Re: Stellar Wind & profile of William Binney
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: KYpatriot</div><div class="ubbcode-body">And you are absolutely SURE that the NSA wasn't give a back door key to the encryption? Really? </div></div>
How do you prove a negative or shift the burden of proof to me and emphasizing it with "Really?" to make it seem like you have evidence to the contrary and that I'm crazy for even suggesting something contrary?
That only works with an assumption that every encryption algorithm developed includes a backdoor so the government has backdoor access or a weak point to attack. It also means a master key must exist for every encryption algorithm, which simply isn't the case because <span style="font-style: italic">anyone </span>(with the ability) can come up with their own encryption and write it how they see fit. The Rijndael cipher written by a couple of Belgians (not NSA spooks) won over a bunch of other competitors to become the AES standard but it isn't the only game in town. When the NIST held the AES competition, it was specifically for a "an unclassified, publicly disclosed encryption algorithm" which means it isn't secret and anyone can use it. It was an open competition to any cryptographers that wanted to participate to get their algorithm adopted as the AES standard. Unless they were all in on it and held back on some secret pinky swear stuff, it seems implausible.
That was the entire point. If you use an algorithm which is shrouded in mystery, you DO run the risk of the so called backdoors because you don't know what's actually in it and you're depending on the good faith of whatever company or individual(s) created it. It's also worth noting the algorithm itself and how you implement it are two different things. If you're using AES-256 and you implement the password by writing it on the thumbdrive with a sharpie, or use "secret" as the password, that's obviously poor implementation and no fault of the algorithm itself.
Finally, anyone can write their own encryption schemes. There is nothing stopping you from writing your own encryption. And people do just that. There is tons of stuff out there. TrueCrypt is very popular and completely open source option, if you're paranoid about AES. Unless the government got to them too. At least it seems no one gave the FBI the backdoor key. You're better off waterboarding and zapping nipples to get the password.
http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/
http://g1.globo.com/English/noticia/2010/06/not-even-fbi-can-de-crypt-files-daniel-dantas.html
Of course, if we're to believe the NSA has some secret computational weapon that is generations ahead of what is currently theoretically possible or probable given our current manufacturing and computational capabilities, then there is little point in debating it since nothing can be proven and anyone that uncovers such a thing will be quietly chaparoned away by men in black vans. If the NSA has a secret backdoor, it renders everything the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and the entire commerce sector obsolete because AES is widely used and alphabet soup agencies surely aren't going to embrace an encryption scheme that is an open book to the NSA. They all hate sharing information.
