[Cryptography] Fighting fear (of encryption) with fear (of bad encryption)

[Michael Kjörling]

On 23 Nov 2015 12:22 -0800, from hbaker1 at pipeline.com (Henry Baker):
> As Scotty would always say to Captain Kirk, "I can't hold her
> together much longer, Captain!" We, like Scotty, have to admit as
> much to our "policy-makers".
> 
> The reference to Star Trek is apt. The current Internet crypto
> systems are already on life-support; the best analogy is to NASA's
> space shuttle program. "It hasn't failed yet" led NASA to continue
> to underestimate the risks until the Challenger disaster finally
> forced NASA to admit that the odds of a failure were much higher
> than previously advertised to Congress and to the American people.

The reference to Star Trek may be apt, but also, in my opinion, in a
manner of speaking inappropriate for the example. In the Star Trek
universe, encryption is often trivially breakable, yet it is still
somehow considered useful (as evidenced by its continued use).

Consider <https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/8542/3248> by user Kyle
Jones, which starts out stating that:

> P=NP in the Star Trek universe, but the people there aren't aware of
> it. Evidence:
> 
>   1. There is encryption but it is always breakable. P=NP will let
>      you crack everything but one-time pads but the Federation
>      stubbornly continues to use NP-based ciphers.

For this reason, _encryption_ as used in the Star Trek universe is
perhaps a better metaphor for backdoored encryption.

And of course, let's not go into what goes for "downloading" data in
the Star Trek universe.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
                 “People who think they know everything really annoy
                 those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)