Since I began advocating crypto-anarchy I’ve met a surprising amount of resistance from an unexpected group. Many of my fellows in the liberty movement have taken a defeatist approach to technology. Now that they know that the National Security Agency (NSA) is scooping up every data packet it can get its grubby hands on, an almost Luddite-esque sect has developed in the liberty movement. They believe that the Internet, and all forms of electronic communications, should be avoided because they feel that no force on Earth can stand up to the power of the federal government (an ironic attitude from a movement that advocates standing up to the federal government). These people have become critical of advocating cryptographic and anonymizing tools to protect against unwanted spying.
One of the criticisms they often raise is that the NSA can simply decrypt whatever data it captures. This belief partially stems from the belief that the state is omnipotent and partially from misunderstanding the purpose of encryption. In this post I plan to briefly address the latter (I believe I’ve sufficiently addressed the former in my extensive posting history).
Encryption isn’t a magic bullet that will prevent unauthorized individuals from reading your data for all eternity. It is a tool that stands to greatly delay an unauthorized individual from reading your data. Anything that has been encrypted can be decrypted. If that wasn’t he case then encryption would be useless as it would prevent unauthorized and authorized individuals from reading the data. There are numerous ways to decrypt encrypted data.
The first, and most obvious, method is getting a copy of the decryption key. In order to allow authorized individuals to read encrypted data there has to be a way to legitimately decrypt it. This is done by giving authorized individuals decryption keys. Decryption keys can take many forms including a pre-shared key that is known to both you and other authorized individuals and asymmetric keypairs, one of which is secret and (ideally) known only to you and another which is public.
The second method is brute force. A brute force attack, in regards to cryptography, involves trying every possible decryption key. While this method will eventually decrypt encrypted data, it’s very time consuming if proper cryptographic algorithms and practices are used. Depending on the amount of computational power available, decrypting the data via brute force may take years, decades, or (possibly) centuries. In other words, brute force attacks are expensive.
The third method is to exploit the encryption algorithm itself. This method is cheaper than brute force but it depends on finding an exploitable vulnerability in the algorithm used to encrypt the data. Depending on the algorithm used, this method can decrypt encrypted data very quickly or it can be impossible (at least for the time being).
Humans always perform a cost to benefit analysis before taking an action. The state is no different. While the NSA, theoretically, has a tremendous amount of computing power available to it, using that computing power isn’t free. Computing power requires time and electricity. So long as you have computers dedicated to decrypting one set of data you can’t dedicate them to decrypting other sets of data. It’s unlikely that the NSA is using brute force to decrypt every encrypted set of data it has intercepted. Instead, it is likely using brute force only after it has decided to target an individual.
Algorithm exploits are another concern. Many people believe that the NSA has exploits that allow it to decrypt data encrypted by every known algorithm. Those people often believe that the NSA also has backdoor access to every electronic device (which would make the former mostly irrelevant). Such knowledge still requires a cost to benefit analysis. While the cost in time an electricity is very low the cost in revealing that it has an exploit is very high. Let’s say you encrypted your hard drive with AES-256 and the NSA had an exploit that allowed it to decrypt the drive. Now that it has that information it can use it to target you but, in so doing, it would have to reveal how it obtained that information. In other words, it would have to explain to a court that it has an exploit that allows it to decrypt AES-256 (many people may point out that they don’t have to give you a trail if they whisk you off to Guantanamo Bay, to which I would point out that they wouldn’t need evidence of wrongdoing either). After that information was revealed everybody wanting to hide information from the NSA would encrypt their information with a different, hopefully more secure, algorithm. Unless the NSA knows what algorithm its intended targets decided to use and had an exploit for that algorithm it would have effectively tossed away its most effective tool to get one person. The same risk applies to revealing information about backdoors installed in systems. That’s a tremendous cost.
That leaves us with the method of obtaining the decryption key. This is, most likely, the cheapest option for the NSA to use if it wants to target a specific individual. Even if an individual is unwilling to voluntarily provide their decryption key the NSA can always resort to rubber-hose cryptanalysis. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis relies on the use of coercion to get a decryption key from a target. An example of this method being was a woman in Colorado who was held in contempt of court for refusing to decrypt her hard drive. By holding her in contempt until she decrypted her hard drive the state gave her an ultimatum: either rot in prison indefinitely or face the chance of rotting in prison if incriminating evidence is found on the decrypted hard drive. Another way to use rubber-hose cryptanalysis is physical force. If you torture somebody long enough they will almost certainly surrender a decryption key. I will point out that an agency willing to torture an individual to retrieve a decryption key is unlikely to concern itself with retrieving evidence in the first place so the point would be moot.
Looking at the costs associated with the above mentioned decryption methods we can develop a rudimentary cost to benefit analysis. In most cases, for the state, the cheapest option is to simply get the decryption key from the user. Holding somebody in concept of court for refusing to surrender their decryption key has a positive (for the state) side effect: the person is detained until they provide the decryption key. Such a case is win-win for the NSA because keeping you in a cage also takes you out of the picture. Brute force would likely be resorted to if the NSA was interested enough in decrypting the data that it would be willing to take the time and front the electrical cost of throwing a good amount of computing power at the task. In other words, it is unlikely to brute force every encrypted piece of data. Instead, it would likely use brute force only after it has decided to specifically target an individual. The only time the NSA would resort to an algorithm exploit (if it has one), in my opinion, is if the data is needed immediately and the consequences of any delay would be very high.
There are no magic bullets in security. Encrypting your data won’t prevent unauthorized individuals from reading it for all time. But encrypting your data raises the cost of reading it, which will likely deter fishing expeditions (decrypting all data and selecting people to target based on the decrypted information). By encrypting your data you will likely remain under the radar unless the NSA has some other reason to target you. If that is the case it won’t matter if you use modern technology or not. Once you’re a target the NSA can use old fashioned surveillance methods such as bugging your dwelling or dedicating an individual to follow you around. There is no sense in handicapping yourself in order to avoid Big Brother. Big Brother can watch you whether your use a cell phone or only communication with individuals in person. If you use the best tools available you can enjoy almost the same level of security using modern communication technology as you enjoy when having face-to-face discussions.