Strong Encryption with Backdoors: An Oxymoron for Authoritarians

What follows is a model letter for Canadian citizens to send to the Honourable Bill Blair, your MP and the Prime Minister:

Dear Sir:

Regarding Strong Encryption with Backdoors

Once again, a push has been put out there for the development of strong encryption with backdoors, and to our collective national shame, you have signed it.

Do you understand how moronic that makes you appear? You just asked for something more impossible than rain falling from a blue sky, than deriving significant heat from a full moon, than wanting (with conscious reference to 1984) 2 plus 2 to equal 5.

The math. does. not. support. the concept of Strong Encryption with Backdoors. One of the words, "Strong" or "Backdoors" must be removed from the phrase for it to refer to something real. I and others more competent than me have repeatedly told this and previous governments, yet the request keeps coming back. And every time it does, the governments that request it make themselves look foolish and naïve -- or worse. We elect you to be wise and informed, competent and, where your competence does not extend, humble  enough to ask for wisdom from those who have such competence. So requesting this again (and again, and again) is undermining the faith of Canadian citizens in the competence and capability of our government. Do you need me to outline how this undermines our faith in democratically elected government? Not that we would turn toward autocracy but that we would give up and dis-engage, which in the longer term would result in the same thing.

Please, I urge you, to retract your signature from the recent "International Statement: End-To-End Encryption and Public Safety" published at

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/international-statement-end-end-encryption-and-public-safety

The presence of your signature there is a signal to all and sundry of your incompetence to speak about encryption at all and it shames all Canadians whether they understand the issues or not.

Only governments aspiring to totalitarian powers would insist on this kind of a policy after being informed by mathematicians and cryptographers of its impossibility. I want to believe that my government's security apparatus does not aspire to totalitarian powers. Please restore my faith on both issues (competence and trustworthiness) that this is the case and rescind your signature.

Sincerely,

make use of it as you will...