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US Government Continues Encryption War

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Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#61

Post by justforyou »

Thorentis wrote: post #38
dandanua wrote: post #28

Humans are mortal. It doesn't matter if you are a dictator or a janitor - you will die anyway. But the institutions, the system, the culture - will stay for much much longer. Those who build a centralized system that can control every aspect of humans life just don't realize they are building Hell on Earth. Decentralization and fairfull consensus between every acting party, no matter how much power they have - this i…

I think heirarchy is a natural human inclination. It's observed in every part of the animal kingdom. But it is possible to simultaneously have hierarchy and autonomy at the lowest level. Subsidiarity and distributism are the only things I am convinced will work. Every other endeavour ends up being a free-for-all (that ultimately is self destructive) or a dictorship (that eventually implodes).

The entire spectrum of human behavior is natural, as is any conceivable action no matter how immoral.

The observation of a behavior or inclanation in the wild is not a good basis for the structuring of a civilization.

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#62

Post by matthewdgreen »

zoobab wrote: post #44

You can't make 'deals' with mathematics. As you can't make 'deals' with physics.

You can make deals with the companies that run app stores, however, and that’s the only tool the government needs in order to crush mass-adoption of encryption. I wish that Google and Apple would both recognize the threat that their business model poses to our freedom.

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#63

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

dandanua wrote: post #54
est31 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that institutions are shorter lived than one might think. If you have become 25 this year, you'll have lived for more than 10% of the US's entire lifetime. 75, and you'll have lived for a third of its existence. Those institutions which are longer lived are usually subject to tons of change. Think of the imperial Chinese system with its many dynasties or the church with its schisms. And despite behaviourally mod…

Institutions may change their form, but not their purpose. For example, in USSR the judicial system was basically a tool to justify decisions of prosecutors and party leaders. Nowadays the judicial system of the Post-Soviet countries remains the same. It's a servant of the current political elite.

I don’t know if that’s a great example because that just seems like all judicial systems across all of human history. The protoconcept of judicial process probably arose from subsistence farmer communities needing a way to hypocritically expel or kill people who did not conform to religious decrees, but without losing any social status, and in fact gaining social status by association with the judicial system.

What we have today is a tiny, tiny, tiny modification of that, where our savanna-adapted meat brains put in accoutrements of due process and fair trials, but it’s all just for show so that political elites can say one thing (freedom, due process, fairness) but do another (court packing, systemic racism, regulatory capture, corporate shilling).

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#64

Post by tzs »

est31 wrote: post #42
dandanua wrote: post #28

Humans are mortal. It doesn't matter if you are a dictator or a janitor - you will die anyway. But the institutions, the system, the culture - will stay for much much longer. Those who build a centralized system that can control every aspect of humans life just don't realize they are building Hell on Earth. Decentralization and fairfull consensus between every acting party, no matter how much power they have - this i…

Note that institutions are shorter lived than one might think. If you have become 25 this year, you'll have lived for more than 10% of the US's entire lifetime. 75, and you'll have lived for a third of its existence. Those institutions which are longer lived are usually subject to tons of change. Think of the imperial Chinese system with its many dynasties or the church with its schisms. And despite behaviourally mod…

> Note that institutions are shorter lived than one might think. If you have become 25 this year, you'll have lived for more than 10% of the US's entire lifetime. 75, and you'll have lived for a third of its existence.

Note also that the US has one of the longest lived current governments in the world. There are plenty of countries that have been around longer, but most of them have forms of government that came into effect there later than when the US got its current form of government.

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#67

Post by gman83 »

est31 wrote: post #42
dandanua wrote: post #28

Humans are mortal. It doesn't matter if you are a dictator or a janitor - you will die anyway. But the institutions, the system, the culture - will stay for much much longer. Those who build a centralized system that can control every aspect of humans life just don't realize they are building Hell on Earth. Decentralization and fairfull consensus between every acting party, no matter how much power they have - this i…

Note that institutions are shorter lived than one might think. If you have become 25 this year, you'll have lived for more than 10% of the US's entire lifetime. 75, and you'll have lived for a third of its existence. Those institutions which are longer lived are usually subject to tons of change. Think of the imperial Chinese system with its many dynasties or the church with its schisms. And despite behaviourally mod…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_institutions_in...

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#68

Post by specialist »

I find three things about the encryption debate really weird.

#1 Split brain

The "same" government that gave us Tor (onion routing) wants to take it away. So at least some of the players understand the practical need for encryption. I'd rather those pro and con insiders fight it out, instead of fighting by proxy thru us citizens and consumers.

#2 Fishing expeditions

What possible value does unlocking, decryption have after the fact?

Does the FBI really need to unlock a spree shooter's iPhone? Why? What could they possibly learn? They already have all the meta data like FOAF, location, purchases. What more are they looking for? To better establish guilt?

And any one already under surveillance has already had their entire life rootkitted. So again no need for after the fact unlocking.

#3 Trusting trust, time boxed secrecy

I've had many, many fruitless conversations about computer security (wrt election integrity) with non-tech policy makers. I have yet to figure out how to convey the understanding that backdoors and security thru obscurity is no security at all.

The best policy compromise proposal that I can imagine, and I'm spitballing here, is formalizing some kind of temporal privacy.

Using voting and secret ballots as an example:

I absolutely do not want any one any where to know anyone's votes during an election. I don't even want precounts, so that pols and admins can preview tabulations. But I also don't care at all if someone knows how I voted after the election is certified. (Sure, there's still some risk of coercion and vote buying. But there are easier attack vectors for which we have no mitigation, so it's comparatively minor.)

So instead of trying to protect all secrets for all time, I think all the players might be able to chill a bit if we time boxed most secrets.

(I have other proposals for protecting personal privacy, like with medical records.)

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