RIM somehow thinks that 256-bit encryption will thwart the NSA?

Doesn't matter, much. We all know about France's secret plans to nuke the rest of the EU, anyway.

What are we gunna intercept? Their plans to surrender as soon as the s**t hits the fan? What a joke.

We're so interested in things like French military secrets such as Bon Juer's: The Art of Loosing War.

Or their cleverly concealed hatred of America for you know, trying to make a difference in the world.

US government uses 256-Bit AES for documents up to TOP SECRET. So I think it is good.

... and check good things you could take from France : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ic4xgOERgk

People believed that Lenovo's IBM U.S. designed and built laptop will steal American secret, some even go as far as saying a Chinese general visited the IBM plant and ordered them to install eavesdropping devices on all ThinkPad notebooks.

For the naysayers, what do you think NSA and ECHELON's mission is after the Cold War?

After reading the emails, we at the NSA have discovered that the French don't actually eat frogs but rather trick Americans into believing this so they consume the mind altering poison found naturally in the frog's limbs.

The french must have smoked to a little to much sticky icky this month. I doubt the NAS has cracked AES encryption. I don't have that much confidence in the NAS or any other government agency for that matter.

So they can do it again. And this time they can go and make a better Boeing, the last time they could not do it....

What do they have to protect? Don't they still have the Maginot Line? Nothing can get past that.

Seriously though, is the NSA going to take the time to decrypt all email coming from crackberries in France, then read them hoping that they get some important top secret info? They'd be better off paying a few spies to just steal their cell phones and laptops.

I think a few kids with pellet guns would be a threat to french national security.

I work at RIM...our BlackBerries are the most secure wireless email devices available. They are secure enough for the US military. No one has access to any information going through our servers. Not a single RIM employee is able to view the contents of any given email. The french government is being ridiculous - they'd be better off banning all cellphones, since they are 1000x more likely to be bugged / overheard than have their emails hacked through our servers.

The US government does not have access to our servers. No goverment/military does.

Wireless email does not go through any servers in USA. USA doesnt even have any of our servers...we're currently waiting for a building to be built in Texas.

The french are probably just looking for a way to support a French company instead of a Canadian one.

Anything can be cracked given the time and money NSA have at their disposal. If NSA believes they need to intercept their transmissions for the sake of national security they will. Nothing new here. Everything is being monitored including the internet, cell phones, e-mails, P2P and etc. for certian key buzz words.

In the United States tho, we do have privacy rights so in theory they can't snoop you unless you give them the reason to.

Darkk

Would the american government EVER use an email system with servers located abroad? EVER?!!!!

NO!

So why is it so funny that other countries would apply the same logic?

You are all very funny bashing France like you do. At least they invented human rights, take a hint and look at Guantanamo Bay!

France helped pull America out of it's war with England when it became independent. We gave you an air force around World War One. Then you guys helped us out in WW2.

When we left Indochina we told you not to go, but you went anyway, got spanked and called it Vietnam.

We disagreed with Iraq because it was a bad idea. That's now OBVIOUS to the entire WORLD! And if you want us to, we'll help you out.

We've always been friends, now we see how you treat your friends. Don't be surprised if we don't want to let you eavesdrop! Let's respect each other a little more and don't let America become the "Eric Cartman" of the world.

Not sure if you guys caught that story about a US diplomat reporting that Canada was trying to spy on him through a Canadian coin.

Apparently he got one of the quarters that had a red poppy in the middle commemorating veterans and thought it was a tracking device.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/05/07/tech-poppy-quarter.html

Guess what...the US government does because RIM's servers are in Canada!

And nothing identifies an ally quite like a RIMM job huh?...

America cant keep their sticky hands out of anything, o the day the rest of the world isolates the retards from the civilized world.

"French National Security" Hah, isn't that an oxymoron?

Oh, Mr. Hitler, please do not destroy our beautiful cities and cultural arts. We will surrender and do your biddings for you. We can surrender the biggest country in Europe, with the biggest standing army/armor in 6 weeks due to our tough training. Is that fast enough for you, Mine Fuhrer?

I agree with RIM that if France wants to favor their own companies, do so. Do not try to make excuses.

First of all, France does not have a competing company.

@Jerry: I cant believe your comment was approved. That is out of place. Its the same stupidity as calling French fries Freedom fries.

@RIM: And whether the US government and military uses it doesn't really prove a point. I believe that no encryption is secure enough. I don't suppose you guys use PGP and I'm sure you know that any wireless feed can be picked up. aaaantoine is right, 256 bits is what the US government used decades ago ('bout mid seventies).

@gm0n3y: Of course the NSA will it's their purpose and job. They have supercomputers to decrypt and search for keywords and then assign personnel to analyze interesting information. Although France and the US are allies, the world isn't that black and white.

Nobody can fully guaranty that RIM's system is full-proof.
Of course the main reason is political in my opinion. The new president's agenda probably includes loosening France's dependence on the US.

@1 French Guy: You are confusing key length between symmetric cryptography (block ciphers, like DES, IDEA, and AES) and key length of asymmetric cryptography (RSA, Diffie-Hellman). AES is a symmetric cipher, and 256 bits for an AES key is massive. IF there is no attack on AES other than brute force (trying every possible key), then a 256-bit key is safe from everyone and everything, and that's provable. (See pages 157-158 of Applied Cryptography, 2nd ed., by Bruce Schneier. Basically, you simply can't capture enough energy, even from a supernova, to cycle a 256-bit counter through all it's possible values).

Unlike DES, which the NSA had a hand in creating (embedding within it some optimizations that allowed them to attack it using less than brute-force methods), AES is a completely independent creation submitted from non-government-related mathematicians and cryptographers. (The original name of the algorithm was Rijndael, and it was selected as the AES algorithm over several other respectable algorithms through a peer review process). Unless the NSA has knowledge of an entire field of mathematics that no one else in the world knows, they can't crack AES any more than the general public can.

Asymmetric cryptography relies on completely different mathematics, and breaking the key of an asymmetric system is based on factoring a large number into it's two prime factors, typically using the Quadratic Sieve, the General Number Field Sieve, or the Special Number Field Sieve. No counting through all possibilities is required. 1024-bit key lengths are typical, 2048-bit key lengths are more secure. Longer key lengths are useable, but the algorithms to actually perform encryption and decryption then become very slow.

Very few systems these days can be cracked at the cryptography level. Implementation holes and/or social engineering are virtually always the attack methods of choice to get to the unencrypted information.

Is always sadden me to see how poorly educated and obnoxious some of my country men are. Could anyone point to a place and time where the French surrender easily? Most people say WW2 but they know nothing about the war except America won. I have people telling me Japan is a US ally and together they fought against Russia/USSR in the war.

Yeah we had a hand in covering up that too... but we cant stop every conspiracy nut from guessing about our evil deeds. Evil communists framed japan so as our great leader once said if you do not cooperate we will bomb you back to the stone age. And yes we at the NSA don't have to make any sense.

BB not secure? MY A$$. What is the French Governments smoking these days?

Well thats not hard to find out... We have already ruled out freedom fries

to the french guy:
Well, so I am stupid, I guess. Care to explain why? Instead of calling me names, why don't you argue the points I made?

to pei:
Regarding to your question of "could anyone point out a time and place where the French surrendered easily?", yes I have your answer: WWII.

Read the history books and tell me at what time and place the French fought with all their might during the WWII? Oh, "le French resistance" and "le Free French Army" led by that pompous general Charles de Gaule exiled in Briton do not count.

Oh wait, since everybody except you have failed our education system, you must have known this. My sincere apologies for my meager attempt to contest your vast superior intellect.

Jerry, the fact that France fall under the German onslaught doesn't mean they are week or sissy. It took the combined effort of the British Empire, U.S. and USSR to defeat Germany; Empires that together control more than half the planet and 1/3 of the population. If anything, it just means the German are the master race they claimed to be. Without the English Channel and the Atlantic, U.K. and the U.S. will not fare as well.

Pei, once again, your vast intellect astounds me. Let me try to use my feable brain in an attmpt to counter your point.

You do realize that dispite all the objection by Hitler's top generals, he launched his European offensive 3-5 years too early, right?

German air force had very capable fighter in Me-109 and dive bomber name Stuka. Yet they are sourly lacking in long ranged heavy bombers which are vital in modern warfare. And their far superior research in jet development was shelfed due to the early entrance to the war. As a result, Me-262 was not introduced until too late to make any dent against the vast number of allied air fleet.

German tanks were outclass by the French in both firepower and armor protection. Even the Cekoslovia's meager tank force were on par with the lowly Mark II and III that made up the main German tank force. The Mark IV was no help. It was not until the introduction of the Panther, Tiger, Jagpather that tilted the scale to the German side. Again, by then, it was too little, too late, and too little fuel.

The German Navy was in far worse shape. Due to the fact that capital ships are extremely expensive and time consuming to produce, Germany was never able to produce a blue water fleet that could challege the sea supremacy against the British Royal Navy. Thus, Germany could only mount guerilla tactic at the sea for the duration of the war.

If Hitler had listened to his generals and started the war 3-5 years later than he had, there is very good chance that the combination of the Me-262 jet fighter and heavy bombers would have dominated the sky. It would also very likely for the Germans to field better armors which combined with their superior tactics/training, dominate the battlefield. It would certainly gave the German Navy time to built a stronger surface fleet to give the British a run for their money. All being said, one has to be glad that Hilter did not listen to his generals.

So the key here is the early stage in which Hitler launched his offensive. Had the Europeans helped Poland to defend against both Russia and Hitler and the French army fought like a real army with real generals, Hitler's ambition would have been easily crashed. The key is that the lack of action and effective resistance CREATED the monster that is the battle hardened, well trained, well equipped, and well lead, Germany army that we know and fear of.

And yes, the French contribution in WWII amounts to a good vessel state to Nazi Germany. Perhaps all the brave/good frenchmen were killed during Napolean's wars.

I called Steven Colbert and your on notice... lets not forget you just agreed with the same people who thought the holocaust was good or didn't even occur. And for my USA home boys here's a joke. French Military Victory!

It is nice to know you know your stuff.

Everything you mentioned I already knows whoever I disagree with your analysis of French and British action during the Phony War. First, the British army is too small therefore it can't possibly take on the Germane. Second, the French defense policy is one based on the experience of WW1, an easily defendable trench (Maginot Line) where the enemy will waste million of men on. That being said, France and UK will not actively invade Germany.

Poland for the most part is a lost cause even before the war; France and UK have no effective way to reinforce Poland. And Polish's strong stance toward in the face of Germany and USSR doesn't help either.

In hindsight, France, UK and even the US's inaction during Anschluss is a costly mistake. However, so is Hitler's decision to start the war early (I have wrote a paper on why Germany have to start the war early due to the Soviet). To coin French coward when the UK and US also failed to act is simply prejudice.

Agent, are you familiar with association fallacy?

...let's evaluate these two approaches.

a) Crack AES/256, and the ellyptic curve encryption RIM has that is tougher than any other known system to mankind. Do this in pseudo-realtime so that the results are at least somewhat pertinent to the present time.

b) Send in a male Chinese agent to establish a long-term, passionate affair with a French diplomat with access to secret documents. During the more than a decade of the affair, somehow the French diplomat thinks that he is sleeping with a woman.

One of the two scenarios is far more likely than the other.