<story><title>Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security</title><url>https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-keynote-address-international-conference-cyber</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>daveslash</author><text>Modern encryption is really just math. Cryptography in consumer and off-the-shelf products (which Barr is targeting with his discussion) theoretically _could_ be modified in such a way that the government could decrypt it. The two ways of which I can think are (1) Encryption &amp;quot;backdoors&amp;quot; -- fancy math known only to the government; this would require new encryption ciphers or (b) key escrow. Both approaches have their shortcomings and I&amp;#x27;m against both, but it&amp;#x27;s plausible that the government might try it anyway. All that said, because encryption is just math, any individual or group could employ their own encryption by implementing one of any known existing ciphers -- one without a known &amp;quot;fancy math back door&amp;quot; and refuse to follow the &amp;quot;key escrow&amp;quot; guidelines. In these discussions about the government being able to decrypt stuff, are we, in effect, suggesting that certain math be made illegal? If that&amp;#x27;s really what&amp;#x27;s being proposed, I&amp;#x27;d urge people to consider &amp;quot;Illegal Numbers&amp;quot; and how effective that&amp;#x27;s been. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Illegal_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Illegal_number&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>MrLeap</author><text>Breaking encryption for the government is so furiously stupid it blows my mind every time it is suggested. Especially here, where people actually give the idea merit. It makes me miss oldschool &amp;#x2F;. where 100% of everyone was on the same page. Your point illustrates a huge reason as to why.&lt;p&gt;Backdooring stupid.crypt and forcing law abiding people to use it just insures that big badguys will use any other kind of encryption. All you&amp;#x27;ve really accomplished is adding an extra charge of illegal encryption use at the expense of security for every human.&lt;p&gt;This potentially creates all sorts of pathologies. Is it illegal now for me not to update an old computer? If your backdoors are implemented in hardware, is it illegal to use old computers?&lt;p&gt;When people are against gun control, a common thread is &amp;quot;make guns illegal and only criminals will have guns.&amp;quot; This argument has merit, but if we DID amend out #2 and make guns illegal, over time firearm proliferation would decrease.&lt;p&gt;Not so with encryption. Other, more free countries will constantly be developing better security methodologies, and reproducing those methods is effectively free. &amp;quot;Fuck up encryption, then only bad guys will have encryption&amp;quot; is a much stronger argument, because it&amp;#x27;s emphatically true.&lt;p&gt;The ignorant hubris of this is massively disheartening.</text></comment>
<story><title>Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security</title><url>https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-keynote-address-international-conference-cyber</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>daveslash</author><text>Modern encryption is really just math. Cryptography in consumer and off-the-shelf products (which Barr is targeting with his discussion) theoretically _could_ be modified in such a way that the government could decrypt it. The two ways of which I can think are (1) Encryption &amp;quot;backdoors&amp;quot; -- fancy math known only to the government; this would require new encryption ciphers or (b) key escrow. Both approaches have their shortcomings and I&amp;#x27;m against both, but it&amp;#x27;s plausible that the government might try it anyway. All that said, because encryption is just math, any individual or group could employ their own encryption by implementing one of any known existing ciphers -- one without a known &amp;quot;fancy math back door&amp;quot; and refuse to follow the &amp;quot;key escrow&amp;quot; guidelines. In these discussions about the government being able to decrypt stuff, are we, in effect, suggesting that certain math be made illegal? If that&amp;#x27;s really what&amp;#x27;s being proposed, I&amp;#x27;d urge people to consider &amp;quot;Illegal Numbers&amp;quot; and how effective that&amp;#x27;s been. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Illegal_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Illegal_number&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>teunispeters</author><text>Key escrow has a number of problems, not the least enforcement that keys are valid and validated. (something that there&amp;#x27;s not a good history of, and international issues come up)&lt;p&gt;Back doors are worse though - build a back door and it will be used, just not necessarily by the agency it was built for.  There are a lot of groups with a lot of resources oriented around taking advantage of this, and few are legitimate.  (and some are enemy nations).&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a third problem - doing it in such a way that it can&amp;#x27;t be blocked from monitoring.  (see &amp;quot;clipper chip&amp;quot; for more on that).</text></comment>