Thank Snowden, As NSA Estimates He Singlehandedly Sped Up Encryption Adoption By 7 Years
from the thank-you-ed dept
As part of our funding campaign for our coverage of encryption, we reached out to some companies that care about these issues to ask them to show their support. This post is sponsored by Golden Frog, a company dedicated to online privacy, security and freedom.
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, is claiming that, according to NSA estimates the Snowden revelations sped up the adoption rate of encryption by 7 years. Apparently, that's based on NSA estimates of the adoption curve of encryption. As reported by Jenna McLaughlin at the Intercept:
“As a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has accelerated by seven years,” James Clapper said during a breakfast for journalists hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.Of course, it's worth noting that, in the past few months, it seemed as if the NSA and the intelligence community was moving away from its kneejerk hatred of encryption, pushing back against the FBI's argument that we need to backdoor encryption. But, apparently they're not willing to go quite this far. Basically, the NSA wants strong encryption out there, but it doesn't really want you to use it.
The shortened timeline has had “a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists,” he said.
When pressed by The Intercept to explain his figure, Clapper said it came from the National Security Agency. “The projected growth maturation and installation of commercially available encryption — what they had forecasted for seven years ahead, three years ago, was accelerated to now, because of the revelation of the leaks.”
Asked if that was a good thing, leading to better protection for American consumers from the arms race of hackers constantly trying to penetrate software worldwide, Clapper answered no.Yup. James Clapper would prefer that the American public be less safe by not using encryption, rather than protecting their digital lives.
“From our standpoint, it’s not … it’s not a good thing,” he said.
Of course, many other people do think it's a very, very good thing. Including Ed Snowden:
Of all the things I've been accused of, this is the one of which I am most proud. https://t.co/1qybuvnmpt https://t.co/yoAF71KFXc
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 25, 2016
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Filed Under: edward snowden, encryption, james clapper, nsa, sponsored post
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"It's not my fault for stealing the cookies, it's your fault for catching me."
Had they shown restraint in their actions, only going after targets and trying to minimize 'incidental' collection of other data rather than trying to grab everything simply because they could it's entirely possible that Snowden wouldn't have felt the need to leak the evidence exposing their actions in the first place, and even if he did there still wouldn't have been nearly as strong a push to roll out widespread encryption.
If encryption is becoming more widespread and it's making their jobs 'harder', they have only their own actions to blame, as they made it very clear that they have no interest in protecting or respecting the privacy or security of anyone that isn't them, so if people and companies want it done they will have to do it themselves.
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Re: "It's not my fault for stealing the cookies, it's your fault for catching me."
And the arms race with malicious hackers out there (remember hacking is not always bad per se) also isn't guilty alone. There's a lot of people wanting to protect their devices from plain old theft of data. Remember our phones now carry a great deal about our lives.
So in the end Clapper is giving too much importance to Ed while leaving other factors out.
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Re: Re: "It's not my fault for stealing the cookies, it's your fault for catching me."
He gets a 2-fer on this one. He gets to blame Ed and Encryption. A win-win.
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Re: Re: "It's not my fault for stealing the cookies, it's your fault for catching me."
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Re: Re: "It's not my fault for stealing the cookies, it's your fault for catching me."
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Re: "It's not my fault for stealing the cookies, it's your fault for catching me."
Now everything is encrypted even over private links between data centers. And increasingly, is encrypted at rest on storage media.
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He acts like the revelations of the U.S. letter agencies acting in a Naziesque fashion towards its citizens was a bad thing.
Wanna see the real domestic terrorists? There is a picture of one right here... look up.
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Re:
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Not 7 years...
“The projected growth maturation and installation of commercially available encryption — what they had forecasted for seven years ahead, three years ago, was accelerated to now, because of the revelation of the leaks.”
It's only 4 years ahead per their forecast.
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Re: Not 7 years...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSAiI3xMh4
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Another thing improved encryption technology
Perhaps a bit off topic but the push by some government three letter agency leaders and politicians for back doors to encryption probably won't stop the use of secure encryption. Should this be required and implemented then immediately cracked it would be interesting to see the response of those pushing this when their most private correspondence is published including financial records, hotel bills, notes to girlfriends or boyfriends, etc.
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Sponsored by Golden Frog? What a disgrace.
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Re: Sponsored by Golden Frog? What a disgrace.
2. actually, was going to post (as a proud ABP/ghostery/noscript user) that i found those restrained, on-point, and relatively unobtrusive 'inline' ads to be fine...
3. if ads were mostly like that, wouldn't have any where near the hatred of them i do now... oh, i would probably still hate them, just not as rabidly and righteously...
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Re: Re: Sponsored by Golden Frog? What a disgrace.
https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/17g53i/if_you_thought_you_were_safe_using_golden _frog/
https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN/comments/2bb0u1/i_use_vypr_vpn_and_just_got_a_dcma_copyright/
http s://www.goldenfrog.com/copyright
Read them carefully. It means that Golden Frog can and does track your activity and connections, and can associate a DMCA notice (and as a result any other legal action) to you and your account.
The point of a VPN is to be encrypted and to by anonymous. Golden Frog appears to fail on at least one of those areas. So Techdirt taking ads (these are ads, nothing more and nothing less) from a company that doesn't seem to meet up to the Techdirt ideals is pretty funny.
Mike Masnick, would you care to comment on this? What is your personal feeling about Golden Frog, and why are they the only company paying for this special spamvertising activity?
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Re: Re: Re: Sponsored by Golden Frog? What a disgrace.
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It comes down to if you are having a hard time justifying and getting more because it is coming up against public disapproval then maybe you shouldn't be doing the things that bring you bad publicity and negative reactions.
More and more today, it's becoming evident that this country is corrupt from top to bottom. The money is guilty but not the person carrying it? State lab testers are faking results and get fired but no one in DOJ wants to address the 10s of thousands of jailed people put in there as a results of bad evidence? That law makers are making laws directly and continuously that don't favor the voters that put them in office? That votes voters make don't really count?
Seems to have no end of examples to provide as reasons why the citizens of this country no longer trust the government but rather fear it.
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Re:
Granted, the FBI is probably not responsible for any of the plots that worked, but still, they're obviously not doing what anyone could call "fighting terrorism".
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$u$picious journali$m
So much for TD being a trustworthy source.
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Advanced by 7 years?
Also note that newer systems under development are typically not open architectures. As the older systems become deprecated, the newer ones are making the Internet more closed.
This can be attributed to less economic freedom, (fewer innovators have the free time to innovate in a non-militaristic way) and to intellectual property law that treats public assets like the dirt in the bottom of a cock fighting ring.
The impetus for change is there, but the freedom to do so is under progressively more constraint. That constraint will continue to get worse under either of the front running candidates. It is fair to say the next major technology boom won't come from the U.S.. It will be like the 80's again with heavy domestic stagflation, and a foreign markets dominating.
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Is it just me?
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Role reversal?
Hens in charge of the fox house tend to end up with short terms.
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You really should vet your sponsors, its just like your daily deal. Techdirt is loosing credibility when you spam this kind of poor services
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