3 ms·
This is exactly what I mean about an arms race. If an agency is legally entitled to access private keys, for example, through legalised hacking of your home com
by polemic 13y ago
This is exactly what I mean about an arms race. If an agency is legally entitled to access private keys, for example, through legalised hacking of your home computer via backdoors installed by cooperative corporations, you're back to square one. If the network controllers make the so-called metadata of who talked to who and when, they've got a heck of lot of data to start with. If the control as much computer power and as much of the world expertise on crypography as some people claim, maybe they can break crypto in ways that appear mathematically unlikely now.
Arms race. You cannot win with purely technical means when you fundamentally lack control over the technology.
- Zigurd 13y agoNo, really, there is no "arms race." It has a known terminus. If strong encryption were in widespread use, the race would be over. Even metadata analysis would become mostly useless. What's more, the week before PRISM was revealed, there were headlines about how China was all up in our trade and state secrets. Are laws going to protect against that? You assert that the people "fundamentally lack control over the technology" and that just isn't true. Start with the fact that strong encryption was born in an environment where the adversary is assumed to be a state actor with unlimited resources. There is enough open security technology that surmising that our government or any other has an undiscovered technology with fundamentally different properties is like any super-weapon fantasy: There are no flying saucers at Area 51 and there is no hyperdimensional machine in the basement of Ft. Mead. They put their pants on one leg at a time like everyone else.