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> concerns that the U.S. agency could be promoting encryption technology it knew how to break, rather than the most secure. If they were going to do this, woul
by jstanley 9y ago
> concerns that the U.S. agency could be promoting encryption technology it knew how to break, rather than the most secure.
If they were going to do this, wouldn't they submit it under a pseudonym?
- maze-le 9y agoNope, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
- OscarCunningham 9y agoPseudonymous submission would also be a reason for suspicion.
- kennywinker 9y agoWhy would they? A national security organization should be concerned with keeping their citizen’s traffic from being snooped - not snooping their citizen’s traffic.
- risotto_groupon 9y agoIf the glass is half full of citizen traffic and half full of non-citizen traffic and the NSA drinks ALL of it and I don't think they should be drinking ANY of it does that make me an optimist or a pessimist?
- notheguyouthink 9y agoEh, I mean, it's complicated - isn't it? If anyone inside US borders is off limits, wouldn't it be a great place for terrorists to set up shop? Completely no surveillance in US borders, win win! I agree completely that our rights shouldn't be trampled on by governing agencies. Yet, I don't know how they're going to work in the old fashioned way. Perhaps it's not required, but I can't blame them for seeking that option, even if well meaning. (By old fashioned, I mean back in the days of easily monitoring everyones phones and calling it good enough. Things are becoming increasingly difficult to monitor for a even a well meaning government) edit: Not sure why I'm being downvotes, so let me elaborate. We all know it's stupidly common for the government to monitor it's civilians. Those days are being altered heavily due to cryptography. In some ways it still be easier to track people, in other ways it will be harder. Is this news to any of you? I don't get the push back lol.
- jstanley 9y agoThere were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so. It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago> There were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so. Oh, I thought it was far easier to tap a phone than to break modern cryptography. Why was it not? > It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before. I would argue that this is changing though, hence the entire point of this Post. In the 90s no one encrypted anything, even https was laughable. More and more things are being encrypted. That's what this post is effectively about, no? The government is trying to stay ahead of the ball on cryptography and hoping to keep their ability to monitor everyone. Do you somehow disagree? I'm confused.
- ENOTTY 9y agoPlease look past the name of the Agency to understand its mission. If you think the security of US citizens' communications should be a mission of the NSA, go advocate with your representatives to make it so. As it currently stands, the IA mission of the NSA is solely to secure National Security Systems, which are systems that handle classified information or are critical to military or intelligence activities. "National Security Directive (NSD) 42 authorizes NSA to secure National Security Systems, which includes systems that handle classified information or are otherwise critical to military or intelligence activities." https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/information-assurance/ https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/information-assurance/
- tptacek 9y agoHow would that even work? Cryptography is a small world. A submission from someone nobody's heard of would have no chance.
- antonvs 9y agoSatoshi Nakamoto sympathizes.
- tptacek 9y agoIn serious academic crypto circles, "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a clown. I don't think a "Satoshi" algorithm would stand much of a chance either.
- kaoD 9y agoCan you elaborate? In what way is he a clown? (honest question) As I understand it he applied a bunch of well known algorithms to solve a long-standing problem. He's not a cryptologist but, as far as I can tell, he never claimed so.
- jessaustin 9y agoBecause no one would consider it, or because careful expert analysis isn't enough and no one would trust it? In the latter case, how does one get on the trusted list, and if NSA is on it how on earth does one get off?
- tptacek 9y agoProbably nobody would even consider it. It would be like standardizing a cipher proposed on reddit r/crypto.
- jessaustin 9y agoIn that case they could just pay some reputable experts to consider it. They would pay anonymously, of course.