241–250 of 337 posts
Would like to see more detailed logic in the original post. For e.g. why specifically the parallel between physical world and digital is flawed.
alright, will write a follow up
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We almost never say it. I want to say it. As someone who first became politically aware during the post 9/11 Bush era, it's really nice to have an administration in the White House that isn't trying to scare us. We wouldn't live like that in a Trump administration. We would live in fear.
hillary would do the same god damn thing. "but...terrorism!" "Iran is threatening freedom ".
And Secretary Clinton had been meeting with representatives of Britain, France and the Arab countries. And she sort of essentially called in from Paris and then from Cairo, and she ended up tipping the balance and essentially convincing President Obama, who later described this as a 51-49 decision, to join the other countries in the coalition to bomb Gaddafi’s forces."
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/3/the_libya_gamble_inside...
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> We need people advocating for the right balance, not just getting each other frustrated. I don't understand this line of thinking regarding the big encryption debate. Yeah it sounds good if you don't know anything about encryption. "Look, he's being reasonable. Why is everyone saying he's wrong instead of striking a balance". The problem is it's a binary problem. There is zero way to strike any type of balance here…
I didn't think I'd come back but I liked your comment and wanted to rebut. There is a middle ground and where it lies is directly related to the assessed risk. To support a mechanism is a binary choice but its design is not. In the San Bernardino example, an unexpected potential adversary (Apple) has emerged. An unexpected vector is being discussed which has nothing to do with the encryption mechanism itself. Perfect…
Why is it not unreasonable? You're compelling companies to write custom software explicitly for law enforcement use. Let's say you own a company that creates product X. Now the FBI is compelling you, through the court system, to develop a completely custom version of product X to let them access it or use it in some way. Sure they're paying you but you now have to redirect resources to handle this and you likely hired people to do things other than work on a government project. This ultimately can hurt your company and its market position simply by consuming your resources.
This is unprecedented outside of war times. It's hard for me to imagine anyone being okay with compelling a company to become a government contractor.
> It's a hard problem but it's not binary.
It absolutely is. The "middle ground" you pointed to isn't a middle ground; it's unconstitutional. I have yet to hear a technically viable AND constitutional "middle ground" in this debate.
A key promise of Obama's campaign for the presidency was to run the “most transparent” government- however the only person to really deliver on that promise was a whistleblower. Secret courts, secret domestic spying, and now calls for weakening of the digital equivalent of the safe shows that he either was not honest about transparency, or has radically changed his opinion since becoming POTUS. Maybe it's that he dec…
I voted for Obama twice. I regret both.
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If you're not willing to revolt over it then it is definitely a possibility that end-to-end encryption will be made illegal. Non-techies simply don't care, they have 'nothing to hide' (or so they think).
I don't think it will happen due to the impossibility of actually enforcing it, hence "effective manner" in my OP.
Lavabit?
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but there is no "balance" when somethig is binary. You either have encryption or you don't.
If the San Bernardino case proves anything, it's that encryption is not the whole picture.
Higher priority freedoms:
1. Freedom of religious choice and freedom from religious persecution. Freedom of religious assembly.
2. Freedom to immigrate to the US.
Lower Priority Freedoms:
1. Freedom to purchase guns and ammunition
2. Freedom to use encryption to keep personal communication private
Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every devi…
This is not a debate about privacy vs. security. It's about security vs. security. [1] [2] [3] On balance, putting backdoors in phones will make us less secure, because criminals will just use other methods to communicate, and the public will be putting their data within reach of every hacker in the world through a government-imposed weakness. The administration is unlikely to understand our privacy concerns. They do…
You're reusing arguments about key escrow in a way that doesn't apply.
This isn't key escrow. It's about software updates, which use digital signing in the way it's supposed to be used.
Apple's software updates are guarded by a private key. Of course they need to keep the private key safe, but sometimes use it to sign releases. It's expensive but doable, and a good thing too, because the entire app ecosystem (not to mention https and Bitcoin) depends on keeping private keys safe.
If keeping a private key safe is impossible even for a well-funded company like Apple, public key encryption doesn't work. Game over.
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I think Washington has changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington. He's spent seven years in the craziest bubble in America surrounded by people being paid millions to distort his worldview one way or another. A while back he advised some kids in College to never type anything into a computer if they want it to remain private. For him, it probably seems completely reasonable. I doubt he's touched a keyboard sin…
I'm not so sure about all this. Bernie's been in Washington for decades as a Congressman, so he's been exposed to the same stuff, and his worldview is completely different from Obama's. Before he was elected, Obama had very little experience in Washington; he didn't even serve a full Senate term, and mostly voted "present". He just told us what we wanted to hear, and didn't have much of a record backing up his rhetor…
As strange as it may sound, the Clintons did the most for the pro-encryption side of this debate. Former President Clinton passed CALEA, which TechDirt points out applies to "manufacturers and providers of telecommunications support services" [1]. Also from CALEA,
> (1) Design of features and systems configurations. This subchapter does not authorize any law enforcement agency or office
> (a) to require any specific design of equipment, facilities, services, features, or system configurations to be adopted by any provider of a wire or electronic communication service, any manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, or any provider of telecommunications support services;
> (b) to prohibit the adoption of any equipment, facility, service, or feature by any provider of a wire or electronic communication service, any manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, or any provider of telecommunications support services.
I believe the judge in the San Bernardino case will point to this to deny the DOJ's request to use the All Writs Act to compel Apple to write the special version of the OS. At the very least, CALEA is a strong statement that Congress has already decided that they will not pass laws requiring Apple and others to put backdoors in their phones. That doesn't mean the debate is over, however. Many people still do not understand encryption technology and will blame technologists for standing in the way of legislation that they perceive would have saved us from certain terrorist attacks.
Although Bernie has said he's against surveillance, he and many of his most vocal supporters remain uninformed about encryption. I tried posting a couple times in the Sanders subreddit, calling for Sanders to take a stronger position in support of end-to-end encryption [2]. The response was he can't take a position on this because it isn't a major issue. I think that time is fast approaching. Obama hasn't let up, and obviously neither will technologists. It's difficult for a politician or law enforcement official to tell the population that they can't track all communications in the manner they used to be able to, and on the other hand, we technologists cannot simply ask math to stop working.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160223/23441033692/how-e...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/49otvu...
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> We need people advocating for the right balance, not just getting each other frustrated. I don't understand this line of thinking regarding the big encryption debate. Yeah it sounds good if you don't know anything about encryption. "Look, he's being reasonable. Why is everyone saying he's wrong instead of striking a balance". The problem is it's a binary problem. There is zero way to strike any type of balance here…
In that case, perhaps the balance we need to strike is rhetorical, not technical. I think some people in the tech world are 4th-amendment absolutists. That's not a new thing; in Cryptonomnicon there was the electromagnetic doorframe so strong that it would wipe drives passing through it. I don't know that it's a position I hold myself, but it's one I definitely respect. But we have a multi-century history of the gove…
I'm not sure trying to increase the complexity of the issue just to make it sound like the technology community doesn't see this as binary is a good solution. I think what we need to do is education people around how encryption works.
If we're wishy-washy about the whole thing it may come off as something we can possibly do in the end. I think education is the only way. But that's just my opinion.
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> We need people advocating for the right balance, not just getting each other frustrated. I don't understand this line of thinking regarding the big encryption debate. Yeah it sounds good if you don't know anything about encryption. "Look, he's being reasonable. Why is everyone saying he's wrong instead of striking a balance". The problem is it's a binary problem. There is zero way to strike any type of balance here…
I didn't think I'd come back but I liked your comment and wanted to rebut. There is a middle ground and where it lies is directly related to the assessed risk. To support a mechanism is a binary choice but its design is not. In the San Bernardino example, an unexpected potential adversary (Apple) has emerged. An unexpected vector is being discussed which has nothing to do with the encryption mechanism itself. Perfect…
It's also a binary condition whether a company should produce an unsafe fork of their own software and make it available to any government. If they should, then in effect all governments will use it against their adversaries, foreign and domestic.