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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.
LOL, how quaint. As if a company belongs to a particular nation state. Freemasons 2016, huyah!
Sir Bush, president and knighted...
Well of course he's going to say this nonsense, no surprise there. What is surprising is hearing about it from a british newspaper without a bleep in U.S. news. I imagine apple, microsoft, google and the likes will have a response soon.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Glad to see that this fellow has figured out how to create new technology jobs in foreign countries. I didn't realize that was his job, but kudos nevertheless.
"No sane man will dance." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
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.
>> (for crypto) there's no one else for people to turn to (mofos)
Well, it's a good thing that all mathematicians have always been and will always be American then.
Under 18 U.S.C. ss. 1001, lying to Congress is offense punishable by up to five years in prison (or eight if the lie is terrorism-related). The correct "response" to John Brennon's blatant, politically motivated, criminal lie is to indict him, convict him, and send him to Federal prison where totalitarian freedom-hating enemies of the American public like him belong.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
When it comes to intelligence agencies, never attribute to ignorance that which can adequately be explained by malice.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The issue isn't whether the rest of the world would use it. The question is how long until the backdoor is hacked. Knowing its there will make it a prime target. Is the US government willing to back up its confidence with a guarantee to reimbursed all losses for everyone using this technology? Only then could the claim that it wouldn't "cause any commercial problems" be at all plausible.
Would be only a slight generalization of his view point.
A lot of people think this is how Americans think about the rest of the world.
We've heard it's out there, but it doesn't matter very much, as long as they have a McDonalds, a 7-11, and a Starbucks.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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.
I can't decide if Brennan is stupid, or if he thinks everyone else is stupid.
I readily admit this is not an uncommon reaction of mine when I read of the things presented by elected and appointed officials. The US government is a madhouse.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
if the Government spooks & goons can peek at your stuff then the criminals that are good at cybercrime will find a way to crack the key to the Government's backdoor
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The biggest threat to US security is US security.
He is worse than the terrorists.
If it's known there is a backdoor people WILL find it. And the arrogance that only American companies can create encryption libraries is dumbfounding. We have China's Red Flag, edition of Linux, North Korea appearently has "Red Star" and I suspect Russia has their own version of Linux as well. It may a crime to use non-use encryption, but it will be there and used if people fear for their privacy. We recently had an event in France where the CIA tried to claim encryption was used to coordinate their operation, and it turns it...it had nothing to do with coordination. The best people will use method with less technology dependencies. This will only make it easier for people (terrorists or "partner" like China) to go through their backdoors to access data. . We seem to "terrorism" as an excuse for everything the same way we used "communism" in the Mccarthy days. the end doesn't justify the means
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
I took a trip to Europe last week. I tried using GPG but it told me that it won't encrypt anything because I'm not in the USA. Then I tried VeraCrypt but it made my hard drive fizzle out.
I would like to apologize on behalf of the American people. Director Brennan clearly has no knowledge on the subject which he is speaking about and was advised poorly by his staff.
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.
the various agencies of the US Government tend to lie ( even to Congress ), I'm somewhat puzzled about why they even bother to ask questions of them anymore.
Perhaps Congress should forgo asking questions of the professional liars ( any intelligence agency ) and ask the tech world instead. I'm quite sure the likes of Cisco, Juniper, Apple, Google and many others ( assuming they're not secretly on the Governments payroll ) would have a much different perspective on the issue at hand.
For example, AES is a Belgian design. The US has long since lost leadership in this. That is if they ever had it.
Incidentally, when did US TLAs catch any terrorists "coordinating via encryption" the last time? Oh, right, NEVER.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It would be "aiding or giving comfort to the enemies of the United States" – by encouraging them to take over for the US companies that this type of legislation would kill.
You or I would go to Federal Prison for that.
Who actually invented public key encryption first, oh yeah a British fella working for gchq one evening in his head cos he couldnt write it down
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.
That you audit the compiler first is a given. I mean, no later than this it's a given that the first thing you do when auditing source code is auditing the compiler for it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Encryption Routines created by people who are not American
- AES (Rijndael)
- IDEA
- Serpent
Hashing Routines created by people who are not American
- SHA-3 (Keccak)
So the Current Encryption Standard and Future Hashing Standards in the US were created by non-American's, but hey, "non-American solutions are simply 'theoretical.'"
You have to be not actually dumb to get high up in government. But you do have to have a certain capacity to believe in the institutional lies, or at least repeat them as if you mean them. They still institutionally believe in a rather simplistic device to the point that gaming the thing is a criminal offence, for example.
More to the point, this here is politics in action. He is furthering an agenda in front of an audience that made this agenda-pushing their day-and-night jobs, but who do not necessarily have any clue whatsoever about what goes on under the veneer of the nice words from the very respectable chief of this here government outfit reporting to congress. So he's basically daydreaming his "truth" into existence. If he can get it enacted in law, he has won.
* Quiz: What other organisation institutionally believes in an unproven, even outright silly, bullshit device based on similar principles?
Another article has more of the exchange:
Let's allow the assumption that American companies currently dominate the encryption field. We'll say that's true. How long would that dominance that last if foreign companies used strong encryption and American companies used hobbled encryption left vulnerable to the American government and hackers? Thank goodness for Warner and Wyden for pointing out how idiotic Brennan 's assertion was.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The AES encryption algorithm is Rijndael, which is Belgian
The runner-up for the contest for becoming the AES standard was Serpent, which was a British/Danish/Israeli collaboration.
Third place went to the Twofish algorithm, designed by Bruce Schneier, a US citizen who happens to be a vocal opponent of backdoors.
The "main" encryption du jour happens to be from outside the USA. The best alternative is also from outside the USA. Of course, the nationality of the creators doesn't matter - the USA is able to make modified implementations that include backdoors, but the original non-backdoored versions are already out there for everyone to use instead.
Im only aware of 4 countires, America,russia, china, and terrorizerstan. Clearly we must be the only smart people.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink