back to article How to confuse a Euro-cop: Survey reveals the crypto they love to hate

European Union (EU) citizens can now get an idea of what their governments want – and are doing about – cryptography regulation. The new opportunity comes courtesy of an freedom of information request by Bits of Freedom, summarised by privacy researcher Lukas Olejnik here. The news is bleak: the responses to a survey sent to …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's a non starter anyway.

    Apple, (to their credit) make security one of their USP.

    As do blackberry.

    There are already unbreakble (atmaftff) encryption tools out there already.

    Do the powers that be think they can curtail their use by criminals?

    Really? Do they?

    Or is this just a phishing exercise foisted upon those of us who, as a rule, only need to secure their bank account transactions.

    So much MORE data that they couldn't read but now, possibly, be able to?

    It would be great if i could get all my email contacts to use PGP or equivalent, but the truth is, they are just not bothered about doing so.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: It's a non starter anyway.

      It will boil down to the logic that if only crims can use encryption than anyone who uses it is a crim and will be dealt with in Room 101.

      Lately, I find any discussion involving more laws, rules, including the ones regarding encryption to be beyond silly. It's like the lawmakers think that another law will just bring everyone into compliance. They can start by looking at something simple, like traffic laws which are ignored by many regularly (especially speeding). What makes them thing that everyone will fall into line with any new regulation?

  2. Lee D Silver badge

    Purpose of encryption: To stop people - other than those intended - being able to see, or infer, the contents of a message.

    Sorry, but it's working exactly as designed.

    "Weakening" it or "backdooring" it makes it stop being encryption.

    And unless you can stop everyone, everywhere, across the planet having access to ... gosh... mathematics... you're not going to stop it.

    Sure, you can ask Skype for a backdoor but you could do that legally anyway without any need to break encryption whatsoever as Skype are part of the "intended recipients" for most things. But if people are using an OTR plugin or similar to communicate USING Skype, there's nothing you can do.

    And guess what the terrorists are doing, as compared to Granny who just wants to talk to Fred in Australia?

    It's like saying "Oh, yes, we'd really like a way that no bullets in the world would ever fire in any gun, anywhere, except our own". Although "true", it makes you sound just as stupid.

    You had your chance when PKE was declared a weapon and that all got invalidated, and only ever really took effect in one country. You can't hide "maths" any more than you can uninvent "chemistry" to get rid of bombs.

    Rather than chase encrypted messages, put a few more people on the ground, in airports, and do a few more checks on people at the borders.

    P.S. Though I would never suggest anyone - even a mathematician - does so, it's possible to encrypt using nothing more than pen and paper, and it's possible to extend existing source code to use unbelievable complex keys that take 20+ minutes to sign a single message. Even when "weakened" by using all the known flaws in the algorithm, that means it's still not going to be cracked this side of armageddon.

    Rather than chase the dream of an encryption scheme you can crack every time, acknowledge that you are no more likely to crack the encryption than infiltrate the groups in question, or get a bug onto their PC directly, or work it out by other means. Just like foreign militaries.

    1. Anonymous Blowhard

      "put a few more people on the ground, in airports, and do a few more checks on people at the borders."

      I'd be more worried about the murdering bastards that were born here...

      1. theModge

        "I'd be more worried about the murdering bastards that were born here..."

        The government you mean?

        The points about re-prioritising traditional intelligence seem reasonable, though I suspect that they're just not doing very well at that, hence resorting to other methods.

        I'd also suggest that given that England is really quite comfortable and Syria is not, asking them selves why not just lone terrorists, but even mothers with Children are trying to go there is also a worth while exercise.

        Lastly I'd point out that given the recent banning of much porn the average citizen is going to be using a VPN. This in turn will mean that just investigating everyone using a VPN is of no use. As is investigating everyone using TOR, when every student and his non-technical mate is using it to procure their drugs.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "I'd be more worried about the murdering bastards that were born here..."

        One nazi white guy goes nuts with a gun. Meanwhile, how many british born pakistanis have gone to fight for ISIS and have killed, tortured or murdered how many civilians...?

        Answer: A fuck load.

        1. Blitheringeejit
          Holmes

          A fuck load...

          ...of British-born people is a fuck load of British citizens - emphatically not "Pakistanis". By no means all the Brits who have gone to fight with ISIS come from families of Pakistani origin. Not all of them are even slightly brown - a good few white nutters have joined the cause.

          To illustrate the subtleties at work here (because I'm guessing that subtlety isn't your strong suit), Britain's most famous jihadi, yer actual Jihadi John, was born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents - so before he was righteously offed, he was an Arab, which is seriously different from a Pakistani. If you deny or don't care about that difference, then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

          Ignorant racial stereotyping is what extremists like ISIS do - we need to know better, and do better. Not least because "know thine enemy" is a rather important weapon in fighting both ideological and military battles. Ultimately ISIS will lose because they are ignorant and stupid - and the smarter everyone opposing them can be, the sooner they will be beaten.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: A fuck load...

            "Ultimately ISIS will lose because they are ignorant and stupid"

            Don't forget ugly too!

            But you are rigth. They will NEVER create anything worthwile, so will wither away in their own mess.

            All they can do is pester people. Some kind of narcissistic, semi-autistic religion-nerds compensating for their inferiority complex. I'm sure I forgot to mention several other character defects, such as fear of the opposite sex. What a bunch of losers.

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      >Sorry, but it's working exactly as designed.

      Actually, it isn't. As the head of the NSA pointed out, they like encryption. Because Joe Public doesn't bother with it much, the people who use encryption stand out like a sore thumb, providing the NSA with metadata that to them is just as useful as any message content.

      Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time. Whilst professionals like doctors and lawyers will need to take due diligence against criminal data thieves to comply with data protection legislation, most people's choice of messaging app will be determined by what their friends use and its convenience.

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        So, surely it IS working exactly as described.

        One of the roles of encrypted streams is to be indistinguishable from random noise. As more people use encryption - as they should - the more those using encryption slip into unrecognisable random noise.

        P.S. likely for the last ten years, your email, banking, shopping, logins, software updates, and just about everything else have been encrypted. Quite how much do you think one encrypted stream is going to stand out.

        And what you're suggesting is that encryption itself is not breakable, hence not useful to try to break, and so they rely on other metadata. The encryption did its job. You still don't know what was said. If you posted the encrypted message on a forum, you still don't know how the intended recipient was and only the recipient can understand the message. The encryption is doing everything it's designed to do.

        The NSA are also presumably doing everything they were designed to do. But that should mean a lot more than "let's try to break encryption".

        Encryption works exactly as intended as it's NOT designed to stop people knowing some data travelled from A to B. It's designed to make sure that data can never be accessed by unauthorised people and that the encryption data itself (not the format, carrier, connection, etc.) is indistinguishable from random noise. Job done.

        That they did the equivalent of sending an encrypted message to "terrorist_cell_B@hotmail.com" is their own stupidity. The encryption still did its job, exactly as designed.

        "We know this terrorist sent a message to this other terrorist at 9:26am".

        "Okay. What was in the message?"

        "No idea".

        "So, absent any other significant correlation, it could have been a recipe for cookies?"

        "Er..."

        "And how 'rare' are encrypted messages nowadays, Mr Spy?"

        "Well, we've been arguing for years that we can't crack people's Tesco's shopping..."

        "Oh. Interesting. I move to dismiss, your honour."

      2. Whitter
        Meh

        Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

        Stenography is your friend.

        1. hplasm
          Happy

          Re: Stenography is your friend.

          Getting a shorthand secretary to sit on my knee? Cool!

        2. Basic

          Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

          Only if you have a cute assistant. Steganography on the other hand may well be useful ;)

        3. Kubla Cant

          Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

          @Whitter Stenography is your friend.

          Shorthand? Do you perhaps mean "steganography"?

          1. Whitter
            Facepalm

            Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

            <facepalm>self</facepalm>

          2. GrapeBunch

            Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

            " @Whitter Stenography is your friend.

            Shorthand? Do you perhaps mean "steganography"? "

            That never worked. The dinosaur broke the pencil.

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

          @Whitter well, given that few people can read shorthand, it might help a bit, but I'm sure the NSA and GCHQ (and crims) will have folk who can read the stuff amongst their numbers. I thought steganography - encoding messages within picture files - was fairly easily cracked?

          Me, I'm just hoping/wishing for someone to create an easy to use frontend for using PGP with emails :-}

          1. tom dial Silver badge

            Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

            An easy to use frontend for using PGP with emails

            I've had very little technical trouble with Thunderbird and Enigmail. Neither has my wife, for whom I set it up. The combination transferred flawlessly from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (unlike some other applications) and through three or four Debian Linux distribution upgrades. The last time I looked there remained some work to be done on web mail interfaces, although ProtonMail's is not too bad. Google End-to-End and Mailvelope were usable, although I do not know whether they have had a proper security validation or, indeed, still are being developed and maintained.

            The problem has very little to do with availability or technical matters, and a great deal to do with the observed fact that only a tiny fraction of the public, as against those who lurk on technical web sites, actually cares about it.

            1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

              "The problem has very little to do with availability or technical matters, and a great deal to do with the observed fact that only a tiny fraction of the public, as against those who lurk on technical web sites, actually cares about it."

              Sort of in between. The problem is that any form of encryption, including PGP is an add-on to email as it currently exists. On the technical side we currently have a protocol for exchanging emails and a mechanism, MX records, for mapping addresses to servers. Some clients will help encrypt and decrypt the messages. However the mail system as it stands doesn't build this in not does it make provision for distribution of keys. The encrypted message is just stuff being send.

              In order for Esme's wish to come true the protocols need to evolve. It's no use having PGP-enabled clients unless her correspondents are also using them and have a mechanism to share their public keys.

              There needs to be a mechanism for publishing public keys. The mail protocol needs to make cryptographic signing standard, via an transitional period where it's optional, with mis-signed messages being bounced by the recipient's server. Clients and servers would all need to be PGP-enabled and users would be nudged towards setting up keys during the transitional period.

              Unless PGP is built into the browser there's an obvious problem with webmail. But in any case - webmail and security?

          2. John H Woods Silver badge

            Re: Encryption will only work as intended until everybody is using it all the time

            "I thought steganography - encoding messages within picture files - was fairly easily cracked?" --- Esme

            Consultancy answer 1b) "it depends"

            It can be fairly easily disrupted, by performing invisible-to-the-naked-eye transformations on pictures in transit. But as properly encrypted material is indistinguishable from random data, providing you're hiding something much smaller than the picture and nobody else has a copy of the original, then it is quite hard to detect. However, even if you can detect it, what you are detecting is properly encrypted material, and it's just as hard to crack as something that is obviously a PGP encrypted mail, for instance.

            TL;DR: Steganography is for hiding the movement of data; you can (should) still use encryption for hiding the data itself.

        5. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. John H Woods Silver badge

      "infiltrate the groups in question, or get a bug onto their PC directly, or work it out by other means" --- Lee D

      And this is the entire problem: none of those techniques can be used in bulk, for mass surveillance of whole populations, and that is what politicians all seem to want to do.

  3. JetSetJim
    Black Helicopters

    > Hopefully not using rubber-hose decryption - Ed

    Oblig. xkcd. Hopefully not too prevalent in the civilised world...

    1. theModge

      the civilised world...

      "Water boarding works" --D.Trump.

      1. herman

        Well, being ex military, I am sorry to say, but torture does in fact work and when it can save lives, it will be used, whether it is official policy or not.

        The problem with disallowing torture, is that soldiers may still torture and then kill the captive, to hide the act of torture.

        1. Ejit

          And at the bottom of that particularly nasty cesspit is extra judicial execution although we now call it "drone strikes". Then as the act becomes normalised the politicians or military commanders who consume the fruit of this poison tree, look the other way while they elect Donald.

          Have we learned nothing from Operation Phoenix in Vietnam? Around 20,000 tortured and executed...for what, a seat on the last helicopter out of Saigon?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @ejit

            "And at the bottom of that particularly nasty cesspit is extra judicial execution although we now call it "drone strikes"."

            Feel free to volunteer to go over to Syria and ask the ISIS jihadis nicely if they'd kindly fly over and allow themselves to be tried in court. If ever a user was better named than you, I haven't seen one yet.

            1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

              Re: @ejit

              "Feel free to volunteer to go over to Syria and ask the ISIS jihadis nicely if they'd kindly fly over and allow themselves to be tried in court. If ever a user was better named than you, I haven't seen one yet."

              I suppose there are cases where it's well justified.

              But it's hardly only used in Irak/Syria against ISIS.

              Now, scumbags that ISIS are, they keep lots of innocent civilans with them to increase colateral damage,

            2. Ejit

              Re: @ejit

              So the unlawful killing is justified by the identification of the target. Whose identification? Under what judicial process was that determination made? While it may be convenient to use as your example a particularly nasty band of terrorist/freedom fighter - you pays your money, you makes your choice - The rather large Hellfire missile does not discriminate between jihadi and doctor tending the sick and innocent nearby.

              When other nations acquire this technology and deploy it using their definition of terrorist are you going to so blithely cast aside the rule of law as you appear willing to do now, or is it only the size of the stick that counts?

              1. tom dial Silver badge

                Re: @ejit

                Judicial process and warfare are not commonly thought to be closely associated.

                Drone attacks certainly kill people near the target, and they also may go astray, fail to hit the target and still kill or maim substantial numbers of people. Yet they probably are more effective than car bomb attacks on markets or mosques, barrel bombs, or bombs dropped from high flying planes in terms of killing specific people without killing too many who may not be personally involved in a conflict. Upwards of 25,000 people, few of them directly involved in Nazi military operations, were killed between 13 and 15 February, 1945, and the Tokyo bombings of 9 - 10 March, 1945 killed roughly 4 times as many, most of them quite as innocent as most of the bystanders killed in drone attacks.

                Wars are really bad things, and they always kill or injure innocent people. Focusing on particular weapons, especially those which limit unintended killing and injury, is a distraction from the main point.

          2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

            Yeah, drone strikes really are the Supreme Cowards' Warfare.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              @boring coward

              >Yeah, drone strikes really are the Supreme Cowards' Warfare.

              I'm sure swordsmen said exactly the same thing about the bow and arrow when it was invented.

              "Whats this? Killed someone at a distance?? Thats completely unfair - its not how real men kill!"

              Every new weapon almost always removes the user one more step away from the actual act and gives them an advantage over their adversary. You should google what happened when the maxim gun showed up in africa. In the battle of Shangani the british held off 5000 natives with FOUR of them.

              1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

                Re: @boring coward

                "I'm sure swordsmen said exactly the same thing about the bow and arrow when it was invented."

                Bows and arrows pre-date swords by millennia, as do spears.

                /Pedantic

                1. Sir Runcible Spoon

                  Re: @boring coward

                  "Bows and arrows pre-date swords by millennia, as do spears.

                  /Pedantic"

                  I think he might be referring to the longbow, rather than just 'bows n arrows' :)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Torture

          Torture can work when performed competently. A significant danger is that it is done incompetently and is simply used to confirm whatever you want to believe.

          Password recovery is one of the easier cases as it should be very easy to verify the correctness of te hinformation concerned.

          I have never heard a convincing scenario in peace time where torture would be morally justified as the scenarios are always highly contrived and assume a certainty of knowledge about the situation and future outcomes which are completely unrealistic. The possibility of other methods, not necessarily tehcnical, are always implictly discounted.

          1. Schultz

            "Torture can work when performed competently."

            Care to share the literature that would support this statement?

        3. Tom 7

          RE: but torture does in fact work

          no it doesnt - it gives you answers that you wish to think are correct when they are merely given to stop the torture continuing.

        4. Basic

          Then you're an example of everything I loathe and can't wait until someone drags you off to return the favour.

        5. tom dial Silver badge

          Torture might work, but then again it might not, and it often won't be easy, or perhaps even possible, to tell. A torture victim may well lie to make the torture stop or pause, saying whatever seems necessary and effective at that. Unless the information can be verified quickly against other information known to be true it is likely to be worth little, as it is if it merely confirms information the interrogators believe to be true.

    2. Primus Secundus Tertius

      In the UK they can jail you for not disclosing the password whent they officially ask. No need for the heavy treatment.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Not disclosing passwords

        Of course, if you sent something using public-key encryption you don't *have* a key which will decrypt what you sent.

        1. dajames

          Re: Not disclosing passwords

          Of course, if you sent something using public-key encryption you don't *have* a key which will decrypt what you sent.

          Indeed ... so it would be the recipient of the message that would be asked to disclose the password (to the container holding the private key), and not the sender. The same arguments apply, though.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Not disclosing passwords

            That's assuming the government has access to the recipient, which frequently isn't the case. Oh, I. forget the special case of the USA whose long arm extends everywhere. and isn't above water boarding.

      2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Gimp

        "In the UK they can jail you for not disclosing the password"

        True, but that means they actually have to do some investigation to find, you know, evidence that you may be doing something illegal.

        And that's such a pain when you just want to hoover up all the data all the time.

        Which is exactly what data fetishists want to do (along with storing it forever, because you never know when yesterdays nobody becomes today's somebody).

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Oblig. xkcd. Hopefully not too prevalent in the civilised world..."

      Obligatory retort: Rubber hoses don't work against wimps and masochists. Wimps faint at the sight of the hose, so they won't talk, and masochists get off on the beatings.

      And many of these types are either alone or estranged, so there are no significant others you can use for coercion.

  4. Primus Secundus Tertius

    Capitally unreadable

    1. So the report from Italy is in all-capitals. They could have used MS Word on the original document, see below:

    Original: CAPS-LOCK ON.

    Sentence case: Caps-lock on.

    A bit more difficult with a pdf, of course.

    2. Hopefully the use of hopefully at the beginning of sentence, which is a German-American mistranslation of hoffentlich, will be banned by the sub-editors at el Reg.

  5. Part-time Farmer

    No Backdoor can ever be exclusive with encryption. Its a Backdoor!

    I remember the significant discussions between the CCEB five and their industry support when sound algorithms and key lengths were finally accepted as essential for civil "good order". Those days, IBM and others were limited to selling only 64-bit DES products [128 and 256 bit were classified as munitions].

    It was finally acknowledged that commerce, personal and civil government were legally entitled to privacy and therefore sound crypto. There are more positives than negatives; AND STILL ARE.

    A Backdoor is a backdoor. It is never limited to "officials-only", AND will not stay limited if it starts that way.

  6. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    "Which is probably why if Sweden wants to decrypt a device, its approach is to question the user [Hopefully not using rubber-hose decryption - Ed]"

    No risk of that. This is Sweden we are talking about!

    A country whose prime minister said that ISIS beheadings aren't "quite right".

    1. Charles 9

      So what if someone wants to decrypt a device but the owner is under the protection of a hostile sovereign power?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Logic hole

    'They adming they are lacking skills to tackle cybercrime'

    Logical response -> increase skills and personnel with skills to tackle cybercrime.

    Their response -> backdoor everyone's crypto so that don't need cybersecurity skills to access their data...

  8. Dave 15

    I wonder what would happen if...

    What would happen if people stopped voting for the same old same old parties and stared thinking about what these people are doing with the power they are given and vote for someone else.

    Would we actually get rid of some of this stuff? My feeling is no, they would lie and just pretend everyone had voted for more of the same.

    I still can't get over the collective piss poor memory of the government...

    a) We created the harrier so we had aircraft when our runways were bombed, now we have less runways we have also got rid of the harrier

    b) We had aircraft carriers because ships without aircraft were sunk (the Japanese took all of 15 minutes to sink two battleships).... now we don't have any aircraft carriers to protect the 20 ships that are supposed to be our navy

    c) We broadcast to the resistance in europe what to attack and when using the bbc during the second world war. The Germans listened to every word but had no idea what it meant

    So I put on facebook... on thursday I am taking a cake to my grandmother,

    What might that mean?

    1. collinsl Bronze badge

      Re: I wonder what would happen if...

      Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone.

      Tomorrow:

      Blessent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone

      Jean a une longue Moustache.

      Il y a un feu a l'agence du assurance.

    2. Kubla Cant

      Re: I wonder what would happen if...

      What would happen if people stopped voting for the same old same old parties and stared thinking about what these people are doing with the power they are given and vote for someone else.

      Hmm. Substitute "same old same old candidates" in that sentence and we know what happens: Trump.

    3. Sir Runcible Spoon
      Joke

      Re: I wonder what would happen if...

      "So I put on facebook... on thursday I am taking a cake to my grandmother,"

      The CAKE is a LIE !

  9. David Nash Silver badge

    Voting for someone else?

    "What would happen if people stopped voting for the same old same old parties and stared thinking about what these people are doing with the power they are given and vote for someone else."

    That brings its own dangers.

    1. Dave 15

      Re: Voting for someone else?

      It does

      But then to be honest if someone is kicking me in the head running away could be dangerous but seems at least one way of stopping the headache

      1. Primus Secundus Tertius

        Re: Voting for someone else?

        @Dave 15

        In 1933 Germans voted for the alternative, Adolf. It was a long time before they had another proper vote, especially in the eastern zone.

        Politics is not as easy as it may seem, especially when you are deling with real people. If you think your opinions are worth so much more than those of current politicians, then offer yourself to the people.

      2. Charles 9

        Re: Voting for someone else?

        "But then to be honest if someone is kicking me in the head running away could be dangerous but seems at least one way of stopping the headache"

        But if running away means you get SHOT, some will take the beatings because at least you're still alive.

  10. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "the Italian response to note that it's seeing HTTPS all over the place, given the concerted push by 'net luminaries to persuade site operators to employ it and therefore offer better protection to sensitive data."

    Written with a straight face?

  11. JaitcH
    FAIL

    Crypto Comms

    Signal, Telegram, PGP are solutions to amoral government employees. Take a look at > https://theintercept.com/2016/07/02/security-tips-every-signal-user-should-know/ <

    If you are a techie use MESH radio and load the Google App. Think smartmeter networks!

    Establishing an InterNet Cafe would really conceal your InterNet activities.

    If you use Apple stuff, disable Cloud backups because many of your activities and data acquisition activities are copied there and Apple can be required to produce against a warrant from Plod. URLs and calls made/received/missed are also recorded in the cloud.

    The hardest thing for the government to track are PAGERS, IRIDIUM satellite pagers, because whilst they know where the messages are sent from, the NEVER know who/where is receiving them!

    One pager number + a pager, coupled with SDR (Software Defined Radios) - one for each user - and using a numeric header to define recipients and you are away.

    Check out: > http://www.rtl-sdr.com/chaos-communications-congress-talks-iridium-pager-hacking/ <, > http://www.rtl-sdr.com/category/satellite/ <, > http://motherboard.vice.com/read/its-surprisingly-simple-to-hack-a-satellite <. Also Google: > satellite pagers, sdr, hacking <.

    And don't forget the HF spectrum in the northern hemisphere - there are very few HF listening stations active these days. New Zealand, however, has a HSA HF setup to monitor the disparate Oceana Islands. Zip or burst transmitters drive the eavesdroppers crazy.

    1. tom dial Silver badge

      Re: Crypto Comms

      These suggestions might be useful for spies (both "ours" and "theirs") and those engaged in various forms of activity defined as criminal behavior under applicable laws. They are likely to seem like quite a lot of bother to the overwhelming majority of the population who are not in either category, for whom the best use case may be privacy for affairs or sexting (Anthony Weiner, take note). That may seem uncomfortably close to "those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear," but it probably is true that the majority of people who are not already subjects of specific law enforcement interest are very unlikely to wind up in trouble due to their tradecraft failures.

      1. GrapeBunch

        Re: Crypto Comms

        Just the opposite. LE loves low hanging-fruit, and yin.

  12. Lord-a-miytee

    False economics

    "a common complaint among EU countries that they don't have the money, technology, or skills to fight cybercrime"

    And how will weakening cryptography decrease the cost of fighting cybercrime? Surely cybercrime will mushroom catastrophically, with increased cost to everyone. Additionally, since no data will be secure, any business on the open internet will become untenable, reversing the much vaunted cost benefits of e-commerce.

  13. GrapeBunch

    Noise

    If the purpose of encryption is to make the message indistinguishable from noise, shouldn't the ideally-encrypted message look like an SEO but content-free web page with advertising? It's not rocket science.

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