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The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

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Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#111
I like how these policies illustrate clearly what the real agenda of these agencies is.

It clearly isn't to protect the American People in general. The way to do that would be to give them the best security measures available ie: E2E encryption.

It is to strengthen the government against it's citizens. By having an encryption asymmetry between the government and it's citizens, the victory is that actions can be made easier in the case where the government and it's citizens are opposing forces.

It's pretty clear in my mind that the FBI views "it's team" as exclusively law enforcement, other three letter agencies and other governmental organizations and it views everyone else as a hostile. The FBI is not on your side.

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#113

When the FBI is hurting bad for talent to secure the interests of the US, why on earth would I sign up when this is their stance on encryption?

Yeah they've got billboard up all over my city recruiting for 'special agents'.

Whatever they are paying i could not imagine it's even close to enough to deal with what you are signing up for.

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia isn't a threat to the US. Foreign policy maybe, but not existential like China.

Russia is a terrible threat to the US. How much/many of their disinformation and memes (in the traditional sense) are correlated with disrupted political discourse, extremism, and disunity in the US? They don't sponsor squads of disinfo/misinfo actors just for giggles. It has a profound destabilizing bang for their buck.

Similar disinformation happens domestically, see russiagate

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what your phone runs. As long as it's communicating with the network, the carrier knows its location.

Cell towers is far from the only tracking possibility.

Yes but it's the only one that's a requirement if you want to actually use your phone.

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#116
post #43
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think, "Most people are oblivious," they just don't care and/or don't understand the implications. The idea that the government can use your mobile phone to spy on you is so widely understood that even the dumbest popcorn movies make sure to show fugitives ditching their phones and criminals collecting/discarding them before they discuss business without explaining why. Everybody understands the purpose of a…

>I don't think, "Most people are oblivious," they just don't care and/or don't understand the implications. But they do, that's what's baffling. The number of people I have heard parrot the "Bill Gates put a tracking chip in the vaccine" has me both baffled and worried. These are people who appear to be otherwise completely sane and mostly rational. When I've pointed out that's literally what their phone does, so why…

>But they do, that's what's baffling

I think it's more that there's no other option.

They need their phone, and they don't like all the tracking just like you or I don't like the tracking, but that's their only option if they want to use a phone.

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#117
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US does not have equal protection under the law, and the laws are enforced arbitrarily to carry out the will of the military and the ownership class. The thing you reference is just a cover story. It's plain as day to anyone paying attention who runs that country. There is no party you can vote for that will stop the perpetual war or perpetual ubiquitous surveillance, despite a vast majority of people in the coun…

Is there a vast majority against surveillance? > A majority of voters say they are satisfied with the authority given to U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor Americans suspected of committing a crime, according to a poll released Thursday. > Fifty-one percent of respondents in a recent Hill-HarrisX survey said the intelligence community has the "right amount of power" in determining who should be subject to governme…

Two things:

1) Despite Snowden, most Americans are not aware of the extent of the surveillance to which they are subjected.

2) Your first quoted paragraph mentions "suspected of committing a crime". This suggests to me that they were asked about targeted surveillance, that is, of criminal suspects. The issue is one of mass surveillance: the surveillance conducted of those who are not suspected of criminal activity.

Most people aren't okay with that, when informed of the full scope of that to which they are subjected.

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#118
In my humble opinion, at the end of the day anything that is a valid crime must have a victim.

So if you find a victim, you should be able to trace backwards to find the criminal.

It's just lazy crap policing to expect everyone to accept their security being compromised so you can dragnet everyone, including the vast majority who are innocent of any crime, and expect to sit on your ass and have your job done for you by google alerts.

This kind of dragnet surveillance of the entire populace was impossible (without unlimited manpower/funds) until very recently. It was not impossible to find criminals before smartphones/encryption, and it's not impossible now.

The authorities have so many more ways to catch criminals than at any time in history, but they still want more.

I don't want to live in a world where my every move and conversation is tracked and stored in a database forever.

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#119
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a vast majority against surveillance? > A majority of voters say they are satisfied with the authority given to U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor Americans suspected of committing a crime, according to a poll released Thursday. > Fifty-one percent of respondents in a recent Hill-HarrisX survey said the intelligence community has the "right amount of power" in determining who should be subject to governme…

Two things: 1) Despite Snowden, most Americans are not aware of the extent of the surveillance to which they are subjected. 2) Your first quoted paragraph mentions "suspected of committing a crime". This suggests to me that they were asked about targeted surveillance, that is, of criminal suspects. The issue is one of mass surveillance: the surveillance conducted of those who are not suspected of criminal activity. M…

Snowden himself is not particularly popular these days. If there isn't an outright majority who view him as a traitor, then it's certainly a sizeable minority. Opinions were almost evenly split back in 2013, and opinions on pardoning vs. prosecution were likewise evenly split when this was polled in 2017 (about 30% each, however). And over the past couple of years, the intelligence community appears to have convinced many more people that Snowden is a Russian asset - I suspect American attitudes towards him have cooled somewhat, or perhaps become partisan.

If you look at polling on concerns about surveillance in general in 2015, it was pretty much an even split, with a slight majority who were concerned about surveillance.[0] A majority did say it was unacceptable to surveil American citizens, at 57%, with 40% saying it was acceptable - I would not call that a vast majority, though.

Even if somebody says they're against this sort of mass surveillance, that does not change anything unless people vote based on it. Like it or not, things like surveillance and war take a back seat to all the other issues voters care about, especially since those two are among the least likely to actually affect the individual voters in question. The result of this is that few Democrats are going to vote for Rand Paul or Ted Cruz just because they happen to position themselves against the NSA or war in Syria, and few Republicans are going to vote for Bernie Sanders based on the same, even if they have strong preferences against surveillance and war - and that's ignoring the fact that there are definitely people on the other side of these issues, who believe that pardoning Snowden and withdrawing from Afghanistan is bowing down to Russia or something.

Ultimately, people get the government they deserve.

[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/03/16/americans-pr...

Re: The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption

#120
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago was 2006. Almost every adult carried a cellphone everywhere back then.

I certainly didn't. But will concede I was definitely a late adopter.

It was 66%. Most adults, but less than “almost every”.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

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