Occupation: Researcher In Cryptography
As the local police department might want to decrypt a phone of a criminal suspect, so would the Chinese or the Russian or the Iranian intelligence a….
The security of computers and the Internet is a horrible and dangerous mess. Every week we hear about breaches of databases of Social Security number….
I think it's interesting because the 1990s ended with the government pretty much giving up. There was a recognition that encryption was important. In….
As we build systems that are more and more complex, we make more and more subtle but very high-impact mistakes. As we use computers for more things a….
If we try to prohibit encryption or discourage it or make it more difficult to use, we're going to suffer the consequences that will be far reaching ….
From a policymaker's point of view, [the back door] must look like a perfect solution. "We'll hold onto a separate copy of the keys, and we'll try to….
There's been a certain amount of opportunism in the wake of the Paris attacks in 2015, when there was almost a reflexive assumption that, "Oh, if onl….
On balance, the use of encryption, just like the use of good locks on doors, has the net effect of preventing a lot more crime than it might assist..
What encryption lets us do is say, "Yes, the Internet is insecure." Bad guys are able to compromise computers everywhere, but we're able to tolerate ….
If it were possible to hold onto this sort of database and really be assured that only good guys get access to it, we might have a different discussi….
So, in 1993, in what was probably the first salvo of the first Crypto War, there was concern coming from the National Security Agency and the FBI tha….
We basically have only two real tried and true techniques that can help counter this. One of them is to make systems as simple as we can, and there a….
When the September 11th attacks happened, only about a year later, the crypto community was holding its breath because here was a time when we just h….
Computer science doesn't know how to build complex systems that work reliably. This has been a well-understood problem since the very beginning of pr….
It's only after you get down into the technical weeds - and they are admittedly rather weedy - that it becomes clear that this is much harder than it….
Clipper took a relatively simple problem, encryption between two phones, and turned it into a much more complex problem, encryption between two phone….
In order for any smartphone manufacturer to decrypt the data on your phone, it has to hold onto a secret that lets it get that access. And that secre….
It may be true that encryption makes certain investigations of crime more difficult. It can close down certain investigative techniques or make it ha….
Telephone handsets are particularly in need of built-in security. We have almost every aspect of our personal and work lives reflected on them and we….
I believed then, and continue to believe now, that the benefits to our security and freedom of widely available cryptography far, far outweigh the in….
The people working in my field also are quite skeptical of our ability to do this. It ultimately boils down to the problem of building complex system….