Alan Grayson: “Let me see if I can try to allay some of the concerns that have been expressed. My amendment seeks to address a serious…”

“Let me see if I can try to allay some of the concerns that have been expressed. My amendment seeks to address a serious problem. A year-and-a-half ago it was revealed that the National Security Agency deliberately subverted American cryptographic standards. Cryptographic standards for the national security community and the commercial software industry are developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, known as NIST. These standards are intended to protect Americans from foreign intelligence agencies, from cyber criminals, from industrial espionage, and from privacy violations by those who wish us harm. {time} 0040 They are embedded in software products which are used and sold widely--in fact, almost universally--in this country and elsewhere. Unfortunately, media reports have confirmed that the National Security Agency successfully and deliberately weakened encryption standards promulgated by NIST to further NSA surveillance goals at the cost of privacy of ordinary U.S. citizens. This is extremely dangerous. It leaves users of those standards vulnerable to anybody who is familiar with those weaknesses, friend or foe. As World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee put it: It is naive to imagine that, if you deliberately introduce a weakness into a system, you will be the only one to use it.…”