Viewing Single Post From: The NSA May Read My Mail

Viewing Single Post From: The NSA May Read My Mail
insecure	Oct 11 2005, 03:22 PM
Elite member Posts: 381 Group: Trusted Member Member #10 Joined: September 9, 2005	No, I haven't read "Digital Fortress". Judging by what I've heard from others here, the guy doesn't know much about crypto. If your email can be decrypted without the proper key by fewer than 10^50 computers working at 10^20 brute-force decryptions per second in less than 1000 years, you're probably not trying hard enough to encrypt it. Before a computer can do it, a human has to work out - at least in principle - how to do it first. A human can work out how to crack a Vigenere cipher. (This has been done.) The computer can't unless it is told how to do it - by a human. That is why a cryptographer's most fearsome adversary is not the computer, but the cryptanalyst. As for email encryption meaning you have something to hide - let's just say you wanted to send something through snailmail - the details of your new invention to the Patent Office; or perhaps a specimen signature to your bank for your new bank account; or even just a somewhat personal letter to your girlfriend. Would you send the information on a postcard? Or would you put it in an envelope? It is not the government's job to read my emails, or your emails. It is the government's job to protect the people from harm by outsiders (i.e. an army), and from harm by other people (i.e. a police force), and to arbitrate in case of dispute (i.e. a court system), and that's about it. The rest is stuff they've taken upon themselves, and nobody has got around to stopping them yet. In any case, any terrorist clever enough to accomplish a terrorist act is certainly clever enough not to use easily-cracked lamebrain encryption systems.


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