[Cryptography] Statement from Attorney General William P. Barr on Introduction of Lawful Access Bill in Senate

[Henry Baker]

At 10:56 AM 7/6/2020, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>In rather the same way that cryptography actually protects very little
>of your privacy now that we live in a surveillance economy where every
>large company is analyzing everything - where you shop, what kind of
>dogfood you buy, where you get gas for your car, every word you type on
>social media, where your cell phone goes every minute of every day, and
>everything else they can get - and constantly cross-referencing it
>against public records etc.  Maybe defensive crypto makes a difference,
>but really, how much difference does it make?

You might want to ask some of the folks who have lost millions in
Bitcoin due to almost-if-not-actual-state-level-hacking.

As a taxpayer, I'm more than a little pissed that the NSA/CIA have
no responsibility to protect *me* as a citizen; apparently, NSA's
only responsibility is to protect the *federal govt* from hackers.
So I have to personally protect myself against state-level hackers,
while ***my own govt is sawing on my encryption limb to make me even
more vulnerable.***

I hate to suggest it, for all sorts of obvious reasons, but the
NSA might get a tiny bit more sympathy from ordinary citizens if
the NSA was actually tasked with protecting said citizens.  It's
nice for the banks that the NSA occasionally provides them with
assistance, but when was the last time the NSA helped an ordinary
citizen?

Whatever you may think of J. Edgar Hoover, his extensive P.R.
campaign during his entire lifetime convinced most Americans
that the FBI was protecting said ordinary Americans from all
sorts of nasties.  Only later did we find out that 'ordinary'
Americans didn't include all sorts of racial, ethnic, religious
and political minorities.