[Cryptography] On the false choice between privacy and security

Tom Mitchell mitch at niftyegg.com
Fri Feb 19 22:28:33 EST 2016


On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell at cs.tcd.ie>
wrote
>
>
> On 19/02/16 22:43, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> > This is not about security vs. privacy. We're talking about nothing
> > less than deranged short-term thinking that privileges the convenience
> > of a small part of the machinery of law enforcement over the safety of
> > almost everyone in our entire society.
>
> Well said.
>
> I'm not sure I'd 100% agree with "deranged" though, I think a part of it
> is that law enforcement folks are scared to revisit the traditional set
> of requirements that they've posed for interception since they know
> that a rational analysis of those in today's network, done in the open,
> would likely lead to very different conclusions as to what's ok and
> what's not. Personally, I think such a requirements analysis could be
> very interesting, but seems unlikely.


This is interesting with regard to the attack on Perl Harbor history.
The code phrase

    "Tora Tora Tora"

was a sent in the clear.
Then there is:
"The Japanese commence a series of 14 [encrypted] radio messages from Tokyo
to the Japanese embassy in Washington that will conclude with a declaration
of war. The final message will be received precisely at 1:00 pm on December
7, 1941 after which the Japanese embassy is to destroy the code machines,
an ominous point."

I suspect someone believes there is the equivalent of a cache of
"purple+magic" like
documents to be discovered.   All this noise about Apple seems to be a
smoke screen
for something else or just misguided and ignorant.   Misguided because the
last
message said destroy codes and code machines a lesson not lost to any
history buff.

There are layers of secrecy that we can only guess about.  I am glad to be
on the
outside with no unpublished knowledge.


-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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