Wow, what a week in the public debate on “exceptional” encryption! The OPM debacle, the MIT paper detailing why what the government wants can never be secure and the government’s odd admixture of fear-mongering mixed with hand-ringing all came together for me in the help text for iCloud Keychain (screenshot nearby).
It simply says,”Your information is encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.” That deceptively dry-as-dust statement is at the heart of the government’s very public push to convince us that there can be encryption that is “secure” and which they can crack at will. The MIT report, published by the most respected academics and practitioners in cryptography, simply states that
These proposals are unworkable in practice, raise enormous legal and ethical questions, and would undo progress on security at a time when Internet vulnerabilities are causing extreme economic harm.”
What more is there to say?
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