Daily Archives: 22 December 2015

Encryption and Backdoors

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Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) wants (this is old news) a means for Government to read our private communications, most especially those we’ve chosen to encrypt. She wants Government to be able to penetrate that encryption, via, perhaps, a backdoor.

I think that Silicon Valley has to take a look at their products. [I]f you create a product that allows evil monsters to communicate in this way,…that is a big problem.

They have apps to communicate on, which cannot be pierced even with a court order[.]

On the one hand, perhaps hammers and screwdrivers should be Government controlled—they get used by evil monsters to commit mayhem.

Perhaps guns should be Government controlled—oh, wait….

Then, there’s this:

A major breach at computer network company Juniper Networks has US officials worried that hackers working for a foreign government were able to spy on the encrypted communications of the US government and private companies for the past three years.

The FBI is investigating the breach, which involved hackers installing a back door on computer equipment, US officials told CNN.

Yet, Government, folks like Feinstein who should know better and others who are simply pandering, wants a deliberate backdoor inserted into our private communications.

I’ll say it again. There is no safety without intact individual liberty.

Wrong Mindset

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An American B-52 bomber on a routine mission over the South China Sea unintentionally flew within two nautical miles of an artificial island built by China [in the Spratly Island group], senior defense officials said, exacerbating a hotly divisive issue for Washington and Beijing.

The PRC has filed a diplomatic protest, and the Pentagon is investigating the flight.

This is the wrong mindset. We should be making such flights often, at a variety of altitudes, and with a variety of aircraft types. We should be sailing as closely through the Spratlys and might safely be done, with individual ships and with squadrons of them.

The [PRC Defense Ministry] said this and other US operations in the area were “serious military provocations” that endangered Chinese personnel and could cause the militarization of the South China Sea. It added that the Chinese military would take “all necessary measures” to protect China’s sovereignty.

No, the only military provocation is the PRC’s ongoing militarization of the Spratlys, the South China Sea generally, and the East China Sea, as well. Its own militarization activities are all that might “endanger Chinese personnel.”

Finally, the PRC should take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty. That’s not at risk in the South or East China Seas; although Japan’s, the Philippines’, Vietnam’s, Brunei’s, and on and on are certainly at risk.

This isn’t PRC territory, and we—and those other nations—need to be more enthusiastic, more direct, in enforcing that simple fact.