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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

#131

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

bboygravity wrote: post #121
snowwrestler wrote: post #8

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…

> But it’s not their responsibility to account for negative side effects. That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. Wait, what? We have a saying in the actions and decisions of our governments (context: EU and US)? No we don't. We don't live in direct democracies. If Interpol or any police force wants to ban encryption and if that benefits who ever is in government, then that ban wi…

Maybe go outside, make some friends, join a community of individuals who are interested in claiming their place in the history of the world. Stop waiting for a champion to come and save you, and just be a champion.

We're trying to form a voting bloc in my community to turn the local government upside down. If similar movements happened in other communities around the U.S. the legislature would be very different.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#132

Post by scandox »

bboygravity wrote: post #121
snowwrestler wrote: post #8

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…

> But it’s not their responsibility to account for negative side effects. That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. Wait, what? We have a saying in the actions and decisions of our governments (context: EU and US)? No we don't. We don't live in direct democracies. If Interpol or any police force wants to ban encryption and if that benefits who ever is in government, then that ban wi…

> This is nothing new. What we as citizens think of that is completely irrelevant. Unless the majority of the population would really care about encryption and it would influence the 4-yearly vote-thing (elections).

You are contradicting yourself. Effectively you're saying unless a majority of people agree with you then it is non-democratic. As parent poster said we have the responsibility: it is to communicate this argument to people and also to be part of our own government.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#133

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

EGreg wrote: post #20
snowwrestler wrote: post #8

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…

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…

> Now, if we have governments that punish people for being dissidents or engaging in victimless crimes, the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and not to sneak around.

You might as well be saying that instead of having democracy and elections, the answer is to fix the government and the laws.

You are putting the cart before the horse here: Sufficiently powerful individuals are the precondition for fixing the government and the laws. And that doesn't change once all the governments and laws are fixed: Criminals will continue to try and corrupt the government and the law. If you have too much power concentrated in one spot, be it a dictator or surveillance agencies, that is the spot that criminals will try to manipulate/use to their advantage, and only sufficient independent real power of individuals (that is: power that can not be made to disappear by a simple decision of someone trying to subvert the system) can possibly keep that in check.

The dream of the benevolent dictator, in some form or an other, seems to be irresistible--but if we want human rights to stay, we have to overcome that urge. Benevolent dictators are not a thing, and every attempt to build one so far has led to disaster.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#134

Post by zozbot234 »

jacquesm wrote: post #129
zozbot234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions of dollars per year? On a world basis, that's quite insubstantial. And child abuse has always been around, unfortunately. Much of it probably goes unrecorded. Indeed, we only became aware of how bad the problem really was in the 1980s, due to the very fact that media of it was now being created and exchanged.

I aspire to one day reach your level of cynicism but for now I will have to disagree with you that that is insubstantial, even on a world basis. Especially so because it is concentrated in only a very few countries where children have a very high chance of being exploited in this way. Have a read. https://www.rappler.com/nation/191219-philippines-top-global...

> Especially so because it is concentrated in only a very few countries

The meaningful question to ask is what's going on in those countries, that makes abuse so much more likely to occur there? It can't just be weak government, the Philippines aren't generally known for having weak or ineffective government.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#135

Post by malka »

Freak_NL wrote: post #100
jacquesm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's easy. Someone uses encryption? Jail him regardless of the content. You can't hide the existence of the message.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#136

Post by Roark66 »

Interpol is a bloody joke. Recently they accepted a submission from Russia to put an international arrest warrant on an activist named Ihor Mazur right before he was going to EU to appear at some conference. The guy, is not a terrorist, nor an extremist, but he was arrested on the Polish border and it took 2 days of effort from Ukrainian and Polish embassies for Interpol to finally accept the Russian claim as bogus and withdraw the warrant. He was eventually freed, but for Interpol to even accept this from Russia on their word alone was insane.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#137

Post by cesarb »

andy_ppp wrote: post #38

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.

> 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?

If only people who break the law use encryption, then everyone who uses encryption must be breaking some law (that is, "(~lawbreaker => ~encryption) => (encryption => lawbreaker)").

That is, instead of having to do all the work to find out if the guy is really a pedophile or something else, they can simply arrest the guy for using encryption. It's a lazy approach.

> I don’t really understand how this will work in reality for things like SSL or ssh.

It wouldn't, these protocols (and many others) would have to be basically rewritten, or we'd have to go back to plain HTTP and telnet.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#138

Post by saint_fiasco »

andy_ppp wrote: post #38

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 idea is that if only criminals use encryption, they can go after every user of encryption and do some enhanced interrogation on them, since they are obviously up to no good.

But I also don't understand what they plan to do for online shopping and so on.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#139

Post by aplacelikethis »

malka wrote: post #135
Freak_NL wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's easy. Someone uses encryption? Jail him regardless of the content. You can't hide the existence of the message.

What about /dev/random? You're gonna ban PRNG's while we're at it?

And HTTPS?

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#140

Post by eeZah7Ux »

snowwrestler wrote: post #8

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…

> This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around.

And let's not forget that both [should] work for the people.

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