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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: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @07:51PM
I know y'all may think this blindingly obvious, but the real lead here is: Candidate who wants to make America "GREAT" "again" ends up putting together a team that is advocating exactly the same totalitarian shit as before.
Kind of like how the candidate who would give us "HOPE AND CHANGE" ended up putting together a team that advocated exactly the same totalitarian shit as before. Kind of like how the candidate who was going to be The Decider... granted he gave us two new fronts to fight combat engagements on (that still aren't settled,) but his team even before September 11 advocated exactly the same totalitarian shit as before. Then you had the Slick one whose wife just lost the election. He gave us prurient sexual escapades and did manage to balance the budget and take credit for a normal economic upturn (and his veep claims credit for Teh Internets.) He had a staff who advocated the same totalitarian shit as before - see for example Tomahawk missiles against the Taliban. Before him you had the Daddy of The Decider, who lasted only one term in office because his team gave us the same totalitarian shit as before (despite taking back Kuwait.) Then you had the B-list Actor who was excellent at oratory but was clueless enough to have a staff who started giving us the same shit as we have now - who were actually continuing the same shit as Nixon and Ford did. His predecessor, Jimmy Carter, was genuinely new and different because we were sick of Ford/Nixon.... And Carter is still today regarded by many as a wonderful humanitarian and diplomat but who in his single term was one of the WORST Presidents the United States ever had.
So. What's your real theme here, and why the fuck would anyone not expect that Mr. Make America Great Again would have anything but a staff who would give us the same totalitarian shit that's been shoveled down our throats since before McCarthyism?
You young idiots... get the picture yet? I hope so. Because then you'll have genuinely learned something new that those of us who were stupid enough to vote for Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama didn't learn when we were young and stupid.
Thanks for reading.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 25 2017, @10:25PM
Yeah, I think I'm going to continue submitting updates on the Crypto Wars, regardless if it is the same shit that has been going on for 2+ decades.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]