# Phillip Rogaway - The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work

:::: tags
- Cryptography
- Society
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An appeal to cryptographers to ponder on the [Russell-Einstein
manifesto], consider the moral implications of their work, take a step
back from "crypto-for-crypto", and focus on "crypto-for-privacy" (or,
to name the threat more explicitly, "anti-surveillance research").

Harps on FBI Director James Comey's "law-enforcement framing":

> 1. Privacy is *personal* good.  It's about your desire to control
>    personal information about you.
> 2. Security, on the other hand, is a *collective* good.  It's about
>    living in a safe and secure world.
> 3. Privacy and security are inherently in conflict.  As you
>    strengthen one, you weaken the other.  We need to find the right
>    *balance*.
> 4. Modern communications technology has destroyed the former
>    balance.  It's been a boon to privacy, and a blow to security.
>    Encryption is especially threatening.  Our laws just haven't kept
>    up.
> 5. Because of this, *bad guys* may win.  The bad guys are
>    terrorists, murderers, child pornographers, drug traffickers, and
>    money launderers.  The technology that we good guys use - the bad
>    guys use it too, to escape detection.
> 6. At this point, we run the risk of Going Dark.  Warrants will be
>    issued, but, due to encryption, they'll be meaningless.  We're
>    becoming a country of unopenable closets.  Default encryption may
>    make a good marketing pitch, but it's reckless design.  It will
>    lead us to a very dark place.

This framing is dismissed as "inconsistent with the history of
intelligence gathering, and with the NSA's own mission statement",
without further explanation.

I wish the author had spent some prose explaining how exactly this
framing is fallacious.  There is a footnote providing some references,
but as far as I can tell these references mainly reinforce the point
that the NSA's surveillance methods are a threat to privacy; it is not
obvious how "the NSA overreaches" contradicts "it's harder to catch
bad guys once they get better crypto".

For what it's worth, I found that [Aaron Brantly's
article](#aaron-brantly---banning-encryption-to-stop-terrorists-a-worse-than-futile-excercise)
does a better job at showing the shortsightedness of this line of
reasoning, as does this footnote:

> When crypto is outlawed only outlaws will have crypto.

[Russell-Einstein manifesto]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manifesto

# Aaron Brantly - Banning Encryption to Stop Terrorists: A Worse than Futile Excercise

:::: tags
- Cryptography
- Society
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The debate can be phrased as follows:

> Is increasing security in one narrow area worth degrading it in
> every other?

Answering "yes" overlooks two things:

1. Weakening officially distributed encryption will not impact
   terrorists, who will simply move to new, unregulated platforms.

2. Once they have done that, we end up in a situation where lawful
   citizens are stuck with insecure communication channels, and
   terrorists are the only ones benefiting from state-of-the-art
   confidentiality/integrity/authenticity.