NSA Able To Crack A5/1 Cellphone Crypto 122
jones_supa writes "The most widely used cellphone encryption cipher A5/1 can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows. This gives the agency the means to intercept most of the billions of calls and texts that travel over radiowaves every day, even when the agency would not have the encryption key. Encryption experts have long known the cipher to be weak and have urged providers to upgrade to newer systems. Consequently it is also suggested that other nations likely have the same cracking capability through their own intelligence services. The vulnerability outlined in the NSA document concerns encryption developed in the 1980s but still used widely by cellphones that rely on 2G GSM. It is unclear if the agency may also be able to decode newer forms of encryption, such as those covered under CDMA."
Don't Worry they Built it that Way (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA has maintained a policy that any encryption that was able to block their efforts was ILLEGAL in the USA. Do you actually expect anything to work? Bluntly do you expect to have your banking transactions secure when they can crack them. How about your phone call confirmations when they can record them and appear to be you. How about a hacker who walks into the NSA back-door in all of this. This makes the NSA the biggest terrorist and criminal agents in the world and the accomplace to the stunningly biggest crime situation in history where nobody is secure!
If you don't like them hearing your private speech (Score:3, Insightful)
Well then, just self-censor. Isn't that the road we're heading down?
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
My mobile carrier is AT&T. The NSA doesn't need to break the encryption.
Re:If you don't like them hearing your private spe (Score:2, Insightful)
Why should we self-censor, they shouldn't be listening in without probable cause. I don't care about differing opinions on that front.
Re:If you don't like them hearing your private spe (Score:4, Insightful)
> [1. It's interesting to note you can't translate "reasonableness" into Latin or modern French. It seems to be something very English-language-specific. My college's motto, "Let Reasonableness Flourish", is in English because of that oddity, and it says interesting things about other countrys' jurisprudence.]
After five years of Latin, I feel fairly confident in saying the following:
rationabilis [latin-dictionary.net] is Latin for "reasonable" or "rational".
-itas [wiktionary.org] is the Latin suffix for "-ness".
Thus, it would be fair to say that "rationabilitas" is Latin for "reasonableness". So no, reasonableness is not an English-language specific concept. And no, it doesn't imply shit about anything.