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The EFF addresses some shortcomings in the recent report to policy makers by the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) on encryption.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a much-anticipated report yesterday that attempts to influence the encryption debate by proposing a "framework for decisionmakers." At best, the report is unhelpful. At worst, its framing makes the task of defending encryption harder.
The report collapses the question of whether the government should mandate "exceptional access" to the contents of encrypted communications with how the government could accomplish this mandate. We wish the report gave as much weight to the benefits of encryption and risks that exceptional access poses to everyone's civil liberties as it does to the needs—real and professed—of law enforcement and the intelligence community.
The report via the link in the quote above is available free of charge but holds several hoops to hop through between you and the final PDF. The EFF recognizes that the NAS report was undertaken in good faith, but identifies two main points of contention with the final product. Specifically, the framing is problematic and the discussion of the possible risks to civil liberties is quite brief.
Source : New National Academy of Sciences Report on Encryption Asks the Wrong Questions
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:32AM
> It is impossible to build a secure communication, while at the same time giving government the "keys" to unlock that communication.
True. Either secure communication is possible, or it is not possible. Seems highly likely that it's possible. Problem is, they (the military brass and high level bureaucrats at spy agencies) seem to think they can have it both ways-- secure communication for themselves, and back doors for everyone else. If you pin them to the wall, they will admit it doesn't make sense, and profess that they understand that and so you are insulting their intelligence.
But as soon as they're off the hot seat, they go right back to demanding exactly that. They want the happy situation the Allies had in WWII-- both German and Japanese communication broken, and Allied communication secure from the Axis. It's like they feel that state of affairs is the status quo, rather than the result of the good fortune of the Germans having the arrogance to believe the Enigma machine was unbreakable, or if not unbreakable, having too much contempt for Allied science, thought the Allies were such bad scientists they couldn't break it anyway.