Nate Cardozo and Eva Galperin write:
In comments yesterday during a cybersecurity conference at the New America Foundation, the Director of the NSA, Admiral Mike Rogers faced vocal criticism from the tech community (including cryptography expert Bruce Schneier and Yahoo CISO Alex Stamos). The criticism focused on the Obama administration’s insistence that it should have access to everyone’s encrypted communications via a backdoor, sometimes called a “golden key.” Security experts caution that such a magic key, usable only by the “good guys” is—like magic—not actually possible.
Nevertheless, the NSA continues to assert that technology companies have a responsibility to create a “framework” to allow them (and their analysts) access to our data and communications, even if we have chosen to encrypt them. Admiral Rogers would of course prefer that we not call the backdoor a “backdoor,” because in his words, backdoors are, well, “kind of shady.” Like others in the Obama administration, he focuses on changing the terminology, not the substance.
Read more on EFF.