A report today from Reuters tells the story of how the NSA’s efforts to lead the way for international encryption standards were shut down by several other members in the international community. The story explains how several other nations were distrustful of the standards proposed to the International Organization of Standards by the U.S. because of information Edward Snowden provided that says the U.S. was hoping to establish standards with back doors for its own use. The report highlights how the U.S. has had suspect behavior in this realm before. The full report can be read here.
My kneejerk reaction was that this was just another story highlighting how the Snowden leaks are still hurting the U.S. several years later. But after considering the narrative a little more, I realized that Snowden doesn’t matter for this scenario. Nation-states are always going to be skeptical of each other when this type of technology is on the line. The U.S. certainly isn’t the only nation who would want to provide itself with an advantage when it comes to access to protected information. If, for example, China proposed encryption techniques, the U.S. would be just as skeptical, even without a Snowden type leak to use as support for their thinking.
A tiger can’t change its stripes. International actors will never change their behavior and decide to put blind faith in other nations. Even if there was a new, strong standard that was developed and agreed upon, any one actor that found a vulnerability would keep that information to itself. As the article points out, the result of this is lower encryption standards. These lower standards don’t really help anyone, but don’t expect it to change anytime soon.
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