[Cryptography] Clinton asked for a secure email Blackberry in 2009

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/hillary-clinton-sought-secure-smartphone-after-rebuffed-by-nsa

OK so lets try to avoid Hilary bashing and focus on the policy issue please?

A long time ago now, I worked on the MIT system deployed in the
Clinton WhiteHouse that included email. I doubt the situation has
changed much since.

What has sickened me in this attack from the start is that people were
making national security a partisan issue. What HRC did as SoS was no
different to what Rice or Powell had done in the previous
administration.

The email system is insecure and that is what has the national
security implications. No matter whether Clinton's email packets are
going over NIPRNET or Comcast, they are not secured with message layer
cryptography and the transport layer cryptography is easily defeated
with a downgrade attack.

Obama required the NSA to provide him with a secure Blackberry and
they were unable to refuse. But the NSA could and did refuse Clinton.
The questions for a hearing are pretty obvious:

1) Does the Secretary of State have an urgent need for mobile communications?

2) Should the Secretary of State have secure communications?

The answers are obviously yes. The Secretary of State travels more
than any other member of the cabinet. Her need for secure mobile
communications was arguably much higher than that of the President.

I think that this particular issue actually bleeds into the Apple/FBI
case. At the same time that the FBI is arguing for the ability to
break any system, the Federal government is unable to meet the
security needs of the Cabinet member with the most need for secure
mobile communications.

The cost of the PRISM, TAO, etc. programs was needing to preserve the
vulnerabilities they exploited. And they certainly haven't ended
completely. Only the other day I found myself having to argue that no,
a 2^128 work factor is not sufficient for every need and yes we do
require a 2^256 work factor.

The original reason I wanted to go to elliptic curves in the first
place was to get the 2^256 work factor I can't get with RSA without
silly key sizes (16K). But no, I have to spend time making the case.