DOJ: Strong encryption that we don’t have access to is “unreasonable”

Suppose you use a (5,5) threshold system to make 5 shares of a secret, and you distribute those shares to 5 shareholders. Someone who wants to get your secret without your cooperation has to convince all 5 shareholders to cooperate (or steal copies of the shares from all 5 of them).

If that does not provide a sufficient level of protection, you could instead go with a (6,6) or (7,7) or higher threshold system. The higher you go, the less likely it is that a bad actor will be able to get copies of all the shares.

A drawback of that approach is that if just one shareholder loses their share, the secret is not recoverable. That can be addressed by increasing n more than t. Instead of say, a (7,7) threshold system maybe you use a (7,10).

That's the basic idea. You set t high enough that the chances that a bad actor, even a powerful one, could subvert t different shareholders is low enough for you, and you set n above t a bit to allow for some shareholders losing their shares or being unavailable if the time ever comes when the shareholders decide that there is a legitimate reason to recover your secret.

Going beyond the basic idea, you can add a second level. You take your secret, and make, say, 4 shares using a (4,4) system. Let's call these "level 1 shares". Instead of giving the level 1 shares to shareholders, we can take each level 1 share, use a separate threshold system to make shares of the level 1 share, which we call "level 2 shares", and distribute the level 2 shares to shareholders.

What this does is let us make different categories of shareholders, with different weights.

So we might make 4 level 1 shares, using a (4,4) system. Call these s1, s2, s3, and s4. We thing might apply a (3,3) system to s1, and give the resulting shares to whatever agency or department or branch handles warrants in 3 separate foreign national governments.

s2 we apply a (3,6) system to, and given those 6 shares to 6 non-government civil rights organizations.

s3 we apply a (3,6) system to, and give those to 6 individuals that we trust.

s4 we apply a (2,3) system to, and give those to three commercial entities that offer shareholding as a service. We should pick entities in 3 different countries, separate from the countries we gave s1's shares to.

With that scheme, someone trying to get at our secret needs to get 3 foreign governments, 3 civil rights organizations, 3 people we trust, and 2 companies to all agree that giving up our secret is justified.

As with the single level approach you can bump the particular numbers up or down to decrease or increase the chances that someone can illegitimately get your secret.

The way to fight for strong privacy isn't to run around screaming how "these people just don't GET it!". Because they will look at the framed Math PhD certificate on the wall and rightfully conclude that you're starting from wrong assumptions.

Instead, start by imagine the most perfect FBI agents you can. Then, debate them.

That debate must start with agreeing that your idealized agent does indeed have a harder job when all evidence moves from binders full of incriminating paper to an encrypted, impenetrable blob. Not accepting that truth makes you useless for your cause, because nobody who isn't already a convert will listen to you if you deny reality with ill-fitting analogies.

Only then can you make your case, the two main arguments of which should be:

- It is impossible to weaken encryption without running the risk of those weaknesses being exploited, or the keys to the backdoor, falling into the hands of bad actors.

- The ability to automate electronic surveillance potentially increases the quantity of surveillance to a point where it also takes on a different quality. Even if judicial oversight remained (which is questionable, considering FISA et al), privacy invasion was previously limited by two informal, yet important, caveats: the costs and resources required to have agents physically search, and the public visibility of such searches.

This is not the right question. It is the one they use but is not the right one.

"Do we want our citizen able to protect themselves" is the right question. And as most government have shown, they really don't want it. They want to be in charge of the protecting.

Once you see things from their perspective their position makes more sense.

You may think you're taking a strong stance for privacy and freedom. But anyone who isn't already in your corner, and sees reality through similarly myopic lenses, will only be put off by such blatantly obvious falsehoods.

Technologist tend to follow some variation of the "law of the jungle": disagree with the FED's policies? Create a currency that follows no policy except the one dictated by its algorithm! In this endeavor, they commit two mistakes:

(a) Confusing what is with what ought: the inability to do something, sometimes almost true (monetary policy for bitcoin), sometimes obviously false (two-key encryption), is used as an argument to shut down debate.

(b) The refusal to meaningfully engage with any argument that is not narrowly about tech. They believe any such arguments aren't "objective", and that they can sidestep it with technology. Yet this fails to see that of course every algorithm or other technology is the child of ideology by just another name.

In doing so, technologists usurp powers that aren't theirs: if the gold standard is the better monetary policy, you're supposed convince enough people to get Rand Paul elected president. Yes, politics is deeply frustrating, because everyone is just wrong, all the time. But it's still a much better decision-making process than five techbros in china noticing their hashrate has made them king.