Prism: the problem is the law not the technology

I read more about the NSA this week more then I care to admit. I also read a lot of comments on those articles, good and bad. On most tech related forums you see post about encryption. How we should all know about encryption, the proper way to do it, and how big companies suck at it. Yes, encryption should be implemented, but it is definitely not the solution to prevent the government from getting your data.

I'm no security expert, I actually know very little about it. I do read a lot about how this and that encryption algorithms got cracked, and the explanation is beyond my understanding. Most of the time, brute force is enough to decrypt a message, all you need is the resources and they are becoming more and more available.

With the NSA data leak everyone is panic mode, (almost excited I would say), and github is being filled with cryptographic repos. It almost look like a gold rush. Let me just say it once, encrypting your data does not prevent the government from getting it and reading it.

It maybe very hard to crack some encryption algorithm but it is not impossible, if not already. It's like finding Waldo (in a larger scale).

Instead of trying to create more complex algorithm to obfuscate data, we should put our effort into making sure the law forbid any entity to illegally spy on us in the first place. You wouldn't be allowed to walk into At&t data center with your flash drive, plug it in and start copying phone meta data would you? It would be considered stealing and you will probably end up in court and or in jail. It wasn't so much different from Aaron Schwartz case. Why should there be an exception if it is the government copying those files.

Remember the problem is not the technology, the problem is the law.