[liberationtech] to encrypt or not to encrypt?

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall]

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On Fri Jun 21 14:54:29 2013, Michael Rogers wrote:
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> On 21/06/13 17:57, Joseph Lorenzo Hall wrote:
>> What about the theory that by encrypting all the things we are 
>> feeding some massively large NSA cryptanalysis project that uses 
>> different flavors of ciphertext to find weaknesses? Very
>> conspiracy theorist-y, but I've heard a few people say that maybe
>> we shouldn't "donate" unnecessary ciphertext to such a project.
>> :/
> 
> Sorry to be blunt, but that theory is nonsense. The NSA can't
> possibly learn more from the ciphertext of an unknown plaintext
> than it could learn by generating its own ciphertext from a known
> plaintext - which would save the cost of a splitter cabinet, to
> boot.

No, thanks for being blunt and this makes a lot of sense! best, Joe
- -- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Senior Staff Technologist
Center for Democracy & Technology
1634 I ST NW STE 1100
Washington DC 20006-4011
(p) 202-407-8825
(f) 202-637-0968
joe at cdt.org
PGP: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
fingerprint: BE7E A889 7742 8773 301B 4FA1 C0E2 6D90 F257 77F8

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