Empire Files: NSA Whistleblower: Government Collecting Everything You Do

  • NISS is probably NIST.

    > But what about people who want to protect their privacy?

    > BB: Then you invent your own encryption. And don’t pass it through [NISS?] because then the NSA will have it. So, you don’t use anything publicly because they’ve already got that.

    > AM: The encryption methodologies that are available now – the NSA was involved in constructing themselves.

    > BB: They also know the algorithms, all of them, they have the software for it. Because it has to run through NISS to do testing. They do the testing and then they approve it for public use.

    > So, I say, ‘hey, if you’re talking to your little community, make your own encryption.’ You’re not doing this publicly, we’re just doing it amongst ourselves. That would cause them a real problem.

    So Bill Binney's recommendation is not to publish your crypto? Security by obscurity? You have to be pretty good at it though.

    South African underground did exactly that not to get caught.

  • (Quote from article - Bill Binney ex-technical director of the NSA) "That’s the point. This is a totalitarian based slide. This is where we’re going. I think they’ve done it by basically generating fear in the population. The fear that something‘s going to happen unless they do this. When in fact we knew that was a fraud from the beginning. You don’t have to give up any privacy to have security."