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Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

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Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#131

Post by kordless »

Encryption and privacy are what make this reality work. You think you are you. I think I am me. This reality's ability to keep those separate is a privacy feature. From a Buddhist's perspective our understanding (Dharma) is that we are, on some level, all the same entity.

One of the early sutras put it this way:

> "Discrimination is consciousness. Nondiscrimination is wisdom. Clinging to consciousness will bring disgrace but clinging to wisdom will bring purity. Disgrace leads to birth and death but purity leads to Nirvana."

Encryption gives the means by which we can enable privacy between ourselves, or what we think of as self. If we enable complete privacy from all others, we drop into a self-world. If we disable privacy, and join all the others disabling privacy, we drop into an isolated type of Nirvana, with the implication everything becomes quite boring. I have compared this in the past to the observed push and pull of public and private cloud business models.

One solution may come via virtual realities where we can arrive at consensus in a fair and measured way without centralized control. It is my belief that immutable data structures backed by encryption, such as a blockchain, are the path out of this mess.

Here's Alan Watts talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBOcFwUzIIQ

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#132

Post by zanny »

tzs wrote: post #109
bsder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment you mention "child pornography" as justification I consider that you have lost the argument. This is simply Godwin's Law for the modern era.

In a society where most followed your approach, would there be any point in child pornography even being illegal?

The creation of it certainly remains illegal, and its existence is a violation of individuals right to privacy (these images are never taken with consent, because the victims cannot consent). In the same way you could consider it a violation of your privacy for someone you do not want there taking your picture in private, child porn violates the same principle.

So child porn can be perfectly illegal without having an explicit law saying "Child Porn is illegal". Its creation violates so many fundamentals and its distribution violates a subset of those.

But the reason for the illegality is as important as the legality in the first place. Some of the most horrible nations commit acts we deem moral in consequence but often do them for still vile reasons (ie, you don't execute the mafia boss for rampant murder and robbery, but because hes threatening your own power).

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#133

Post by jacquesm »

richmarr wrote: post #130
dopamean wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the FBI already acknowledged very early on that they didn't expect to find anything useful on the phone for these very reasons.

I imagine there's a Venn diagram of overlap between what a nutjob thinks is worth hiding and what would be of interest to law enforcement organisations. For example I doubt many of these extremists would both trying to hide information that could be used for psychological profiling of future attackers

The psychological profiling of future attackers has nothing to do with getting away with this push to access that particular phone. That's simply not even on the radar at this point, the FBI would be laughed out of any court they went to if they presented that as the reason why they want access. Their fig-leaf is that the phone may contain valuable information regarding this particular crime.

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#134

Post by drcube »

wyager wrote: post #113
arebop wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make your own country less corrupt, more free, and better for the economically-worst-off, so that your own entrepreneurs may eventually overtake the authoritarian superpowers?

>and better for the economically-worst-off, Not that I disagree with this, but how is this supposed to help entrepreneurs? If anything, it will just increase the tax burden of running a business.

You're not going to be a very successful entrepreneur if your customers are broke.

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#135

Post by FroshKiller »

mobiuscog wrote: post #37
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it happens, it'll become precedent, then all countries will want to do it. The next logical step is to outlaw phones and devices that are incapable of breaking into. Then they'll make it so you need a license to employ cryptography. It sounds crazy, but where we are right now would have sounded just as crazy 15 years ago.

>Then they'll make it so you need a license to employ cryptography. You already need one to export certain goods / to certain countries.

Big difference between "need" and "are required to have"!

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#136

Post by chishaku »

jccc wrote: post #82

Before you comment, please consider whether you'd prefer to vent your frustration in online message boards with like-minded people, or spend that potential energy in other ways: "What you can do about it: -- You can contact the Obama White House online to comment on strong encryption. https://www.whitehouse.gov/webform/share-your-thoughts-onstr... -- You can contact your state Senators and Representatives via the con…

A few more resources along the same lines:

* Tracking Congressional bills, Congressional representatives and voting history:

https://www.govtrack.us/

* General resource on local, state and federal elections:

https://ballotpedia.org

* Data on lobbying and political contributions:

https://www.opensecrets.org/

* Voting history, policy positions and public statement transcripts of politicians and political organizations:

http://votesmart.org/

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#137

Post by Zigurd »

arebop wrote: post #105
mixblast wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about the rest of the world? Can we do anything other than just trusting the US citizens to get their government to do the right thing?

Make your own country less corrupt, more free, and better for the economically-worst-off, so that your own entrepreneurs may eventually overtake the authoritarian superpowers?

Make your own country independent of deep-state interlocking intelligence services. Part of the problem is that the US will set the tone for dozens of countries where it has cultivated linkages that often override the will of the people.

I'm looking at you, Sweden.

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#138

Post by nickpsecurity »

h0w412d wrote: post #121
ccvannorman wrote: post #119

I am surprised that a search for "math" only turned up one result in this thread, about car accidents vs terrorist victims. Isn't it true that encryption legislation or policy is sort of irrelevant next to the very clear math that says encryption will always be ahead of decryption? Even in a (hopefully avoidable) dystopia where encryption is illegal, would that really stop technology companies from continuing to do w…

Yep. Cory Doctorow has talked about this: how the universe "makes it easy" to secure communications because mathematically, it's really easy to encrypt (verify that a number is prime) and really difficult to decrypt through hacking (factor a huge prime number). And because of that, outlawing encryption is really outlawing math, which is ridiculous. Math is a universal API everyone has access to simply by existing. Yo…

Do you have a link to that? Because I know a guy who really needs to counterpoint it. High-security engineer, Clive Robinson, always said security is about physics if you look at it down to the hardware. The physics try to connect things in ways you didn't see coming. That allows unauthorized communications. The physics also try to corrupt the operation of your chips. That compromises computational security mechanisms. Even encryption algorithms had tons of problems when they were implemented to the point that it takes pro's with years of experience to implement them with any assurance. Those are often broken later.

So, if Doctorow said that, he couldn't be further from the truth. The universe seems to do everything it can to make security difficult via physics itself. Throw in economics and biology (evolving malicious attackers) to top the argument off.

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#139

Post by Zigurd »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #29
jacquesm wrote: post #2

> No, David. If I were in the job now, I would have simply told the FBI to call Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency, and NSA would have solved this problem for them. They're not as interested in solving the problem as they are in getting a legal precedent. That's quite the quote, especially given his history of employment. The weirdest thing about this whole cell-phone saga to me is that the…

No the weirdest thing is that Apple is standing up to the government. Isn't that just wrong? You, the people choose the government, so in effect Apple is standing up to the people of America and saying 'no'. If you the people didn't want the FBI to be bullish then choose a different government. It feels to me (an outsider) that it's the government that is out of control and is not accountable to the people.

> You, the people choose the government

From among two choices, already bought by special interests, and already so habituated to our intelligence and law enforcement communities that they have zero scepticism about these kinds of travesties.

Re: Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism

#140

Post by exabrial »

"You dont need a gun"

"You don't need encryption"

It's not the bill of needs. I was born with these rights. This is the danger of eroding the constitution, the arguments can be used against whatever issue you want. If we want it changed, do it the right way and pass an amendment. But please, protect the integrity of the most important document we have.

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