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Most likely they just don't know what they're talking about. This is a government answer to a question posed by parliament, which means that it probably went th
by nhaehnle 14y ago
Most likely they just don't know what they're talking about. This is a government answer to a question posed by parliament, which means that it probably went through a lot of hands, most of which don't even know what PGP stands for, let alone what the technology does.
The statement itself is very vague anyway, saying that "it depends on the strength and the quality of the encryption". Which most likely translates to: they cannot actually break PGP, but they have some tricks to get key material via other means, and then obviously they can decrypt.
- pmjordan 14y agoIn addition to weak keys, I would not be surprised if most of the time they actually just steal the keys off the subject's system (and install keyloggers for catching the passphrase). The "Bundestrojaner" (federal trojan) has been widely reported and even if the police no longer use that particular software, I'm sure the secret service have their own, similar tools. The other thing is that often, knowing who the subject is talking to and when is probably half the battle. PGP doesn't intrinsically protect against that.
- eblackburn 14y agoAgreed. No matter how complex they key, phyiscal security can nearly always be broken. From mysterious breaks ins to _we have ways of making you talk_
- mhb 14y agoMaybe they mean PHP.