Also... we're throwing around words like "crime" and "terror" and talking about shadowy quasi-governmental organizations encroaching on civil rights to privacy. I offer this commentary from the Eurythmics' score to Michael Radford's 1984 film "1984" to serve as background music for our discussions.
Encryption Is Not a Crime
191–200 of 222 posts
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes. The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.". Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
>> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes. > The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.". > Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with. Oh come on. Why do you think a "purely emotional…
>Are you some galaxy brain, coldly observing humanity from some ivory tower constructed of pure software?
I just think arguments based on appeals to emotion are very often fallacious. But sure, I guess that means I'm a... whatever you just said.
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are suggesting that family courts in Colorado should be barred from hearing info from psychologists about the impact of dead-naming?
> You are suggesting that family courts in Colorado should be barred from hearing info from psychologists about the impact of dead-naming? Classic strawman argument. Where was anything like this suggested? Are they barred today under existing legislation? The eventuality of this line of reasoning is that: "special interests who control the DSM (or whatever standards body governs these soft sciences) can influence and…
There was a question mark at the end of the sentence, indicating a question.
"Are you suggesting that family courts in Colorado should be barred from hearing info from psychologists about the impact of dead-naming?"
It is a simple question. I think it tells more about your viewpoint than you may think that you consider discussions of trans issues "a strawman."
I also appreciate how you have decided that you know my thoughts on a complex subject simply by me asking you to provide more detail as to what you were saying.
It's entirely possible I'm not attacking you. It's possible I don't understand what you're saying.
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes. The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.". Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
>> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes. > The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.". > Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with. Oh come on. Why do you think a "purely emotional…
Those are both reasoned arguments. The emotional argument would be "some guy is so bothered by sexual abuse he wants to ban lightbulbs because once he heard about a lightbulb in the context of an abuse". The "solution" is not really a solution, but the emotional person does not really care about solutions, he's too emotional to think straight.
At least that is how I see the word used.
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh? The encrypted data is at rest and the only person who knew the key is dead. Your plan makes no sense.
Generally the set of people who are relevant in the debate of the balance of privacy rights and criminal prosecution, are living. Dead people are distinctly immune to prosecution, and generally granted fewer rights.
If you intended to reply to a different thread and accidentally ended up here instead, there is truth to what you say, but it has nothing to do with this one.
As it pertains to this thread, where the sole key holder is dead and took the knowledge with him, how do you anticipate to carry out gaining access to the data using live attacks? There are plenty of reasons why the government wants access to data even where prosecution isn't necessary.
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally the set of people who are relevant in the debate of the balance of privacy rights and criminal prosecution, are living. Dead people are distinctly immune to prosecution, and generally granted fewer rights.
If you intended to reply to a different thread and accidentally ended up here instead, there is truth to what you say, but it has nothing to do with this one. As it pertains to this thread, where the sole key holder is dead and took the knowledge with him, how do you anticipate to carry out gaining access to the data using live attacks? There are plenty of reasons why the government wants access to data even where pr…
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Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#197If we had trustworthy governments, or trustworthy police agencies, then maybe mandated backdoors wouldn't be all that bad. But if anything, recent events that clearly demonstrated that governments are not trustworthy, even if one is trustworthy today it couldn't become an evil regime tomorrow, and handing all your power over literally anything to such an organization does not seem wise.
I have yet to see a case against someone that hinged on some data that was encrypted. Almost every tale from some cell needing to be cracked has ended in a fart because they got the information anyway using old-fashioned police investigation. We went from Patriot Act to literally disappearing people without due process in only 23 years. Imagine if they could also decrypt your phone and plant evidence in advance.
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally the set of people who are relevant in the debate of the balance of privacy rights and criminal prosecution, are living. Dead people are distinctly immune to prosecution, and generally granted fewer rights.
If you intended to reply to a different thread and accidentally ended up here instead, there is truth to what you say, but it has nothing to do with this one. As it pertains to this thread, where the sole key holder is dead and took the knowledge with him, how do you anticipate to carry out gaining access to the data using live attacks? There are plenty of reasons why the government wants access to data even where pr…
The overlap between data that was never shared and data that is relevant after the person was dead is excruciatingly small.
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#199The problem is the average person doesn't care very much or understand it. If you ask anyone if privacy matters they will of course say yes. If you ask them why they use software with telemetry or websites with Google Analytics they will simply shrug. If you ask them if it's alright for the NSA to collect and analyze data from everyone they will say yes and they have nothing to hide. People don't know what privacy is…
>People don't know what privacy is.
You nailed the problem. Privacy is the tension between freedom and overwatch. Perfect privacy would yield zero justice, while zero privacy yields big brother/1984 overwatch. A healthy balance must exist for society to thrive.
Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that's your view - but these demands aren't going to go away, and what I think is sensible is for us a technical community to consider reasonable alternatives. Every society is a compromise between anarchic freedom and authoritarian tyranny, and this is another discussion about how a (relatively) new set of technologies can fit into that compromise in a way that is acceptable and reasonable. I acknowledge the pr…
> but these demands aren't going to go away To me, this just means that we must remain vigilant. The slow creep towards authoritarianism isn’t going to go away either. The solution is not to look for reasonable ways for authoritarian rules to exist. Continuous harmful pressure must be met with continuous resistance. > Every society is a compromise between anarchic freedom and authoritarian tyranny Except not every so…
> Except not every society is such a compromise. Some are fully under authoritarian control, and serve as a warning for others who are tempted by authoritarian ideas.
Every society is on a continuum, and so represents some compromise between freedom for the citizen and power for the authorities. No society is perfectly free and no society is entirely authoritarian.
> Breaking encryption need not inherently be part of that compromise. And until someone can explain how breaking encryption will actually stop the kind of bad actors used to justify such a direction (vs. driving them deeper underground, i.e. even if you outlaw encryption, it’s not as if law breakers will obey such a law), I see no merit in entertaining such a compromise. The crimes being committed are already illegal.
Being able to legally access a private citizen's encrypted data in specific situations would help to (at least more rapidly) prosecute certain crimes more successfully. This is, I think, inarguably true. You can decide for yourself if that is worth a compromise. I'm somewhat on the fence.
> I don’t think most people in our community see it as inherently/perfectly good, but as extremely important and necessary. This is a critical distinction. As with everything, there are harms that come with the good, and such is the nature of all things. The question becomes: are the harms allowed worse than the good that is preserved? And would the new harms of disallowing the status quo be potentially worse than the harms supposedly prevented?
I think it's convenient and useful, but I hardly think it's necessary. Society managed to function just fine (although less conveniently) when strong encryption wasn't available for communications. Banking still happened, money still changed hands.
> I agree that we need to think critically about this. But clearly we disagree about what one should conclude from such a critical analysis. I’d argue that taking the position that the government needs more power - especially at this moment in history - is the result of not thinking critically enough.
It depends on how you define power. As society changes and new technologies emerge, maintaining existing government authority in new areas - and working out ways to ensure that authority is maintained - isn't really giving governments more power, but trying to ensure your society remains in the agreed location on the freedom/authority continuum.
If you see this as expanding powers, I can see how you would consider that a problem. But I think this is more about ensuring existing power is maintained correctly over a new area where crime is being committed.