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The NSA's job is more than simply spying -- they also subvert security through intentionally and maliciously weakening it. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA co
by ihsw 13y ago
The NSA's job is more than simply spying -- they also subvert security through intentionally and maliciously weakening it. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA considers it an acceptable risk that sensitive government systems are allowed to continue remaining vulnerable regardless of the dangers because fixing those security vulnerabilities would alert their adversaries to such vulnerabilities.
Even furthermore, the various intelligence agencies also weaken systems for their own convenience, and yet there is nothing stopping anyone else from exploiting such weaknesses. Isn't this simply recklessness and negligence?
We keep hearing about hackers getting customer data over and over again, is that because of what our government has done?
It's not just spying.
- bediger4000 13y agoAgreed. I have a somewhat concrete example, the US credit card system. We know that GCHQ, and probably the NSA, knew about public-key encryption a long time before it was reinvented. Therefore, the US credit card system could have been made quite secure, instead of the amalgam of cheapest-to-implement patches that it is today. Very probably, the NSA could have prevented the largest part of "identity theft". I guess we also have to ask ourselves if this was deliberate on their part, or did they just miss the emergence of the credit-card-as-electronic-money?
- DanBC 13y agoHow long is "a long time"? GCHQ had RSA a few years before RSA invented it. (About 3 years according to WP). The story of it is interesting: Clifford Cocks was working on it, he went home, and had the realisation at home. He could not write it down because that's not what mathematician spies do, so he had to remember it overnight u til he went back to the office the next morning.
- leot 13y agoWidely deployed PKI would transform humanity as we know it, and I believe largely for the better (Yelp, Facebook, and many other websites besides would be rendered irrelevant with widespread PKI). "Like" this restaurant? Sign its public key and give it a star rating. Want to consult with person X who is trusted by authority Y to do Z at a level L? This is straightforward without a bespoke who-trusts-whom website (heck, it's possible without "users") if we have PKI. Every year we don't have PKI is quite possibly trillions lost globally. If the NSA has been the one preventing the adoption of widespread PKI, then this is the cost they have imposed.
- Phlarp 13y agoThis is utopian fantasy and will remain utopian fantasy until you can teach my mother how PKI works. For 99% of the population, excel formulas are the pinnacle of their technical prowess.
- leot 13y agoIf I was advocating teaching people to read 800 years ago, you could have said the same thing about literacy. People learn when it's sufficiently important that they do so.
- danabramov 13y agoCan you sell literacy to someone? I think it's fairly simple: if you're literate, you can make way more money for your family. How do you sell understanding cryptography, using it in real life and whatnot?
- a3n 13y agoRight now there's relatively little risk in credit and identity theft, because people are usually mostly made whole after an event. As more criminals pour through the holes opened by the NSA and their ilk, it will become difficult and then impossible for most of those victims to be made whole. At that point you can easily sell security, privacy and good government. That is, if it isn't taken violently at the point of a pitchfork. [Hey, NSA, have you reinforced your buildings?]
- danabramov 13y agoDon't get why you're being downvoted. I can hardly imagine my friends signing restaurants' public keys. They don't have any problem with Facebook or Foursquare whatsoever. As some guy said, you can't start with the technology and work backwards to customer experience.
- danabramov 13y ago