Perry E. Metzger wrote:
The real problem with the NSA is the same as the problem with the FBI re: digital telephony. They've gotten used to a certain model of how the world works and rather than adapt to new times where most people have access to strong crypto, they have decided to use the laws to try to retard the inevitable.
Perry is absolutely right about this. We have been living in a "golden era" for the FBI and NSA. By analogy, we have also been living in a golden era for physicians: during the last several decades (in the developed world anyway) we have relied on antibiotics to the point where they are taken for granted. This time has passed, and there is no going back. The Golden Age of Antibiotics is over. Similarly, the Golden Age of Wiretaps is over. No amount of wishful thinking and convoluted logic can put the genie back into the bottle. An attempt to (in effect) make certain types of mathematics illegal will only serve to knock us out of our technological leadership position, not make our country safe from terrorism and drugs. Given a world in which strong crypto is actually used, and that use is illegal, how can a government make the punishment fit the crime? Would all use of illegal cryptography be treated as though there was an actual threat of terrorism? The death penalty? This is, of course, an absurd point of view. The government could no more accomplish this than they could make muttering over the phone (thereby defeating a plaintext wiretap), or the use of obscure language (such as Native American dialects) illegal. It just doesn't hang together as a rational approach. Like physicians, the FBI and the national security operations must devise alternative schemes to combat the real "enemy," terrorists and drug dealers -- not mathematicians and ordinary citizens trying to have a private conversation. The suppression of basic rights that would be required in any attempt to overcome the "force of nature" that is human knowledge would make a mockery of our "inalienable rights" as free people to conduct our lives without fear of the overbearing scrutiny of unrestrained government. dvw