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Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

reuters.com

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Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#62

The weirdest part of this argument is that law abiding people get no encryption while people who break the law will still have access to encryption, so how does it help you catch pedophiles? I don’t really understand how this will work in reality for things like SSL or ssh.

The truth is the law won't be used to catch pedophiles. It will just be used to prosecute anyone who uses encryption for legal or illegal means.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#64
Have any of these proposals to require companies to provide access to law enforcement included any concrete suggestion of how, exactly it should be done without also providing access to bad actors?

It sounds like Interpol et al. are just saying "make 1 + 1 = 3" and expecting the nerds to figure it out.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#65

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who h…

> That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments.

An important point to make, is that it is not given that citizens are in charge of government.

I might trust my current government to uphold democracy - but that does not mean I trust every future government to do the same and I need laws in place for restricting their rights, not mine.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#66

Encryption is math, and not even hard math at that. You have as much chance of stopping evil people from using encryption as you have of stopping them from doing multiplication. Make every politician who opposes encryption feel like an idiot for thinking they can stop people from adding and multiplying.

Unfortunately, feeling like or even being an idiot seems a price they're willing to pay:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-en...

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#67
post #19

I had an idea that a decent compromise is to limit keystrength, but not have any kind of backdoor. This way the vast majority of communication is protected, and the government can't just spy en mass. But, if there was some specific target they could throw a lot of computing resources at it. But they would need to know in advance who to target, they couldn't just have a wide dragnet. Thoughts?

If a cipher can be broken by the government, it can also be broken by narco cartels or mafia states. The targets will be key decision makers, not regular citizens, but their decisions, coerced by those mafia states, will harm regular citizens.

Unlike physical locks, breaking encrypted data doesn't need physical presence. This means that not just local authorities under an elected Sheriff can break into one's house, but also completely random people from say China or KSA can teleport in, break in and kidnap the data.

In the near future we'll have a brain-to-computer-to-internet interface. This will be a big leap forward or backwards as it can be used for rapid collaboration or total undisputable survelliance for a greedy dictator. The crypthography case today will set the precedent for tomorrow. Btw, even the 24/7 thoughts monitoring can be used for good: someone really advanced, a saint-like person, could be giving advice on what's wrong with your thoughts. But we understand that the humanity is far from this level of maturity.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#68
post #52

The issue here is that you can't stop people from using encryption; they'll just start using a combination of encryption and steganography for example. It isn't like we are dealing with people who are afraid to break the law.

I don't follow this argument. Compromising commonly used encryption means less people will use hard encryption. That goes for criminals too. They won't all just switch to a hardened scheme. Some will switch, some will go with the compromised version, and some might even stop the criminal things they are doing for fear of detection.

The question is whether this means it's worth compromising encryption.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#69
post #51

Any time these topics around weakening privacy or removing encryption comes up, it's nearly always presented with a save the children type of argument. I mean, who doesn't want to protect children from child abuse and predators? The problem however, is that most children that are abused are done so by family members or people already close to them (like maybe their priests), so with that in mind I don't really unders…

It's not an argument, it's marketing.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#70
post #16

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who h…

I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this. Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. It seems everyone is so eager to paint the other side as objectively wrong / motivated by bad intentions, when in reality I don't believe this is an objectively right answer. As a society we have to decide how much freedom and security we…

But those citizens need to restrict the freedom and security of others.

In Europe we have many examples of human trafficking where officials had problems to investigate because of political reasons and other problems, mainly understaffed law enforcement.

Every police force asks for more powers, every interior ministry wants more surveillance.

Even with decryption tools, I don't see how traffickers would suddenly not be able to obfuscate their communications.

What becomes very easy is to crack down on dissent though. And being able to communicate with others without any listeners is a security requirement. So freedom and security aren't orthogonal at all.

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