More encryption means less privacy

That won't solve the problem

> Slapping unbreakable crypto onto more and more packets is just going to make matters worse > > The IT and networking communities overlooked a wise saying from soldiers and police officers: "Make sure the other side has an easier way out than destroying you."

Who is developing this stronger encryption? The development of encryption has a huge incentive to build backdoors for payouts by government or corporate or worse groups. Then you have the people implementing the encryption that could also introduce backdoors (who knows if heartbleed was intentional or not). Then you have lots of other ways to backdoor the system, from default software installs, viruses, or even compiler or CPU backdooring. There is no such thing as a system that has perfect security. Even if you build everything yourself and are perfect at doing so, the tools you use could easily have backdoors.

By increasing usage of encryption for more and more mundane things all we're doing is increasing the incentive to break that encryption.

Yeah, it does.

I almost called out the crypto wars specifically, because they were a political win caused by technical means (just too hard to control exports) and enabling technical progress (didn't regulate surveillance, but made privacy securable).

To the extent that anyone has actually come to the table on this stuff, it's been as a result of technical change forcing their hand. I wouldn't be surprised if widespread encryption-by-default changes the terms of the debate and opens the door to more transparency from governments who want some degree of cooperation.

If there is a backdoor, that backdoor can be used by anyone that has the key. I do not trust a government to responsibly handle such a key, as it leaking once results in total failure of security for everyone.

A backdoored crypto system is a broken crypto system.

Well, two things:

1. I've always maintained that privacy is a political and social problem, not just a technological one. Nothing stops a more powerful actor from breaking encryption with a rubber hose if they really want to. Technological solutions are still needed since there's a variety of actors involved, only some of which will obey the political doctrine.

2. I often wonder if encryption will make us think of privacy a bit like we think about rule breaking in sports. Since there's an official, we assume that you can break the rules if you don't get caught, at least on the field. There's no ethical pressure to "do the right thing" because we've offloaded that burden to the officiating crew. Has technology become a bit like the official in this case? Our physical spaces have strong and protected rights, at least in the US, but our digital ones do not, and that may be because we are protecting them in other ways.

I'd honestly expect something this ridiculous and intellectually insulting to have been said by an NSA official during an interview.

There no possible political engagement at this point. Agencies of major governments can quite secretly and even illegally engage in mass surveillance, as they documentably have. They can even spy on each others' citizens. The only way you can force issues out into the open where they can be politically engaged is by making secret surveillance impossible.

"Make sure the other side has an easier way out than destroying you."

That only works when the other guy isn't already dedicated to destroying every vestige of your privacy.