''Can We Have All The Cryptography Keys Please?''

British Prime Minister David Cameron is widely reported to be in the United States, amongst other reasons, to request 100% intelligence sharing on issues of cryptography.

There is no doubt that secure communications are an invaluable tool in the hands of anyone.

Cryptography, is invaluable for, say, dissidents in North Korea to let the outside world know what is happening without being shot as spies.

I recall many years ago visiting a country within the sphere of influence of the former Soviet Union.

The computer connection for the outside world was never working at the hotel and likewise at all the other hotels.

Excuses were always made why it was 'OUT OF ORDER' – despite my polite requests to see if I could look at and possibly fix one of the computers – which offers were always politely declined.

I recall from history books when intelligence sharing was at a high level after World War II between the U.S. and Great Britain. Little did most Americans know that the British Secret Service (MI6) was riddled with Soviet spies and there was hardly anything the Soviet Union was unaware of as soon at it landed on a British desk anywhere in the world.

Today there is no reason not to think that there are many Edward Snowdens well placed within many countries who would relish the thought of compromising commercial intelligence to, say for example, China and Russia.

For the U.S. to order cryptography companies to cooperate with foreign intelligence services – or indeed for the NSA to share all it's keys with allies– would be sheer madness – and I have no doubt, from historical precedents, would be a death sentence for dissidents in many different parts of the world as details of their online activities became available to their governments.

The truth of the matter is that cryptography is more valuable as a business tool than it is for terrorists.

More countries (especially totalitarian) worldwide are privately more up in arms about their inabilities to read secure citizens and business communications than they ever were about terrorism.  Countries such as China and Russia are having to invest such vast resources simply into codebreaking where the algorithms have become so complex (quantum genetic algorithms and intelligent molecular genetic systems for example) to make their cracking very time consuming , very costly and way beyond the reach of small nations.

You recall how 9/11 was used by so many diverse U.S. government departments to 'snoop' on

everyone, worldwide?   'Fishing' expeditions and 'trawling' became the order of the day.

The effects of such are still being felt in terms of new legislation, worldwide, to this very day.

Some might even argue that a new financial system was evolving during the course of 2002-2006 which would have profound effects on world economies later on.

So too today this issue of secure communications is being used to open the floodgates to every type of intrusion of privacy.

My concern is more the fact that such information sharing by the NSA will most certainly result in this information yet again ending up in the hands of the very totalitarian regimes and business competitors – China and Russia - but even more serious is that dissidents living under such regimes will have absolutely nowhere to hide nor to communicate with the outside world as none will feel safe and secure online.

The U.S. government has 'betrayed' so many of it's allies recently (see my previous blog) is yet another betrayal just around the corner?
Very soon the U.S. will have not a single ally (or to be more precise, interest) it can trust as all will fear being 'sold out' or 'outed' 'at the drop of a hat'.

©Patrick Emek, 2015

Many countries are developing their own 'autonomous' and 'firewalled' internet and intranet systems completely shielded or configured with narrow ports of entry and exit. North Korea is one of such countries.  I have chosen it in this blog purely as an example of the dilemma which dissidents worldwide face.

https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/11283/CJRieserVTPhDEEDissertation101804.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y