slashdot. What did you do about it, mister shit-talking anonymous coward?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Not sure where you're getting Sweden from, as Daemen and Rijmen are from Belgium and work at a Belgian university.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time