The OPM data breach – which has resulted in the personnel data of pretty much anyone who has ever held a security clearance having their personal data compromised – is possibly the best example of why we can’t trust the government to backdoor our crypto. As a friend of mine put it today:
Remember how the federal government claims it can keep “backdoor” keys for all encrypted data safe?
What they lost here were the records of everyone who has applied for a security clearance in the last 15 years. Every name, all their SSNs, all their employers, addresses, education, friends, family, lovers names, everything you can imagine that you need to tell the to get a clearance, going back decades. Can you imagine what a foreign intelligence agency can and will do with that data? There is no personnel information more critical than that — they know literally everyone who works for the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, dozens of other agencies and everything about them.
And these people keep saying “trust us! We can keep you safe!”
