The new trouble with crypto

by Peter Smart, 18 November, 2001

After reading Laurence's article on PGP, I feel I should place a bit of a damp squib on the whole thing. Just so as to piss on his firework.

Once upon a time, it would almost certainly of been myself writing such articles, praising the joys of 4096 bit cryptography, and how nobody will ever be able to crack your top secret messages planning to meet with your mates at the local boozer at eight.

We have however, recently been reminded of the mentality of some people who will go out of their way to hurt or kill people.

Banning crypto

There's all sorts of talk about banning crypto, restricting crypto and doing this that and the other to crypto, but it doesn't really matter. Even if the development of every single cryptography tools was to cease, the existing technology is still enough to keep us going for quite some time.

So what's going to happen? With governments all pulling together, to fight terrorism, and the vast majority of the public behind them, the banning of freely available cryptography tools may not be too far fetched, or too far down the line. But is this really the answer? Will this suddenly stop terrorism, and will it even help? Well, my initial answer is, "Hell no!" But the arguments that will be used for banning, will be convincing.

Crypto reliance and the problems it brings

Illegal organisations communicating freely, planning illegal and potentially harmful activities, and we all know that the destruction of the World Trade Centre's, 'Twin Towers', will receive more than a brief mention. And I for one find this all just a little concerning. Pulling in the sympathy vote to pass laws surely isn't ethical. Yes, cryptography has a dirty side to it, but modern communications have come to rely on it. Internet banking, banking on your telly, online shopping, subscribing to the late night porn channel, sending sensitive business information. All can be done securely, but only with encryption.

Ok, so perhaps just licence this technology to organisations whom can justify it. Then, we have a cracker problem, a serious one. With every illegal cracker worth his weight in salt trying to hack everything that has so much as a whiff of encryption. Imagine a key escrow style system being hacked into, and every single key on it being compromised. Could that not be classed as an act of terrorism? Compromising the security of everyone who has (been forced) to place their trust into it? Sensitive business correspondence being sold on the black market, credit card details being decrypted before they reach the bank, and some other git getting the late night porn you just paid for! With only a few organisations allowed to use it, crackers would have a common goal. And we'd be in the shit soooo quickly!

So where exactly, is the happy medium? Well, there ain't one! And there ain't gonna be one. We all just have to live with it. One argument you'll hear little of, is the pure truth, that encryption does not kill or harm people, only psychos and wankers with guns do.

It worked for the romans

Banning crypto won't solve a thing, it'll just move the goal posts. Other methods will be used. Can they ban regular mail sent encrypted? It was good enough for the romans, and just about everyone else in history. Will they ban decoder cards that come free with every pack of Corn Flakes? I seriously doubt it, and that is why, it won't help. Can they really spot steganography in the wild? My home page with a picture of my cat, and my girlfriend, and the snowman I built in 1997, could all contain plans to take over the world, but just how many images are their on the net? Ahh, here's the answer, one my mother once suggested to stop pornography, "Can't they just pull the plug on the Internet? That would solve it."

Well, there you have it, the way to stop terrorism, is to ban the Internet, and all electronic communications. Yip, that would do it, because you do all know, that before the Internet, there was no kiddy porn, no terrorism, no illegal communications and no crime. You didn't have to lock your doors, hell they didn't even have doors in them days. Just the occasional World War, and they didn't use encryption then did they?

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