Ex-NSA Chief Defends End-to-End Encryption. Isn’t It Surprising?

ByAmar Shekhar
NSA
NSA

NSAShort Bytes: Your perception about NSA might change a little after reading the statement by a former director of NSA, General Michael Hayden, where he is trying to see some value in the personal data. He defended end-to-end encryption by calling it good for America.

NSA talking about the data privacy? Does not look absurd? But this is how it was. Now you might want to stop accusing NSA for violating the data privacy. Or maybe not.

General Michael Hayden, has seen some value in preserving secure end-to-end encryption on the web without giving government agencies their own “backdoors”. Backdoors were the places from where government agencies used to monitor the activities over the web for intelligence gathering. However, the level of intelligence gathering sometimes breached the level of data privacy far more than we even thought of.

Hayden, in a cybersecurity conference in Florida this week, told that —

“I actually think end-to-end encryption is good for America,” Hayden said. “I know encryption represents a particular challenge for the FBI. But on balance, I actually think it creates greater security for the American nation than the alternative: a backdoor.”

Hayden went on to explaining the merits and demerits to banning the use of end-to-end encryption,

“When was the last time you saw the success of legislation designed to prevent technological progress?” Hayden asked rhetorically. “It’s just not gonna happen.”

Major tech giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have all come out in favor of maintaining secure end-to-end encryption and also not providing any backdoor for the government access.

The FBI has been on the other side of the debate and late last year director James Comey explained that his agency could not read communications between a suspected terrorist and his partners overseas because he was using encrypted communications.

“In May, when two terrorists attempted to kill a whole bunch of people in Garland, Texas, and were stopped by great local law enforcement … that morning before one of those terrorists went to attempt mass murder, he exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist,” Comey explained. “We have no idea what he said because those messages were encrypted. And to this day, I can’t tell you what those messages said with that terrorist 109 times the morning of that attack. That’s a big problem, and we have to grapple with it.”

What are your views regarding end-to-end encryption debate? Add your views in the comments below.

A passionate adventure traveller over Trekkerpedia.com and Author of the book 'The Girl from the Woods'.

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