The 2nd Crypto Wars

This has been invisible to most people, but we're now in what I call the "2nd Crypto Wars”. This is important, and your world will be impacted by it.

The current battleground is that the Government wants the ability to see your banking communication, your chats, your Alexa snippets... They won’t do that, of course. They’ll only use it on the bad guys, they promise. You should be happy that they can see everything because they’ll protect you from [insert boogie-man du jour].

The occasional criminal who breaks the system and vacuums out a few bank accounts is a small price to pay for allowing the government to pursue terrorists, drug dealers, and child pornographers. (They always seem to use child porn as a boogie man. After all, there’s no one who can stand up and defend it, not even Roy Moore.). Government abuse of this system is, of course, not something to worry about at all.

After all, we’re talking about iPhones and nanny cams, not nuclear launch codes.

The problem with this is that, actually, no — much the same technology secures it all, from your Facebook Messenger to political communications between legislators to military communications. The DoD may buy $500 hammers, but they buy off-the-shelf communication equipment from Cisco, GE, etc. (because, frankly, that stuff is damn good and they can’t really do better with a bespoke system). I use this technology daily to secure everything from political information to credit cards. When something breaks in these systems, whole companies can fail and real people are out of jobs.

The DoJ keeps has always maintained that we can put in a backdoor that only they can use, and only when their motivations and pure and just and on the side of right.

A.G. Barr has recently shown a change in Government strategy, and that's progress. He’s given up on the delusion that you can have your cake while he eats it. His speech admitted some of the consequences (less security for you) instead of pretending they don’t exist, and he’s claiming it’s worth the cost to get the result (more security for you). So, we can now at least discuss things in the world of reality instead of fantasy.

Big Brother may be watching over you, but Big Brother can’t see everywhere. One of the primary purposes of Government (in the modern world) is to provide security for its citizens, so this is a legitimate concern. How much do you want him to and what does it cost you? That’s now the discussion.

For further reading, Bruce Schneier has his own take.