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"the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards." This is the part that truly disgusts me.
This is likely a minority view, but I have no problem with the NSA being able to break encryption, that's in fact part of their job. Decoding encryption has long been part of their mission. I also suspect they're not alone in terms of signals intelligence groups in having this capability. The issue to me has always been how and what data they access and store, and how it is used.
I draw the line at collecting everything without specific warrants, regardless of what they do with it, against their charter and the Constitution.
I draw the line at hardware backdoors for equipment that I buy, and insertion of vulnerabilities into encryption standards that I take advantage of. Or I guess I should say that take advantage of me.
Normal people don't need 256-bit symmetric encryption. That's assault encryption and should only be used on the battlefield. 40-bits is enough and anything over that should be banned. I'm only joking, but the same argument is used against other technologies that governments seek to control/dominate. Edit: Skipjack was 80-bits I think. It was used in Clipper Phones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skipjack_(cipher)
This is likely a minority view, but I have no problem with the NSA being able to break encryption, that's in fact part of their job. Decoding encryption has long been part of their mission. I also suspect they're not alone in terms of signals intelligence groups in having this capability. The issue to me has always been how and what data they access and store, and how it is used.
The N.S.A. hacked into target computers to snare messages before they were encrypted. And the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards followed by hardware and software developers around the world. This is mostly a confirmation of what has been supposed: No magic, mostly bribed and coerced cooperation from the people who should…
And if this were really an issue, couldn't you just use 4096-bit RSA (unless they have managed to surreptitiously insert a backdoor in it)?
By introducing such back doors, the N.S.A. has
surreptitiously accomplished what it had failed
to do in the open. Two decades ago, officials
grew concerned about the spread of strong
encryption software like Pretty Good Privacy,
or P.G.P., designed by a programmer named Phil
Zimmermann. The Clinton administration fought
back by proposing the Clipper Chip, which
would have effectively neutered digital
encryption by ensuring that the N.S.A. always
had the key.
Should I bother to read up on PGP?