It's not just that federally-mandated backdoors increase the chance of compromise (although they certainly do). If the U.S. government can mandate that technology companies provide access through encryption, then so can other countries. Sovereignty is still a powerful concept under international law.

So imagine if Apple, upon condition of selling iPhones within China, must provide the Chinese government with a backdoor through Apple's encryption. Do you know how many federal employees use Apple technology? Including the President himself, who totes an iPad everywhere?

I don't think that federal intelligence and law enforcement officials calling for backdoors have fully thought through the consequences.

> I don't think that federal intelligence and law enforcement officials calling for backdoors have fully thought through the consequences

I think assuming that level of incompetence is a big claim.

It's simply much more likely that the actual plans/goals and the talking points and press releases about the plans/goals are mostly unrelated, as usual. You can infer that those calling for backdoors have decided that calling for backdoors is the best thing to say, inferring anything more requires more information.

> I think assuming that level of incompetence is a big claim.

Not really. Have you listened to the average member of Congress lately? Incompetence runs deep throughout all levels of government.

I think largely politicians are very intelligent and competent. What they're not though, is open about their own thoughts. That's not their job. Their job is to reflect what their supporters (financially and votingly) want. If their supporters have wild nonsense ideas, they have to promote those ideas to keep their job. That's why they were elected. We don't choose politicians because they're smart and have good ideas. We choose them because they tell us our own foolish ideas back to us.

They key point here though is that their "supporters" are NOT the American public. They are private corporations and banks with their own agendas, usually contrary to the public's well being.

The best salesman is someone who believes in the product. I'm willing to take them at their word.

It's not fair to say incompetent; I didn't say that.

Instead, look at it this way: everyone has their area of responsibility. The head of the CIA is charged with providing the best possible situational awareness for the U.S. government. He's going to make proposals and requests that will help him do that.

He's not charged with balancing all possible consequences from his requests, and he's not going to do so.

> He's not charged with balancing all possible consequences from his requests, and he's not going to do so.

But ... that seems like quite a level of incompetence for someone trusted with the position of Head of the CIA?

By which I mean, not charging him with that responsibility is a mistake (in gov structure), but him actually not doing so is his own incompetence, is it not?

I think assuming that level of _competence_, at least in fields other than diplomacy and public speaking, is a big claim. It's not reasonable to assume that every single ancient senator that's pushing for this is fully aware of the consequences, but it is reasonable to think they simply haven't thought any further than "I need to make it look like I'm doing something, or I'll look bad".

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a man who only has words, everything looks like a soapbox.

> You can infer that those calling for backdoors have decided that calling for backdoors is the best thing to say, inferring anything more requires more information.

How is calling for a really bad idea because it's the best thing to say different from the level of incompetence you say is too big to assume?

It sounds like the implication is that the politicians are smart enough to know that the backdoors are ultimately not going to happen but that calling for them is a way to appease voters who haven't followed this through to its logical conclusion.

edit: "not going to happen" could be read as "not going to be effective." I wouldn't actually be surprised if the US ended up passing some law restricting crypto to an approved list of backdoored schemes (surprised: no, dismayed: yes), forcing people into hiding their crypto in deniable ways. What some people don't seem to grasp is that no matter how much you outlaw certain math operations, whether or not the end users comply with those laws is ultimately up to them, and the terrorists simply won't comply.

It would help conventional law enforcement. Most violent criminals probably don't put enough forethought into their spontaneous attacks to properly avoid notice by the NSA. Unfortunately the NSA doesn't seem to use their resources to secure the nation, and just ignores all the large scale violent crime that goes on daily.

> Unfortunately the NSA doesn't seem to use their resources to secure the nation, and just ignores all the large scale violent crime that goes on daily.

The NSA is part of the Department of Defense charged with foreign signals intelligence for national security purposes, its not a law enforcement agency. (And many of the tools it uses would be flagrantly unconstitutional if used for domestic law enforcement.)

Generally, blurring of the military and law enforcement roles is not a healthy thing; it may be good for order, but rarely for liberty.

It's largely outside of the NSA mandate to monitor the communications of US citizen criminals. It is not the fault of the NSA that Congress has not passed a law telling them to spy on domestic criminals.

I get that some of the controversy lately is about how well they stick to their mandate, but that doesn't change what the mandate is.

Many regulations do. The real trick is giving even the terrorists reasons to behave.

It sounds impossible, of course, but that's just because we're not sure where these guys put their goals; some may be fighting for lack of another purpose in their life, while others may be motivated by personal loss or a thorough belief in the violent interpretation of Islam.

So what we really need to do is find a common thread among all the terrorists, and pull on it.

Indeed. Also, combine your steganography argument with this image

http://www.friendmosaic.com/images/example-mosaic.jpg

and it's pretty easy to see that this avenue of thought --- that we will put our efforts toward finding a way to ban encryption --- is totally ridiculous.

One of the reports on the Osama Bin Laden raid stated that he had a porn stash, I wondered at the time if this was for use as a starting point for steganographic communications.