The rest of the world says :“Hey dude, do you know what your are saying?”
Obama: “Sure, we want back-door magic encryption keys and a farting unicorn.”
China says: “That’s a neat idea, we think we will do the same. Cheers Obama!”
Obama: “Hey No! You cannot do that! National Security yo, check!”
The World: "Ha ha ha ha ha "
Seriously, just WHEN will they realize that the world is racing past them while they bicker?
Oh, I guess you want a debate right? OK, If the cap fits, should you wear it?
In other words, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Is anyone still of the opinion that that this American exceptionalism is dragging us all down - slowly, but quite frankly, surely?
Encryption the government can break is encryption anyone can break. When they say they want back doors, they’re saying they don’t want encryption. Can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
And no, this has nothing to do with Obama, who probably doesn’t even know what encryption is or why it is useful. It’s just more Luddism from the government. Both parties are equally ignorant and equally guilty.
Actually, if you follow the link and the links in the link, you’ll see that President Obama has some pretty strong (and well thought out) opinions about encryption.
This is one of the (relatively few) cases where the blame really does adhere to both major parties, yes. There’s a mix of politicians and bureaucrats elected/appointed by both sides going around setting their hair on fire and screeching that ISIL will behead us all if we don’t bend over and present a back door to Big Brother. It must be particularly embarrassing for them to have this story pop up now:
The fact that the original source of the problem (back when the White House was occupied by Bill Clinton, admittedly) and the two biggest sources of alarmist propaganda (both then and now) are the ones listed as bitten by the bug is just icing on the cake.
So, like, if you use Gnu PGP, the code generates two very big numbers, you give one to your friends, they use that to encrypt stuff that can only be decrypted with your number. How would you put a back door into that? Does the government want to outlaw Gnu PGP?
Of course all security programmers in every company would be forced to change their software and/or hardware for this plan to work.
Back in the 90s there was the idea of a “key escrow”, where you had to register all your private keys with the FBI and they would safeguard them until you (or someone you talked to once) committed some crime which gave them probable cause to search your hard drive and emails.
There was also the idea of a computer chip that did this automatically by saving encryption keys in such a way that only “authorized” government agents could obtain them when needed.
Both ideas are naive horse hockey, but they sound good to the uneducated and inexperienced, aka politicians.
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