4 ms·

Well, that traded off the govt's ability to wiretap.

by venus 13y ago

Zigurd 13y ago
Wouldn't every system based on strong encryption prevent wiretaps? The only way to do that and preserve the power to wiretap is to make open source encryption illegal and mandate the use of key escrow. That would be hard to enforce. It appears that neither the developers of Skype nor the government of Estonia viewed that as a bad trade-off.
- venus 13y ago
  I wasn't trying to make some kind of statement with my comment - I was merely pointing out an identifiable trade-off. That said, if and when an easy-to-use, truly secure p2p communication system ever gains real traction then action against it will probably be on the table. Banning won't really work, as you say, but it can probably be made inconvenient/unpalatable enough to discourage most users. I think most people agree that there do exist legitimate cases for governmental wiretapping, as long as the rules are agreed upon and followed strictly. Genuine untappable comms will be a threat to that legitimate government function and I don't think, barring some radical shift in popular opinion, there will be much opposition to such a ban.
- gnosis 13y ago
  Conventional encryption (strong or otherwise) does absolutely nothing to prevent wiretaps. If the encryption algorithm that's used is well respected among cryptographers and has no known, practically exploitable weaknesses; if this algorithm has been implemented correctly in the encryption software; if the software is used properly by every party involved in the communcation; if these parties' systems have not been compromised; if the people or entitites interested in your communication are not (like the NSA is speculated to be) 20 to 30 years ahead of the public cryptography community -- all very big if's -- then you might buy yourself some time until the encryption is finally broken (something that might happen tomorrow, or next month, or next year, or 20 years from now, or never, who knows?). In the meantime, your encrypted communication could be intercepted, recorded, and stored indefinitely -- and available for a practically limitless number of decryption attempts in the future.

Well, that traded off the govt's ability to wiretap.

by venus 13y ago

Well, that traded off the govt's ability to wiretap.

Wouldn't every system based on strong encryption prevent wiretaps? The only way to do that and preserve the power to wiretap is to make open source encryption illegal and mandate the use of key escrow. That would be hard to enforce. It appears that neither the developers of Skype nor the government of Estonia viewed that as a bad trade-off.

venus 13y ago
I wasn't trying to make some kind of statement with my comment - I was merely pointing out an identifiable trade-off. That said, if and when an easy-to-use, truly secure p2p communication system ever gains real traction then action against it will probably be on the table. Banning won't really work, as you say, but it can probably be made inconvenient/unpalatable enough to discourage most users. I think most people agree that there do exist legitimate cases for governmental wiretapping, as long as the rules are agreed upon and followed strictly. Genuine untappable comms will be a threat to that legitimate government function and I don't think, barring some radical shift in popular opinion, there will be much opposition to such a ban.
gnosis 13y ago
Conventional encryption (strong or otherwise) does absolutely nothing to prevent wiretaps. If the encryption algorithm that's used is well respected among cryptographers and has no known, practically exploitable weaknesses; if this algorithm has been implemented correctly in the encryption software; if the software is used properly by every party involved in the communcation; if these parties' systems have not been compromised; if the people or entitites interested in your communication are not (like the NSA is speculated to be) 20 to 30 years ahead of the public cryptography community -- all very big if's -- then you might buy yourself some time until the encryption is finally broken (something that might happen tomorrow, or next month, or next year, or 20 years from now, or never, who knows?). In the meantime, your encrypted communication could be intercepted, recorded, and stored indefinitely -- and available for a practically limitless number of decryption attempts in the future.