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Amendment would remove requirement that the National Institute of Standards and Technology consult with the NSA on encryption standards

Amendment would remove requirement that the National Institute of Standards and Technology consult with the NSA on encryption standards

by Justin Elliott ProPublica, May 23, 2014, 4:55 p.m.

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An amendment adopted by a House committee would, if enacted, take a step toward removing the National Security Agency from the business of meddling with encryption standards that protect security on the Internet.

As we reported with the Guardian and the New York Times last year, the NSA has for years engaged in a multi-front war on encryption, in many cases cracking the technology that is used to protect the confidentiality of intercepted communications. Part of the NSAs efforts centered on the development of encryption standards by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which sets standards that are adopted by government and industry.

Documents provided by Edward Snowden suggest that the NSA inserted a backdoor into one popular encryption standard, prompting NIST to launch an ongoing review of all its existing standards.

The amendment adopted this week by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology would remove an existing requirement in the law that NIST consult with the NSA on encryption standards.

In a Dear Colleague letter, the amendments sponsor, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), quoted our story on the NSA from last year.

See original here:

House Committee Puts NSA on Notice Over Encryption Standards

President Obama's BlackBerry was more difficult to create than you'd think.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

"It just really bothered a lot of people -- nobody wanted to put anything out there that wasn't completely secure," said retired NSA technical director Richard "Dickie" George in an interview with CNNMoney.

George's role was to review the BlackBerry's algorithms and write and engineer diagrams for the phone.

In response to Obama's request, the NSA set up a lab where dozens of experts performed surgery for several months on a high-profile patient: the soon-to-be presidential BlackBerry. The course of treatment was to manipulate the device's innards to weed out potential threats to secure communication.

In the end, that meant taking most of the fun out of the phone: the president can't play Angry Birds, for example.

"You try to get rid of any functionality that's not really required. Every piece of functionality is an opportunity for the adversary," George says.

According to George, the president simply wanted a phone that enabled him to communicate with his advisers. Though the president was a well known BlackBerry (BBRY) addict at the time, the choice of smartphone model was the NSA's, not Obama's, George explained.

What functionality the president's phone actually possesses is secret -- and the NSA won't even confirm that he can use it to send a text or write an email (but it's a pretty safe bet it isn't used for Oval Office selfies).

Related: Let's talk about text, baby

See more here:

NSA guy who made Obama's BlackBerry

Edward Snowden disclosed the massivecollection and storage of US calling data by the NSA last year. Now mostHouse members can now say they voted to end what many critics consider the most troubling practiceSnowdendisclosed.

The House has moved the U.S. closer to ending the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records, the most significant demonstration to date of leakerEdwardSnowden'simpact on the debate over privacy versus security.

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But the final version of the legislation, "watered down" in the words of one supporter, also showed the limits of that impact. The bill was severely weakened to mollify U.S. intelligence agencies, which insisted that the surveillance programs that shocked many Americans are a critical bulwark against terror plots.

The bill was approved 303-121, which means that most House members can now say they voted to end what many critics consider the most troubling practiceSnowdendisclosed the collection and storage of U.S. calling data by the secretive intelligence agency. But almost no other major provision designed to restrict NSA surveillance, including limits on the secret court that grants warrants to search the data, survived the negotiations to get the bill to the House floor.

And even the prohibition on bulk collection of Americans' communications records has been called into question by some activists who say a last-minute change in wording diminished what was sold as a ban.

"People will say, 'We did something, and isn't something enough,'" said Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues for the Federation of American Scientists. "But this bill doesn't fundamentally resolve the uncertainties that generated the whole controversy."

Though some privacy activists continued to back the bill, others withdrew support, as did technology companies such as Google and Facebook.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I believe this is a workable compromise that protects the core function of a counterterrorism program we know has saved lives around the world."

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