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Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

wsj.com

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Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#21

Post by rlucas »

olliej wrote: post #15
rcoveson wrote: post #11

There's a balance that must be struck between the efficiency of law enforcement and the freedom of citizens. Personally, I lean heavily towards the latter, and I think this is the reason: My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. I'm sure this is true of many Americans; perhaps more true now than ever in history. So why is it that there is so much suppo…

But encryption doesn’t have “mostly safe”. It has safe and not safe. There isn’t a meaningful in between.

Unclear why this was heavily downvoted.

Modern encryption is, eventually, either effectively unbreakable, or effectively worthless.

Or is there widespread knowledge of exploits that can recover, say, 25% of a plaintext reliably, but no more?

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#23

Post by cs702 »

robbya wrote: post #14
cs702 wrote: post #3

This is a terrible article. There are ZERO mentions of the risks and tradeoffs inherent to mandating or requiring backdoor access. Here is a good summary of such risks: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/97690

There's an HTTPS version too: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/97690

Thanks. Updated!

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#24

Post by skybrian »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #13
rcoveson wrote: post #11

There's a balance that must be struck between the efficiency of law enforcement and the freedom of citizens. Personally, I lean heavily towards the latter, and I think this is the reason: My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. I'm sure this is true of many Americans; perhaps more true now than ever in history. So why is it that there is so much suppo…

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Ben Franklin No one likes to say this but your average citizen is either not smart enough or doesn't care enough to understand statistics... so sensationalism wins.

Ben Franklin would have done well on Twitter, but this is in essence a snappy Revolution War slogan, nothing more.

It makes a false binary distinction and real world decisions are more complicated.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#26

Post by dgzl »

javajosh wrote: post #19

Go through each of the Bill of Rights, and for each produce a scenario where that right would be used by a criminal to protect him or her from planning, executing, and avoiding detection of a crime. All individual rights are carved out from the default government, which is the one that takes absolute authority over all within its domain. North Korea is closest to this ideal today, but most vanilla monarchies were lik…

But what about the children?

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#27

Post by LeifCarrotson »

rcoveson wrote: post #11

There's a balance that must be struck between the efficiency of law enforcement and the freedom of citizens. Personally, I lean heavily towards the latter, and I think this is the reason: My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. I'm sure this is true of many Americans; perhaps more true now than ever in history. So why is it that there is so much suppo…

Perhaps a facet of infrequent exposure is that it makes the same event more impactful and therefore more effectively sensationalized?

I don't particularly fear a car accident, even though it's far and away the most likely thing to cause me physical injury. Several of my family and friends have been in car accidents, most are just fine. My chance of being awakened and assaulted by a burglar are unfathomably more remote, I've only ever come across it in movies.

As a result, I have a strong emotional reaction to the 0.001% chance of a breaking and entering and a weaker reaction to the 10% chance of a car accident. But I don't naturally want to spend a proportional amount on a safer car, I'm more inclined buy motion-activated floodlights.

If we lived in a lawless Wild West, I think we'd be more inured to the possibility of crime. Now that it's mostly a foreign experience it's easier to respond with fear instead of reason.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#29

Post by krapp »

skybrian wrote: post #24
nickthemagicman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Ben Franklin No one likes to say this but your average citizen is either not smart enough or doesn't care enough to understand statistics... so sensationalism wins.

Ben Franklin would have done well on Twitter, but this is in essence a snappy Revolution War slogan, nothing more. It makes a false binary distinction and real world decisions are more complicated.

>Ben Franklin would have done well on Twitter, but this is in essence a snappy Revolution War slogan, nothing more.

It actually isn't, it's a snippet of a greater dialogue with often taken out of context in order to to infer precisely the opposite meaning of what was intended[0,1].

Ben Franklin understood the nuance and complexity of the real world better than many of the libertarians and ancaps who quote him..

[0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be...

[1]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#30

Post by [deleted] »

rlucas wrote: post #21
olliej wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But encryption doesn’t have “mostly safe”. It has safe and not safe. There isn’t a meaningful in between.

Unclear why this was heavily downvoted. Modern encryption is, eventually, either effectively unbreakable, or effectively worthless. Or is there widespread knowledge of exploits that can recover, say, 25% of a plaintext reliably, but no more?

[deleted]
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