US National Intelligence Director says Snowden accelerates cryptography distribution by 7 years

"From our point of view, this is not very good"

United States National Intelligence Director James Klepper (James Clapper) made accusations against Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee, who revealed thousands of secret American intelligence documents about methods of spying and intercepting electronic communications in various countries. The director of National Intelligence rebuked Snowden for the fact that because of his deed, the development of massive cryptographic tools for the general public has greatly accelerated.

"As a result of Snowden's revelations, the beginning of commercial encryption accelerated by seven years," said James Klepper . The emergence of secure messengers and other reliable end-to-end encryption tools "has a profound impact on our ability to collect data, in particular, against terrorists," he said.

The journalists of the opposition publication The Intercept asked Klepper to explain this figure - why seven years exactly? He said that such an assessment was made at the National Security Agency. “The projected growth in popularity and the number of installations of commercially available encryption tools - what they predicted for seven years in the future three years ago, has already happened due to information leaks,” the director of the US National Intelligence Agency explained.

Apparently, the forecast was made three years ago ten years ahead.

The director of intelligence is sincerely convinced that such progress is bad for society. He was directly asked if improving cryptographic tools leads to better protection of American citizens from intruders who are looking for vulnerabilities in various software. He replied no. "From our point of view, no ... this is not very good," he said.

Edward Snowden commented on Twitter : "Of all the things that accuse me, I am especially proud of it."