Quotes about Strong Encryption

Barack Obama

I'm a strong believer in strong encryption.

Chertoff Group

Efforts to constrain encryption through forms of extraordinary access will inevitably introduce vulnerabilities into the security of consumer products in ways that are likely to have adverse long-term effects on the security, privacy, and civil liberties of citizens.

Chertoff Group

The spread of strong consumer encryption technology around the globe is inevitable;

Bruce Schneier

There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files.

Apple Inc.

This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. The government demands that Apple create a back door to defeat the encryption on the iPhone, making its user’s most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identify thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance.

The FBI had obtained a court order requiring apple to write software that could hack into a person's iPhone. Apple, with most other hi-tech companies in support, filed a motion with the court opposing the order. The FBI shortly thereafter withdrew its request for the order saying that they had found other solutions, when they had originally told the court that there were no other solutions.

Dorothy Denning

Everyone is a proponent of strong encryption.

Sean P. Larkin

On the social media front, governments may attempt to monitor and repress citizens’ postings or discredit incriminating reports with misinformation, but such efforts buck technological trends that are empowering consumers, such as strong encryption.

Apple Inc.

What is to stop the government from demanding that Apple write code to turn on the microphone [of a user's iPhone] in aid of government surveillance, activate the video camera, surreptitiously record conversations, or turn on location services to track the phone’s user? Nothing.

James Comey

As all of our lives become digital, the logic of encryption is all of our lives will be covered by strong encryption, and therefore all of our lives - including the lives of criminals and terrorists and spies - will be in a place that is utterly unavailable to court-ordered process. And that, I think, to a democracy should be very, very concerning.

James Comey

I love strong encryption. It protects us in so many ways from bad people. But it takes us to a place - absolute privacy - that we have not been to before.

Whitfield Diffie

Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.

Edward Snowden

It should be clear that unencrypted journalist-source communications is unforgivably reckless.

Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. Laura Poitras, the journalist, was not accused or suspected of anything. However, on the belief, that Snowden might have given her some classified material, the American government prevailed upon the British to seize her personal computer. Snowden made the programs public as the highest level intelligence officials were lying to Congress about them. The position of the US Government was that Snowden had violated American Law. Others praised him for revealing illegal activities in which the government was engaged and was lying about including to the Congressional oversight committees. Snowden repeatedly outsmarted the government and ended up getting asylum in Russia. In the case of the computer material, he had encrypted the material using “strong encryption” which most computer experts believe is impossible even for the best code breakers and computers to crack. See {628105} . In this quotation he argues that all journalists should use strong encryption on ALL of their notes and other materials that they receive from confidential sources. Government officials had tried to keep strong encryption secret even though it was invented by a private scientists with no government support or involvement. They failed, but have been trying to find a way to defeat strong encryption since. Ironically, most non-technical private individuals and companies do not use it even though it is quite easy and the software is free. Editors and publishers are ambivalent in that they could not comply with court orders or show them to employees even though it is their own property if the individual reporter or the source did not want them to.

Chertoff Group

We can find no successful terrorist attack that would have been prevented by the availability of a lawful decryption access technology ...

The law enforcement and the intelligence agencies have been claiming for a number of years that etrong encryption (encryption which no one can crack with existing technology) if used by the general public would really hinder law enforcement and espionage efforts. The Federal government actually obtained a court order prohibiting the inventor of the stong encryption frm sharing the equations and techniques with anyone--as blatant an infringement to the right of free speech as there was been. The order was ignored and although the government tried to intimidate the developer by threatening him with prison. He refused to comply and the government finally dropeed the case, as the courts would almost certainly find such a jailing unconstitutional. However, although they tell the courts that there is a clear and present danger if terrorists use encryption, no one had, up to that time, found a single case where being able to decypher the encryption would have prevented an attack.

Apple Inc.

no court has ever authorized what the government now seeks, no law supports such unlimited and sweeping use of the judicial process, and the Constitution forbids it.

Priti Patel

Strong encryption enables commerce and protects us online.

Dorothy Denning

The concern is over what will happen as strong encryption becomes commonplace with all digital communications and stored data. Right now the use of encryption isn't all that widespread, but that state of affairs is expected to change rapidly.

Strong Encryption Quotes