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UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

reuters.com

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Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#111

Post by ue_ »

anon1385 wrote: post #41
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #16

> She said it was a case of getting together "the best people who understand the technology, who understand the necessary hashtags" Our Government is an absolute disgrace; and unfortunately, one to which there is currently no credible, strong opposition. (from https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewchampion/necessary-hashtags )

If you are referring to the current state of the Labour party then that's irrelevant. Even when Labour were "strong" opposition, or were in power with large majorities, they have had very authoritarian positions on this kind of thing. Labour were supporters of the recent IP Bill (it actually applied restrictions to some of the crazy powers the last Labour government gave to the police, which gives you an indication o…

It's a damn shame as a Communist myself to agree with Labour on various issues, but so vehemently disagree with them on the abstention or even outright support of spying bills.

Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#113

Post by natch »

guilhas wrote: post #60
ktta wrote: post #21

Hmm, this definitely brings up an interesting discussion I don't think HN has had before, especially something in a similar vein since Apple+San Bernardino fiasco. Obviously privacy is something that HN holds very close to its heart. But I'm interested in what do people here have to say about the privacy features are used by terrible people to do terrible things. And I want to share something that I think is one of t…

I personally think if there is a warrant the company should provide information. The same way my house is private but if there is any kind of problem police has access to it. Although we should have mechanism to protect from mass random surveillance.

So, no matter how bad the government, and how ridiculous its laws (let's say they ban music, and dole out harsh punishments to people who dare listen to music), then we as technology providers should enable them to catch such people and punish them for their "crimes"?

Saudi Arabia punishes rape victims. We should help with that?

China punishes people who try to air grievances about government abuse and corruption. Again, we should enable them to be more effective in their invasive prying into those individuals than they already are?

In North Korea, your entire family can be punished if you dare be disobedient to the government.

In the US, we recently elected Donald Trump.

Etc. etc... why do you think governments can be trusted with this power?

On top of all that, once the technical means exist, they will also be discovered, cracked, and used by fraudsters, extortionists, and anyone else who can figure out a way to abuse the information.

Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#114

Post by ktta »

cm2187 wrote: post #96
ktta wrote: post #21

Hmm, this definitely brings up an interesting discussion I don't think HN has had before, especially something in a similar vein since Apple+San Bernardino fiasco. Obviously privacy is something that HN holds very close to its heart. But I'm interested in what do people here have to say about the privacy features are used by terrible people to do terrible things. And I want to share something that I think is one of t…

Terrorism, and crime in general is a nuisance that we have to live with. You can have a society with no crime. All you need is a super repressive totalitarian state, total transparency with citizens reporting on each others, state surveillance everywhere. It will work. But first I don't want to live in such a state. And second these totalitarian states slide invariably toward corruption and state crimes. So we have t…

I completely agree. You are one of the very few!

I have to ask, what's up with the domain name? Is that some sort of public windows share folder?

Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#115

Post by cm2187 »

ktta wrote: post #114
cm2187 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrorism, and crime in general is a nuisance that we have to live with. You can have a society with no crime. All you need is a super repressive totalitarian state, total transparency with citizens reporting on each others, state surveillance everywhere. It will work. But first I don't want to live in such a state. And second these totalitarian states slide invariably toward corruption and state crimes. So we have t…

I completely agree. You are one of the very few! I have to ask, what's up with the domain name? Is that some sort of public windows share folder?

It's just the online file storage of Microsoft Azure.

Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#116

Post by ue_ »

fwn wrote: post #28
ktta wrote: post #21

Hmm, this definitely brings up an interesting discussion I don't think HN has had before, especially something in a similar vein since Apple+San Bernardino fiasco. Obviously privacy is something that HN holds very close to its heart. But I'm interested in what do people here have to say about the privacy features are used by terrible people to do terrible things. And I want to share something that I think is one of t…

I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. A hammer, a knife or a government can be pretty useful, or pretty violent - depending on how you use it. This alone does not imply that a hammer, a knife or a government should not exist or be banned. edit: words

>or a government should not exist or be banned.

I was with you up until 'government'. I regard states as exercising unjust authority over people and defenders of private property which is why I'm an anarcho-Communist. The way in which the modern world is divided up means that one must be a subject of some state, which I believe makes there no way to provide proper consent to be governed.

Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#117

Post by adrianN »

visarga wrote: post #9

> "That is my view - it is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide." I am sure a ban on encryption would work. Hey, guys, I just had a great idea. Let's ban bombs, knifes, and driving into people. That would fix the terrorism problem. Once it is illegal, no terrorist would dare do it!!! I'm wondering why Churchill didn't think to ban the Enigma machine. If only England was led by smar…

The difference is that it's relatively easy to detect when people use encrypted communication. You can just arrest them. It's not so easy to detect whether someone is planning to drive into people.

Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#118

Post by loup-vaillant »

orless wrote: post #57
blfr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? That's not an issue. Writing solid encryption software is very difficult on its own. You will hear "do not roll your own crypto" all the time from security experts. We don't live in a James Bond universe and it's beyond the reach of terrorist organisations.

You don't have to roll your own crypto to create an own end-to-end encryption app. You can use existing crypto. Writing a user interface around it is not so difficult. Beyound the reach of the terrorist organisations? We have already seen pretty sophisticated operations by relatively small crime organizations (like exploiting pseudorandom generators in casino slot machines). There's an established black market for ex…

> small crime organizations (like exploiting pseudorandom generators in casino slot machines)

If all you do is pushing the buttons of the slot machine in the right order with the right timing, that's hardly a crime —and I don't care about court judgements to the contrary. If a slot machine has a crappy pseudo random number generator, they're just asking for it. I'd rather sue the slot machine's maker for providing a machine that's not fit for its intended purpose.

Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

#120

Post by natch »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #64
ktta wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. Well, that's a very evasive argument in my opinion. It's absolutely true that objects are neutral, but you can't make a blanket argument with topics like these. That argument has been made lots of times by many (including me). But it eventually breaks down. You can't give a child a gun and when the kid shoots someone say it was the kid's fault. Whose fault is it?…

on the other hand a huge nuclear arsenal maintained a long period of peace during a troubled time, so there's that

It arguably has so far, but let's not get too smug about it. The end of that story has not yet been written.
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