NSA’s director says Paris attacks “would not have happened” without crypto

"According to statements from French law enforcement, the attackers had used standard SMS messages to communicate—not encrypted messaging apps on smartphones."

There's evidence that Rogers is aware of the social value of cryptography and is not advocating for government backdoors as a solution here. For example, the article currently states

> Rogers called encryption "foundational to our future" and added that arguing over encryption backdoors was "a waste of time."

But then devotes much more space to other quotes by Rogers that might be out of context. For example, this larger passage:

> "Is it harder for us to generate the kind of knowledge that I would like against some of these targets? Yes," Rogers told Isikoff. "Is that directly tied in part to changes they are making in their communications? Yes. Does encryption make it much more difficult for us to execute our mission. Yes."

So? All those things are true, but it doesn't mean Rogers is calling for backdoors or legal changes to make those things easier. He may well be aware that this is just a fundamental trade-off between security and privacy, and that we have to get better at security without compromising on this particular aspect of privacy.

It's easy to read this and think Rogers is listing off gripes about crypto, but that doesn't seem like the whole story, and this seems much more like clickbait on closer inspection.

I do think my original comments are relevant, just not necessarily as a criticism of these comments by Rogers. So here they are anyway:

[1] Since crypto exists and is useful for human prosperity and protection from untrustworthy government actors, why waste time talking about a counter-factual situation where crypto didn't exist and the attack didn't happen?

Why be so lazy?

Why not instead talk about a world where crypto does exist, and where people reap benefits of crypto helping protect them from untrustworthy government actors, and also attacks like those in Paris are still prevented?

Unless one can demonstrate there is an impossibility theorem here ... that crypto implies unstoppable terrorism ... then it just seems lazy and misinformative to spend time talking about wishful thinking of a no-crypto world instead of working on how to both have crypto and thwart terrorists at the same time.