5 ms·

Why does anyone take a US-based seriously as a standards authority? It seems like a transparent conflict of interest.

gustavus 3y ago
Because your options are Beijing or DC. We like to pretend the age of empires is past but realistically we still live in a time of where there are two major world powers and everyone gets to decide which side of the line they want to fall on, accept American hegemony or submit to Chinese control.
- garba_dlm 3y ago
  so essentially: "because you only have worse choices"
  - marcyb5st 3y ago
    Except that in one I can say "my president is an idiot. We need a leadership change" without wiping my credit score or being detained.
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      Ha, you can say that in China too (about the US president lol).
      - kube-system 3y ago
        A classic joke! https://youtu.be/9qh-1_tXeuQ?t=30 https://youtu.be/9qh-1_tXeuQ?t=30
      - lsofzz 3y ago
        United States of China. Peoples Republic of United States. Sounds the same.
    - keepamovin 3y ago
      True. But it's important to note that it is likely that, given the requirements of creating large, functioning systems of administration, it might be true that all governing systems are trying to solve the same types of problems. And it's worth remembering that, even in the US there exist examples of people who pushed for real change to these systems, and ended up detained, dead or simply disappeared. It might also be worthwhile to consider the following well known allegations: revolving door appointments between bureaucracy and companies that it interfaces with and regulates; compromise of politicians by various interest groups using bribery or blackmail; the effects of corporate lobbying and donations to distort the legislative and electoral processes; the powers of unelected career bureaucrats whose tenures often outlast elected officials. It's important to recall that the US is not alone is allegedly suffering from these maladies, but that it might suffer from them ought be a cause for concern. Such considerations seem to raise the question of whether the president (and associated democratic and elected apparatuses) are in some way figureheads designed to provide a focus and an outlet, but may also function to protect the overall system against substantial reforms. Such a description may help explain why processes in democracies often stagnate. The is not to say that the Chinese system is "better" in any sense (our first consideration indicates that perhaps all large governing systems must essentially be the same), but it might be more honest about what it is. This gives rise to the sense that democracy, at least in part, may be a deception that usefully provides people the illusion of a voice for change, while at the same time protecting the governing system by ensuring people do not seek more disruptive methods to alter it. Of course, the flipside is, without such less disruptive avenues, people are then without peaceful recourse. This means that in the Chinese system, the government knows it faces the threat of revolution, which, while it could be thought to function as a kind of guidance of, or check-and-balance on, its power, is also responded to by the system itself becoming more draconian and authoritarian, in order to protect itself, if that makes sense? So in the US, the system protects itself with what may be described as a generally more peaceful and free society, with what be a somewhat deceptive democracy (of course more authoritarian exceptions are occasionally made to neutralize true rabble rousers), whereas in China, the system protects itself more overtly, with a generally more authoritarian and restrictive society, which is more open about what it is. The point of this comparison is to foster more mutual understanding and less false-differences that fuel unnecessary divisions and distort discussions with fallacies, in an attempt to try to guide discussions along more productive directions, based on realities.
    - friendzis 3y ago
      Half seriously, what's the difference between your career ruined via social credit being wiped by government or your career ruined via social credit being wiped on Twitter?
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        It's pretty simple to not be on Twitter. It's comparably hard to evade governments.
        Detrytus 3y ago
        Just because you are not on Twitter (or Facebook, or whatever) won't stop other people from tweeting lies about you. And the public image that you have on social media matters a lot in this society. See also: "Cancel culture".
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        > or your career ruined via social credit being wiped on Twitter? Whose career got ruined actually? Johnny Depp is still making movies, Rammstein just announced a 2024 tour, JKR still is making millions upon millions every year with Harry Potter, Trump is likely to be the Republican candidate in 2024. "Cancel culture" isn't real.
      - xcdzvyn 3y ago
        One's a repressive government and one's some number of people choosing not to like you very much anymore?
      - garba_dlm 3y ago
        "due process"??? but we've gotta update this now that the law will turn to software
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      So I guess the op was right, why does the rest of the world use American standards, since we can't choose your president either (I don't actually believe that we shouldn't use NIST standards, but my point is that's a pretty weak argument for non Americans. )
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  There is plenty of non-backdoored cryptography to use. It’s just the US forces various entities to use their backdoored crypto in order to get grants and government contracts and regulatory approvals. For example, Satoshi Nakamoto chose a very interesting, lightly used elliptic curve secp256k1 for Bitcoin because for various reasons he was very confident it wasn’t backdoored, and obviously it has stood the test of time https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secp256k1 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secp256k1
- Roark66 3y ago
  >Because your options are Beijing or DC. We have plenty of standards in Europe too :-) However, with cryptography historically the best crypto has been invented in the US and it made much more sense for allies to just use ready made solutions than to roll their own. Do countries on the US crypto exports ban lists have their own incompatible crypto? I dont know, they might, but they for sure don't share it as freely available standards.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > historically the best crypto has been invented in the US ENIGMA?
    - jcranmer 3y ago
      The Enigma machine was probably the weakest of its kind of machines. It had a critical security flaw in that it could never encipher a letter to itself, and most of its security came from the IV settings, which were communicated in such poor fashion that the Poles cracked it long before WW2 even started. By contrast, the US and British rotor machines were never cracked by the Axis powers in WW2, and the other two German rotor ciphers were less thoroughly cracked by the Allies.
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
        According to Wikipedia, rotor cyphers were probably invented in the Netherlands, not the US. It says an american tried to commercialize the idea, but went bust. The only patents they mention were issued to Europeans. They don't seem to mention these spiffy US and UK rotor cyphers; any pointers?
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    > but they for sure don't share it as freely available standards. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8891 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8891 (GOST Magma) is a russian standard block cipher. https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/eea3eia3zucv16.pdf https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/eea3... is a Chinese stream cipher. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ribose-cfrg-sm4-10 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ribose-cfrg-sm4-... Chinese block cipher. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-oscca-cfrg-sm3-02 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-oscca-cfrg-sm3-0... Chinese hash function. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4269 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4269 (SEED) is from South Korea (aligned, but still worth a mention)
- diogenes4 3y ago
  > Because your options are Beijing or DC What kind of mental contortions do you have to go through to think like this? It comes off like gung-ho ignorance at best, and reeks of some of the most obvious american military propaganda I've ever read.
tptacek 3y ago
NIST refereed a competition among the best-regarded academic cryptographers in the world. It didn't design any of these constructions, and practically all of the inputs into the competition, including the critiques of the submissions, came from academics (many of them not American). One of the annoying things about how Bernstein is communicating about this is that he is counting on his audience not knowing this.
- diogenes4 3y ago
  This is all nice and well, but it doesn't actually address the inherent untrustworthiness of a state-associated (and known to be penetrated) organization.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    The entire point of the competition is for the state to select a state standard, so "state-associated" is not the smoking gun people suggest it is. If you don't care about state standards, hey, I'm right there with you. But: they obviously exist.
    - diogenes4 3y ago
      Right, I guess I'm asking why anyone puts up with the idea of a state standard to begin with when it only benefits the state.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        Why not ask Bernstein why he's participating in a program to generate one?
Nursie 3y ago
Where else are you going to go? The EU, UK and Australia are all bad for this in various ways, having key-disclosure laws or trying to ban e2e or whatever else. I don’t know about you but I don’t consider China or Russia to be valid places to look for un-backdoored crypto either. It seems (to this non-American) like one of the least-worst options. Maybe we could trust a Scandinavian country or Switzerland? (Yes, I have missed out huge swathes of the world, which I mostly know little about…)
- nocoiner 3y ago
  Wasn’t Crypto AG - the Swiss company that was, oops, secretly owned by the CIA and West German intelligence - established by a Swede?
  - Nursie 3y ago
    Ha, there go my two 'good' options in one fell swoop!
    - dagw 3y ago
      Yeah, As someone who grew up in one Scandinavian country and currently lives in another, I wouldn't trust a Scandinavian country to not roll over and be a US lapdog when push comes to shove.
- diogenes4 3y ago
  > Where else are you going to go? I don't know, but I'd start with getting buy-in from any interested country with an emphasis on not too much from any one. Where it's physically located is irrelevant, the issue is the clear commitment to the interests of the american state.
riffraff 3y ago
NIST promotes open competitions with many non-US based participants, e.g. AES was designed by Belgian researchers. These is somewhat better than not having such a system at all. If nothing else, you get to benefit from public analysis and pick another of the algorithms that get proposed in the competition, even if it's not the NIST-blessed one.
- diogenes4 3y ago
  The issue is not AES of course, it's the NIST being associated with a government that can't be trusted when it comes to developing reliable and trustworthy encryption schemes. They've clearly demonstrated this time and time again.

Because your options are Beijing or DC. We like to pretend the age of empires is past but realistically we still live in a time of where there are two major world powers and everyone gets to decide which side of the line they want to fall on, accept American hegemony or submit to Chinese control.

garba_dlm 3y ago
so essentially: "because you only have worse choices"
- marcyb5st 3y ago
  Except that in one I can say "my president is an idiot. We need a leadership change" without wiping my credit score or being detained.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Ha, you can say that in China too (about the US president lol).
    - kube-system 3y ago
      A classic joke! https://youtu.be/9qh-1_tXeuQ?t=30 https://youtu.be/9qh-1_tXeuQ?t=30
    - lsofzz 3y ago
      United States of China. Peoples Republic of United States. Sounds the same.
  - keepamovin 3y ago
    True. But it's important to note that it is likely that, given the requirements of creating large, functioning systems of administration, it might be true that all governing systems are trying to solve the same types of problems. And it's worth remembering that, even in the US there exist examples of people who pushed for real change to these systems, and ended up detained, dead or simply disappeared. It might also be worthwhile to consider the following well known allegations: revolving door appointments between bureaucracy and companies that it interfaces with and regulates; compromise of politicians by various interest groups using bribery or blackmail; the effects of corporate lobbying and donations to distort the legislative and electoral processes; the powers of unelected career bureaucrats whose tenures often outlast elected officials. It's important to recall that the US is not alone is allegedly suffering from these maladies, but that it might suffer from them ought be a cause for concern. Such considerations seem to raise the question of whether the president (and associated democratic and elected apparatuses) are in some way figureheads designed to provide a focus and an outlet, but may also function to protect the overall system against substantial reforms. Such a description may help explain why processes in democracies often stagnate. The is not to say that the Chinese system is "better" in any sense (our first consideration indicates that perhaps all large governing systems must essentially be the same), but it might be more honest about what it is. This gives rise to the sense that democracy, at least in part, may be a deception that usefully provides people the illusion of a voice for change, while at the same time protecting the governing system by ensuring people do not seek more disruptive methods to alter it. Of course, the flipside is, without such less disruptive avenues, people are then without peaceful recourse. This means that in the Chinese system, the government knows it faces the threat of revolution, which, while it could be thought to function as a kind of guidance of, or check-and-balance on, its power, is also responded to by the system itself becoming more draconian and authoritarian, in order to protect itself, if that makes sense? So in the US, the system protects itself with what may be described as a generally more peaceful and free society, with what be a somewhat deceptive democracy (of course more authoritarian exceptions are occasionally made to neutralize true rabble rousers), whereas in China, the system protects itself more overtly, with a generally more authoritarian and restrictive society, which is more open about what it is. The point of this comparison is to foster more mutual understanding and less false-differences that fuel unnecessary divisions and distort discussions with fallacies, in an attempt to try to guide discussions along more productive directions, based on realities.
  - friendzis 3y ago
    Half seriously, what's the difference between your career ruined via social credit being wiped by government or your career ruined via social credit being wiped on Twitter?
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      It's pretty simple to not be on Twitter. It's comparably hard to evade governments.
      - Detrytus 3y ago
        Just because you are not on Twitter (or Facebook, or whatever) won't stop other people from tweeting lies about you. And the public image that you have on social media matters a lot in this society. See also: "Cancel culture".
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > or your career ruined via social credit being wiped on Twitter? Whose career got ruined actually? Johnny Depp is still making movies, Rammstein just announced a 2024 tour, JKR still is making millions upon millions every year with Harry Potter, Trump is likely to be the Republican candidate in 2024. "Cancel culture" isn't real.
    - xcdzvyn 3y ago
      One's a repressive government and one's some number of people choosing not to like you very much anymore?
    - garba_dlm 3y ago
      "due process"??? but we've gotta update this now that the law will turn to software
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    So I guess the op was right, why does the rest of the world use American standards, since we can't choose your president either (I don't actually believe that we shouldn't use NIST standards, but my point is that's a pretty weak argument for non Americans. )
monero-xmr 3y ago
There is plenty of non-backdoored cryptography to use. It’s just the US forces various entities to use their backdoored crypto in order to get grants and government contracts and regulatory approvals. For example, Satoshi Nakamoto chose a very interesting, lightly used elliptic curve secp256k1 for Bitcoin because for various reasons he was very confident it wasn’t backdoored, and obviously it has stood the test of time https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secp256k1 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secp256k1
Roark66 3y ago
>Because your options are Beijing or DC. We have plenty of standards in Europe too :-) However, with cryptography historically the best crypto has been invented in the US and it made much more sense for allies to just use ready made solutions than to roll their own. Do countries on the US crypto exports ban lists have their own incompatible crypto? I dont know, they might, but they for sure don't share it as freely available standards.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > historically the best crypto has been invented in the US ENIGMA?
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    The Enigma machine was probably the weakest of its kind of machines. It had a critical security flaw in that it could never encipher a letter to itself, and most of its security came from the IV settings, which were communicated in such poor fashion that the Poles cracked it long before WW2 even started. By contrast, the US and British rotor machines were never cracked by the Axis powers in WW2, and the other two German rotor ciphers were less thoroughly cracked by the Allies.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      According to Wikipedia, rotor cyphers were probably invented in the Netherlands, not the US. It says an american tried to commercialize the idea, but went bust. The only patents they mention were issued to Europeans. They don't seem to mention these spiffy US and UK rotor cyphers; any pointers?
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  > but they for sure don't share it as freely available standards. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8891 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8891 (GOST Magma) is a russian standard block cipher. https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/eea3eia3zucv16.pdf https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/eea3... is a Chinese stream cipher. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ribose-cfrg-sm4-10 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ribose-cfrg-sm4-... Chinese block cipher. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-oscca-cfrg-sm3-02 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-oscca-cfrg-sm3-0... Chinese hash function. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4269 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4269 (SEED) is from South Korea (aligned, but still worth a mention)
diogenes4 3y ago
> Because your options are Beijing or DC What kind of mental contortions do you have to go through to think like this? It comes off like gung-ho ignorance at best, and reeks of some of the most obvious american military propaganda I've ever read.

tptacek 3y ago

NIST refereed a competition among the best-regarded academic cryptographers in the world. It didn't design any of these constructions, and practically all of the inputs into the competition, including the critiques of the submissions, came from academics (many of them not American). One of the annoying things about how Bernstein is communicating about this is that he is counting on his audience not knowing this.

diogenes4 3y ago
This is all nice and well, but it doesn't actually address the inherent untrustworthiness of a state-associated (and known to be penetrated) organization.
- tptacek 3y ago
  The entire point of the competition is for the state to select a state standard, so "state-associated" is not the smoking gun people suggest it is. If you don't care about state standards, hey, I'm right there with you. But: they obviously exist.
  - diogenes4 3y ago
    Right, I guess I'm asking why anyone puts up with the idea of a state standard to begin with when it only benefits the state.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Why not ask Bernstein why he's participating in a program to generate one?

Nursie 3y ago

Where else are you going to go? The EU, UK and Australia are all bad for this in various ways, having key-disclosure laws or trying to ban e2e or whatever else. I don’t know about you but I don’t consider China or Russia to be valid places to look for un-backdoored crypto either. It seems (to this non-American) like one of the least-worst options. Maybe we could trust a Scandinavian country or Switzerland? (Yes, I have missed out huge swathes of the world, which I mostly know little about…)

nocoiner 3y ago
Wasn’t Crypto AG - the Swiss company that was, oops, secretly owned by the CIA and West German intelligence - established by a Swede?
- Nursie 3y ago
  Ha, there go my two 'good' options in one fell swoop!
  - dagw 3y ago
    Yeah, As someone who grew up in one Scandinavian country and currently lives in another, I wouldn't trust a Scandinavian country to not roll over and be a US lapdog when push comes to shove.
diogenes4 3y ago
> Where else are you going to go? I don't know, but I'd start with getting buy-in from any interested country with an emphasis on not too much from any one. Where it's physically located is irrelevant, the issue is the clear commitment to the interests of the american state.

riffraff 3y ago

NIST promotes open competitions with many non-US based participants, e.g. AES was designed by Belgian researchers. These is somewhat better than not having such a system at all. If nothing else, you get to benefit from public analysis and pick another of the algorithms that get proposed in the competition, even if it's not the NIST-blessed one.

diogenes4 3y ago
The issue is not AES of course, it's the NIST being associated with a government that can't be trusted when it comes to developing reliable and trustworthy encryption schemes. They've clearly demonstrated this time and time again.