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The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

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Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#161

Post by DanBC »

icelancer wrote: post #158
DanBC wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how armed citizenry helps with law enforcement. People are shot and killed by law enforcement. Sometimes they're shot and killed very quickly, within 30 seconds of an officer arriving on scene. People who are thought to be armed are often shot and killed by US police. Notice the "thought" there, many people are shot even though they don't have a weapon because law enforcement thinks the person has a gun.…

>Do you have any examples where an interaction between a citizen and a cop is made better by the presence of a gun on the citizen? Better thought: Do you think a completely unarmed populace is a better idea given how bad police abuse their power?

>Better thought: Do you think a completely unarmed populace is a better idea given how bad police abuse their power?

Well, yes, I do.

The US is heavily armed. The US has a lot of poorly trained, unskilled, abusive police officers.

Gun ownership hasn't made US police any better. If anything it's made them far more lethal - one reason given (by both pro- and anti- gun advocates) for the shocking numbers of people shot and killed by US police each year is the presence of guns in the population.

When a police officer abuses their power I can grind through it, or I can pull a gun and get shot. In most cases getting shot is the worse outcome.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#162

Post by marklgr »

deciplex wrote: post #114
statictype wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very good point. As someone who has been anti-gun and pro-encryption, I'm now wondering how I reconcile these two stances that are at conflict with each other.

Maybe you're having trouble reconciling them because they are irreconcilable. It sounds to me like you're awfully close to a "decide what I want first and rationalize it later" style of pondering, or perhaps have crossed that line already.

> "decide what I want first and rationalize it later"

Incidentally, this is Jim Jefferies point[1] about guns: guns are fun, people enjoy having them and shooting, so they rationalize with evil governements threats from centuries ago.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#163

Post by adrianN »

LastZactionHero wrote: post #87
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone have any insights into why the commonly used guns argument is not good enough for encryption? If we ban guns(encryption), only the criminals will have it. The only thing I can think of is that the majority of people who advocate for encryption are anti-gun, and don't want to give strength to that argument?

The recent issues over encryption has actually changed my thinking on guns. I'm not 'pro gun', don't own guns, and want nothing to do with them personally. But as I think about my stance on the legality of encryption it sounds pretty similar to the argument for guns. Still don't want one, but it's harder for me to be dismissive of a point when I turn around and use the same point for another issue.

Contrary to encryption you don't need guns to safely communicate over the Internet, say with your bank. So I'd argue that strong encryption is a lot more important than guns.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#164

Post by over »

adrianN wrote: post #163
LastZactionHero wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent issues over encryption has actually changed my thinking on guns. I'm not 'pro gun', don't own guns, and want nothing to do with them personally. But as I think about my stance on the legality of encryption it sounds pretty similar to the argument for guns. Still don't want one, but it's harder for me to be dismissive of a point when I turn around and use the same point for another issue.

Contrary to encryption you don't need guns to safely communicate over the Internet, say with your bank. So I'd argue that strong encryption is a lot more important than guns.

Sure, you don't personally need guns, but you do need physical safety at each end of the communication. Physical safety is provided by people with guns.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#165

Post by edraferi »

krylon wrote: post #143

I find it disturbing how the intelligence and law enforcement community seem to think there is some kind of natural right for them to snoop on people. In case of the good old phone system, the very way that worked maked wiretapping very easy. The same was true for physical mail (one major reason why most states created and held on to the monopoly on mail for so long). With email and IM this is - again due to the way…

You're correct to point out that this debate is about a change in the staus quo: law enforcement used to be able to access the dominant communications system with a lawful order, proper crypto removes that capability.

It is inevitable that this change, lwft unchecked, will increase citizen privacy AND decrease law enforcement effectiveness. The HN community is very aware of these privacy benefits, but skeptical about the security costs. I wonder how far security must slip before those costs become apparent.

Until that happens, we basically have two camps of experts talking past eachother. The tech community sees the privacy cost, the law enforcement sees the security cost. Both back up their claims with "trust us, this is what we do for a living." This makes it very difficult to create a policy solution.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#166

Post by coldcode »

bmelton wrote: post #107
jessegreathouse wrote: post #5

If the government wins any of these court battles, it's only a matter of time until one-way encryption is outlawed. It follows logically that if criminals/terrorists can't use iPhones to securely communicate, then they'll just move on to the next convenient encryption app. The government will continue to order companies to break their one-way encryption until the government realizes they're playing musical chairs and…

"they'll issue an executive order to ban one-way encryption outright" I want to point out the reasons for which that's impossible -- that the executive can't issue an EO that applies to the citizenry at large, and that there aren't any agencies that specifically regulate software companies, but as I can't find a loophole that hasn't been leveraged to render my arguments moot, I can't even convince myself that it coul…

Plus the impossibility of controlling apps, software and frameworks outside the US. All it takes is one person in one country building correct encryption and everyone uses that for illegal activities everywhere. It's not a matter of blocking holes in a dike; there is no dike.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#167

Post by adrianN »

over wrote: post #164
adrianN wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to encryption you don't need guns to safely communicate over the Internet, say with your bank. So I'd argue that strong encryption is a lot more important than guns.

Sure, you don't personally need guns, but you do need physical safety at each end of the communication. Physical safety is provided by people with guns.

Those people can be policemen.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#168

Post by [deleted] »

danieltillett wrote: post #126
bmelton wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument fails intermediate scrutiny, which is the minimal level of scrutiny a constitutionally enumerated right must be held to. In brief, strict scrutiny is the most stringent level of scrutiny, and rational basis the least stringent. Operating a vehicle on public roads is decidedly a right, but not a constitutionally enumerated one, so it is only held to rational basis. Rational basis scrutiny allows a right…

>Banning teflon coated bullets does not fundamentally infringe the right, and is narrowly tailored enough that it survives the least restrictive means test. Banning all ammunition cripples the right, fundamentally, and is nowhere near tailored enough to survive heightened levels of scrutiny. Just to nit pick it is not teflon coated bullets that are banned (at the federal level), but bullets made of certain hardened m…

[deleted]

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#169

Post by bmelton »

danieltillett wrote: post #124
bmelton wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the words of Alan Gura, the attorney who successfully argued in D.C. v Heller (the pivotal modern firearms case) -- because banning bullets is a backdoor ban on firearms. Firearms without bullets are no longer firearms, they are simply bludgeons.

Sure that is the aim, but is it unconstitutional? How much can you degrade the killing power of a bullet before it becomes unconstitutional?

I don't know. How much can you impede the ability for minorities to vote before it becomes unconstitutional? How much torture can you get away with before it becomes unconstitutionally cruel and unusual? How much can you restrict the abortion rights of women before it runs afoul of the constitution and pre-existing precedent?

It's people asking questions like that, and failing to respect the spirit of the constitution that explains exactly how we've become a nation in which federal power is effectively unrestrained by the constitution.

Endorsing gun control means being an enemy to the bill of rights. Wiggling past scrutiny by playing legislative "I'm not touching you" games as you're doing weakens the whole of protections to the citizenry. Whatever semantic games you like playing against the second amendment sets precedent for those same games to be played by the other side for speech, privacy, abortion and marriage rights. It is the failure of the left to respect some rights, paired with the failure of the right to respect the others that has gotten us where we are.

Just because the government doesn't like a right doesn't mean they get to ignore it. Because people like you let them selectively ignore the rights you don't like is what gives them the power to ignore the rights you do. If you want to be constitutional (and you should), you can ban bullets by repealing the second amendment, or amending the constitution to state that bullets aren't protected by it.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#170

Post by 1024core »

XorNot wrote: post #148
1024core wrote: post #53

If the USG can force Apple/Whatsapp to decrypt some communication, what prevents the PRC from doing the same? Will we see Tim Cook arrested the next time he goes to China?

What stops them now? I don't understand why people think this is an issue. While you could certainly imagine the PRC being emboldened, it's not like their history of human rights abuses has kept them in check. The only thing which does is how much they love trade with the west, but it would be entertaining the amount of blowback making a move against Foxconn would create (also worth considering: China, land of fake e…

Don't you think that if they see Apple handing over iPhone contents to USG, they will now feel entitled to do the same in China?
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