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Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

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Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#171

Post by bonton89 »

crazygringo wrote: post #27

I can sympathize with the general notion that more encryption is better, even if I wouldn't go to the extreme of declaring it a duty . But the author just completely lost me at: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros... Those tools and techniques should ceas…

I feel like the "all" in this passage is everyone who is capable, not the population in general. The population in general is the second phase, but they need a beachhead to be established to help them. First the capable group needs to stop hiding behind the excuse that the incapable group can't do what they can but won't.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#172

Post by TeMPOraL »

bee_rider wrote: post #154
bitwize wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called hegemony. Hegemony is just another form of dominance, as ultimately it's backed up by force of arms. Power flowing from the barrel of a gun and all that.

The sort of economy required to build a top-tier military nowadays requires international trade and cooperation. If this sort of military force can’t be produced without a bunch of willing allies, then the force is just an intermediary step. It is constrained by the need to keep those allies willing. I’m not saying the world is all butterflies and roses, just pointing out that that constraint is real, and I think it…

Timescales matter. US may not be able to sustain a top-tier military on its own long-term, but short term, they do have the top-tier military and their "allies" don't, so international diplomacy remains the art of skate-dancing around explicitly talking about where the US aircraft carriers are parked now. And that's skating constrained to boundaries defined by MAD, let's not forget that.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#173

Post by bonton89 »

esafak wrote: post #169
charcircuit wrote: post #136

>If you don't have something to hide someone else might have something to hide I don't find it ethical to fight for the privacy just to protect criminals.

It is not criminal to want privacy, any more than it is to want a firearm.

Or to have a miscarriage in the state of Texas.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#174

Post by nonrandomstring »

crazygringo wrote: post #34
nonrandomstring wrote: post #5

> you would be morally obliged to disobey In days of yore my CS law module was taught by a QC - that's a high ranking barrister in the UK - who explained the world of difference between the "The Rule of Law" and "the law" in a class called "jurisprudence". Rule of Law (capitalised conceptual) is there as permanent ground truth in contrast to the ephemeral du-jure laws. At times I still struggle with that profound cou…

Of course, the idea that there is any kind of "permanent ground truth" around morals/laws is very much up for debate. Some philosophers think it exists (usually called "natural law" [1]), while many others think it's nonsense. I would guess that most anthropologists, for instance, would say it's rubbish -- people who have studied the exceedingly wide variation in what is considered moral or immoral across cultures. A…

Indeed, Ragnar Redbeard's philosophy [0] (Arthur Desmond) is worth a read.

I dipped into it a bit in my study of ethics, and there's many eye opening passages, though it's mostly a rehash of Nietzsche, minus the compassion and good humour :)

Today it's regarded by some as a seed of "far right supremacist" thinking. And sadly these ideas are confused with the work of Darwin etc.

We should also note many historical counterparts, and remember that, for example, the Greeks rewarded soldiers with "spoils" as payment.

I think what I'm saying about upholding the principle of Rule of Law above the laws of foolish men is quite separate from this - although when governments test their people to the point of rebellion it is about the brute reality that might does not lie where it is supposed.

[0] https://archive.org/details/might-is-right-by-ragnar-redbear...

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#175

Post by sacnoradhq »

Post-ACID for stateful services -> DHC: Durability*, hygiene**, and confidentiality***.

* Superset of bare metal recovery readiness, proven backups, monitoring, availability, and warm storage integrity.

** Superset of consistency, isolation, referential integrity, and data hygiene.

*** Superset of authenticated, G4+ FHE, and/or zero-knowledge encryption at rest and in-flight, elimination of side-channels, least privilege access control of metadata and data, removing plaintext paths, reducing privacy-liability metadata, and eliminating bleed-through of internal metadata externally.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#176

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #114
crazygringo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the idea that there is any kind of "permanent ground truth" around morals/laws is very much up for debate. Some philosophers think it exists (usually called "natural law" [1]), while many others think it's nonsense. I would guess that most anthropologists, for instance, would say it's rubbish -- people who have studied the exceedingly wide variation in what is considered moral or immoral across cultures. A…

> A duty in one community may very well be a prohibition in another. I think the standard example of this is whether you marry your brother's widow. On the other hand, there is a large list of phenomena that are observed in every documented culture, such as marriage.

> large list

I am no anthropologist myself but I remember hearing that this list is actually rather small. Religion was an example that was given and I would believe marriage. How many others, though?

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#177

Post by spacebanana7 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #114
crazygringo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the idea that there is any kind of "permanent ground truth" around morals/laws is very much up for debate. Some philosophers think it exists (usually called "natural law" [1]), while many others think it's nonsense. I would guess that most anthropologists, for instance, would say it's rubbish -- people who have studied the exceedingly wide variation in what is considered moral or immoral across cultures. A…

> A duty in one community may very well be a prohibition in another. I think the standard example of this is whether you marry your brother's widow. On the other hand, there is a large list of phenomena that are observed in every documented culture, such as marriage.

Many rules also emerge out of game theory.

Some level of prohibition against lying in court, judicial corruption and generally perverting the course of justice must exist in order for a system of law to operate.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#178

Post by saulrh »

WolfeReader wrote: post #134
judge2020 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this doesn't work because a _lot_ of will people legitimately will tell you they "have nothing to hide" and would tell you they'd let 3-letter agencies in the U.S. go through their phone with a fine-tooth comb (at least, until they're actually being faced with that reality and try to get out of it). The only reason we currently have any message encryption is because a few tech companies have made the de…

"The only reason we currently have any message encryption is because a few tech companies have made the decision to protect as many as possible by releasing products which enable it (iOS, Whatsapp, and now texts via Google Messages)." Completely false. Phil Zimmerman gave us PGP for free in 1991, and numerous open encryption standards now belong to the general public. Giving credit to Apple, Meta, and Google for this…

A technology being published does not mean that it is available, especially for technologies that require uptake by the general public. And, well, PGP and GPG have reputations for such awful usability that they _might as well not exist_ as far as the general public is concerned. As another comment here mentions, just look at its uptake numbers! There are probalby more people qualified to do open-head neurosurgery than there are people who are qualified to use PGP. It's no more "available" than the C64 demoscene, orbital rocketry, or quantum physics. Signal and Apple and Google aren't being credited for developing the core tech, they're being credited for refining it until they can wrap it up in a package that's so user-friendly and low-friction that _every single person on the planet_ can use it.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#179

Post by kardianos »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #5

> you would be morally obliged to disobey In days of yore my CS law module was taught by a QC - that's a high ranking barrister in the UK - who explained the world of difference between the "The Rule of Law" and "the law" in a class called "jurisprudence". Rule of Law (capitalised conceptual) is there as permanent ground truth in contrast to the ephemeral du-jure laws. At times I still struggle with that profound cou…

This feel like Utopian thinking. I believe that there are better and worse ways of living and thus better and worse laws. Most ways of living and laws come with trade-offs, others appear to be materially better or worse all around. In other words, there *is* a type of ground truth we can move towards and not everything is relative.

However, we are humans and thinking that "we have arrived" and "I know Utopia" is full of pride and not humble.

Rule of Law is a *process*, that is, it should (ideally) be procedurally symmetrical to all people it applies to based on each person's applicable merit or demerit. So long as you live in a republic, you should try to follow the Rule of Law. No, you are not obligated to throw rocks at police, even when they are tools. You fight tyrants where it matters to them, in the courts, voting box, and make the rule of law apply to them. Tyrants won't care if you injure an officer, in fact, they will use that against you (see rules for radicals, they want your reaction). You find the real battle and fight there.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#180

Post by defend »

crazygringo wrote: post #27

I can sympathize with the general notion that more encryption is better, even if I wouldn't go to the extreme of declaring it a duty . But the author just completely lost me at: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros... Those tools and techniques should ceas…

It's only impractical if you actually require end users to understand and apply all of these technologies. It's a lot more tractable if they're abstracted away.

The fact is that developers very (very) rarely have to interface directly with TLS or the Signal protocol, yet billions of non-technical users implicitly use them in our browsers and via Signal or WhatsApp.

In my view, the challenge in the adoption of secure/private-by-design tech is the simplicity and usability of the interfaces and the capabilities these tools provide.

We need secure tools to compete on capability in order to garner mass usage. Without (significant) feature superiority there's little reason for users to make the switch. I'm actively trying to solve some of these problems at Backbone [0]; aiming to build a usable, secure experience for end users and a simple, robust end-to-end-encryption interface for developers.

[0] https://backbone.dev/

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