Last week was the annual RSA convention in San Francisco, the premier convention of cybersecurity professionals in America each year. This year the largest crowd ever gathered at the Moscone Center, and the Obama Administration was out in force. It had three booths on the convention floor (including one from NSA with an absolutely cool Enigma on display) and I saw one national security advisor; one cabinet secretary; one undersecretary, an ambassador and several assistant secretaries in attendance. It was an effort to show the love.
Thus, the Administration has to be disappointed with the reviews it got. Here’s an exceedingly unkind one from ZDNet. And even the New York Times sensed the skepticism:
Not long after Mr. Johnson declared that “encryption is making it harder for your government to find criminal activity and potential terrorist activity,” large numbers of entrepreneurs and engineers crammed into the first of several seminars, called “Post-Snowden Cryptography.” There, they took notes as the world’s best code makers mocked the Obama administration’s drive for a “technical compromise” that would ensure the government some continued access.