[Cryptography] propaganda on "hurdles for law enforcement"

[Bill Frantz]

On 7/25/14 at 2:24 PM, jsd at av8n.com (John Denker) wrote:

>The article contradicts Bill Frantz's assumption that all
>present-day crypto is ineffective.

This is a bit of a misinterpretation the point I was trying to make.

The crypto is, in theory, effective. But in practice, there is a 
large body of things around it which render its effectiveness 
irrelevant in important cases:

   The OS it runs on
   The hardware it runs on
   Mistakes by the people using it
   The RNGs it depends on

If you need absolute assurance that your secrets are being kept, 
don't give them to a computer, because doing so involves some 
level of risk.

It would be interesting to compare the computer risks with the 
risks of sending the secret through the US mail. If the threat 
model is massive, non-targeted snooping, then clearly the mail 
is safer. If it is targeted snooping, envelopes are easy to 
steam open.

Cheers - Bill

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