Congressman with CS degree: Encryption back-doors are ‘technologically stupid’
washingtonpost.com
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That is insane to me. Hermain Cain did his undergraduate in math and his masters in CS... and from good schools, no less.
I wish I would have known this in 2012, I wonder how it would have made me feel about him, when watching debates. I don't remember much about my opinion of him, but I can definitely say it never crossed my mind that he would have this background.
But that is what works. Many politicians are brilliant polymaths and they all seem to have converged on the same behavior.
I guess if you were to design a computer to be a politician, it would end up in the same spot. Its job would be to appeal to people of different backgrounds, who are irrational in different ways. (And don't think that highly educated people in Silicon Valley aren't irrational in their own way.)
Isn't this is sort of like saying laws are protecting those who rape, defraud, assault, or even kill?
Encryption backdoors at best do nothing to help against private actors wishing physical harm on people, and the death toll of those killed by governments and government aided private actors (for the US, include KKK types including or aided by local law enforcement) suggests we don't want to give this sort of power to governments.
Two of the smartest people I've ever met were congressional staffers.
U.S. Representative Thomas Massie entered Congress in November 2012 after serving as Lewis County Judge Executive. He represents Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District which stretches across Northern Kentucky and 280 miles of the Ohio River.
U.S. Representative Massie attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. During school, he invented a technology that enabled people to interact with computers using their sense of touch, and leveraged that technology to found SensAble Technologies, Inc., which raised over $32 million of venture capital, created 70 jobs, and obtained 24 patents. The hardware and software he developed is now used to design automobiles, jewelry, shoes, dental prosthetics, and even reconstructive implants for wounded soldiers.
This is the classic programmer-and-requirements problem. Ms. Hess and Mr. Conley have very reasonable-sounding aims, but: they're impossible. That's all there is to it.
- Vice Chair Farenthold, in video, on creating back doors that are accessible to the "good guys" and impenetrable to anyone else
The NSA has a term for these types of backdoors: NOBUS. Nobody But Us. Schneier calls this idea silly, but the principle is sound if there are cryptographic garuntees behind the backdoor (like above examples). Backdoors in code are less likely to be NOBUS.
If politicians had a basic understanding of mutual exclusivity (such a basic concept in computing) and compound interest. The world would be a much better state.
And implement.
Hopefully any encryption back door is not entrusted to somebody at the Genius Bar. Why is the hacker in a van and at a river... phishing trip?
... and the folks in a van in a suburban street are more likely to be doing government surveillance?