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DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

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Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#31

Post by newfeatureok »

I was talking to a layperson about encryption and privacy and they were very much against both interestingly. They compared encryption to wearing a mask in public and said if people don't want to be noticed (w.r.t privacy and encryption) they shouldn't be "participating" (it was unclear what they meant by this).

Just goes to show you how the average person thinks about these things. I have to admit I wouldn't like it if people wore masks in public in a way where I couldn't recall their face, but I don't think that's necessarily the same as encryption, but I guess I see the comparison.

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#32

Post by giggles_giggles »

btilly wrote: post #14

Why does this say that the DOJ has been pushing for this since 2016? 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 eve…

> Why does this say that the DOJ has been pushing for this since 2016?

Because that's when Trump came into power and nothing bad ever happened under the Obama admin.

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#33

Post by wyldfire »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #25

Are there any concrete proposals on the table that can be looked at? This feels to me like one of the typical debates where people are shooting at each other but nobody understands what they really are talking about.

I think you're mistaken.

Virtually any proposal that the government might offer will be a key escrow. We already know it's bad and why it's bad, because it's been debated for decades. I don't think there are any more novel solutions that should revitalize the argument.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough oversight mechanisms or checks to prevent abuse. The problem is that the design has unfixable security defects.

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#35

Post by Buttons840 »

caleb-allen wrote: post #9

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…

So in an ethics discussion the professor simply asked "is X bad?" That doesn't seem like a very enlightened ethics discussion.

How certain are you he said "bad"? If he has instead asked "is encryption problematic?", the outcome can be interpreted much differently because there are problems with encryption. Especially in an ethics discussion, there are definitely pros and cons to encryption. (FWIW, the pros outweigh the cons by far, IMHO.)

I'm not trying to say your memory is wrong, I'm just asking how certain you are about what was asked exactly. Changing one synonym for another can make a big difference.

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#36

Post by slg »

westmeal wrote: post #15
caleb-allen wrote: post #9

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.

Encryption allows data to be locked away from the government including law enforcement and prosecutors in a way that was nearly impossible for the average citizen a few decades ago. Warrants can't break encryption like they could doors or locks. As much of life moves to the digital world and becomes encrypted, that can be a drastic change in how the justice system works. Pro-encryption people need to keep this in mind when talking to anti-encryption folks. Criminals being able to hide evidence is a serious concern for the average person.

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#37

Post by blattimwind »

u801e wrote: post #23
wyldfire wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]

Then again, given speeding is so widely accepted, radar detectors are legal to use in 49 out of 50 states. It would be nice if encryption was viewed the same way.

Isn't (relatively) strong encryption legal in every one of your 50 states and deployed to more than 10^10 devices globally?

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#38

Post by dropoutcoder »

I find it interesting that the hn world is largely unified in beliefs about the trade-offs of exceptional access that aren’t necessarily true. Perhaps this is a cultural top-down tribal mentality borne of an adversarial arrangement between the billionaire oligarchs behind the startup scene and the government which serves to offer counterbalance against unchecked power.

I personally find it reprehensible that large trillion dollar tech corps wash their hands of responsibility for the safety of citizens by offering strong encryption to the masses.

I’m personally okay with secret police, but such things work better in secret. The calculus has indeed changed. Checks and balances within such secret societies do need to exist. I’m hopeful that tech geniuses will help to solve the problems regarding technical and social trade offs and risks behind exceptional access, instead of conforming to the often strict libertarian mentality of the sv community.

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#39

Post by cortesoft »

grecy wrote: post #29
westmeal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'm having trouble understanding why people would say mathematical functions are bad. Encryption is more than just mathematical functions, it's the application of mathematical functions. And the application is what matters, because it would be easy to say a Nuclear weapon is just physics or that a bio-weapon is just chemistry. Clearly, how you use basic principles matters.

It isn't like Nuclear weapons, though, because every single computer has everything you need to do full encryption. Nuclear weapons require materials, manufacturing, etc.

Nuclear weapons require both the knowledge and the physical world parts.... encryption just requires the knowledge, which is impossible to put back in the box.

Re: DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot

#40

Post by alistairSH »

addicted wrote: post #6

Isn’t the tech lash for the complete opposite reasons? The fact that too many people have too much of our data? Why would people (outside of effective propaganda, which would be true even without the tech lash) support something that makes their problems worse?

Huge portions of the population (Congress included) are technically illiterate. They don't know any better.
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