FBI drive for encryption backdoors is déjà vu for security experts
The FBI now wants to require all encrypted communications systems to have backdoors for surveillance, according to a New York Times report, and to the nation's top crypto experts it sounds like a battle they've fought before.
Back in the 1990s, in what's remembered as the crypto wars, the FBI and NSA argued that national security would be endangered if they did not have a way to spy on encrypted e-mails, IMs and phone calls. After a long protracted battle, the security community prevailed after mustering detailed technical studies and research that concluded that national security was actually strengthened by wide use of encryption to secure computers and sensitive business and government communications.
