I would say if you combine the one-time pad with parity and CRC and steganography, there is no way anyone could even detect the cyphertext much less break it. So, why would they even need to bother banning encryption for the masses ? Because they obviously consider you their enemy, that's the only conclusion that makes sense. They aren't even targeting professionals here. They are saying you the common people are the terrorists. I guess you're just gonna accept that right ?

People like David Cameron only assumed the worst case scenario of encryption usage like hiding criminal activities or planning some threat to society. Most innocent people use encryption to protect their information from hackers and identity thieves.

The true scenario to be feared is for massive amounts of unencrypted highly personal information, about millions of people and in near real-time, to be made readily available to unknown persons throughout the planet.

Which, uhh, is the status quo, right now.

Every coin has two sides. One side is white. The other side is not. This is not a fault of the coin.

EU's 'Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator' Finally Says It: Force Internet Companies To Hand Over Their Crypto Keys
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...pto-keys.shtml

Why not also force everyone in Europe to keep their front-doors and cars unlocked, just in case the authorities want to peek inside? Why not prohibit the sending of mail in envelopes, just in case the authorities want to read them without bothering to steam them open? "Obviously," the best way to ensure the security of the public is to remove from them all capability to secure themselves. Yes, make it illegal to conceal anything at all, just in case the authorities want to know.

This scenario is absurd, of course ... because if you make everything in your world "immediately accessible to 'the authorities,'" you make those same thing "immediately accessible" to anyone and everyone else, too. (And this, albeit in a different sense and scenario, is precisely what has already gone wrong.)

Information can be too-easily aggregated, and used to too-easily provide profiles and other data bases (about literally millions of people) which are extremely dangerous "in the aggregate." This ought not be a trivial thing to do, because if it is trivial, anyone can do it ... including those very people whom you do not like and who also do not like you. In your zeal to "counter" terrorism, you're actually making it (potentially, at least) even easier.

Whereas, if information were "securely encrypted, routinely," and also subjected to rigorous controls as to its collection, harboring and dissemination, it would no longer be nearly so easy - as it is today – to accumulate information without being impeded or noticed.

Actually ...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-allowed.shtml

This is "yesterday's thinking at its best."

"Yesterday," if you looked out your window at "a crowd of people" ... anywhere ... it never occurred to you that you might be able to know the most-intimate details of every one of them. That was the stuff of 1984 science-fiction novels (which "everyone knows" ...heh... are merely flights of fantasy.

Given ...heh... that "nobody could know everything about everyone," especially not "without lifting a finger," the implicit assumption was that you had to have a Spy. (And, in fact, you did.)

Therefore, you wanted to trap Spies. And you knew that Spies had to communicate with one another using various forms of (non-computerized, of course) "secret communications." In those days, "therefore" (...heh...), if you actually encountered any sort of information that was encrypted, you knew that it had to be coming from a Spy. Therefore, in order to keep track of those pesky Spies, you simply had to be able to detect encrypted communications.

Fast-forward half-a-dozen decades, and the status quo is altogether different, but $$$ the $$$ official $$$ thinking $$$ isn't.

Today, people are hemorrhaging information of the most personal sort ... and they are entirely unaware (nor would it remotely occur to them, even in their worst nightmare ...) just what "this device they refer-to as 'their telephone'" is contributing to that problem.

And this information ... this multiple-terabytes-a-day information tsunami ... is completely unencrypted, completely "free for the taking," and unconstrained by the geographic boundaries of your (so-called ...) "Sovereign State."

Furthermore: this information is durable. If, for example, someone has a dataset which describes everywhere you were (down to ±5 feet, every 15 seconds), all of last year five years ago, then, let's face it, Hadoop will also tell them what your habits are.

You don't need a Spy to know this.

No one has to send "an encrypted communique" to anyone, anywhere, to know this.

And, if they happened to be "up to no good" and wanted to let their compatriot know about this, "they're in no hurry." They could have sent a USB-stick in the mail ... anytime in the last four and a half years ... and it would have been plenty good enough.

"All for Marketing Purposes™, you know ..."

Uh huh. We're already scroo-o-ooo'd. Hoisted upon our own technological petard.

Nobody Saw This Coming: Now China Too Wants Company Encryption Keys And Backdoors In Hardware And Software
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...software.shtml

IMO, this is all part of Cold War 2.0.

The sad truth is that persons in position of political power have no clue as to how this internet stuff works, and neither do the yes-persons who surround them.

Consequently, they are easy prey for consultants selling cyber snake oil.

Supposedly, the original comment was not directed at stopping encryption, but rather at allowing them to hack your computer:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-subvert.shtml
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...ion-draft-code

I think they still need to clarify what they are after.