Occasionally I am puzzled by the way a controversial issue can receive intense public debate for months with nobody mentioning important and obvious facts.
A good example is the fuss of restriction of encryption technology. Modern encryption algorithms allow public key encryption, which is enormously useful for commercial applications and routine security. But the method is inherently insecure because it is non-random. The government wants a trap-door into these algorithms, allegedly because they might be used for criminal activities.
What nobody is pointing out is that criminals or terrorists don’t need, and if they’re smart won’t use, these algorithms anyway. Any outlaw with three brain cells working would use a one-time pad method. Formerly this was too clumsy, because it requires a key as long as the message. Computers have made it easy. One can construct a true random-number one-time pad of any length (by doing analog-to-digital conversion on white noise from an electronic device) and store it on disk or on CD-ROM. This gives totally unbreakable encipherment.
All this is obvious. So it is clear that government cannot really believe that having trap doors into encryption algorithms will be effective against criminals or terrorists. The only reason that they could want this power is to use it against law-abiding citizens. Why isn’t anybody saying this?