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Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

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Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#71

Post by datashovel »

datashovel wrote: post #68

This is absolutely terrifying. You can't use "the way things currently are" to argue for giving governments access to personal data. You have to think about, and protect "the way things might end up". How easy do you want to make it for corrupt government leaders to suppress opposition?

with regard to snuffing out terrorist plots, this (in my mind) needs to be a collective effort. Government is not the only entity that should be responsible for preventing terrorism. The way I see it, it's the only way to keep governments from becoming the omniscient creatures they strive to be. By making it a world-wide collective effort to work to prevent terrorism. The moment you make it entirely the government's problem and responsibility is the moment you (for humanity's sake) have to relinquish your privacy.

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#72

Post by FLUX-YOU »

SixSigma wrote: post #28
nlh wrote: post #10

Allow me to ask what I'm certain is an incredibly naive question, so please bear with me. But it's a question that the average / non-tech folks ARE asking, and I'm not looking to be attacked, I'm looking for an intelligent answer (or corrections if my assumptions are wrong.) Base scenario: We have adversaries. Our adversaries are plotting something objectively bad - to blow up things and kill innocent people. They ar…

The people who exploded the first car bomb in front of J.P.Morgan didn't use encryption. Timothy McVeigh didn't use encryption. 9/11 Hijackers didn't use encryption. 7/7 Bombers didn't use encryption. Boston Bombers didn't use encryption. Can you see where this is going ?

Some of them are though:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/books/review/agent-storm-m... (second paragraph before the end)

FTR, I don't believe we should compromise everyone for these cases. Clearly traditional HUMINT is still viable.

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#73

Post by fennecfoxen »

adventured wrote: post #33
bhhaskin wrote: post #5

George Orwell's 1984 should be a required reading for high school students. Not just in the U.S., but world wide. It really highlights just what dangers come from the idea that you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the sheer amount of power and influence a global, instantaneous, and always on intelligence network can have over the population.

I would add Anthem to that list. It predates 1984 by 11 years, and Orwell likely borrowed a lot of concepts from it.

As long as we're adding books to a dystopian-novel reading list, consider That Hideous Strength - a sort of spiritual prequel to 1984 describing the gradual rise of such a regime. It also might be the last major work in the genre before the atomic bomb, and predates 1984. It's a transitional work, which is both interesting and a source of its limitations -- I'll leave you with Orwell's book review to detail its strengths and weaknesses which should get you an idea: http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/

You can also consider Chesterton's The Man who Would Be Thursday, referenced in that review as well.

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#74

Post by louthy »

dllthomas wrote: post #9
bhhaskin wrote: post #5

George Orwell's 1984 should be a required reading for high school students. Not just in the U.S., but world wide. It really highlights just what dangers come from the idea that you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the sheer amount of power and influence a global, instantaneous, and always on intelligence network can have over the population.

I've started to think that the focus on 1984 is harmful. For one, fiction is not evidence. Using it as such is poor reasoning. For another, I've seen a reaction of "that's just fiction, it wouldn't actually happen" distracting from the important points.

Use the Stasi as a plausible real life example instead

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#76

Post by yuubi »

nlh wrote: post #47
PostOnce wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they find out Person Y's phone needed to be searched/monitored to begin with? Obviously they have other sources of intelligence. The question also doesn't address the issue of how far is too far, imagine how many crimes would be discovered with nightly searches of everyone's homes. Should we begin searching everyone's homes warrantlessly? What is more detrimental to society, the criminals, or the police state…

Excellent points. Thanks. First let me clarify that I agree the notion of "banning encryption" is misguided and wrong. I'm looking at Obama's position (perhaps incorrectly) as "we need to be able to have backdoors", not "ban encryption". I think the government's argument would be that yes, the most sophisticated adversaries will always find a way around monitoring. But I think they'd argue that 95% of adversaries are…

> "we need to be able to have backdoors", not "ban encryption"

They can't reliably have backdoors without banning crypto that lacks it.

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#77

Post by mrsteveman1 »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #48
mrsteveman1 wrote: post #7

Blatant attempt by intelligence services and law enforcement to get their personal wish lists legislated by shamelessly exploiting a tragedy. I'll happily donate a constant percentage of my company income to fight whatever useless laws come out of this. It'll be fought immediately if they try to legislate backdoors or any equivalent tinkering. Last time we had a big legal fight about strong encryption, we got a supre…

Why don't you donate to EFF?

I do :)

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#78

Post by dllthomas »

datashovel wrote: post #71
datashovel wrote: post #68

This is absolutely terrifying. You can't use "the way things currently are" to argue for giving governments access to personal data. You have to think about, and protect "the way things might end up". How easy do you want to make it for corrupt government leaders to suppress opposition?

with regard to snuffing out terrorist plots, this (in my mind) needs to be a collective effort. Government is not the only entity that should be responsible for preventing terrorism. The way I see it, it's the only way to keep governments from becoming the omniscient creatures they strive to be. By making it a world-wide collective effort to work to prevent terrorism. The moment you make it entirely the government's…

Similar for abuse of anonymity, I think.

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#79

Post by ibejoeb »

"If we find evidence of a terrorist plot…"

Have I missed something important? Is there a case, or even evidence of one, wherein encryption was a factor in a plot coming to fruition? If there had been, I would have expected the Obama, Cameron, et al., to trot it out.

Are we legislating this just in case? Strong encryption is already out there. I suppose if we make it illegal, the terrorists will just have to make do with weak encryption. But why don't we just make terrorism illegal, then?

Re: Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fight

#80

Post by xnull1guest »

ipsin wrote: post #75

What really twists the knife for me is the idea that a belief in privacy is unpatriotic. "Of course, they'll want to subvert private communications. They're patriots ." The world needs a hell of a lot less patriotism right about now.

This kind of "privacy" (lack of the existence of institutionalized absolute compelled disclosure to law enforcement and along with broadly cast suspicion less search) was once called liberty and freedom by American mythological forefathers.
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