It's good to see The Intercept and others smell a rat with the fake fight between Apple and the USG (hardly only the FBI). Crediting Snowden and his flacks with this phony crypto war is a bit much, though, opposition to government instrusions around the world have been persistent for decades, especially against the ever increasing digital violations and forever failing protections against them. "Strong crypto is hard to do while making it easy for users." What is most needed from the Snowden 90% still-secret wad are defenses against the USG now that alarms have been repeatedly clanged about redacted and incomplete offenses. Most peculiar that almost no defensive measures have been released, although Snowden may have insisted on not releasing those as threats to US national security. Snowden's alleged demand that outlets check with USG before releases to assure no national harm is institutionalized in national security reporting, but is also required by fear of prosecution of outlets and their investors such as Omidyar, Slim, Bezo, all the major media. Withholding the 90% of Snowden material which he claims was given to the public, is damnable betrayal of the public for monetary and professional benefits. In this way the Snowden material has been handled like the USG handles it, as if it is owned by the handlers, not by the ones who paid for it. It would not be off-base to accuse the Snowden handlers of what Apple and the USG are doing, engaging in a fake fight "in the public interest" for pecuniary gain. Privacy and civil liberties are being peddled as commercial products, cheered yesterday by Apple investors. The DNI's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is as much a marketing scam as the American Civil Liberties Union, same kind of people populate both, testify in Congress, meet with POTUS, work the lecture circuit. At 11:05 AM 2/27/2016, you wrote:

...

After the 2013 Snowden revelations, as

John Young wrote: > USG is not USA. Apple is not its buyers. USG v Apple is not about citizens and privacy. It's about secretkeepers against the public. Therefore, except for members of “the public” who have no secrets (no credit card PINs, no private medical conditions, no private relationships, no private future plans, no private original ideas, no private and unpopular political views, etc.), “it’s about secretkeepers” against themselves? I suppose then we should all file amicus briefs on both sides? John Young wrote: > Govs may concede crypto public protection to assure other means remain effective. Promoting public crypto as a cloak appears to be the campaign underway, now as in the 1990s, so beguiling to crypto advocates to claim a win (for the industry-org-edu to continue doing openly and secretly what it does best). This has been addressed previously and yesterday by an article at The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2016/02/26/fbi-vs-apple-post-crypto-wars/ mainstream technology companies started spreading encryption by putting it in popular consumer products, the wars erupted again. Law enforcement officials, led by FBI Director James Comey, loudly insisted that U.S. companies should build backdoors to break the encryption just for them. > > That won’t happen because what these law enforcement officials are asking for isn’t possible (any backdoor can be used by hackers, too) and wouldn’t be effective (because encryption is widely available globally now). They’ve succeeded in slowing the spread of unbreakable encryption by intimidating tech companies that might otherwise be rolling it out faster, but not much else. > > Indeed, as almost everyone else acknowledges, unbreakable encryption is here to stay. > > Tech privacy advocates continue to remain vigilant about encryption, actively pointing out the inadequacies and impossibilities of the anti-encryption movement, and jumping on any sign of backsliding. > > But even as they have stayed focused on defending encryption, the government has been shifting its focus to something else. > > The ongoing, very public dispute between Apple and the FBI, in fact, marks a key inflection point — at least as far as the puublic’s understanding of the issue. > > You might say we’re entering the Post-Crypto phase of the Crypto Wars. Think about it: The more we learn about the FBI’s demand that Apple help it hack into a password-protected iPhone, the more it looks like part of a concerted, long-term effort by the government to find new ways around unbreakable encryption — rather than try to break it. Withoutt Ed Snowden’s whistle-blowing, Glenn Greenwald’s, Laura Poitras’ and Ewen MacAskill’s journalism, reporting by the Intercept and by the Washington Post’s Bart Gellman, and Apple’s refusal, “the public” would not be discussing this at all. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography