> Quantum cryptology is currently in limited use and expanding, and may one day offer us all security from the NSA's of the world
..."classic" cryptography done right, and software done right, with verifiable versions of critical components like compilers and kernels, and a few more pieces of technology we already have, but simply "done right", would give all the unbreakable security anyone would need. But "doing things right" is simply suicide (business-wise) in the current economy. Technologies "done right" and "maintained right" from a security perspective have negative economic value for whoever would develop them in the current market system, so unless you're an institution big enough to be both the researcher and the producer and the consumer of such technology you'll never have it.
...and if you are big enough, let's say a big army system, the inefficiencies that make any such big closed systems underperform (bureaucracy, internal corruption, lack of employee motivation etc.) would make security flaws appear into the system.
So the thing to have hope in is this: even if all systems have flaws that your boggie-man (the NSA, let's say) can exploit, the boggie-man himself has flaws that can be exploited.
...so the best guarantee of freedom is a perpetual world-wide cyberwar intense enough to guarantee anyone's secrets and private information always have a certain risk of getting exposed so that no one can afford to keep truly horrible secrets (like torturing people in secret prisons, or routinely violating everyone's privacy!) because they would know that information leakage is at some point inevitable.
This reminds me of the reality of 'criminal convenience.' A criminal isn't going to plan the perfect attack so that they don't get caught; they'll just smash and grab. Firstly, 'doing it right' is expensive. Secondly, there is enough uncertainty in the world and the bottlenecks of human concern are so over-saturated with confusion that nobody will likely catch you anyway.
>...so the best guarantee of freedom is a perpetual world-wide cyberwar intense enough to guarantee anyone's secrets and private information always have a certain risk of getting exposed [...]
I feel like this would just entrench cynicism as a way of life. Kind of like it already is: everyone expects bad things to happen and they feel they are inevitable. It doesn't improve anything because so few people believe real improvement is possible. Admittedly, I think that things are getting better.
This depends heavily on the length of time you need a communication to remain unbroken for. Current encryption algorithms are probably strong against determined attackers for years or possibly even decades, but what about several decades? With classical communications, your adversaries can store your coded messages and decrypt them when algorithms/technology permit.
..."classic" cryptography done right, and software done right, with verifiable versions of critical components like compilers and kernels, and a few more pieces of technology we already have, but simply "done right", would give all the unbreakable security anyone would need. But "doing things right" is simply suicide (business-wise) in the current economy. Technologies "done right" and "maintained right" from a security perspective have negative economic value for whoever would develop them in the current market system, so unless you're an institution big enough to be both the researcher and the producer and the consumer of such technology you'll never have it.
...and if you are big enough, let's say a big army system, the inefficiencies that make any such big closed systems underperform (bureaucracy, internal corruption, lack of employee motivation etc.) would make security flaws appear into the system.
So the thing to have hope in is this: even if all systems have flaws that your boggie-man (the NSA, let's say) can exploit, the boggie-man himself has flaws that can be exploited.
...so the best guarantee of freedom is a perpetual world-wide cyberwar intense enough to guarantee anyone's secrets and private information always have a certain risk of getting exposed so that no one can afford to keep truly horrible secrets (like torturing people in secret prisons, or routinely violating everyone's privacy!) because they would know that information leakage is at some point inevitable.