Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators • Hacker News Board

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#91

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #86

protomyth wrote: post #17

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.

From the article: "Tech companies should include mechanisms in the design of their encrypted products and services whereby governments, acting with appropriate legal authority, can obtain access to data in a readable and useable format" They would target companies, not math or protocols.

But software is written not only by companies. Single person can deliver to millions of users and remain anonymous if he's careful.

So drop the idea you can prevent encryption, learn to live with it. Drop the idea of giving your policemen ability to time travel and listen to anyones private conversation from the past while remaining invisible. It would be nice for you but physics (of internet) does not allow it.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#92

Post by GoblinSlayer » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:28 AM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #29

Lots of criticism here, fair enough, it’s very worrying to give non-transparent institutions this kind of power, not to mention the technical feasibility. But... what should be done about child pornography, then? The ability to disseminate it with impunity is a problem we can’t just pretend doesn’t exist. Using online platforms pedophiles can monetize and go full time professional in countries where children are easi…

>The ability to disseminate it with impunity is a problem we can’t just pretend doesn’t exist.

I don't think there's such ability. And why only distribution is a crime?

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#93

Post by Iv » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

Fight against pedophilia has always been one of the common excuses (the other being terrorism) used to install spying devices everywhere, even despite very few actual organizations that fight the problem actually asking for such things.

I would be sad to hear that it would indeed be a useful tool, because the behavior of western government in the last 20 years at least makes it impossible to trust them on that one.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#94

Post by apatters » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #24

tqi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A nice example of the complexity in this space: the Ben Franklin quote "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" means something rather different when taken in context (1). (1) https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Not really. While that specific quote wasn't about surveillance, Franklin was decidedly pro-encryption, as were most of the Founding Fathers. They all "encrypted" their letters regularly with elaborate codes and ciphers to thwart surveillance by colonial authorities. The Revolution probably would have been impossible without it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/h3ll0-mr...

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#95

Post by AdrianB1 » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

lifthrasiir wrote: post #48

wruza wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and not to sneak around It would be nice if someone “fixed” some governments (and some crimes as a side quest), but 1) condemning privacy only makes this harder than de-facto almost impossible. 2) “prove someone said something” is not how our earth-wide culture works. We are basically based on the fact that conversations are private to some extent. Did you find yours…

> That’s cool, but something hints me you’re not living in one of these countries where hard work is required. Swap with one of its citizens, make a change, then we talk. There are some points in the GP though. Ideally we should try to fix the government and the laws for who can't, but even people in countries blessed enough to be able to try don't try enough.

Then until you are successful in fixing all the governments put the encryption discussion on hold. Then we can see the remaining arguments.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#96

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

ars wrote: 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?

It's a no go for law enforcement because they want to eventually spy en masse.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#97

Post by AdrianB1 » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:40 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #85

EGreg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years of reading on HN, I used to just accept that encryption is the best thing. And from a point of view of what will happen, that’s what will happen. But should we as a society want this? I would argue these days that it is far better to be able to reconstruct a conversation and prove someone said something. In case things go wrong, we have to have a way to establish truth, and prove things, so we can have fai…

> I would argue these days that it is far better to be able to reconstruct a conversation and prove someone said something. In case things go wrong, we have to have a way to establish truth, and prove things, so we can have fairness in outcomes. I'd love to have that capability. What matters is who controls it. If everything about me was constantly recorded but I was the person that decides if and when make some of t…

If you love that capability, good for you. But leave it out for the others, live and let live.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#98

Post by GoblinSlayer » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #46

There must be an algorithm that we can apply to show what such a change will have for society. If the probability is that the change is negligible, we should consider allowing it. But if the probability is that the change is overwhelmingly "bad", we should not allow it. Let's not argue from ignorance. What are the numbers? What are the ethics? For example: Say if we listened in on all connections, we would catch an e…

In the past we didn't have all the recent data mining technologies, they are a game changer.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#99

Post by atq2119 » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

notduncansmith wrote: post #47

sneak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is a human right. Encryption backdoors for governments are human rights abuses. It has nothing to do with safety; it is not a debate about “how much safety do we purchase with reduced privacy”. It’s just as firearms rights have nothing to do with hunting, or a militia.

I said this in an earlier comment: for both encryption and guns, they will always come at a cost to society, but that cost is the price of democracy. They will always cost something, and we will always need them, but we can work to create environments that need less of them and environments that make them less costly.

Encryption also provides immense benefits to society. Modern commerce couldn't work without encryption. Companies wouldn't be able to protect their trade secrets. And so on.

Plenty of non-technical people think that they can have their cake and eat it by giving a backdoor to "the government". Which government though? The one of Burkina Faso? The fact is that backdoored encryption is broken encryption.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#100

Post by Freak_NL » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #88

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't physically abuse over the internet though, that's my point and that's why I separated the two concepts of "removing content from the Internet" and "Protecting children from harm". The digital is an after-effect of the physical.

No, but you can order physical abuse over the internet. I really don't want to bother you with how dark some of the darker stuff on the internet is but you're going to have to trust me on this without having to become more explicit or you risk losing your breakfast and then some. The digital can definitely be a pre-cursor and active element in the physical.

Sure, but then we're not talking about the vast majority of digital transgressions are we? That is, the simple (re)distribution of child pornography — ghastly enough as that is — not the few who actively seek out and order new abusive material from those who actually produce the stuff.

This debate is about proportionality. How many children can live a marginally better live by giving up strong encryption and privacy worldwide? Because with the exception of the few cases in countries with a strong and well-functioning legal system, the abuse doesn't stop when the on-line orders stop coming in. How many activists and oppressed minorities will lose out (livelihoods and/or lives) by doing this?

And even then, you're not addressing the real problem with this anti-encryption stance: how are you going to prevent the bad guys from using encryption? Encryption is here, right now, and it exists as a mathematical fact. Introduce a government (incidentally, which?) backdoor in WhatsApp or whichever major platform, and you catch some low-hanging fruit, until they wise up and use the vetted tools without a backdoor that already exist to hide their activities. This significantly impacts the proportionality balance.

If you want to prevent child abuse, investing in education, welfare, economic equality, respect for basic human rights, and boots-on-the-ground police capacity will net you a vastly better return on investment.