NSA Employee Continues To Co-Chair Influential Internet Cryptographic Standards Group

Comforting.

A National Security Agency employee will continue to co-chair an influential group that helps to develop cryptographic standards designed to protect Internet communications, despite calls that he should be removed.

Kevin Igoe, a senior cryptographer with the NSA’s Commercial Solutions Center, is one of two co-chairs of the Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG), which provides cryptographic guidance to working groups that develop widely used standards for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). On Sunday, the chair of the group that oversees appointments to the CFRG rejected a recent call that Igoe be removed in light of recent revelations that the NSA has worked to deliberately weaken international encryption standards.

This is an interesting read, even if it does keep referencing the abbreviations for some organizations that most of us aren’t familiar with. The question that kept running through my mind was, “Forget why he’s being allowed to stay there, why was he there in the first place?”