Comment Really? (Score 1) 1
It's likely far too late for something like that. O.k. if they had put that stuff in place in the late 90s than now it wouldn't be out. I'm sure all sorts of things out there could fall under "unbreakable" now for a given term of unbreakable...
So are they going to require passwords to be numbers only and only 4 digits? That should help breaking things. It wouldn't stop/slow things when you've got existing software out there that easily lets you use all sorts of interesting passwords now a days.
Do they think that they can just cast a mass oblivate on the entire population and make them forget using stuff that has existed for the last 2 decades? Right, this is Britain that we are talking about. The country most likely to try to actually implement 1984 thinking that it's a good thing.
Oh, why am I even bothering to complain now? Folks at work like that I can use apps to unlock forgotten passwords on things like psts. They really don't want unbreakable encryption. That basically means if they lose a password that I'd never be able to help them. and they might as well delete the crap. What they want is only encryption that magically works and never keeps them out of crap even with forgetting passwords and such.
What I'm actually thinking about is your average smart phone and the various passwords to get into the damn thing. For your average person, they might as well be unbreakable. For any moderately sized modern police agency, they'd have crime scene with tools where they can basically dock any smart phone and trivially get into any of them. It's pretty much required by law for manufactures to make products for law enforcement to get into the devices if they've got physical access.
I tend to shrug it off now. Cops don't have magic technopathy powers and can just glance into your smart phones and read stuff. They've got to actually take it and usually drop it off to the crime scene tech who spends the time to do that. They only really do that if they actually care about what might be on it though. You are still protected by the same laws that you've always been protected by though. They've got rules that they've got to follow and than there the time effort equation as well. Most of slashdot used to complain that it was even possible for the cops to do that. Let's admit it. Now a days long after 9/11, we want our government folks to actually be able to get into crap if they need to.
If the government actually had a decent reason to look closely at you, there ain't anything you'll be able to do to really keep them out of your stuff.