Hillary Clinton wants “Manhattan-like project” to break encryption | Hacker News Reader

Hillary Clinton wants “Manhattan-like project” to break encryption

arstechnica.com

43 pointsnikbackm17 comments

We have a Manhattan-like project already, is it called the NSA. They have had pretty much a mirror image budget to NASA over the same lifetime. Encryption is a red herring. Terrorism is a red herring. We are spending ourselves into a depression chasing ghosts.

Coming from someone who while Secretary of State willingly breached security policies to ensure her privacy, this rhetoric carries no water at all.

Who are the Halliburton and Blackwater of the information security fields, or is it them all over again?

They are obviously superpac'g Clinton's campaign

She suggested that there be a "Manhattan-like project" where the government and industry collaborate to solve the issue of law enforcement not being able to decrypt messages of suspected terrorists even after following due process. This article is totally misleading.

That doesn't help any - in that case, encryption is working as intended.

No key? No data. Anything that can let government and industry collaborate to get in is an avenue that attackers can use to get in.

She suggested that there be a "Manhattan-like project"

This is the sort of pointy-haired-boss thinking that gets parodied in Dilbert. Anything is possible, if you just throw enough money at it. Actual understanding of science and first principles is unnecessary if you understand that!

Putting aside the question of "should we break encryption" to look at the Manhattan analogy. We did not get atomic bombs because the government asked physicists to invent a method of building bombs orders of magnitude larger than what we had before.

Instead, physicists hypothesized that atoms might undergo fission, which would lead to a release of energy and neutrons. Then they did further research into this matter and observed fission occur. Once this foundational research happened, not before, Openheimer drew a picture of a bomb.

It was only later, that the US spent about 0.2% of GDP on the research and development necessary to construct an atomic bomb.[0]

At this point in time, we have no hypotheses that are analogies to fission from which we can build the type of system that Clinton is suggesting. In fact, a solution to this problem would also be a solution to many of the problems that cryptographers have been researching for decades. Consider that under the proposed system, the Government has legitimate access to the encrypted data[1]. Additionally, we would like the system to prevent access to people without legitimate access. It will be a good day for crypto when we solve this weakened version of the problem at scale.

At the moment, the best solution to this problem we have is to decentralize all key material, so that any breach is localized. However, this solution is fundamentally contradictory to the proposed system.

Additionally, when we say that the Government is an honest actor, we really mean that the Government computer systems are honest actors. We know that this is not the case, because we have seen these systems be compromised by malicious actors.

[0] Total cost of the Manhatten project was about 2% of GDP but about ~90% went to construction, which would likely be far more expensive for a bomb than for crypto.

[1] With judicial approval, which I will ignore. For the purposes of this security definition, assume that the Government is an honest actor.

Seems pretty rough, as it seems like she's trying to solve NP hard problems. And once it's solved for a small number, just a small adjustment again would render them useless.

Anyone who wants the government not to see anything would just encrypt with the larger key as a standard (unless someone does a timing cheat in the decryption implementation itself).

There could be dirty tricks deployed, but truly breaking an encryption is a serious waste of time and money. It sounds to me that Clinton's tech team needs to get more than just policy wonks in there if we are to trust her with truly understanding technology.

Like the fact that H1 Visas are really a ploy to get cheap labor, and not that we are 'deficient' in tech know-how.

I expect this level of technology cluelessness and obliviousness to unintended consequence from Diane Feinstein. Now that Hilary is exhibiting it, that's another strong point in favor of Bernie Sanders for me.

I just can't believe anyone would say they "trust the tech experts" immediately before dismissing what the experts are telling them.

Given article context she said that there must be a way of cracking encryption without installing backdoors which tech experts advise agaist. Where she dissmised what they say?

I think with quantum computing and possibilities that breaking encryption brings to the table goverments will have this in near future.

To me, "backdoor" and "government can crack it if they try" differ only in degree, not in kind.

The tech experts are telling her that you can't break encryption without ruining it for everyone. She is turning around and basically saying they aren't trying hard enough.

It's possible that quantum computing will offer a temporary way around this, but unless governments ban the sale of quantum computing, it's only a matter of time until quantum computing allows criminals the same ability. Also consider that if the government can use quantum computing to break encryption, what's to stop other governments like China from doing the same thing?

Recommended reading, if you haven't already: Crypto[1]. It covers a lot of history in a readable format (especially if you're not a mathematician) and deals with a lot of the shrouded history of cryptography in America, the NSA, etc.

[1] http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto

In a way it isn't insane to try and break current RSA encryption. We know if you throw enough cpu cycles at it you will eventually succeed. What is more interesting is if we come up with a new method to break it and I would totally be behind that.

The NSA is already working on this. So is every other government with a halfway competent intelligence agency. So are researchers.

Guess what the NSA is already doing.

Actually less idiotic than what Martin O'Malley said right afterwards, that we should never give up liberty for the promise of safety (paraphrased). Except that's exactly what a stop sign does... trade liberty to drive without stopping for the reduced risk of crashing at every intersection. Our democracy is based on compromise, not ideology.

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