45 ms·

CIA Director John Brennan Pretends Foreign Cryptography Doesn't Exist

chopin 10y ago
As commented somewhere in the Schneier thread: Presumably Brennan refers to the big players, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel (ME) et al. These companies are delivering crypto and/or hardware for the masses and could be subverted maybe with small short term effect. Of course, the terrorists will switch. And Mr. Brennan knows that. This is the revealing part: It's about mass surveillance of people who are not terrorists by any means.
- peteretep 10y ago
  What's the motivation for mass surveillance of people who aren't terrorists in the US?
  - TheCondor 10y ago
    Money. It's all subcontracted out. It costs tons to do a full nation the size of the US and it's dramatically cheaper than a foreign nation. There are also the conspiracy type reasons but I think it's just a jobs program for white upper middle class men.
    - nerdponx 10y ago
      This. But I think there is an aspect of misguided "we're doing the right thing" doublethink layered on top of it.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      The commercial surveillance complex is just a special case of the military industrial complex. No conspiracy is necessary to explain the greed in traditional defense contracting; surveillance tech is just the latest variation. Also, the current obsession with machine learning is amplifying the problem. It's easy to misuse data analysis (e.g. overfitting the model until it says what you want it to say). Data is seen as valuable on it's own even if it isn't useful "now". This produces an effect similar to tulip-mania where everybody wants as much data as possible even if it isn't currently useful. Finally, add in bad incentives where failure is rewarded with more contracts. As Mudge (Peiter Zatko) gave a very good description[1] of this problem which he called "game theory is a bitch". The solution is to make retaining data toxic with liability. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wXq6oRBnI#t=1173 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wXq6oRBnI#t=1173
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      This can't be overstated. "Terrorism" is HUGE business.
  - CapitalistCartr 10y ago
    Control. Power. Authoritarianism. Corporate paternalism.
  - div 10y ago
    Knowledge is power.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IAO-logo.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IAO-logo.png From the logo of the former Information Awareness Office (under the pyramid-with-eye, of course): scientia est potentia
  - yarper 10y ago
    They're all terrorists until proven otherwise!
  - sleepychu 10y ago
    Perhaps not using the ubiquitous products makes you a terrorist? It's a tradeoff, if you really believe that the government are motivated solely for your protection then of course you would allow them unlimited access into your personal life (as long as it was invisible to you, via your phone/computer, why would you care? They only use that information to help you. Think Doctor and seeing you naked, you trust that they don't care about seeing you naked, they just want to help you.) If you're the director of the CIA maybe you really believe that the government having unlimited invasion of privacy is the correct way to keep everyone safe.
    - nerdponx 10y ago
      I said this and reply to another user, but I'll say it here. I really do think that some or most of the people at the top believe, or at least have convinced themselves, that they are doing the right thing for the American people. I also think that they know more about the world than they will ever let on, and there are things that go on behind closed doors and off the record that we will never learn about, so it's tough to say what they really do and don't understand.
  - Torai 10y ago
    Identifying the transcendent people and activities that could undermine the status quo the CIA works to defend. Now we could argue if the CIA works for the well being of the majority of US citizens, or to defend the obscure interests of some minority. And discuss the historical role of the CIA "fighting terrorism".
  - arca_vorago 10y ago
    1) Money. As William Binney revealed, they scrapped his multi-million dollar system that protected privacy (I still disagree with him that the collection was constitutional in the first place) for a multi-billion dollar system that wasn't nearly as effective. So in essence, one motivation would be to line the pockets of various entitles around McLean, VA and other good ol boys. 2) Control. This level of surveillance is key in the primary purpose of dissident control. This is why they are harping so much on "lone-wolf radicals" who are "radicalised by the internet". Because they want to say wolf so loud and so much that nobody has the chance to remind them about the constitution. This is also part of why you will see a huge increase in bad legislation written and passed by corrupted good ol boy house/senate. The internet is a threat to the global order due to it's decentralized nature and it's encouragement of anarchistic freedom of thought. The oligarchy are moving against the internet. 3) Fall-guys. The more sinister, grander chessboard for the supranational oligarchs is one of de-legitimizing American power and principles. I'll let you digest the details of this. Always remember where the Company got it's start. Wall Street international lawyers. I'm pretty sure McCarthy, despite his unconstitutional antics, was actually on to something... but he just didn't aim high-enough in the chain. Corruption in the three-letters is top down. http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman%27s%20CIA%20article.html http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman%27s%20CIA%2...
  - ionised 10y ago
    Control I'm guessing. If massive financial fraud, corruption and widening inequality continue to get worse, there is going to be a lot of unrest in the western developed nations. There's only so much shit people can take, so much of their shit that can be taken from them before they realise their entire financial system and wars waged are a giant ponzi scheme set up to suck resources from the many up to the few. This shit happens in cycles. The upper echelons of society know this is coming again.
  - RogtamBar 10y ago
    You have heard of the concept of 'three felonies a day'. Well, combine that with knowing almost everything about everybody, and you can use the threat of charges or actually having them charged to deal with dissidents. I once knew a gun rights' activist in the US. He has friends who were targeted this way by the Federal gov't. It's not just a theoretical thing.
- jernfrost 10y ago
  But these have often bought solutions from foreign companies and integrated them. One example would be Skype. The question is with the kind of regime CIA envisions would Skype ever have gotten bought by Google?
- tremon 10y ago
  Of course, the terrorists will switch Not only terrorists will switch. Everyone who has the option will switch. This is just another nail in the coffin for US technology companies. I'm pretty sure that when this gets through, the non-US companies will be bought en-masse by US companies, like Microsoft did with Skype.
  - chopin 10y ago
    Everyone who has the option will switch This might be difficult. With iOS, Android or Windows you have to trust the OS Vendor. I assume especially on iOS it might be difficult to supply any meaningful encryption at all if Apple decides to not supporting it.
    - zaphar 10y ago
      Android is open source so if an OS vendor outside of the United States decides to use it and provide strong encryption there is very little stopping them from doing so. A lot of the hardest work has been done already. There is a small but growing market for strong encryption. US companies will find themselves losing some amount of market share due to encryption restrictions. We already saw this once with the previous crypto wars. The U.S. thought that they could corner the market on good crypto and instead ended up losing a good portion of the market. The U.S. lost that war and they can totally lose this one for the same reason. We don't have a monopoly on good crypto in the U.S. and if they have their way we'll end up with only bad crypto.
  - Hermel 10y ago
    > This is just another nail in the coffin for US technology companies. What are the other nails in your opinion? To me it seems that the Silicon Valley is doing quite well.
    - tremon 10y ago
      The other big nail is surveillance itself, especially when coupled with the fact that foreigner's data in US' corporations hands is a free-for-all for everyone.
- cschmidt 10y ago
  Schneier made an interesting point at his talk at DEFCON last year. He suggested people use encryption from the big players, rather than more niche crypto products. He said he thought the NSA etc. monitor users of those niche software closely, essentially getting lots of metadata about them. He suggested "hiding" in the mass of other people using big player products. Maybe the NSA wants terrorists to switch, since it would make them stand out from the crowd, creating a much smaller pool of people (terrorists and crypto geeks) to watch.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    this sort of hiding sounds a bit like desperate attempt to save a lost battle of credibility of major US IT companies... no, thank you
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    Sounds like the best solution is to use the niche encryption software to encrypt your data, then wrap it up in encryption by the big players, so you keep your everyday activity under wraps, but if they can break the big-player encryption, you have another layer of protection.
    - chatmasta 10y ago
      The best solution is probably to communicate via encrypted stetanography in open channels. For example a Twitter account posting a bunch of cat pics with (encrypted) messages encoded in them. This way your first layer of protection is the steganography (nobody knows the message even exists), and the second layer is the encryption. I've got a side project about 10% complete that's a "stegonographic social overlay network". Fully client side JS steganographic encoding of images that are then uploaded to a choice of social media sites, and then subscribed to like RSS feeds. I think it's a cool concept.
      - deelowe 10y ago
        Maybe, but how hard is it to derive suspension of stenography in an image for some useful level of confidence (e.g 20%, 50%, 75%)? Not crack it, but know that there's perhaps something up? Surely, just knowing which accounts are posting "suspicious" communications is valuable enough in and of itself.
- RogtamBar 10y ago
  How is Facebook, a company which has probably almost since the start operated as a data collection system for CIA (see http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread291893/pg1 http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread291893/pg1 ) .. in the busienss of providing crypto?
Rathor1 10y ago
He is not dumb, he is deliberately lying.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Always possible that he is dumb and deliberately lying.
  - alanwatts 10y ago
    Which one is worse?
  - mikro2nd 10y ago
    "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"?
    - shapov 10y ago
      Sounds like a quote from someone who is engaged in malicious activity.
      - nxzero 10y ago
        Sounds like a something said by someone that understands people, that being "misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."
  - throwaway2048 10y ago
    you don't become a CIA director while being that ignorant of SIGINT
    - nxzero 10y ago
      Tell that to Petraeus.
  - nolepointer 10y ago
yarper 10y ago
Interestingly it seems that GPG is originally from Germany [0] (a headline act from the first crypto war, I expect there are many other examples!) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard
- rurban 10y ago
  Practically all public visible encryption had to come from overseas during the crypto wars, because US crypto was not allowed to be exported. So everybody used european or australian crypto, and we still do. gpg, openssl, gnutls, truecrypt, ssleay, ...
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Calling it a "crypto war" is missing the point - and the solution for that matter.
    - Afforess 10y ago
      "Crypto Wars" is a historical term, not slang or embellishment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
      - nxzero 10y ago
        Yes, I know, and it is an embellishment if you believe crypto was/is the solution. Calling it a crypto war is missing the point and the solution; in fact, the link you provide shows that the focus on crypto was a mistake.
- JshWright 10y ago
  GPG is an implementation of PGP (via the OpenPGP specification). PGP was developed in the US, and was, in many ways, the opening salvo of the "first crypto war".
  - e12e 10y ago
Bromskloss 10y ago
> US companies dominate the international market as far as encryption technologies When do people turn to "companies" for encryption instead of using publicly available libraries or applications?
- lb1lf 10y ago
  -Most people(tm) probably couldn't care less and definitely wouldn't be willing to put up with the hassle of making their friends switch from iMessage, Google Talk, Skype, Facebook Messenger or whatever it is called - in order to use an encrypted solution. If end-to-end crypto is going to become the norm, it needs to be supported by the clients people have chosen to use - not by some obscure (to Joe Q. Average) app. Brennan obviously knows this - it doesn't matter all that much if .01% of the web population use a client outside US control if the remaining 99.99% do use crippled, US-controlled apps. Heck, it would probably save them lots of time, as being among the .01% would immediately flag you as a crank, terrorist or both.
- nenreme 10y ago
  E.g. when they use messengers which claim that they are end-to-end encrypted.
golergka 10y ago
Well, if he's talking about consumer products, he's absolutely right — Telegram is about the only widely popular non-US consumer product offering encrypted communication I know.
- sudocarbon 10y ago
  Isn't Open Whisper Systems Signal open to foreigners as well?
nxzero 10y ago
Really depends on the requirements for encryption. Unbreakable encryption is easy to do with basic math.
- lb1lf 10y ago
  Surprisingly tough to get a good implementation of basic math going, though. It is irrelevant if your cipher is sound and for all intents and purposes unbreakable if you, say, leave the key vulnerable to some side-channel attack.
vaadu 10y ago
This is SOP for this administration. If you deny a problem exists it does not exist. The same state of denial exists when they refuse to use the words Islamic terrorists.
- 0xfeba 10y ago
  The limited use of the words Islamic Terrorism is more of Obama walking a tight-rope than denial. It may be futile, but it's not malicious. > Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, have said that they don't use terms like "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam" because they believe doing so would grant undeserved religious legitimacy to terrorist movements such as the Islamic State. Citing Islam as a factor risks framing counterterrorism as a war between the West and Islam, they have said. > "They are not religious leaders -- they're terrorists," Obama said in February. "And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam." http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/why-won-t-obama-say-radical-islam-n591196 http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    This hysteria about Obama not saying the correct incantation to defeat terrorism is pretty amusing coming from the anti-PC crowd.. Or don't they realize that forcing someone to say a certain phrase is a perfect mirror image of forcing people to avoid certain phrases?
    - 0xfeba 10y ago
      Yep. That and the willingness of some people to abandon parts of the Bill of Rights to 'solve' this problem is frightening. Not subtle, mass surveillance, arguably constitutional things, but massive profiling and harassment. "The government is totally inept and can't be trusted, but if we granted it all these absurd powers to interpose it between a man and his religious beliefs, it won't at all be abused."
frandroid 10y ago
At this point, Brennan knows that there are no consequences to lying to Congress, so why wouldn't he do it?
e12e 10y ago
Really strange. Surely Keccack (SHA-3, among other things) is "foreign" encryption? Although, I suppose it might be a bit theoretical in the sense that no one yet has a product that uses it in a configuration for encryption, rather than just hashing? I suppose SSH doesn't exist, and isn't from Finland either. http://keccak.noekeon.org/ http://keccak.noekeon.org/
lalibrew 10y ago
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As commented somewhere in the Schneier thread: Presumably Brennan refers to the big players, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel (ME) et al. These companies are delivering crypto and/or hardware for the masses and could be subverted maybe with small short term effect. Of course, the terrorists will switch. And Mr. Brennan knows that. This is the revealing part: It's about mass surveillance of people who are not terrorists by any means.

peteretep 10y ago
What's the motivation for mass surveillance of people who aren't terrorists in the US?
- TheCondor 10y ago
  Money. It's all subcontracted out. It costs tons to do a full nation the size of the US and it's dramatically cheaper than a foreign nation. There are also the conspiracy type reasons but I think it's just a jobs program for white upper middle class men.
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    This. But I think there is an aspect of misguided "we're doing the right thing" doublethink layered on top of it.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    The commercial surveillance complex is just a special case of the military industrial complex. No conspiracy is necessary to explain the greed in traditional defense contracting; surveillance tech is just the latest variation. Also, the current obsession with machine learning is amplifying the problem. It's easy to misuse data analysis (e.g. overfitting the model until it says what you want it to say). Data is seen as valuable on it's own even if it isn't useful "now". This produces an effect similar to tulip-mania where everybody wants as much data as possible even if it isn't currently useful. Finally, add in bad incentives where failure is rewarded with more contracts. As Mudge (Peiter Zatko) gave a very good description[1] of this problem which he called "game theory is a bitch". The solution is to make retaining data toxic with liability. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wXq6oRBnI#t=1173 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wXq6oRBnI#t=1173
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    This can't be overstated. "Terrorism" is HUGE business.
- CapitalistCartr 10y ago
  Control. Power. Authoritarianism. Corporate paternalism.
- div 10y ago
  Knowledge is power.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IAO-logo.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IAO-logo.png From the logo of the former Information Awareness Office (under the pyramid-with-eye, of course): scientia est potentia
- yarper 10y ago
  They're all terrorists until proven otherwise!
- sleepychu 10y ago
  Perhaps not using the ubiquitous products makes you a terrorist? It's a tradeoff, if you really believe that the government are motivated solely for your protection then of course you would allow them unlimited access into your personal life (as long as it was invisible to you, via your phone/computer, why would you care? They only use that information to help you. Think Doctor and seeing you naked, you trust that they don't care about seeing you naked, they just want to help you.) If you're the director of the CIA maybe you really believe that the government having unlimited invasion of privacy is the correct way to keep everyone safe.
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    I said this and reply to another user, but I'll say it here. I really do think that some or most of the people at the top believe, or at least have convinced themselves, that they are doing the right thing for the American people. I also think that they know more about the world than they will ever let on, and there are things that go on behind closed doors and off the record that we will never learn about, so it's tough to say what they really do and don't understand.
- Torai 10y ago
  Identifying the transcendent people and activities that could undermine the status quo the CIA works to defend. Now we could argue if the CIA works for the well being of the majority of US citizens, or to defend the obscure interests of some minority. And discuss the historical role of the CIA "fighting terrorism".
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  1) Money. As William Binney revealed, they scrapped his multi-million dollar system that protected privacy (I still disagree with him that the collection was constitutional in the first place) for a multi-billion dollar system that wasn't nearly as effective. So in essence, one motivation would be to line the pockets of various entitles around McLean, VA and other good ol boys. 2) Control. This level of surveillance is key in the primary purpose of dissident control. This is why they are harping so much on "lone-wolf radicals" who are "radicalised by the internet". Because they want to say wolf so loud and so much that nobody has the chance to remind them about the constitution. This is also part of why you will see a huge increase in bad legislation written and passed by corrupted good ol boy house/senate. The internet is a threat to the global order due to it's decentralized nature and it's encouragement of anarchistic freedom of thought. The oligarchy are moving against the internet. 3) Fall-guys. The more sinister, grander chessboard for the supranational oligarchs is one of de-legitimizing American power and principles. I'll let you digest the details of this. Always remember where the Company got it's start. Wall Street international lawyers. I'm pretty sure McCarthy, despite his unconstitutional antics, was actually on to something... but he just didn't aim high-enough in the chain. Corruption in the three-letters is top down. http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman%27s%20CIA%20article.html http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman%27s%20CIA%2...
- ionised 10y ago
  Control I'm guessing. If massive financial fraud, corruption and widening inequality continue to get worse, there is going to be a lot of unrest in the western developed nations. There's only so much shit people can take, so much of their shit that can be taken from them before they realise their entire financial system and wars waged are a giant ponzi scheme set up to suck resources from the many up to the few. This shit happens in cycles. The upper echelons of society know this is coming again.
- RogtamBar 10y ago
  You have heard of the concept of 'three felonies a day'. Well, combine that with knowing almost everything about everybody, and you can use the threat of charges or actually having them charged to deal with dissidents. I once knew a gun rights' activist in the US. He has friends who were targeted this way by the Federal gov't. It's not just a theoretical thing.
jernfrost 10y ago
But these have often bought solutions from foreign companies and integrated them. One example would be Skype. The question is with the kind of regime CIA envisions would Skype ever have gotten bought by Google?
tremon 10y ago
Of course, the terrorists will switch Not only terrorists will switch. Everyone who has the option will switch. This is just another nail in the coffin for US technology companies. I'm pretty sure that when this gets through, the non-US companies will be bought en-masse by US companies, like Microsoft did with Skype.
- chopin 10y ago
  Everyone who has the option will switch This might be difficult. With iOS, Android or Windows you have to trust the OS Vendor. I assume especially on iOS it might be difficult to supply any meaningful encryption at all if Apple decides to not supporting it.
  - zaphar 10y ago
    Android is open source so if an OS vendor outside of the United States decides to use it and provide strong encryption there is very little stopping them from doing so. A lot of the hardest work has been done already. There is a small but growing market for strong encryption. US companies will find themselves losing some amount of market share due to encryption restrictions. We already saw this once with the previous crypto wars. The U.S. thought that they could corner the market on good crypto and instead ended up losing a good portion of the market. The U.S. lost that war and they can totally lose this one for the same reason. We don't have a monopoly on good crypto in the U.S. and if they have their way we'll end up with only bad crypto.
- Hermel 10y ago
  > This is just another nail in the coffin for US technology companies. What are the other nails in your opinion? To me it seems that the Silicon Valley is doing quite well.
  - tremon 10y ago
    The other big nail is surveillance itself, especially when coupled with the fact that foreigner's data in US' corporations hands is a free-for-all for everyone.
cschmidt 10y ago
Schneier made an interesting point at his talk at DEFCON last year. He suggested people use encryption from the big players, rather than more niche crypto products. He said he thought the NSA etc. monitor users of those niche software closely, essentially getting lots of metadata about them. He suggested "hiding" in the mass of other people using big player products. Maybe the NSA wants terrorists to switch, since it would make them stand out from the crowd, creating a much smaller pool of people (terrorists and crypto geeks) to watch.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  this sort of hiding sounds a bit like desperate attempt to save a lost battle of credibility of major US IT companies... no, thank you
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Sounds like the best solution is to use the niche encryption software to encrypt your data, then wrap it up in encryption by the big players, so you keep your everyday activity under wraps, but if they can break the big-player encryption, you have another layer of protection.
  - chatmasta 10y ago
    The best solution is probably to communicate via encrypted stetanography in open channels. For example a Twitter account posting a bunch of cat pics with (encrypted) messages encoded in them. This way your first layer of protection is the steganography (nobody knows the message even exists), and the second layer is the encryption. I've got a side project about 10% complete that's a "stegonographic social overlay network". Fully client side JS steganographic encoding of images that are then uploaded to a choice of social media sites, and then subscribed to like RSS feeds. I think it's a cool concept.
    - deelowe 10y ago
      Maybe, but how hard is it to derive suspension of stenography in an image for some useful level of confidence (e.g 20%, 50%, 75%)? Not crack it, but know that there's perhaps something up? Surely, just knowing which accounts are posting "suspicious" communications is valuable enough in and of itself.
RogtamBar 10y ago
How is Facebook, a company which has probably almost since the start operated as a data collection system for CIA (see http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread291893/pg1 http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread291893/pg1 ) .. in the busienss of providing crypto?

Rathor1 10y ago

He is not dumb, he is deliberately lying.

nxzero 10y ago
Always possible that he is dumb and deliberately lying.
- alanwatts 10y ago
  Which one is worse?
- mikro2nd 10y ago
  "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"?
  - shapov 10y ago
    Sounds like a quote from someone who is engaged in malicious activity.
    - nxzero 10y ago
      Sounds like a something said by someone that understands people, that being "misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."
- throwaway2048 10y ago
  you don't become a CIA director while being that ignorant of SIGINT
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Tell that to Petraeus.
- nolepointer 10y ago

yarper 10y ago

Interestingly it seems that GPG is originally from Germany [0] (a headline act from the first crypto war, I expect there are many other examples!) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard

rurban 10y ago
Practically all public visible encryption had to come from overseas during the crypto wars, because US crypto was not allowed to be exported. So everybody used european or australian crypto, and we still do. gpg, openssl, gnutls, truecrypt, ssleay, ...
- nxzero 10y ago
  Calling it a "crypto war" is missing the point - and the solution for that matter.
  - Afforess 10y ago
    "Crypto Wars" is a historical term, not slang or embellishment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
    - nxzero 10y ago
      Yes, I know, and it is an embellishment if you believe crypto was/is the solution. Calling it a crypto war is missing the point and the solution; in fact, the link you provide shows that the focus on crypto was a mistake.
JshWright 10y ago
GPG is an implementation of PGP (via the OpenPGP specification). PGP was developed in the US, and was, in many ways, the opening salvo of the "first crypto war".
- e12e 10y ago

Bromskloss 10y ago

> US companies dominate the international market as far as encryption technologies When do people turn to "companies" for encryption instead of using publicly available libraries or applications?

lb1lf 10y ago
-Most people(tm) probably couldn't care less and definitely wouldn't be willing to put up with the hassle of making their friends switch from iMessage, Google Talk, Skype, Facebook Messenger or whatever it is called - in order to use an encrypted solution. If end-to-end crypto is going to become the norm, it needs to be supported by the clients people have chosen to use - not by some obscure (to Joe Q. Average) app. Brennan obviously knows this - it doesn't matter all that much if .01% of the web population use a client outside US control if the remaining 99.99% do use crippled, US-controlled apps. Heck, it would probably save them lots of time, as being among the .01% would immediately flag you as a crank, terrorist or both.
nenreme 10y ago
E.g. when they use messengers which claim that they are end-to-end encrypted.

golergka 10y ago

Well, if he's talking about consumer products, he's absolutely right — Telegram is about the only widely popular non-US consumer product offering encrypted communication I know.

sudocarbon 10y ago
Isn't Open Whisper Systems Signal open to foreigners as well?

nxzero 10y ago

Really depends on the requirements for encryption. Unbreakable encryption is easy to do with basic math.

lb1lf 10y ago
Surprisingly tough to get a good implementation of basic math going, though. It is irrelevant if your cipher is sound and for all intents and purposes unbreakable if you, say, leave the key vulnerable to some side-channel attack.

vaadu 10y ago

This is SOP for this administration. If you deny a problem exists it does not exist. The same state of denial exists when they refuse to use the words Islamic terrorists.

0xfeba 10y ago
The limited use of the words Islamic Terrorism is more of Obama walking a tight-rope than denial. It may be futile, but it's not malicious. > Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, have said that they don't use terms like "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam" because they believe doing so would grant undeserved religious legitimacy to terrorist movements such as the Islamic State. Citing Islam as a factor risks framing counterterrorism as a war between the West and Islam, they have said. > "They are not religious leaders -- they're terrorists," Obama said in February. "And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam." http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/why-won-t-obama-say-radical-islam-n591196 http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/...
- deleted 10y ago
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- mikeyouse 10y ago
  This hysteria about Obama not saying the correct incantation to defeat terrorism is pretty amusing coming from the anti-PC crowd.. Or don't they realize that forcing someone to say a certain phrase is a perfect mirror image of forcing people to avoid certain phrases?
  - 0xfeba 10y ago
    Yep. That and the willingness of some people to abandon parts of the Bill of Rights to 'solve' this problem is frightening. Not subtle, mass surveillance, arguably constitutional things, but massive profiling and harassment. "The government is totally inept and can't be trusted, but if we granted it all these absurd powers to interpose it between a man and his religious beliefs, it won't at all be abused."

frandroid 10y ago

At this point, Brennan knows that there are no consequences to lying to Congress, so why wouldn't he do it?

e12e 10y ago

Really strange. Surely Keccack (SHA-3, among other things) is "foreign" encryption? Although, I suppose it might be a bit theoretical in the sense that no one yet has a product that uses it in a configuration for encryption, rather than just hashing? I suppose SSH doesn't exist, and isn't from Finland either. http://keccak.noekeon.org/ http://keccak.noekeon.org/

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