Historian
Will Durant once said, "The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds." When it comes to discussions about security and encryption, it seems many government officials are counting on people thinking that way.
In the wake of terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Brussels, and Paris, the level of misinformation and outright
lies about the use of encryption reached shameful levels on Capitol Hill. After last week's attack in Orlando, things were no different.
Just days after the attack, in a rare open session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Mark Warner worried that passing legislation mandating encryption backdoors would simply push the bad guys onto foreign-based hardware and software." But CIA director John Brennan dismissed this argument. They shouldn't worry,
Brennan said, because non-American solutions are simply "theoretical."
Subsequent to the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden disputed Brennan's statement, noting, "Strong encryption technologies are available from foreign sources today -- half of them of them are inexpensive and the other half are free."
