[Cryptography] Purposely weakening encryption "because Paris"

[Henry Baker]

At 10:58 AM 11/18/2015, grarpamp wrote:
>Senate Intelligence Committee leaders are vowing to explore ways to grant more government access to secure communications.

Let's see.  The govt *requires* access, thus weakening all encryption and enabling the possibility of catastrophic failure of cellphone & computer communication world-wide.

What the public doesn't understand is that any *systematic* weakness can be exploited *at scale* by anyone with access to a botnet -- e.g., a teenager sitting at his computer in his underwear in Russia.

These govts are asking everyone to *unilaterally disarm* themselves in a war which is going on *right now* in everyone's pocket or purse, where there are thousands of "pings" per hour trying to break into *everyone's* computer and cellphone.

In a shopping mall parking lot, most of us can see when gangs of thieves are going around testing every car door and window to see if they can get in to steal stuff.

The same thing is going on right now in everyone's pocket or purse -- gangs of thieves from across the globe are testing every feature and every protocol of our cellphones to see if they can get in and steal our data.

If OPM's 22 *million* people compromised teaches us anything, it teaches us that encryption failures could take out *whole countries*, or at least substantial fractions of whole countries.

History didn't judge the Trojans very kindly when they invited the Trojan Horse into their city.

History won't judge us very kindly when we purposely weaken our encryption to enable terrorists to go after *millions* of people at a time, instead of tens of people.

This unilateral disarmament is not just stupid, it is suicidal.