decryption

His data would be safe from decryption then, right? Sort of.

Once the game gets released you don't need to contact valve's servers for decryption keys every time you want to play. Steam itself will install any game I own on any machine I log into.

If these hackers were so "sophisticated" then presumably they could have obtained Adobe's decryption keys too? If not, why not?

Users can no longer decode the contents of the session without the decryption key, which is not available on the client side. Seriously?

Usually this content must be played through a special player that contacts a DRM license server to get a decryption key. One of the things this player does is verify you have an account with rights to play the content.

In a way which adds security"; if the same people who have access to the encrypted data also have access to the decryption keys, you might as well be using ROT-13. If I ask Dropbox for another users files, guess what?

If you create a new powerful encryption tool, you're starting an decryption race from Americans, Chinese, Russians and who-ever-has the power to pursuit it. If they can't break it, they will try to bend it, etc.

What's truly frightening is this line from the Guardian's article on the topic: > The NSA describes strong decryption programs as the "price of admission for the US to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace". What does that even mean?

Encrypted data must be stored for an unlimited time to facilitate possible decryption in the future. Our 'Team Digital Expertise' developed software that profiles social networks on which a suspect operates to use it in order to gather crime-related information.

Or if Americans discovered that the Chinese had interception equipment in critical telecom switching stations throughout the world that allowed them to divert America's commercial and governmental communications to Chinese supercomputers for decryption. There are a lot of things that America does to other countries that would be taken as acts of war if they were done to America.

I assume you mean from a legal perspective; as his service was a central point at which all messages traveled, he had access to both the encrypted content as well as the decryption keys which the government could then obtain access to via legal means. The advantage afforded by personal systems like PGP keys is obvious in that no third party is involved, but at the same time, PGP or anything else doesn't do any better from a legal perspective - the government can coerce you to give up your encryption keys just the same, no?