
How did governments lose control of encryption? - abhi3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35659152
======
progressive_dad
What breaks my heart about this "cold war" becoming a "hot war" is it will
probably stifle school age curriculum. If its a hot button political issue
then teachers won't be encouraging little johnny and suzie to show the class
their nifty secret code they made on the playground. We'll hear a lot of
bloviating on how every child should learn to code, but if you point out the
creative minds of children are fertile ground for exploring steganography
you'll get a resounding laugh and a joke about stegasaurus.

~~~
pdkl95
> show the class their nifty secret code

Everybody knows nifty secret codes are the gateway hobby to harder
technologies like assembling electronic clocks.

~~~
progressive_dad
Or worse, Navajo indian sympathizers.

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ArkyBeagle
The better question is - when did they actually have control of it? They sort-
of did - it took government money to put an Enigma together, but government
money is only a necessary condition because it's money.

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stegosaurus
This article, this headline, is an excellent example of the BBC's bias.

How did governments lose control of mathematics?

Yes, it sounds absurd, doesn't it? The BBC have an opportunity, some would say
an obligation, to educate here.

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spiralpolitik
Never thought I'd see Phil Zimmerman and PGP written out of the history books
of the crypto wars but there you go.

~~~
superuser2
I'd say PGP got us to the point where endpoint security matters, and Apple
closed the loop. Allegedly that's why they want the phone so badly: to dump
data from encrypted messaging apps.

The FBI long ago adapted to breaking open general purpose computers that were
encrypted by i.e. keeping them awake and logged in through arrest and seizure.
PGP won't do you any good there.

Apple finally built the walls around the garden high enough (by doing security
at the hardware level) that they put up a fight even when the device is on and
ready to use.

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greggarious
They never did. Any other questions there champ?

~~~
mollmerx
They never had control or they never lost it?

~~~
pdkl95
Crypto is math. Nobody can monopolize math.

edit:

On the subject of trying to keep powerful and/or dangerous knowledge locked
away from the general public, one of my older HN comments[1] was about the
larger, long-term problem our species' rapid access to new knowledge and
powerful technology.

We need to figure out how to safely integrate new technologies into society
_asap_.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033)

~~~
smacktoward
Governments were _plenty_ able to monopolize math when computing power was
scarce and expensive. That monopoly slipped as computer power got cheaper and
more widely accessible. Now everybody has a computer in their pocket that's as
fast as the world's fastest supercomputers were in 1990, so the monopoly is
well and truly dead.

~~~
pdkl95
They monopolized the _people_ that knew the math, written records that
described the math, and the hardware that implemented the math. The actual
crypto itself cannot be controlled, and in some cases was found by other
through cryptanalysis or independently re-discovered.

That distinction is important - physical things like people or papers or
computers can be controlled and hidden. It's much harder to keep knowledge
itself bottled up, because there is always a risk that someone clever will
discover it on their own.

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stuaxo
The BBCs coverage of this whole thing has been incredibly biased.

Although there is much talk of BBC left wing bias, it is massively pro
government - and more so in recent years.

~~~
junto
Whilst the BBC is supposed to be non-biased, it is funded by public money. The
BBC has to tred carefully around the government and make sure it doesn't upset
whoever is currently in power.

[http://rightdishonourable.com/2015/10/peter-capaldi-the-
bbc-...](http://rightdishonourable.com/2015/10/peter-capaldi-the-bbc-is-
seriously-under-threat-from-the-government/)

------
CM30
They lost control when encryption became a product sold on the free
market/distributed among communities. The internet only took away that control
even more (and faster).

------
graycat
Since no doubt governments never were able to find a fast way to factor a
product of two large prime numbers, they never did have "control" of
encryption.

------
fweespeech
> Cryptography was once controlled by the state and deployed only for military
> and diplomatic ends. But in the 1970s, cryptographer Whitfield Diffie
> devised a system which took encryption keys away from the state and marked
> the start of the so-called "Crypto Wars".

That is an outright lie and the mere fact that this was published as truth
shows the BBC is just a propoganda arm of the UK.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25code.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25code.html?_r=0)

Hell, we are only just now breaking encryption from the 18th century, ffs.

[https://www.sans.org/reading-
room/whitepapers/vpns/history-e...](https://www.sans.org/reading-
room/whitepapers/vpns/history-encryption-730)

> 1500 BC ancient Assyrian merchants used intaglio, a piece of flat stone
> carved into a collage of images and some writing to identify themselves in
> trading transactions. Using this mechanism, they are producing what today we
> know as 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature'
> belonged to this trader, but only he had the intaglio to produce that
> signature. Using this mechanism, they are producing what today we know as
> 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature' belonged
> to this trader, but only he had the intaglio to produce that signature.

\------

> So what they said is right, if you specifically know they're talking about
> public key cryptography and know the history of it. It could have been
> better written.

> Secondly they're trying to dumb down the history of public key cryptography,
> and what they mean by "once controlled by the state" is that James H. Ellis
> & Clifford Cocks discovered and implemented it in secret for the GCHQ in
> 1970-73. With Malcolm J. Williamson implementing the Diffie–Hellman key
> exchange in 1974.

William Stanley Jevons basically foreshadowed its existence in the 1800s.
There was no way it could be controlled once computers became common.

The fact the GCHQ couldn't keep it secret for even 10 years pretty much shows
that.

They never had control except for the briefest of windows and pretending that
was really control of cryptography in any substantial way is crazy.

~~~
Someone1234
> That is an outright lie and the mere fact that this was published as truth
> shows the BBC is just a propoganda arm of the UK.

First off there's absolutely no propaganda benefit in that supposed lie.

Secondly they're trying to dumb down the history of public key cryptography,
and what they mean by "once controlled by the state" is that James H. Ellis &
Clifford Cocks discovered and implemented it in secret for the GCHQ in
1970-73. With Malcolm J. Williamson implementing the Diffie–Hellman key
exchange in 1974.

In 1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman released Diffie–Hellman key
exchange to the non-classified world.

So what they said is right, if you specifically know they're talking about
public key cryptography and know the history of it. It could have been better
written.

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bekimdisha
depends which government you are talking about ;)

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xyzzy4
They lost control when they didn't want to legislate anti-encryption laws.

