Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#41

Post by cellis » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 12:58 AM UTC

rsync wrote: post #34

rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I oppose things like encryption backdoors, I think it's disingenuous to say this is a "fake crisis." The 4th amendment has always required balancing security and privacy--that's why the distinction between "unreasonable searches" and reasonable ones appears right there in the text. And society has always balanced those two interests with a simple mechanism: the police can only search with a warrant, but once th…

"While I oppose things like encryption backdoors, I think it's disingenuous to say this is a "fake crisis." The 4th amendment has always required balancing security and privacy--that's why the distinction between "unreasonable searches" and reasonable ones appears right there in the text." That would be mildly interesting - if this were a 4th amendment issue. It's not. It is a first amendment issue. If I choose to co…

I often wonder whether this is, in fact, a 2nd amendment issue. Consider: until very recently encryption technologies were considered a banned export ( armaments ).

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#42

Post by rayiner » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #39

rayiner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly not about banning encryption though. The debate mostly centers on regulating the products and services companies can provide to facilitate such communications. If there was a precursor to companies promising to make it easy for regular joe criminal to encrypt his postal mail, it's conceivable that the government would have fracked down on those companies. > It's one with only one right answer, but it's a…

> The debate mostly centers on regulating the products and services companies can provide to facilitate such communications. You're calling them products but the relevant thing they want to regulate is still more speech. If you want to communicate with your friends in code then you first have to communicate the code itself. In this context the code is code , but code is speech.

Code is not speech any more than electronic circuits are speech. That is to say that in unique contexts when the code is itself a means of expression code may be speech,[1] but not when it is used to build something that enables communication.

[1] Bricks can also be expression in unique contexts. That doesn't mean that bricks are speech.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#43

Post by bobby_9x » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 2:04 AM UTC

hellbanner wrote: post #10

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #4

This fake crisis of "Going Dark" as if we haven't been that way for all of time before the Internet is dangerous. The "scary" notion that the police won't be able to read everything about everyone is being recast by the Feds as if it really is national crisis. Benjamin Wittes suggests on Lawfare we make Common Carrier Immunity conditional on the company being able to make all data available in the clear to the govern…

I think (most) of us on HN are on the same page here. But we are a minority... many people truly don't care and are not incentivized to care.

Even look at public wifi. Most non-tech savvy people I know really have no problem using piblic wifi to conduct business and login into important accounts.

They want the path of least resistance, which isn‘t good for security or privacy.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#44

Post by rayiner » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 2:08 AM UTC

pash wrote: post #37

rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I oppose things like encryption backdoors, I think it's disingenuous to say this is a "fake crisis." The 4th amendment has always required balancing security and privacy--that's why the distinction between "unreasonable searches" and reasonable ones appears right there in the text. And society has always balanced those two interests with a simple mechanism: the police can only search with a warrant, but once th…

What's unprecedented to an even greater degree is the scale at which mundane communications are now recorded. In the past, the bulk of private communications were opaque to the government, even with a warrant , because people exchanged private information mostly verbally, face to face. Today many analogous conversations take place online, in instant messages, in email, and in other persistent media. Even when the con…

It's possible for both phenomena to be unprecedented.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#45

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 2:40 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #42

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The debate mostly centers on regulating the products and services companies can provide to facilitate such communications. You're calling them products but the relevant thing they want to regulate is still more speech. If you want to communicate with your friends in code then you first have to communicate the code itself. In this context the code is code , but code is speech.

Code is not speech any more than electronic circuits are speech. That is to say that in unique contexts when the code is itself a means of expression code may be speech,[1] but not when it is used to build something that enables communication. [1] Bricks can also be expression in unique contexts. That doesn't mean that bricks are speech.

A brick or electronic circuit is speech when being used as a medium of expression. Code is speech all the time because it can't be anything else. It's pure information. You can't email someone a brick.

It happens we have machines that will turn that information into action, but the code isn't the machine or the action. It's just a type of speech that machines can understand too.

People are always wanting to regulate speech by combining it with a machine, but the machine and the speech are separate. They don't have any specific relationship. Apple makes a) a general purpose computer and b) computer software. But (modulo DRM/copyright) you could run that software on any general purpose computer and use that general purpose computer to run any software.

It's like trying to regulate what information you can print in a newspaper by claiming you're regulating the printing press.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#46

Post by batz » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 2:42 AM UTC

It's not just about tech. The real issue is that government is running up against scaling limits.

Arguably, a government can only rule over how people relate within boundaries it can defend and control. Previously the boundaries were physical geographies, and then regulated channels (mail, PSTN, etc). Now, we have a kind of fractal boundary of peer-to-peer connections that provide tremendous freedom to organize and transact on a diminishingly microscopic scale.

Sovereignty is zero sum.

Crypto provides a kind of micro-sovereignty to users, and for a few privileged or outlying people this is an acceptable risk, but when you have constituencies of people achieving that micro-sovereignty, it cuts into the sovereignty of the state at critical level.

Imagine the strategic consequences for U.S. national security if Rhode Island became it's own country, with an impenetrable laser air shield, with it's own allies, currency, tax laws, extradition treaties, defense systems, resources, etc. It would be such a constant threat, it would make more sense to just invade.

Tor and similar systems could reach that critical mass, where they become a constant threat to the sovereignty of nations. Tech is naively forcing hard questions about the conventions that provide "stability."

The feds know they might just have to just outlaw crypto. The technology exists to detect and round up most people who use it, or enough of them that it will be hard to find people to use it with. If they have to, they will.

This dance they are doing is political posturing, testing the edges to see what kind of resistance they get, and how much political capital it is going to cost.

Like voting and graffiti, if crypto really changed anything, it would be illegal.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#47

Post by marshray » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 2:46 AM UTC

fredgrott wrote: post #11

put in proper context Imagine if its WWII and that they asked for all mail to be un-sealed..Shocking but did almost happen..as far as they got was asking Military Personnel to 'volunteer' not to seal mail..

They forced everyone to turn in their shortwave radios too.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#48

Post by harryh » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 2:50 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #45

rayiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code is not speech any more than electronic circuits are speech. That is to say that in unique contexts when the code is itself a means of expression code may be speech,[1] but not when it is used to build something that enables communication. [1] Bricks can also be expression in unique contexts. That doesn't mean that bricks are speech.

A brick or electronic circuit is speech when being used as a medium of expression. Code is speech all the time because it can't be anything else. It's pure information. You can't email someone a brick. It happens we have machines that will turn that information into action, but the code isn't the machine or the action. It's just a type of speech that machines can understand too. People are always wanting to regulate…

A piece of encryption software is clearly both.

It is speech. If you wanted to you could even go find the source code and translate it into english in such a way that a relatively competent programmer could turn it back into code ("If the first bit in the byte is 1 then do .... other wise do ....").

But it's clearly also a tool. I've never read the source code to the software I use to encrypt my hard drive. It's unlikely that I ever will. I just care that it does the job I want it to.

Trying to say that it's either one or the other is silly. It's both.

But just because it's speech doesn't mean that the government might not have an interest in regulating it. The first amendment is not absolute. I can imagine a great many prima facie arguments supporting the idea of regulating encryption software. The fact that code is speech is not, in and of itself, a defense against any of them.

As with most cases of constitutional law, it comes down to weighing competing interests. Failing to acknowledge these varying interests fails to acknowledge the actual question at hand.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#49

Post by wwweston » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 2:57 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #44

pash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unprecedented to an even greater degree is the scale at which mundane communications are now recorded. In the past, the bulk of private communications were opaque to the government, even with a warrant , because people exchanged private information mostly verbally, face to face. Today many analogous conversations take place online, in instant messages, in email, and in other persistent media. Even when the con…

It's possible for both phenomena to be unprecedented.

And that they're feeding each other.

And maybe in such a way that creates the worst of both worlds. The sufficiently informed and conscientious covert actor can find some way to keep much of their communications obscured. This utterly freaks out state apparatuses that consider legibility a key goal. So they work harder to more broadly collect signals AND chip away at obscuring methods. Would-be coverts escalate. So does the state.

End result? It could well be that the motivated/educated still can keep enough of their secrets hidden, but communications for the mass of people who don't have the reasons/resources for participating in the arms race end up largely transparent. And, well, if the resulting panopticon falls short of realizing its original purpose, it's still bound to have a certain amount of utility one way or another -- at least, not without a high degree of accountability.

Re: Don't Panic: Seeking Points of Agreement on the “Going Dark” Debate

#50

Post by vgugghvhu » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 3:18 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #22

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #4

This fake crisis of "Going Dark" as if we haven't been that way for all of time before the Internet is dangerous. The "scary" notion that the police won't be able to read everything about everyone is being recast by the Feds as if it really is national crisis. Benjamin Wittes suggests on Lawfare we make Common Carrier Immunity conditional on the company being able to make all data available in the clear to the govern…

While I oppose things like encryption backdoors, I think it's disingenuous to say this is a "fake crisis." The 4th amendment has always required balancing security and privacy--that's why the distinction between "unreasonable searches" and reasonable ones appears right there in the text. And society has always balanced those two interests with a simple mechanism: the police can only search with a warrant, but once th…

A government which condones torture and war crimes is no longer a legitimate sovereign.