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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#521

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

a1369209993 wrote: post #513
pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it is impossible to verify whether it is true because we cannot see exactly what they are doing. We are just taking their word for it. It can be nothing more than a "promise" because we are not the ones responsible for carrying out the encryption. We have to trust both (a) the encryption software, which we can examine, and (b) the third person doing the encryption, who is unfortunately operating outside ou…

"Promise" generally means a statement about someone's future behaviour; they're lying (or theoretically not) about something they already did (write the software in such a way that they are literally incapable of retrieving the plaintext of messages). If I say I'm not going to steal and eat your cookies, that's a promise, which I might reneg on or never have intended to keep in the first place, but ultimately it depe…

Understood.

Never trust tech companies about anything. Wise words.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#523

Post by lazyasciiart »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #402
lazyasciiart wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now, the terrorists and child molesters still use the bar, but they always go into the bathroom to talk. The owner suspects that they are talking about bad things in there, and installs surveillance cameras so that if the police ever need to know what's happening in there, they have access. Would you want a real life bar owner to record you on the toilet just so that one day the police can track some bad guys easi…

What analogy does a bathroom have to a messenger app?

People use both of them when they want to do something in privacy, instead of sharing it with the whole world.

If you invent a message app that tells everyone it posts every message to a publicly visible website, then I'd agree that people using it aren't expecting privacy. I don't see it catching on though.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#524

Post by lazyasciiart »

old-gregg wrote: post #385
lazyasciiart wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic used here is argument by analogy. Talking about the constitution would be a different argument.

Analogy != "something different entirely". If we accept such weak criteria for acceptable arguments, one could argue for or against anything by picking a convenient "analogy". Pointing out that a weakened encryption is analogous to getting a wiretapping order for everyone without a cause is a stronger argument.

I believe the criticism you are attempting to make is that those are like apples and oranges. However, I completely disagree.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#525

Post by pdonis »

lukifer wrote: post #500
pdonis wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a perfect world, a blank ballot would be counted as a meta-vote for "None of the Above"; and if it wins, a whole new election of all-new candidates must be held I think this, all by itself, would be a great thing to have in elections. If this had existed in every election in which I have voted, I think I would have used it at least half the time, quite possibly more.

I think the argument against would be pragmatic: the cost and time it takes to run a new election, and the mad scramble for new candidates, presumably leaving the incumbent in office in the interim. (For more local elections, where running unopposed is not uncommon, there's also an interesting conundrum: should that candidate be rejected if they only receive a plurality, ie under 50%? What if literally no one else wa…

> presumably leaving the incumbent in office in the interim

An alternative for many posts would be to have no one in the office once the incumbent's term expires. For example, suppose no one wins a race for a seat in the House of Representatives: when the incumbent's term expires, that seat could simply be vacant, and could be deemed to have voted "abstain" for all votes during the term in which it is empty (or until a new special election is held to hopefully fill the seat).

(For an office like the President, there might have to be some other provision made.)

This would also handle the other case you mention:

> For more local elections, where running unopposed is not uncommon, there's also an interesting conundrum: should that candidate be rejected if they only receive a plurality, ie under 50%?

I would say yes: that counts as no one winning the election, so the seat remains vacant until a new special election is held (assuming someone does win that).

> What if literally no one else wants the job?

Then I would say the will of the people is that they prefer to have no one doing it, if they do not approve of anyone who wants it.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#526

Post by metta2uall »

antoncohen wrote: post #390
metta2uall wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But YouTube Live is publicly accessible, it's not the same as a law enforcement warrant. I think a better analogy is whether it should be okay for a judge to allow police officers to storm into your private residence with only a few seconds warning, and then proceed to examine and even take away anything in your room.

No, because when police have a search warrant and storm your home, they can't seize the private conversation you had in bed with your partner a year earlier. They can't suck the memories out of your head. Technology like mobile phones and messaging have become an extension of us, they are used for private conversations and personal memories. Breaking encryption on these is not like search warrants of yesteryear, and…

Whether traditional search warrants or breaking end-to-end encryption violates privacy more really depends on specific cases and the details of how the end-to-end encryption gets broken. Search warrants definitely aim to seize communications and intrude into private notes, collections, offline-only meetings, affairs, and all kinds of potentially embarrassing bedroom items that were purchased anonymously.

The only real defence against government abuse is strengthening democratic institutions, respect for human rights, strong oversight, transparency etc.. End-to-end encryption is quite a shallow/weak protection since a truly tyrannical government can easily make it illegal at any time. A lot of government abuse is also possible without breaking encryption.

So I think the benefit of end-to-end encryption in protecting against abusive governments is often over-stated. But what about the costs? For example technological progress is making the world more dangerous. Should it be easy for a bunch of people to use unbreakable encryption to coordinate the development extremely dangerous genetically engineered bio-weapons from their homes? If one such person is caught should it be really impossible for 5 judges to allow the police to find all those they've been talking to?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#527

Post by ClayShentrup »

godelski wrote: post #400
ClayShentrup wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a co-inventor of STAR voting. I explain it as, STAR voting is score voting on a 0-5 scale followed by an automatic ("instant") top two runoff. Whereas approval voting is score voting on a 0-1 binary scale. STAR voting performs a tiny bit better in computer simulations of voter satisfaction, but approval voting has the practical benefit of being super simple and requiring no voting machine upgrades. Both are super…

> I'm a co-inventor of STAR voting. Utila? I think I ran into you on Reddit yesterday. Good to see you're also on HN. Small world (if not, then from your tweet I met Mark).

Utila the Econ here.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#528

Post by [deleted] »

ibejoeb wrote: post #394
TallGuyShort wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody prove it by posting their email password. If we require encryption backdoors, the odds of it all ending up on Pastebin at some point is about the same.

hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars ********* see! -------- http://bash.org/?244321

[deleted]

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#529

Post by Toenex »

cortic wrote: post #269
apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

My nothing to hide argument is a little different; Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney probl…

We all know what happens in the bathroom, yet we still close the door. Privacy is a choice that belongs to me.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#530

Post by skinkestek »

el_dev_hell wrote: post #302
cortic wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My nothing to hide argument is a little different; Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney probl…

I like this argument. My normal response to "I have nothing to hide" is: "Cool, can I take a look at your browser search/reddit history?".

I use to point out that I'm not even hiding it from the local police, today. Police here are OK.

I'm hiding it from:

- a future where the nazis or another totalitarian party wins the election

- future corrupt police personnel

- other countries intelligence (not everything I say might be compatible with doing work in North Korea/China/Israel/Saudi Arabia/Turkey (edit: added Turkey, I don't plan to go there in my holiday anyway)

- Leaks from police IT systems

And then I point to Turkey who went from approaching membership in EU to human rights hostile dictatorship in two years.

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