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As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

lauren.vortex.com

101–110 of 295 posts

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#101
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this will last for approximately five minutes until a new ruler establishes themselves either through resource monopolisation or through pure threat of force. And they will never be short of toadies. Why is the default assumption by libertarians that if the government is brought down, human nature will suddenly, completely change?

My view of libertarianism is that it's not a movement to 'fight government'. It is just a system of views that once productive forces of society achieve certain level, government at least as we know it will become redundant. And there is little 'new ruler' can do to establish himself if people don't need a ruler.

>And there is little 'new ruler' can do to establish himself if people don't need a ruler.

Did you, as an uncoerced free man, ever swear an oath of fealty to the US government? (The pledge of allegiance doesn't count.) Did your parents? Did their parents? Did their parents? Has anyone?

Anybody who may have elected to be governed by the United States is now dead, and the chances are good that you're not even related to them by blood. The vast majority of people who have lived under some form of government in their lives almost certainly did not choose to.

EDIT: Unless they immigrated. Forgot about that option. If you immigrated to the United States, you are exempt from this thought experiment.

But not totally, because you probably weren't stateless when you did.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#102
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PFS protects you if feds get google keys now to not be able to decipher what you told google 3 months ago. But if they have the current keys nothing can protect you.

Wouldn't that mean Google would have to build a system to automatically send each key, for every session, for every user, to the NSA? That would be an insane scenario.

Why? That's perfectly feasible from a technical perspective.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#103

This kind of thing makes me think the Snowden disclosures actually emboldened the NSA in some ways. Their nightmare scenario occurred, and nothing happened. Nobody even got fired or "resigned". The public's tepid reaction has brought our nightmare scenario to life - we taught secretive government agencies that they can now do anything they want without fear of public backlash. These kinds of requests can now dramatic…

Do you think it was planned by the NSA?

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#104

This kind of thing makes me think the Snowden disclosures actually emboldened the NSA in some ways. Their nightmare scenario occurred, and nothing happened. Nobody even got fired or "resigned". The public's tepid reaction has brought our nightmare scenario to life - we taught secretive government agencies that they can now do anything they want without fear of public backlash. These kinds of requests can now dramatic…

I disagree with your usage of the past tense here. This is far from over, and I don't think the public's reaction was tepid.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#105
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things you speak of will be outlawed and you won't be allowed to use them.

Harsh. dvmmh made a joke a few days ago and got downvoted to oblivion. But I think this comment is a good one: we do not live in a libertarian paradise. The government is comfortable using its powers, including physical violence under the law, to keep people from doing things it does not want them to do.

Sadly, that's exactly how things work. We tend to think we can find technical solutions to create legal loopholes, but they usually end up as contempt of court.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#106
post #20

Sounds like not "the death of public key encryption" but the golden age of building technical controls into hardware/software which cannot be subverted by the operator, even in the face of a state agent with a gun. Assuming the right tech is developed and deployed, this is going to be far better for everyone in a few years. Yes, it will be shitty for a year or two, but by 2020, if we actually have real technical secu…

In terms of hardware safeguards, is it really an improvement when we have to rely on proprietary hardware safeguards that may have government "special features" silently built in, vs open source software that can be inspected by the public?

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#108

Have no doubt about it, this marks the beginning of the end of online privacy. Now that even the U.S. govt is asking for the TLS Certificates there is no country that has the moral high ground on this issue. I'm from India and when I heard that the Indian government was asking Blackberry for its encryption keys I thought "Hah these people are so ignorant! They don't even know how public key encryption works!!". In hi…

I am in the same boat. I supported US against my own (Indian) government on the ITU taking over internet governance issue because I genuinely believed US would be a better guardian of the Internet than India. I was proven wrong. Now, decentralization of internet control doesn't seem like all that bad a thing.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#109

This kind of thing makes me think the Snowden disclosures actually emboldened the NSA in some ways. Their nightmare scenario occurred, and nothing happened. Nobody even got fired or "resigned". The public's tepid reaction has brought our nightmare scenario to life - we taught secretive government agencies that they can now do anything they want without fear of public backlash. These kinds of requests can now dramatic…

I disagree with your usage of the past tense here. This is far from over, and I don't think the public's reaction was tepid.

Tepid? The response has been cooler than that.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#110

It's a neat argument that the Feds have. If you send traffic unencrypted: 'You have no expectation of privacy, because you're broadcasting information publicly.' Turn on encryption: 'Clearly you have something to hide, and deserve additional scrutiny. It's still not a fourth amendment violation because we are just compelling a business to give us your keys'

Right on,

Clearly its also ok for the police to search your apartment at any time as well. You don't own your apartment, an apartment corporation does, so its clearly not a 4th amendment violation

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