The US governments wants to weaken encryption and put in mandatory backdoors which will damage security. It was a ridiculous and terrible idea the last time they tried it, in the 1990s. We’re still fighting to eliminate the security problems they introduced then. We fought this battle and settled it already, why are we fighting it again..?
Once upon a time, there was a great product called BitTorrent Sync. It allowed you to sync files between your devices — computers, phones and tablets; Windows, Mac and Linux, iOS and Android. It was released as a free preview in 2013. It wasn’t open source, but developers said: Never say never :) We still consider this option. The software used strong end-to-end encryption, so your files couldn’t be snooped on in transit or grabbed from a central server.
I was enjoying some soft blue cheese on fresh French bread, thinking about algorithms, when I had a sudden revelation. I’ve implemented it as The NSA cheese test so you can enjoy it.
A US court has ruled that authorities cannot force people to incriminate themselves by divulging their encryption passwords. This is in marked contrast to the UK, where the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) makes it a crime to decline to hand over all your incriminating files if the police demand it. If the case doesn’t involve national security, you can be put in jail for two years. If it does, five years.
Why are people releasing new hard drive designs that use 40 bit DES encryption? A 600MHz Celeron can crack that in a weekend. Sheesh.
I was writing the other day on another web site about how politicians who are in opposition will speak out against something they agree with because they feel they have to, because it’s their job as the opposition; once they get into power, they’ll make a 180 degree turn and do the exact thing they denounced. Therefore the only way to predict a politician’s actual behavior is to examine his past voting record when in power, and completely ignore anything said when campaigning.
The government is discussing a massive crackdown on use of encryption software.
Well, this is the most interesting thing I’ve heard about in a while: someone’s come up with a provably unbreakable encryption scheme that’s actually practical to implement. There’s an article in the New York Times about it; basically, the scheme goes as follows: Someone sets up a satellite to generate a stream of truly random numbers, synchronized to some appropriate time code. The sender and recipient exchange a secret using an existing public-key encryption scheme, or using some other secure channel.