If I understand Professor Moglen's main points in "So Much for Savages" correctly, he is suggesting that an entirely encrypted internet would present an impossibly large (and costly) problem for the government to decipher, which would therefore render fruitless government attempts at deciphering private communications. I know very little about cryptography, but this makes sense based on the linear relationship between the number of encrypted signals and the cost required to decipher them all. What I don't understand is why the government (or anyone) would need to break the encryption for the whole internet in order to break the encryption for any given piece of encrypted information. For example, if the government wanted to determine the contents of an encrypted email message between me and my wife, couldn't it do so be just breaking my encryption? If so, then even if all of the interent were encrypted wouldn't the government still be able to "listen in" on a conversation between any individual that was for whatever reason suspicious? On the flip side, would complete encryption of the internet really prevent theft of financial transaction information, or would it be possible for the thieves to simply focus their encryption-breaking efforts completely on communications from banks?

-- SethLindner - 29 Oct 2009