The head of NSA, Admiral Michael S. Rogers, addressing at Princeton University said: “I don’t want a back door. I want a front door. And I want the front door to have multiple locks. Big locks.”
This policy by the United States intelligence agency looks quite superficial for the first time. Although it might seem that there would be some relief from the recent surveillances, but it is like a paper-toffee for the citizens of America. Giving access keys to Apple or Google is meaningless unless they are allowed to hide or showcase the sensitive information. It is of no use until they do not have the right to refuse.
With recent revelations from Snowden episode, the government and its agencies were exposed to their most. The digital providers like Microsoft and Google were forbidden from disclosing that they had received letters regarding national security. The NSA’s plan of “dividing the key among trusted partners” could have worked well if only this was the first time and people had not known of their previous such approaches and betrayals. This latest scheme reminds of the infamous Clipper chip incident in 1993.
There are certain questions of doubt looming over this approach by the NSA. Donna Dodson, chief cyber¬security adviser at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technologies said:
The basic question is, is it possible to design a completely secure system to hold a master key available to the U.S. government but not adversaries. There’s no way to do this where you don’t have unintentional vulnerabilities.
The NSA had made plans in coalition with the biggest digital providers of the time and trusting them and asking for the same in the times when trust on the government agencies is on an all time low. Would this plan suffice? Would companies like Google accept the terms of the government? Only time will tell. Comment down your views below.
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