[liberationtech] What would you reply to this?

[Spencer Sevilla]

While anything is certainly possible, I agree with David. To the best of my knowledge, we have no reason to believe that the NSA can crack the cryptographic protocols themselves. All leaked information available on this topic that I’m aware of, from Snowden to Room 641a to the FBI/Apple debate all reinforce this position, as they focus on attack vectors that exist outside of the cryto itself. This actually highlights the benefits of strong e2e encryption (as opposed to simply securing your communication to a public website that then cooperates with surveillance agencies).

On a meta-level, the argument that “the NSA can crack any encryption, therefore we should assume China can too, therefore we should assume encryption is insecure, therefore we should not even bother using e2e encryption” is… remarkably concerning, especially in an age of bad actors and misinformation.

Spencer

> On Jun 14, 2020, at 11:48, David Stodolsky <dss at socialinformatics.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On 14 Jun 2020, at 20:37, Yosem Companys <yosem at techlantis.com <mailto:yosem at techlantis.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> The US’s NSA can crack any encryption in the world and listen to any communications it wants. 
> 
> Not true. Strong crypto can’t be cracked.
> 
> 
> dss
> 
> David Stodolsky, PhD                   Institute for Social Informatics
> Tornskadestien 2, st. th., DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark
> dss at socialinformatics.org <mailto:dss at socialinformatics.org>          Tel./Signal: +45 3095 4070
> 
> -- 
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