Practice Cryptography!
Even with all of the cryptologic and cryptographic technology that has existed in the world for the past 60 years, we still don't really know what encryption is good for or how to use it -- or, more importantly, why it's important. Maybe it's time for people and coders to actually start practicing how to use it, like any other skill.Monday, March 27, 2006
Waxing political
I really hate to bring up politics in this discussion, but there's always some form of it tainting any attempt to bring encryption out into the open and actually discuss it.
"Let them listen to me. I have nothing to hide." Hmmmm.... so you acknowledge that there's this nebulous 'them' that will wiretap you 'for your own good', or 'in the interests of national security', you don't have any idea who they are, and you don't know their motives. What if, for example, someone who looked in on you decided they were going to use your identity to commit some fraud -- or decided that they didn't like you, and hired someone to come smack you or make your working life difficult (I'm actually pulling examples out of history, here, the J. Edgar Hoover and the McCarthy eras, and I'm sure probably a lot more that I don't have).
Oh, you also don't mind your bank statements and checks being sent through the mail without an envelope, for any one of "them" to read. After all... who's to say that your neighbor's not one of "them", and knows anyway?
In practice, encrypting a message (or a stream of bits and bytes) is like folding up a piece of paper and putting it into an envelope. Instead of everything going by for just anyone to read, now suddenly "they" have to work harder at it, doing their jobs like they're supposed to, picking and choosing their threats and obtaining permission from the courts to open the mail.
That is why I would prefer to use encryption for everything, and that is why I think it's LONG past time that we should have made it an integral part of everything. But we can't do that as it stands... because none of the standards work. None of the proposals work. Nothing really works, in the system that we have... and so, we need to make it work. I'll find a way to make it work, if I have to, if nobody reads what I write here. This is far, far too important of an issue to buck any further -- it's gotta stop, and it's gotta stop here.
"Let them listen to me. I have nothing to hide." Hmmmm.... so you acknowledge that there's this nebulous 'them' that will wiretap you 'for your own good', or 'in the interests of national security', you don't have any idea who they are, and you don't know their motives. What if, for example, someone who looked in on you decided they were going to use your identity to commit some fraud -- or decided that they didn't like you, and hired someone to come smack you or make your working life difficult (I'm actually pulling examples out of history, here, the J. Edgar Hoover and the McCarthy eras, and I'm sure probably a lot more that I don't have).
Oh, you also don't mind your bank statements and checks being sent through the mail without an envelope, for any one of "them" to read. After all... who's to say that your neighbor's not one of "them", and knows anyway?
In practice, encrypting a message (or a stream of bits and bytes) is like folding up a piece of paper and putting it into an envelope. Instead of everything going by for just anyone to read, now suddenly "they" have to work harder at it, doing their jobs like they're supposed to, picking and choosing their threats and obtaining permission from the courts to open the mail.
That is why I would prefer to use encryption for everything, and that is why I think it's LONG past time that we should have made it an integral part of everything. But we can't do that as it stands... because none of the standards work. None of the proposals work. Nothing really works, in the system that we have... and so, we need to make it work. I'll find a way to make it work, if I have to, if nobody reads what I write here. This is far, far too important of an issue to buck any further -- it's gotta stop, and it's gotta stop here.
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