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Now they can capitalize on it - "see, tech companies can't be trusted with your data. Trust us instead."
You first DOJ. These folks want back doors so they can read everyone's traffic, but once you put a back door in an encryption standard, it affects everyone.
They have been pushing for some variation on this since basically forever. I first became aware of it back under Clinton with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip. And the debate has been essentially the same since.
Law enforcement wants to be able to break security, and promises that their super secret, super safe system will provide everyone else protection from evildoers while letting law enforcement find the bad guys. Cryptographers have maintained that when you create a back door, it is a question of time until it is found and publicized.
And the back door doesn't even have to be found to be abused. Because it will be made available to law enforcement and the courts. Which are surprisingly easy for third parties to subvert. And which are happy to build programs for themselves that break the rules that they are supposed to follow. (Snowden anyone?)
Success has gone to both sides. But on the balance, the cryptographers have been right.
A small anecdote. A few years ago in an undergrad business class, we were having some discussion and the topic of encryption came up during one of my presentations. A student asked a question related to the ethics of encryption (I don't recall exactly what), and I was clearly confused by the question. To clear up confusion, the professor asked those who thought encryption was "bad" to raise their hand, and at least 6…
A small anecdote. A few years ago in an undergrad business class, we were having some discussion and the topic of encryption came up during one of my presentations. A student asked a question related to the ethics of encryption (I don't recall exactly what), and I was clearly confused by the question. To clear up confusion, the professor asked those who thought encryption was "bad" to raise their hand, and at least 6…
The sane response to corporate totalitarianism is most certainly not government totalitarianism. Sadly with how the two political salesteams frame a false division merely over different flavors of authoritarianism, this has a good chance of working.
As always, the true answer is trustable software running under the control of users ourselves. Unfortunately, we will have to see how bad things get before most people are driven away from all of these centralized attractive nuisances.
I’ve posted plenty of times on HN about the danger of the government being overly involved in tech and the last thing you should want if you value your liberty is more government involvement. I’ve also warned that giving government more power to “protect” people from big tech would come back to bite the very people who for some strange reason trust government. Every time I’ve been downvoted to oblivion. Now the chick…
You can't trust companies to protect privacy.
You can't trust voters/users to make good decisions on voting for the government or choosing the "right" companies to support.
That doesn't leave a lot of options, unfortunately.
I might be ok with this, but not while incompetents like Trump are at the wheel.
A small anecdote. A few years ago in an undergrad business class, we were having some discussion and the topic of encryption came up during one of my presentations. A student asked a question related to the ethics of encryption (I don't recall exactly what), and I was clearly confused by the question. To clear up confusion, the professor asked those who thought encryption was "bad" to raise their hand, and at least 6…
It sounds like a majority of the students had no idea what encryption was and because the authority figure (the professor) asked them whether or not it was bad they just went with it? I'm having trouble understanding why people would say mathematical functions are bad.
People don't think 'encryption' is a mathematical function. They think it's like a radar detector in your car. "Why would you have it unless you intend on speeding?" [goes their thought process]
"Oh I use this frequently and things I do every day would be totally broken without it? Really?!" [is the realization we hope dialogue could bring]