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NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

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Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He won a case against the government representing himself so I think he would be on good footing. He is a professor where I graduated and even the faculty told me he was interesting to deal with. Post QC is his main focus right now and also he published curve25519.

He was represented by the EFF during the first, successful case. They declined to represent him in the second case, which ended in a stalemate.

The full story is interesting and well documented: https://cr.yp.to/export.html

Personally my favorite part of the history is on the “Dishonest behavior by government lawyers” page: https://cr.yp.to/export/dishonesty.html - the disclaimer at the top is hilarious: “This is, sad to say, not a complete list.” Indeed!

Are you implying that he didn’t contribute to the first win before or during EFF involvement?

Are you further implying that a stalemate against the U.S. government is somehow bad for self representation after the EFF wasn’t involved?

In my view it’s a little disingenuous to call it a stalemate implying everything was equal save EFF involved when the government changes the rules.

He challenged the new rules alone because the EFF apparently decided one win was enough.

When the judge dismissed the case, the judge said said that he should come back when the government had made a “concrete threat” - his self representation wasn’t the issue. Do you have reason to believe otherwise?

To quote his press release at the time: ``If and when there is a concrete threat of enforcement against Bernstein for a specific activity, Bernstein may return for judicial resolution of that dispute,'' Patel wrote, after citing Coppolino's ``repeated assurances that Bernstein is not prohibited from engaging in his activities.'' - https://cr.yp.to/export/2003/10.15-bernstein.txt

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#52
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading about this in Steven Levy's crypto and elsewhere, there was a lot of internal arguing about lots of this stuff at the time and people had different opinions. I remember that some of the suggested changes from NSA shared with IBM were actually stronger against a cryptanalysis attack on DES that was not yet publicly known (though at the the time people suspected they were suggesting this because it w…

> I remember that some of the suggested changes from NSA shared with IBM were actually stronger against a cryptanalysis attack on DES that was not yet publicly known So we have that and other examples of NSA apparently strengthening crypto, then we have the dual-EC debacle and some of the info in the Snowden leaks showing that they've tried to weaken it. I feel like any talk about NSA influence on NIST PQ or other cu…

I think it's just both. It's a giant organization of people arguing in favor of different things at different times over its history, I'd guess there's disagreement internally. Some arguing it's critical to secure encryption (I agree with this camp), others wanting to be able to break it for offense reasons despite the problems that causes.

Since we only see the occasional stuff that's unclassified we don't really know the details and those who do can't share them.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#53
post #47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also add Which have not prevented anything and instead are used in parallel construction to go after Americans

I don’t like the collateral damages of many policies. But it’s not fair to say that the policies “have not prevented anything” because we simply don’t know. The policies could have stopped in-progress evil acts (but they were never revealed to the public for intel reasons) or prevented attempts of an evil acts (well, nothing happened, nothing to report).

[deleted]

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was represented by the EFF during the first, successful case. They declined to represent him in the second case, which ended in a stalemate.

The full story is interesting and well documented: https://cr.yp.to/export.html Personally my favorite part of the history is on the “Dishonest behavior by government lawyers” page: https://cr.yp.to/export/dishonesty.html - the disclaimer at the top is hilarious: “This is, sad to say, not a complete list.” Indeed! Are you implying that he didn’t contribute to the first win before or during EFF involvement? Are you fu…

I’m saying that the EFF are skilled lawyers who won a major case, and they should not be deprived of credit for that accomplishment.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part of a class division where we cannot practically exercise our rights which are clearly enumerated in public law. Only people with money or connections can even attempt to get many kinds of records. It’s wrong and government employees involved should be fired, and perhaps seriously punished. If people at NIST had faced real public scrutiny and sanction for their last round of sabotage, perhaps we wouldn’t…

Even though I broadly agree with what you've written here ... the situation in question isn't really about NIST/NSA response to FOIA requests at all. It's about whether the US government has deliberately acted to foist weak encryption on the public (US and otherwise), presumably out of desire/belief that it has the right/need to always decrypt. Whether and how those agencies respond to FOIA requests is a bit of a sid…

We are probably pretty much in agreement. It looks like they’ve got something to hide and they’re hiding it with delay tactics, among others.

They aren’t alone in failing to uphold FOIA laws, but they’re important in a key way: once the standard is forged, hardware will be built, certified, deployed, and required for certain activities. Delay is an attack that is especially pernicious in this exact FOIA case given the NIST standardization process timeline.

As a side note, the NIST FOIA people seem incompetent for reasons other than delay.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#57
post #44
post #32

I may believe almost all of this is overblown and silly, as like a matter of cryptographic research, but I'll say that Matt Topic and Merrick Wayne are the real deal, legit the lawyers you want working on something like this, and if they're involved, presumably some good will come out of the whole thing. Matt Topic is probably best known as the FOIA attorney who got the Laquan McDonald videos released in Chicago; I'v…

I don't think it's a bad thing to push back and demand transparency. At the very least the pressure helps keep NIST honest. Keep reminding them over and over and over again about dual-EC and they're less likely to try stupid stuff like that again.

Transparency is good, and, as Bernstein's attorneys will ably establish, not optional.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#58
post #47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also add Which have not prevented anything and instead are used in parallel construction to go after Americans

I don’t like the collateral damages of many policies. But it’s not fair to say that the policies “have not prevented anything” because we simply don’t know. The policies could have stopped in-progress evil acts (but they were never revealed to the public for intel reasons) or prevented attempts of an evil acts (well, nothing happened, nothing to report).

It also could have stopped the Gods from smiting us all, but there's no evidence that it has.

This article[1] is a good start at realizing the costs outweigh the benefits. There's little or no evidence of good caused, but plenty of evidence of harms caused.

[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/top-5-claims-defenders...

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#59
post #49
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t like the collateral damages of many policies. But it’s not fair to say that the policies “have not prevented anything” because we simply don’t know. The policies could have stopped in-progress evil acts (but they were never revealed to the public for intel reasons) or prevented attempts of an evil acts (well, nothing happened, nothing to report).

I find it rather funny that we know about the parallel construction which they attempt to keep hidden, yet don't know about any successful preventions. I would assume they would at least want people to know if a program was a success. To me, the lack of information speaks volumes This is on top of all the entrapment that we also know about, performed by the FBI and associated informants on Islamic/Muslim communities…

Considering that they do not obey the law, if they had actually stopped any terrorists we would be hearing all about it from "anonymous leakers" by now.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#60

So, question then, isn't one of the differences between this time's selection, compared to previous selections, that some of the algorithms are open source with their code available. For example, Kyber, one of the finalists, is here: https://github.com/pq-crystals/kyber And where it's not open source, I believe in the first round submissions, everyone included reference implementations. Does the code being available…

Worth noting DJB (the article author) was on two competing (losing) teams to Kyber[0] in Round 3. And has an open submission in round 4 (still in progress). That's going to slightly complicate any FOIA until after the fact, or it should. Not that there's no merit in the request.

[0]: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/post-quantum-cryptography/pos...

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