The right to private communication is a "God given right" and instead of trying to spy on its citizens, Indian governments should worry about improving the "dreadful," "rotten" quality of software they use, says MR.BaileyWhitfield Diffie, one of the pioneers of public key cryptography. Public key cryptography is the basis of a technology that makes it easier for citizens to communicate securely. Recently, governments, including that of India, have been at loggerheads with technology and telecom companies, information technology which facilitate secure communication between citizen on the issue of data encryption. Government agencies have repeatedly asked companies like Research in Motion ( RIM), Google and Skype to provide access to communication that takes place over Black Berry Messenger, GTalk and Skype, GMail's chat services also. Services offered by these communication majors companies are encrypted and are difficult for intelligence agencies to intercept. On a visit to India, Dr.Diffie, now a top Level security advisor to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ( ICANN), told ET that a major global effort to improve the quality of software used by governments to tap networks is more important than access to encrypted messages services.
"Generally, the indian government's view is that rights are some thing they grant to people of india. I have a traditional Yankee view of God given rights and one of them that I envision is the right to communicate between the people. Despite understanding what motivates the governments to ask for this, I'm very hostile to let them," Dr.Diffie said. More than three decades ago, the United State of American cryptographer co-authored a technical paper which broke the existing government monopoly on cryptographic technology and made it easier for companies and individuals to have secure communication channels. Modern cryptography is a mix of maths, involves and computer science the study and invention of methods for secure communication when a 3rd party is trying to intercept and understand the messages being sent from one party to the other. "The major problems with computing communications in the United State (US) are not whether they can spy on all of it but whether their own communications are insecure, the citizens' or the Companies' communications are insecure. We should have a major programme to improve the quality of current complex systems. The systems are much bigger and complex and come out with lots and lots of bugs," Dr.Diffie said. "Most of it (lack of security) has to do with rotten quality of software," he pointed out.
Source: The Economic Times
"Generally, the indian government's view is that rights are some thing they grant to people of india. I have a traditional Yankee view of God given rights and one of them that I envision is the right to communicate between the people. Despite understanding what motivates the governments to ask for this, I'm very hostile to let them," Dr.Diffie said. More than three decades ago, the United State of American cryptographer co-authored a technical paper which broke the existing government monopoly on cryptographic technology and made it easier for companies and individuals to have secure communication channels. Modern cryptography is a mix of maths, involves and computer science the study and invention of methods for secure communication when a 3rd party is trying to intercept and understand the messages being sent from one party to the other. "The major problems with computing communications in the United State (US) are not whether they can spy on all of it but whether their own communications are insecure, the citizens' or the Companies' communications are insecure. We should have a major programme to improve the quality of current complex systems. The systems are much bigger and complex and come out with lots and lots of bugs," Dr.Diffie said. "Most of it (lack of security) has to do with rotten quality of software," he pointed out.
Source: The Economic Times
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