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Like other politicians and government officials, President Trump's nominee for the position of Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, wants to have it both ways when it comes to encryption:
At his confirmation hearing, Sessions was largely non-committal. But in his written responses to questions posed by Sen. Patrick Leahy, however, he took a much clearer position:
Question: Do you agree with NSA Director Rogers, Secretary of Defense Carter, and other national security experts that strong encryption helps protect this country from cyberattack and is beneficial to the American people's' digital security?
Response: Encryption serves many valuable and important purposes. It is also critical, however, that national security and criminal investigators be able to overcome encryption, under lawful authority, when necessary to the furtherance of national-security and criminal investigations.
Despite Sessions' "on the one hand, on the other" phrasing, this answer is a clear endorsement of backdooring the security we all rely on. It's simply not feasible for encryption to serve what Sessions concedes are its "many valuable and important purposes" and still be "overcome" when the government wants access to plaintext. As we saw last year with Sens. Burr and Feinstein's draft Compliance with Court Orders Act, the only way to give the government this kind of access is to break the Internet and outlaw industry best practices, and even then it would only reach the minority of encryption products made in the USA.
Related: Presidential Candidates' Tech Stances: Not Great
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday January 25 2017, @03:14PM
indians who where not born here have ALWAYS been happy to do the government's dirty work. they'll happily do it and for low wages, too.
many american citizens (the R variety, mostly, since that is the party with the authority boot-licking attitude) will also happily work against their own best interests; but foreigners are even 'better' since they don't have the full understanding of what made america great, way back when we started.
our principles are not theirs; they come from another culture and they could really care less if we bottom-out and become a hellhole. their country already is, for that matter, and they are doing nothing to really fix their own country, either, truth be told.
so, you can find willing pigs to do the bigging piggies' bidding. shame but its true and everyone knows it.
look at the googlers and yahoos and such. those people work for companies that also sell us all out. and they convince themselves that they are not doing the man's dirty work. cog dissonance at its best.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."