Only the government should have access to encryption and guns. Why would ordinary citizens need these things?
Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
111–120 of 126 posts
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ooh, wow, arguments from authority. As you are so learned, and Chaïm and Ronald aren't here, perhaps you'd care to offer their more proper reading of Orwell. And as you're so learned, you'll immediately know my remark as a paraphrase, and of whom. Right? Because when I read a book, I do so in such a fashion as to repeat its argument, rather than assign others reading I couldn't do properly in the first place. Nor can…
You may be correct, but it's obscured by the fact that you're being a dick. Don't do that.
I took a nasty tone against someone who was trying to bully me. I'm sorry you don't like it but he had it coming.
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I read these kind of comments, I am not sure if these commentators are compensated better than China's 50 cent party. Some mturk generated comments would probably provide more qualitative contributions than something like this.
> When I read these kind of comments, I am not sure if these commentators are compensated better than China's 50 cent party. Some mturk generated comments would probably provide more qualitative contributions than something like this. I doubt anyone bothers to pay people to post this stuff to Hacker News. The battle over crypto is essentially over at this point. As an aside, 'qualitative' is not a synonym for 'qualit…
I have seen repeatedly comments appearing on subjects like these, written by relatively new accounts and supporting some form of surveillance measures. What they have in common is, that they just make a 1-sentence statement "we should be thankful that someone is protecting us", and provide no further arguments for their case. But them being troll baits might be more realistic. After all we are still arguing about it.
If you are trying to nit-pick about word definitions, kindly include the second part of the definition, that clearly supports my use of the word for comparing good/bad quality: "2. qualitative - relating to or involving comparisons based on qualities".
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>He is perhaps the strongest protection against an Obama assassination, since no one would want him to take office. I would argue that the Secret Service is by far the strongest protection.
The pen, or in this case the mere thought that Biden might wind up holding the pen, is mightier than the sword. I think that would make for a scary world that no one wants to see.
You're projecting your own political views on everyone else and HN is not the place for that.
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd add a friendly amendment: CALEA was intended to be a first step, a "beachhead," toward domestic controls on encryption. The fact that the second step was not successful came despite efforts by Biden, the FBI, the NSA, etc. -- not because of them. See below. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html "Joe Biden made his second attempt to introduce such legislation" in the form of the Communications Assista…
I'd ask here how a bill can be a "beachhead" against encryption when it forbids the government from even requiring that telcos adopt equipment for which wiretaps are feasible, and when it specifically exempts telcos from being required to facilitate decryption.
For clarity, you're talking about 103(b)(3)?
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
That doesn't look like a ward against anything, to me. It looks like a compromise stuck into the bill because of push-back from "cypherpunks". If the political winds had changed, or change in the future, that part of CALEA would be removed by a new law.
I think most politicians have no problem banning strong encryption and mandating ISP decryption of it all. Even most citizens have no problem banning strong encryption.
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pen, or in this case the mere thought that Biden might wind up holding the pen, is mightier than the sword. I think that would make for a scary world that no one wants to see.
You're projecting your own political views on everyone else and HN is not the place for that.
It's less about his politics and more about his intelligence. This post - that he tried to to introduce such a sweeping and dangerous law without a single thought about the consequences - is a perfect example of that.
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#117Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On this issue, Biden was clearly on the wrong side of history (and some of the fundamental tenets upon which the US was founded). Probably on the wrong side of history, but it's pure historical revisionism to say it opposed any principle the U.S. was founded upon. Common law courts in England had broad subpoena powers (just like modern U.S. courts). Moreover, investigators had unlimited access to private documents…
My thinking on the subject of Biden's failed attempt to require that the government be able to recover encrypted information is more akin to attempting to require that everyone leave a copy of their house keys with the local police station just in case they decide to get a warrant to search your house. That is conceptually identical to what Biden proposed, yet such an idea would be decidedly un-American and any polit…
It's more like a ban on unbreakable doors.
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>He is perhaps the strongest protection against an Obama assassination, since no one would want him to take office. I would argue that the Secret Service is by far the strongest protection.
The pen, or in this case the mere thought that Biden might wind up holding the pen, is mightier than the sword. I think that would make for a scary world that no one wants to see.
Speak for yourself.
Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're projecting your own political views on everyone else and HN is not the place for that.
It's less about his politics and more about his intelligence. This post - that he tried to to introduce such a sweeping and dangerous law without a single thought about the consequences - is a perfect example of that.
I think you need to read the top comment on this thread to understand why the stuff you are saying here is nonsensical.
If you want to keep perspective, it's important to remember that the world of 1993 looked very different from that of 2012. Very few people believed that every teenager in America would be using the Internet as their first line of communication, or that the Internet would steadily consume retail, finance, media, and even industrial controls. Commercial cryptography itself was merely nascent; "cryptography 2.0", a trend of the late 90s, introduced authenticated cryptography to the mainstream (prior to that people just encrypted and added checksums) --- look at SSHv1 and PGP for representative designs. Nobody understood anything in 1993.