121–130 of 312 posts
I'm not surprised by liberals who want this and think government is mother/father (to be clear I am progressive) but I am REALLY surprised by conservatives that now want government monitoring every part of their citizen's lives.
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> The truth is that people are not inherently bad. I don't know about that. I'd argue that most people don't think of themselves as bad, but it doesn't make them not-bad. And humanity definitely has base instincts - if we didn't, we wouldn't need governments and police.
> but it doesn't make them not-bad. I disagree. I've never found a coherent absolute ethical framework. Not even "Don't kill people." When anyone is arguing that something is bad, that person has to appeal an authority or belief. Often the reasoning leads to utilitarianism: "If we want society to continue, we should ban murder." But that's still an if/then statement. Beneath the if/then is an appeal that society is g…
I think "randomness" is even worse, because it makes it sound like these actions could be expected from anyone at anytime. Statistically, a small portion of the population is responsible for most of the violence, through repeat offenses. Also, in many situations there are clear warning signs (e.g. mentally ill with clear homicidal ideation, member of a gang). Are you really arguing that a dice roll is a good fundamental model for human behavior?
Nondeterminism (assuming humans are truly nondeterministic) doesn't really matter here, except for the fact that we don't have a way of precisely predicting people's behavior (and may never have one). If it turns out that humans are just complicated, deterministic machines that we can not feasibly predict, the reasons for which we have developed societal structures do not disappear.
> But from that same randomness we get music, science, justice.
I think it's pretty easy to distinguish between the first two and violence. I agree that the third is a bit trickier. If what you mean is that the exercise of both these and the dispositions-formerly-known-as-base-instincts are a result of allowing for a significant measure of personal freedom, I'll agree with you. But writing human behavior off as having no more structure than a random number generator ignores a lot of predictive and explanative power that we do actually have.
In my mind, it comes down to what a society's priorities are. If the priorities are Freedom > all, then encryption is a necessary tool. If the priorities are Prosperity > Safety > Freedom > all, then society will run roughshod over freedom.
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I blame it on unicode. Without unicode these terrorists would not be able to communicate with impunity.
In fairness, character encoding is clearly the work of terrorists.
This issue brings up a larger point that many in the tech world have ignored for awhile. Now that end to end encryption is easily accessible by everyone, how do the authorities figure out beforehand when a terrorist attack will take place? The answer is not banning encryption technologies or giving authorities a 'key' as the FBI director has proposed. But now authorities have a very difficult problem on their hands.…
It takes what it has always taken: good police work. Encryption is like envelopes for the mail. They can be broken into with enough force, but their purpose it to shield the contents of the message from those handling it in transit. A post card offers no such protection. So suppose the banned encryption (envelopes). Im sure the government would still reauire envelopes. As would anybody dealing with health records. Or…
"Why I Wrote PGP", by Philip Zimmermann
We really need to emphasize the envelope metaphor a lot more. It's much easier for non-technical propel to understand than any discussion of key/signing/etc.
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Funny how politicians twist reason to suit their own ends. Bad guys use guns, but apparently were not allowed to ban them because they'll somehow find a way to get them no matter what. So the solution is to legalise them. However when it comes to encryption, bad guys use it so it needs to be banned! It's like they have it completely backwards.
Who are "they"? Many politicians are on the same side of each debate, wanting to restrict the rights of free people in the name of safety and security. I'm curious, do you see a distinction between the two issues? Sounds like you're on opposite sides for each of them.
However, even if the bad guys didn't have encryption, we would still want good guys to have encryption to prevent the bad guys from intercepting private and sensitive communications.
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But that arguing would clearly be flawed. I could thing of a lot of weapons that I would not want to see in the hands of everybody I meet on the street. I think it is partially correct to say that about certain information based "tools" (like encryption or information in newspapers) but sometimes that is not true as well, for example with certain malware
Historically, though, the real threat is usually a state actor -- often one's own government -- that has been granted (or has seized) a monopoly on such tools. In particular, the modern notion that the state is the only rightful wielder of force has an unlimited downside. Terrorism is pretty far down the list of things that frighten me.
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I work for a Bank and we use encrypted external email all the time. We have to for regulatory reasons. I'm sure it's the same for defence contractors, and it's a prudent precaution for governments and many other businesses and in many parts of the world.
The ideal scenario for the NSA-types is "unbreakable" crypto with a built-in NSA-only escrow/backdoor and possibly a secondary backdoor for five eyes allies (with domestic traffic free of 5-eyes backdoor.) Suspension of disbelief on security of escrow mechanism is a necessary pre-condition.
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At the risk of putting words into other someone else's mouth, it's a shame that the level of education/awareness regarding the fundamentals of how society works is so lacking. Without encryption, internet doesn't work. Without internet, banking and e-commerce doesn't work. Really, not a single user-identifying service can function without encryption. Also, encryption is based on math and logic. You can't really prohi…
To play devil's advocate, saying "but you can never ban encryption anyway" sets up a false dichotomy. You're right, there are open source projects that will survive no matter what you do. But you can certainly force or convince companies like Apple and Google to prevent those apps from being available in their stores, and you can force large companies like Facebook to give you a backdoor. Sure, someone tech savvy can…
Or someone who has a strong incentive to keep their communication hidden - like a terrorist or a drug enforcer. This leads to a situation where law abiding citizens are punished when their right to privacy is denied, while criminals aren't hindered. "When you outlaw X, X will only be used by outlaws"