4 ms·

In the future, the few years following Snowden's revealations may be viewed as the golden years of strong cryptography: A time when service providers and applic

by tshtf 11y ago

In the future, the few years following Snowden's revealations may be viewed as the golden years of strong cryptography: A time when service providers and application developers began taking these issues seriously. We're moving into a new era now. All it may take is a single attack in the US to drive the legislative and judicial branches to roll back all the fantastic improvements we've seen over the past few years.

graycat 11y ago
They can "roll back" for mass marketed products but not for some simple, open source software in standard C that someone runs on an old PC with PC/DOS, no hard disk and no network connection. So, when turn the power off, the PC forgets everything about the de/encryption. The only non-volatile storage is on diskette. If worried, then just burn those. With the encryption done, the output is just a base 64 file of gibberish safe to mail to the NYT, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. And with no attempts at security, can use products from Apple, Google, and Microsoft can send such data with no problem. The little command line programs on PC/DOS? Easy enough for middle school students to use; when that was state of the art computing, middle school students did use it.
- tjgq 11y ago
  And then they will outlaw the possession of said standard C software, as well as of computer hardware that does not comply with government-mandated eavesdropping. And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. Even if the Base64 data is just a sequence of completely random bits - because who would keep sequences of random bits around, unless they're a terrorist trying to hide something? I'm sorry, but I don't think pushing encryption down into the underworld is a viable solution to the problem. There's no limit to the bad laws that the government can pass. The only real long-term solution is to recognize encryption as a right, otherwise we'll only keep seeing these repeated attempts to outlaw it.
  - graycat 11y ago
    > And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. IMNAL, but my understanding is that such a law would run into rock solid, granite hard, iron clad parts of a little issue called the US Constitution. E.g., if the cops ask you a question, then you don't have to answer. The person's lawyer can just tell the cops that "My client has no idea what that base 64 gibberish is." For encryption as a recognized right, no, that's asking a bit much of the US political system. BTW, for the person receiving the base 64 code (that's the way JPGs, etc. are sent in e-mail), first go through base 64 decoding and, then, apply the receiver's private key to that to decode back to the secret message, e.g., where and when the boy and his girlfriend are going to meet and carve their initials on a tree. Base 64 is in the internet standard for e-mail and there is called MIME for multi-media internet mail extensions. So, the idea of MIME is to permit sending pictures, audio, movies, etc. So, in arithmetic, base 10 has digits 0-9, that is, 10 digits. Base 16 has, right, 16 digits, 0-9-A-F. Base 2 has, you guessed it, 2 digits, 0-1. Well, presto, bingo, base 64 has 64 digits, 0-9, a-z, etc., all simple, ordinary printable characters such as e-mail had been sending right along. Well, with 6 bits, can count from 0 to 63, that is, have 64 different patterns. So, given a stream of bits, can replace each 6 of them with one of the base 64 digits. And there is a simple solution for what to do with any few bits left over. So, that is how to take any stream of bits and 'encode' it to just printable characters easy to send via e-mail. A huge fraction of all Internet data is sent as base 64. So, base 64 data alone is nothing suspicious.
    - tjgq 11y ago
      > IMNAL, but my understanding is that such a law would run into rock solid, granite hard, iron clad parts of a little issue called the US Constitution. E.g., if the cops ask you a question, then you don't have to answer. The person's lawyer can just tell the cops that "My client has no idea what that base 64 gibberish is." The US Constitution hasn't helped prevent the PATRIOT act, or the TSA's unreasonable search powers. > A huge fraction of all Internet data is sent as base 64. So, base 64 data alone is nothing suspicious. There's a difference between Base64 that decodes into a harmless cat picture, and Base64 that's apparently random. Unless we make it normal for everyone to have encrypted, random-looking data lying around, the few that choose to have it will be increasingly harassed by the government, even if they're not doing anything wrong.

by tshtf 11y ago

graycat 11y ago

They can "roll back" for mass marketed products but not for some simple, open source software in standard C that someone runs on an old PC with PC/DOS, no hard disk and no network connection. So, when turn the power off, the PC forgets everything about the de/encryption. The only non-volatile storage is on diskette. If worried, then just burn those. With the encryption done, the output is just a base 64 file of gibberish safe to mail to the NYT, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. And with no attempts at security, can use products from Apple, Google, and Microsoft can send such data with no problem. The little command line programs on PC/DOS? Easy enough for middle school students to use; when that was state of the art computing, middle school students did use it.

tjgq 11y ago
And then they will outlaw the possession of said standard C software, as well as of computer hardware that does not comply with government-mandated eavesdropping. And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. Even if the Base64 data is just a sequence of completely random bits - because who would keep sequences of random bits around, unless they're a terrorist trying to hide something? I'm sorry, but I don't think pushing encryption down into the underworld is a viable solution to the problem. There's no limit to the bad laws that the government can pass. The only real long-term solution is to recognize encryption as a right, otherwise we'll only keep seeing these repeated attempts to outlaw it.
- graycat 11y ago
  > And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. IMNAL, but my understanding is that such a law would run into rock solid, granite hard, iron clad parts of a little issue called the US Constitution. E.g., if the cops ask you a question, then you don't have to answer. The person's lawyer can just tell the cops that "My client has no idea what that base 64 gibberish is." For encryption as a recognized right, no, that's asking a bit much of the US political system. BTW, for the person receiving the base 64 code (that's the way JPGs, etc. are sent in e-mail), first go through base 64 decoding and, then, apply the receiver's private key to that to decode back to the secret message, e.g., where and when the boy and his girlfriend are going to meet and carve their initials on a tree. Base 64 is in the internet standard for e-mail and there is called MIME for multi-media internet mail extensions. So, the idea of MIME is to permit sending pictures, audio, movies, etc. So, in arithmetic, base 10 has digits 0-9, that is, 10 digits. Base 16 has, right, 16 digits, 0-9-A-F. Base 2 has, you guessed it, 2 digits, 0-1. Well, presto, bingo, base 64 has 64 digits, 0-9, a-z, etc., all simple, ordinary printable characters such as e-mail had been sending right along. Well, with 6 bits, can count from 0 to 63, that is, have 64 different patterns. So, given a stream of bits, can replace each 6 of them with one of the base 64 digits. And there is a simple solution for what to do with any few bits left over. So, that is how to take any stream of bits and 'encode' it to just printable characters easy to send via e-mail. A huge fraction of all Internet data is sent as base 64. So, base 64 data alone is nothing suspicious.
  - tjgq 11y ago
    > IMNAL, but my understanding is that such a law would run into rock solid, granite hard, iron clad parts of a little issue called the US Constitution. E.g., if the cops ask you a question, then you don't have to answer. The person's lawyer can just tell the cops that "My client has no idea what that base 64 gibberish is." The US Constitution hasn't helped prevent the PATRIOT act, or the TSA's unreasonable search powers. > A huge fraction of all Internet data is sent as base 64. So, base 64 data alone is nothing suspicious. There's a difference between Base64 that decodes into a harmless cat picture, and Base64 that's apparently random. Unless we make it normal for everyone to have encrypted, random-looking data lying around, the few that choose to have it will be increasingly harassed by the government, even if they're not doing anything wrong.