Petition UK government to not ban encryption

Post by grumio » Fri, Aug 21, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

w0000t wrote: post #52

hiq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed there is, it is called plausible deniability [1]. With Truecrypt, you can nest a hidden volume within another volume, so you can decrypt the latter and it will only show innocuous files, while another password (using other parts of the volume) would provide other (incriminating) files. I wonder what is in a judge's mind when the encrypted evidence turns out to be kitten pictures and the defendant claims that h…

That is not what OP is talking about. You cannot get different information out of the same chunk of encrypted data. That would basically make infinite compression. What the methods you mentioned are doing, is hiding information in places which are marked as: random data no information here . But in reality there is information there. You then need to have dummy information somewhere else.

Post by walshemj » Fri, Aug 21, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #25

dgmdoug wrote: post #12

It really worries me that the leader of our nation does not appear to have all the information required in order to make a decision on a topic as important as this. I would have thought that a domain expert within government would have be consulted before Cameron goes off half cocked in debates and discussions. With technology a key and growing industry within the UK, shouldn't we expect our leaders to at least attem…

What past experience would have given you the idea that a UK prime minister would let domain expects stop them from coming up with stupid proposals? (I was about to single out Cameron, but while I detest him, and while he seem to have a particular blind spot for technology, the problem is by no means unique to the Tories; e.g. consider when David Nutt was asked to go because his evidence-based advice on drugs didn't…

Post by rue » Fri, Aug 21, 2015, 8:54 PM UTC

spuz wrote: post #21

The government's story has been "we need a way to access people's data so we can catch pedophiles, drug dealers and terrorists" and it seems there is a widely held belief that in order to do this, they would need to either ban encryption or weaken it sufficiently to make it effectively useless. However, as far as I can tell, backdoors into your phone or your desktop PC already exist. All the government has to do is c…

Post by nailer » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 5:49 AM UTC

ocb wrote: post #70

Joeboy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you think that. Perhaps I was unclear. The average prospective terrorist / criminal etc isn't going to be able to set up TLS. If they encrypt their communications, the odds are it's going to be going via a third party. Next time you send an email, tell the recipient that from now on you're going to communicate directly by TLS, and they'll need to set up a server before you can talk to them again. I b…

Using PGP securely is as easy as downloading some software, typing in your message, and clicking a button. It's not something that requires any knowledge beyond basic computer usage. You aren't going to be able to stop people from sharing PGP software on the internet. I think you're severely underestimating the intelligence of people in general. If we're talking about ISIS, all it takes is one moderately experienced…

Post by ccvannorman » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC