[Cryptography] Is there a good algorithm providing both compression and encryption at the same time?

[Christian Huitema]

On Monday, May 11, , at 3:09 AM, Peter Gutmann wrote
> ...
> Sure, I'm aware of over two dozen papers on this topic (discussing the ability
> to identify spoken phrases, language used, video content for movie streaming,
> web site browsing patterns, e.g. which tax bracket you're in based on which
> pages on tax sites you visit, and so on), but as I said it depends on whether
> the user considers this a problem or not, and by and large the masses (which
> includes companies, banks, government organisations, and so on, not just Joe
> Sixpack at home) don't.  Skype is in a particularly bad spot here with their
> use of encryption because the vast majority of users don't care whether it's
> encrypted or not (they just want free calling over the Internet), and those
> who really care about encrypted phonecalls typically won't use Skype because
> they let governments listen in.

At the same time, the IETF is pushing the encrypt everything agenda, and one of the big arguments is browsing privacy. You get arguments to encrypt Wikipedia to prevent censors from discovering which pages a particular user is reading. Wikipedia is public, but reading pages on homosexuality or abortion could get youths in trouble in many places. The argument goes that encryption will thwart the censors. Except of course that the encrypted traffic still reveal page lengths, compressed or not...

-- Christian Huitema