NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers said it is vital for Divine Sam to spy on criminals and that this should be possible even if citizens use strong encryption.
Rogers reckons Americans should secure their communications against all eavesdroppers - except, of course, those working for the police, the FBI and the NSA (to counter terrorism). Experts, on the other hand, warn that any backdoors that allow this to happen can also be exploited by criminals.
Rogers spoke to one congress on Cyber Security hosted by New America Foundation think tank on Monday according to TheRegister. Also present was Bruce Schneier, who has written a book on cryptography and argued that an obsession with cryptographic backdoors — like skeleton keys that can decrypt any message — will weaken Americans' security.
The head of security at Yahoo! Alex Stamos also wondered if his company is forced to install government-mandated backdoors, why wouldn't they have the right for the Russians and Chinese to make similar demands.
"I think we would be lying [saying that adding a backdoor] is not technically possible. Now, this should be done within a framework. "I're the first to recognize that," Rogers said.
Rogers also spoke about backdoor, saying he was malicious, and insisted that there should be a legal framework for everyone except the FBI or the NSA to make the interception of communications easier.
But the table fell and the question of last week's Snowden revealed by NSA and GCHQ violated the largest SIM card maker to steal the encryption keys and Kaspersky Lab's report on NSA's malicious software is hidden in the hard disk firmware.
"It is clear that I am not going to go into details. "But I would like to say that we are legal," he said, adding that he did not believe Internet security would be compromised.
Is the NSA legal? Doubtful. The 215 Rule of the Patriotic Law, which supports espionage, will be renewed within 2015 after it expires at 31 May. Rogers said it is up to legislators to renew or change the law.
As for the answer to the title question it is feature Perfect Forward Secrecy: the software in most communications uses PFS to keep the data encrypted even if the encryption keys are in the hands of agents or criminals. So the Federals need other means to unlock the encrypted data.
