Serious question: Even if a government makes encryption illegal, if I have the source code to gpg then I can still encrypt anything I want right? In other words, even if we lose secure access via SSL because of a master cipher, nobody can make the gpg source code, for example, disappear entirely.
Illegal Math
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Re: Illegal Math
#12Buried in the article below the clever though not original point that encryption is not math, is a much more important point:
This debate should really be about whether or not people have the right to have secrets.
If your answer is "no" then you ought to explain how you square that with the fact that many of our everyday activities can be considered criminal in some jurisdictions.
Re: Illegal Math
#13Buried in the article below the clever though not original point that encryption is not math, is a much more important point: This debate should really be about whether or not people have the right to have secrets. If your answer is "no" then you ought to explain how you square that with the fact that many of our everyday activities can be considered criminal in some jurisdictions.
I understand where the sentiment is coming from, but the point you are making here is incoherent. Your argument is literally this: people need encryption so that they can conceal evidence of crimes.
I think next time you pose this argument, you should remove the bit about how your actions might be illegal in some jurisdiction or other. It isn't doing the work for you that you think it is.
Re: Illegal Math
#14>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government.
I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a very scary problem for the government and law enforcement. Things like personal notes, journals, communications all used to be accessible to the government through warrants. Now that information is all locked away behind encryption. This is a huge shift in the way governments fight crime. We need to recognize that fact in order to have any productive debate with anti-encryption folks and we can't just pretend the government is evil because they wanted to keep the status quo of the physical world alive into the digital era.
Re: Illegal Math
#15Seems a little like saying, you burn some gas and your car goes, and if it goes 80mph, that's just physics. You can't make it illegal to obey the laws of physics? Plants are just biology and burning things is just chemistry. You can't make it illegal for a plant to grow and for a human burn it and inhale it, can you? Well...if you pass a law that pi=3 it doesn't change the nature of the universe, but it does regulate…
It's more like saying if you draw a picture of a car going 80mph, that's just a drawing.
Doing physics or chemistry can directly harm people. Doing math or drawing pictures can't.
Re: Illegal Math
#16You can say things like "math cannot be illegal" all you want, but the people with the guns and jails ultimately decide what's "illegal".
(To be clear, I am absolutely not in favor of putting any sort of restrictions on the use of encryption)
Re: Illegal Math
#17>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government. I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a ve…
Not true. You can jail the person for not revealing passwords if you have enough evidence and reasons to suspect the person is guilty and is hiding evidence behind encryption. This is not about being able to access something. This is about the ability to illegally search and seize all information at all times, often without any warrant at all. The government is worried not about not being able to search it, it's grasping for more totalitarian control of people's thoughts and behaviors. I guess because it's scared of what people are capable of.
Re: Illegal Math
#18Buried in the article below the clever though not original point that encryption is not math, is a much more important point: This debate should really be about whether or not people have the right to have secrets. If your answer is "no" then you ought to explain how you square that with the fact that many of our everyday activities can be considered criminal in some jurisdictions.
Is the position "people have the right to have secrets, but companies don't have the right to help them" coherent (not saying I endorse it)? We already accept that phone companies can (be forced to) allow wiretapping with a warrant. They aren't allowed to prevent the government from wiretapping. So why would a company be permitted to sell devices with encryption?
You also need to weaken "allowed to have secrets" to "allowed to have secrets in the presence of a warrant".
Re: Illegal Math
#19>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government. I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a ve…
> Things like personal notes, journals, communications all used to be accessible to the government through warrants. Now that information is all locked away behind encryption.
The government already has plenty of ways to collect evidence through legal means. A judge can compel you to provide access to your company files, to unlock your home, to decrypt your computer, etc. If you don't comply with the discovery process, you can be held in contempt of court. Encryption doesn't change anything in that equation.
The difference here is that the person in question is dead, so he can't provide the password. So the FBI wants to set a precedent that they can obtain information they want through means that would normally not be available to them.
Re: Illegal Math
#20bad news, some math is already illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret