The Government Is Lying to Us About Cybersecurity

The first supposed "lie" here isn't even mentioned. I guess the criticism fits an (unmentioned) statement that the government is trying to improve cybersecurity. But while I have heard that in general terms, I don't remember it coming up in the crypto debate–and would be surprised, considering I can't think of the logic that would connect the two.

The second supposed "lie" is possibly the closest to reality. Although there are plenty of people who would agree that there is something of a difference between "not encrypted" and "encrypted, but the NSA has a a separate key that can decrypt it". Like everyone who thinks TLS isn't completely broken.

The third is simply a conspiracy theory. Don't be surprised if the press, and anybody who isn't already on your side, laughs at you if show up with an argument about how it's all a plan by the NSA/Congress/Disney to control money/brains/Hitler's secret moon base.

Packaging such weak arguments in the language of "lies" weakens your position if you're trying to defend the public's right to strong encryption. Because people will focus on your assumptions that they know to be wrong, such as the government being on some super-secret mission to get your bitcoin or whatever. And they will extrapolate from there.

Instead, start from shared assumption, and build good will, before making actual, strong arguments. One such basis would be acknowledging that, yes, some hypothetical, completely ethical, FBI agent may today have a harder time, because where they would previously find lots of incriminating documents in nicely labelled binders, today a search may often just result in an USB stick with binary gibberish.

Once you've build some rapport, this would be a real argument: I don't trust judicial oversight, because it has been abused too often by, for example, the FISA court and national security letters. Moreover, the government's surveillance powers were previously limited in two less-excplicit ways than judicial oversight, namely the costs and manpower involved with physically searching a place, and surveilling people, as well the nature of such actions as being publicly visible. But these safeguards do not apply to electronic surveillance, making it too likely that such powers will be used in massive operations without probable cause.

At the end of the day, when the police can't get into a room, they can break the door down.

Same with guns. The police are okay with gun ownership because they have the right to gun citizens down. Not to judge, but that's the balance.

Same with why we tortured. It counterbalances their vulnerability to secrets. If torture didn't work, Kiefer Sutherland would never have gotten anywhere. But if everyone were against torture, the show wouldn't have existed.

They have an answer to locked doors, suspects with guns, and terrorists with secrets that -- at minimum -- make sense to them regardless of their effectiveness or consequences to society or our ethical reputation.

The main problem with encryption is there is no workaround. There is no counterbalance. The lock is unbreakable, and there is no one to shoot or torture when all they have is the device itself (and no one to torture always, if they're abiding by the law).

This scares law enforcement. This whole campaign is driven by fear, but they cannot admit fear, so it's all rationalizations and confabulations -- which work by the way -- hence they're keeping at it. And when those with power empathize with this fear in between the lines, they will sign off on these lies.

Of course there is an answer to unbreakable encryption, the same answer to in person conversations at a private location: bug the location where the communication takes place.

You don't need a back door on communications if you are "looking over the shoulder" of someone as they type it in. If the person is a suspect, then they can get a warrant to plant a bug.

On the 3rd argument.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

> In 2001, the Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System recommended to the European Parliament that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy, because economic espionage with ECHELON has been conducted by the U.S. intelligence agencies.[7]

My guess is that the real benefit that the NSA provides is largely economic and military espionage. terrorism hasn't been reduced or increased regardless of NSAs activity, and the folks that run the show are not stupid.

There are some valid points here. Too bad the author felt like taking the least objective possible tone and liberally using half truths and false equivalence was the way to present them.