U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger

Post by paulie_a » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #67

realusername wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see the point, without encryption, there's no modern web, no e-commerce, no smartphones, absolutely everything relies on it like water. Unless you want to go back to pre-2000's technology of course.

Of course e-commerce will be fine, because browser vendors will obtain licenses to ship TLS modules and as a condition of such will include the .gov root cert. It's trivial when you can pass arbitrary legislation. Back in the 90s we had to deal with US gov restrictions on encryption export. Software companies and organisations fell into line. It was a big deal when 128-bit keyed Netscape became available globally in…

Post by EvilEndures » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

praneshp wrote: post #68

EvilEndures wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no conspiracy and I don't think that it is fair to accuse your police and government of being arseholes (to put words in your mouth!) Sometimes we simply have to accept that our personal will does not always dovetail with that of the majority - that is how democracy works. To be fair though, there is also nothing wrong with getting a good rant in on HN. You've clearly never dealt with either in the US for…

> To be honest, I don't think people should cry they have a mandate from the people with less than a 55% majority Can I ask what 55 is? (for instance, in India 66 is a special percentage required for some bills).

Post by merinowool » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #70

Phlarp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's too late to criminalize prostitution, every is already having sex" "It's too late to criminalize possession of drugs. Half the country takes pharmaceuticals!"

The difference being that there's way too much necessary legitimate use of cryptography to stop now, and as the traffic is encrypted, you can't tell what traffic isn't legitimate. Plus steganography and plenty of places accessible on the net that aren't the United States. This isn't meatspace, the dynamics are quite different.

Post by hsienmaneja » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #69

badminton1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the answer. What are the building blocks for encryption? 1) An cryptographic algorithm 2) Some form of key generation 3) A software implementation of 1) and 2) 4) A binary distribution of 3) 5) A computer that executes 4) In practice, chances are those 5 are all rigged. They are rigged because you have so far trusted: - That there are no tricks in the algorithm or its practical implementation - That there a…

1-5 have worked so far for Bitcoin.

Post by gmax » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 4:58 AM UTC

ReverseCold wrote: post #79

mjevans wrote: post #4

I think it has become abundantly clear that a fully peer to peer, encryption required (non-optional), no single central server infrastructure solution is the answer. No points to tap. No point in tapping the data. If they want to capture conversations it's time to go back to the proper old ways of actually spying on high-value targets.

P2P routing is hard (nat bypass only really works on 80-90% of networks which is not good enough and Tor is unviable for mass adoption), and decentralized identifiers are generally not liked by users Other than that, it's doable. Spam protection and censorship (necessary for mobile app stores) can be distributed as opt-out blacklists. If it gets to be a huge problem then a "enter this password to add me" type thing c…