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Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

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121–130 of 255 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#121

Guns can be used for crime, including child sexual abuse and terrorism, so why shouldn't we ban them too? Right to bear arms is in the constitution, and so is the right to unreasonable search/seizure.

As we have seen many times over, cars and other civilian vehicles have been used for criminal purposes on many levels.

You will live and die before we get into banning things just because there are bad, or mentally unstable people in this world.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#123
Banning any type of mathematical or technological advancement will never bring good things. I don't know why I feel like that, but that's how I feel like. Banning building things like nuclear reactors is fine, but banning people from knowing information relevant to building nuclear reactors can avoid safe technological advancements in energy generation, for example.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#124
post #97

If I were arguing by analogy I would ask why we allow door locks. Door locks let people do bad things inside their houses. Yet we are all safer from criminals because of them, overall. And it also helps keep police honest about getting a warrant first before they disturb your house.

The counter argument I've heard to that is that there is no such thing as an unbreakable lock. If someone is doing something illegal in a building, the government can eventually get in. Strong encryption is effectively unbreakable, and basically free for anyone to use. Trying to make a faciliy even remotely as secure is going to take millions of dollars because you need to not only secure the lock, but the entire fac…

Strong encryption may be unbreakable in a mathematical sense but encrypted communications are not unbreakable in practice. Key extraction through side channels or compromise of communications by physical surveillance or evil maid attacks is practical. It just can't be done to a billion people at the same time. Read here https://github.com/maqp/tfc/wiki/Threat-model for an overview of all the ways an all-out, unusually secure encryption system (encryption and decryption done on separate computers with data diodes, 100% reproducible build) can be broken.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#125
Governments have a long history of doing bad things (e.g. hundreds of millions killed in the last 100 years by USSR/China/Germany but many lesser offenses such as the war on drugs in the US). You often don't get to roll back government powers as a government becomes more corrupt or authoritarian; so once you're in, you're in. Thus; even if giving people privacy allows some crime, it is probably not as bad as all the good that comes from not enabling an authoritarian regime by giving up all your privacy.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#126
I like having private conversations. Just because somebody happens to be in a different room during one of these conversations, doesn't mean it's ok for my private conversation to be logged in a db somewhere, mined, searched, leaked, sold and used against me at will.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#127

The only antidote is an emotional connection with history and the reality of oppresion around the world today. No one who feels like they "have nothing to hide" can be convinced of the value of privacy until they have made an emotional connection with the oppressed and see themselves as potential victims. Anything these people think of as "normal" activities has at one point or another been made illegal by a governme…

Relatedly is to bluntly tell them "You don't get to decide that you have nothing to hide - they do.". What was legal, expected, or even required is not guaranteed that it won't be judged negatively in the future.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#128
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn’t they come to me then and look into my phone instead of constantly looking into my messages on the server? I think the door is a great analogy.

and if you say "no", they're screwed. Whereas with a door, they can just push you out of the way and kick it down. I'm opposed to back doors, but the door analogy is a bad one.

There's no such thing as a perfect analogy because the entire point of an analogy is it takes an argument and reframes it in a different context. Different contexts have different edge cases and thus no analogy fits an argument perfectly.

Given this door analogy works for the majority of the arguments being presented (which is impressive in itself given how different the physical and electronic worlds are), I'd say it's actually a pretty good analogy.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#129
post #76

Politicians propose to forbid all buildings from having doors. After all "bad people/stuff etc." could lock the doors and hide behind them. Anyone arguing against that is obviously against safety. Counterpoints: - Do we currently have a big door problem? - Wait, don't doors also serve an important function? - Won't that make everybody much more insecure and basically do nothing against "bad stuff"? - What if I put a…

I'm not sure this is a great analogy as yes, we permit people to have doors and locks but society also provides a mechanism for the government to lawfully get access to them. If the Police have a legit reason to access a property they go to court and get a warrent, and if they need to they'll kick the door in to get in. The current government requests to be able to access encrypted info with a warrent are an extensio…

Police can request access to your phone and if you say "no" then they can send it off to forensics to try and break their way into it.

Some buildings are barricaded to make forced entry harder, some phones are more secure which makes hacking into them harder.

Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?

#130
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see these comparisons made so, so frequently and it bothers me. Guns are not the same as encryption or cars. Yet they're so often made in apples to apples comparisons that it's mind boggling to me. Weapons are uniquely special in that they are specifically designed to maim and kill. Via defense or justified actions is irrelevant; it's a tool of war. Arguably, if there was E2E software that was specifically designed…

The argument is: If you (USA) accept that kids are harmed due to lack of gun control, then do not use harm to kids as an argument against E2E encryption. It is hypocritical.

Just because the victim is the same class of people does not make those equivalent or make us hypocritical.
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