Last Wednesday, Irreal excoriated the Washington Post for their uninformed—ignorant really—editorial supporting backdoors in crypto systems allowing the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to read encrypted communications when they feel it’s necessary. My post and the TechCrunch article it pointed to was harsh so I’m delighted to point to a WAPO Op Ed that gets it right.
An opinion piece entitled Why the fear over ubiquitous data encryption is overblown, makes the case that on balance ubiquitous encryption allowing communication unreadable by anyone other than the intended parties is a good thing, the fears of the law enforcement community notwithstanding. That’s the libertarian/crypto-geek position, of course, so you might think the authors are from the Pirate Party or some other (by U.S. standards) fringe group. The authors, however, have surprising backgrounds. Mike McConnell was the Director of National Intelligence and a former director of the NSA. Michael Chertoff is the former Secretary of Homeland Security. William Lynn was a Deputy Secretary of Defense. These are not the usual suspects. They’re respected members of the government elite who understand the issues and might be expected to support the backdoors. Yet they’re taking on the FBI and others who insist that the fate of the nation depends on the government’s ability to spy on us.
Read the editorial. It’s not so much that it says anything you haven’t heard before but that it’s said by knowledgeable members of the establishment. We can only hope that congress will listen.