Encryption to be banned

**plenderj** · Sep 17th, 2001, 03:18 AM

Quote from www.rotten.com :

CRACKDOWN ON CIVIL LIBERTIES COMING
We received quite a bit of hate mail for stating the obvious, that a crackdown on civil liberties will come out of this disaster. Well, it is already happening. Senator Judd Gregg called on the Senate floor today for a total ban on encryption technology. When Bush said the terrorist attack was an attack on Freedom, that is exactly correct. Except it will be the U.S. Congress who tries to take it away from us. Don't let them.

**simonm** · Sep 17th, 2001, 03:28 AM

It is ironic that the only way we can effectively defend against terrorism is to forsake the very freedoms which the terrorists want to take away.

I can't see how banning encryption technology is going to work though. How are they going to stop it?

**plenderj** · Sep 17th, 2001, 03:33 AM

Well if they ban it, then any data stream they cant peek at is encrypted. But they cant really.

Because that would mean than SSL is no more.
So therefore people could lose money to credit card fraud.

Network Operating Systems will lose their C2 secure certificate, eg. Novell's Netware and Intranetware.

If they do away with encryption.... they might aswell force everyone to release their source code too.

chenko · Sep 17th, 2001, 04:21 AM

ban encryption... one word

GAY

**JungleMan** · Sep 17th, 2001, 06:41 AM

bah, EVERYONE knows Rotten.com is the sickest joke on the internet, and this is just another one of their antics.

**JungleMan** · Sep 17th, 2001, 06:41 AM

Originally posted by chenko
this is me... one word

GAY

chenko · Sep 17th, 2001, 07:35 AM

you dont mean banned, it was on the front of IT Week, they are calling to step down encryption... thats is all

**plenderj** · Sep 17th, 2001, 07:41 AM

I do mean banned. Read the quote.

chenko · Sep 17th, 2001, 07:45 AM

i didnt mean you, i meant THEM

**plenderj** · Sep 17th, 2001, 07:47 AM

*** have you done to your avatar !?

**HarryW** · Sep 17th, 2001, 07:49 AM

You could see it coming really - it's all the internet's fault.

Maybe we should ban difficult-to-read handwriting too.

**plenderj** · Sep 17th, 2001, 07:55 AM

Why stop there ?
Communication is the cause of all this !

**Skitchen8** · Sep 17th, 2001, 09:39 AM

we should ban life all together

chenko · Sep 17th, 2001, 10:40 AM

Eric, i think your sig is a little too long

but its cool so that makes up for it

Helger · Sep 17th, 2001, 10:48 AM

the sig is childish at best

ban encryption? great idea! why try politics and diplomacy when it's easier to infringe upon individual rights? who cares if it's a completely useless thing to do anyway....

helger

**Skitchen8** · Sep 17th, 2001, 11:02 AM

my sig is awesome, i might edit that photo a lil and make it smaller, but for now its staying

Helger · Sep 17th, 2001, 11:19 AM

It's terrific indeed

**aknisely** · Sep 17th, 2001, 01:36 PM

The NSA has the ability to break any encryption, or so I'm told. Banning encryption sounds like someone wants to get his name in the paper as being proactive, or something; he's likely to get a bad reputation from anyone.

That's also like saying if we ban guns, terrorists won't use them anymore.

**CiberTHuG** · Sep 17th, 2001, 01:41 PM

As to the NSA being able to break any encryption; anyone can break any encryption. There is not an encryption on this planet that has not been compromised. The problem is, it may take you 30 days with your desktop to decrypt 64bit RSA. Imagine how long it will take you to do 128bit RSA.

The NSA has a Cray on staff.

**aknisely** · Sep 17th, 2001, 01:51 PM

The NSA has multiple Cray on hand. And I hear the IRS also has powerful computers that the NSA uses when it isn't tax season.

**CiberTHuG** · Sep 17th, 2001, 01:57 PM

That is very possible.

The IRS has traditionally be the forerunner of non-military government computer use. They were the first department to own a computer if I remember correctly.

Helger · Sep 17th, 2001, 02:52 PM

hmmmm - obviously all those crays didn't help much to stop the terrorists from communicating...
It's the sheer amount of mails that need to be checked that makes the task so hard encryption is a good protection against all spy organizations including NSA since it creates further processor workload. Another form of encryption is: using any other language than English. There's not enough 'experts' in US-organizations to deal with this, as far as I'm informed. Best is Chinese; Arab languages are pretty good protection too but now will increase the likelihood of a mail or document to be thoroughly checked. Nimen tongyi bu tongyi?

regards,

Helger

**chrisjk** · Sep 17th, 2001, 02:59 PM

Originally posted by CiberTHuG
Imagine how long it will take you to do 128bit RSA.

If you think that is bitching, what about 256-bit Twofish...would take approximately 30 billion years with today's fastest computers to crack, or something silly like that...

Plain text: Hello VBWorlder's!
256-bit Twofish: DB7820D2803A43BC9C57F0CDBCB795F87A024871967ED22049552DFFE606FBEB

**JungleMan** · Sep 17th, 2001, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by chrisjk
Plain text: Hello VBWorlder's!
256-bit Twofish: DB7820D2803A43BC9C57F0CDBCB795F87A024871967ED22049552DFFE606FBEB

I think you've just proved yourself wrong, whatever can be encrypted can be decrypted. Justlike the age old rule of physics, what goes up must come down.

**Skitchen8** · Sep 17th, 2001, 05:36 PM

1)he said that it can be decrypted
2)unless its a cat w/ toast strapped to its back

**JungleMan** · Sep 17th, 2001, 05:38 PM

it didn't take him 30 billion years to encrypt it though...so somewhere out there is a decryption program. (if there was no way to decrypt the encoding, then it would all be useless blobs of text..)

**Dillinger4** · Sep 17th, 2001, 05:52 PM

There not going to ban every encryption algorithm out there.
Most of the encryption algorithms can be cracked. Such as DES
(Data Encryption Standard, 64 bit block cipher, 56 bit key) or BlowFish(64 bit block cipher,variable key length 32 to 488) designed by Bruce Schneier as a drop in replacement for DES.
Maybe schemes like RSA(Rivest,Shamir,and Adleman) or DESede
which are supposed to be currently uncrackable. But as for DES and BlowFish they will be currently in use for the forseeable future.

**aknisely** · Sep 17th, 2001, 05:55 PM

Originally posted by CiberTHuG
That is very possible.

The IRS has traditionally be the forerunner of non-military government computer use. They were the first department to own a computer if I remember correctly.

Close. the first computer used by the US Gov't was for the census bureau.

**chrisjk** · Sep 17th, 2001, 06:56 PM

Originally posted by jpbtennisman
it didn't take him 30 billion years to encrypt it though...so somewhere out there is a decryption program. (if there was no way to decrypt the encoding, then it would all be useless blobs of text..)

Actually it did, i've been here for that time doing it...

It doesn't take 30 billion years to encrypt because YOU HAVE THE PASSWORD...decryption can only be performed in nanoseconds with the password. The idea of cracking is to find the password, THAT would take 30 billion years.

**aknisely** · Sep 17th, 2001, 07:00 PM

Rather off topic, but if you were encrypting something totall abstract, like credit card numbers, how would you know when you found the correct key?

IE, if your key is 124358 and your credit card number is 285-582-48565, and you try to hack with the key 124359, it brings up 285-582-48566, how would you know you were wrong?

**plenderj** · Sep 18th, 2001, 12:58 AM

Well because of the way most encryption works, if you dont get the right password you just get a load of crap.

Eg. with RSA you know when you have the right pass because it satisfies certain numeric properties with the cypher etc.

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