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

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

#131

Post by hluska »

I worry that this is a case of seemingly good policy having bad effects.

My research indicates that smart criminals tend to communicate in code. Because of the codes used and the frequency at which they change, the existence of communication is often of more probative value than the words used. Companies currently share this meta data with law enforcement.

If the veil of E2EE is lifted, smart criminals will move their communications elsewhere. They will find services owned by foreign companies in regimes that are not friendly to US law enforcement. Or they will move to low tech solutions that make collecting meta data more difficult.

Basically, I’m afraid that changing E2EE will catch criminals who make a myriad of mistakes that will get them caught anyways. Meanwhile, it will drive the intelligent criminals further underground, onto services owned and hosted in hostile (or less friendly) countries.

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

#132

Post by gmuslera »

jdsnape wrote: post #76
diffeomorphism wrote: post #55

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…

The police, the government, the intelligence agencies and so on are not abstract entities, they are composed by people at all levels, in a capitalist economy, with human biases and wishes. There are plenty of documented examples of abuse of this kind of access for fun and profit.

And besides those not-so-abstract entities, they have contractors from private companies and corporations that aren't abstract neither, but even in abstract mode are driven by profit, not respecting your privacy/security/economy.

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

#134

Post by diffeomorphism »

throwawayjava wrote: post #93
lysium wrote: 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.

Any analogy has its limitations, but I think it is helpful for talking about things like "back doors" (and how that is no different from not having doors at all) or how a proposal is basically only "unintended" consequences and no gain. Feel free to suggest a better analogy.

The main difference where this analogy breaks down is that it is much easier to build practically unbreakable encryption (assuming P != NP), versus practically unbreakable doors or safes.

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

#135

Post by citrablue »

jimbob45 wrote: post #117
Xelbair wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is exactly the same with guns. Mind you i come from country with relatively hard to get gun licenses. What about sports shooting? Collecting? Personal defence in dangerous areas? Hunting(which because we fucked up ecosystems in some areas, culling is necessary)? Also over here modern black-powder guns are legal, without license. And they are both VERY dangerous(way more dangerous in a crowds) and relatively cheap.…

Can you explain why a black-powder gun would be more dangerous? I don't see what would make them so much more dangerous than a typical rifle.

You basically load the cartridge in by hand every time. If you leave some space between the powder and projectile, you risk the gun blowing up.

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

#136

Post by diminoten »

DickingAround wrote: post #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…

Cars have a long history of killing people, so do planes, so does AIDS, so does... everything, really. So we make changes, we improve, and now AIDs related deaths have dropped off significantly, we haven't had a fatal plane crash in the US in 10 years, and car related deaths in the US have decreased steadily since the 1960s.

Yes, governments have a history of being unsafe to their citizens, but it's not anything like what it once was, and it's getting steadily better, despite what the MSM wants you to think.

Now I'm not saying it's okay they backdoor all encryption, I just don't think the argument "Government evil" is going to hold water for the average person, nor should it.

A much better argument should come from the, "we prefer guilty people go free than innocent people get convicted, let's apply that policy to privacy" school of thought.

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

#137

Post by diminoten »

thefz wrote: post #16

> how do you respond when someone brings up concerns of E2EE platforms being used for child sexual abuse imagery or terrorism? These are only a tiny part of uses of encryption. Ask anyone if he would like to have his bank transfers, or his credit card credentials in plain text. End to end encryption allows the whole internet to act as a commerce platform. Encryption allows journalists and activists in strict, control…

Twofold: one, criminals are, generally, stupid. They're not going to be perfect, and when they slip up we'll get them.

Two, people are sex trafficked in cars and in planes as well, should we stop using those? "But we can patrol and monitor planes and cars and catch the bad guys!" Okay, but then why do they still do it? Did any of that stop sex trafficking? No.

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

#138

Post by diminoten »

CJefferson wrote: post #109
emilecantin wrote: post #44

Compare it to an envelope in the regular mail. How would they feel if every post office along the way opened their mail, made a photocopy, and put it back in a new envelope before passing it on? Because that's the way things currently are with e.g. Facebook Messenger, Gmail, etc. E2E is when your envelopes are only opened by their final recipient.

But, I think the government should, with a warrant, be able to open peoples mail in transit. And they currently do. E2E encryption with no backdoor removes this ability from them.

It's really a question of scale. Would you be as okay with the government's ability to do this if they could flip a switch and suddenly do it for all of a person's mail immediately and without detection?

What about making that system available to anyone, irrevocably, who managed to get access to that system at one point? And would you put penalties in place for people who, when their mail is opened, are found to be using a cypher of their own? Is it illegal now to speak in code at all?

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

#139

Post by toast0 »

nqzero wrote: post #120

i'm going to go against the grain here and propose an alternative arrangement medium term, i don't see how democracy can function if E2EE becomes the norm (esp in the context of cryptocurrency). influence-buying, disinformation, collusion, bribes, bullying, etc become much much easier, and policing would become nearly impossible instead, ban E2EE but allow each person to have multiple identities (with technical means…

End to end encryption allows for the ends to exchange information without fear of the intermediaries leaking the information to others.

Even if it weren't connected to your identity, you may send pictures you wouldn't want seen by anyone you didn't send them to.

You wouldn't want to send forbidden thoughts if your local government was known to repress them. A government could certainly track down your multiple identities and jail you.

I'm more likely to be harmed by government corruption or poor security practices of a messaging service than by terrorism; I would rather be safe from the first two, than maybe have slightly less of the third.

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

#140

Post by asdkhadsj »

Xelbair wrote: post #50
asdkhadsj wrote: post #8

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…

It is exactly the same with guns. Mind you i come from country with relatively hard to get gun licenses. What about sports shooting? Collecting? Personal defence in dangerous areas? Hunting(which because we fucked up ecosystems in some areas, culling is necessary)? Also over here modern black-powder guns are legal, without license. And they are both VERY dangerous(way more dangerous in a crowds) and relatively cheap.…

> What about sports shooting? Collecting? Personal defence in dangerous areas? Hunting(which because we fucked up ecosystems in some areas, culling is necessary)?

I covered that in hunting rifles. Various types of rifles have legitimate uses. However, it's an argument not in good faith to say that anything with a possible sport should be legal.

I can't make a rocket launcher sport and demand that rocket launchers become ~freely~ fully legal because it has a sport. This is a bad argument.

> Gun violence is a symptom of a worse issue in the society, banning guns will just hiding the symptom of the issue.

I agree entirely. You can have both however, mental health and restrictions. See: most first world countries other than the US.

The funny thing in these discussion is we already do have tons of regulation. The line is already drawn, we're not discussing drawing it, we're discussing whether or not we should move it.

Your arguments could be made about various rocket launchers or, hell, missiles and bombs. The line is already drawn there however, and the same argument for and against various rocket launchers (some legal and some illegal I believe), missiles, bombs and etc could be used in both cases.

Neither argument for or against guns inherently wins the argument; there's subtly in both. However it is my belief that the same reason we don't let people own larger scale weapons of destruction is valid for the larger scale automatic / semiautomatic weapons.

I am in full support of hunting rifles. Less so AKs and the like. I don't care if you have a sport around AKs - in the same way that I wouldn't care if you had a missile "sport".

edit: words

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