Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators • Hacker News Board

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#21

Post by goblin89 » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #9

RHSeeger wrote: post #5

> The international police organization Interpol plans to condemn the spread of strong encryption in a statement Monday saying it protects child sex predators, three people briefed on the matter told Reuters. Let me fix that for you > it protects nearly every single person on the planet.

This is close to saying child rapists rape children behind closed doors so you shouldn't have locks, ignoring that well locked doors benefit everyone who has a house. It's disingenuous.

While I support the sentiment that privacy is important, comparing encryption to locks in this ghastly context is self-defeating.

Recall that there were more than one instance where critical evidence against a wealthy person, required for the prosecution to make a compelling case in court, was obtained by force with a police raid. At least one such instance happened in the US in 2019 and was well-publicized.

Now imagine a real-life security system that is absolutely, one hundred percent immune to unauthorized entry, even if it is attempted as a part of law enforcement raid.

It is possible to identify with the argument that everyone should have access to such an impenetrable lock. However, it’d be really hard to argue that widespread access to it wouldn’t create a radically new situation.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#22

Post by cmdshiftf4 » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:01 AM UTC

Sigh. What we can basically tell from this is that the Five Eyes crew have joint legislation ready to go on this and are now going to insert an easy-to-digest and appealing narrative into the mainstream ahead of the release of that legislation.

The combination of "But the children! You don't support child predators, do you?!", low general technical understanding and overall apathy to the removal of our rights (in the name of "progress") means that this is basically destined to succeed.

Might be time to really re-evaluate our personal relationship with technology and make the appropriate moves to isolate it in our lives. If/when this goes through, technology will essentially have us under surveillance in every aspect of our daily lives.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#23

Post by m0dest » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:01 AM UTC

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #13

Imagine for a moment that ssh became illegal. Is it even possible for the tech economy to continue? What would that look like? My head hurts. Actually, think of what Attorney General Barr said: Corporations should have access to strong encryption, just not little people. In that horrifying sort of world, there would be encryption licenses perhaps. And general purpose computing would be under a large threat. It is so…

It’d probably be some new PKI on top of SSH where your private key would be held in escrow by an identity provider. e.g. Your username is your email address, and your email provider retains your key pair. It’d probably be portrayed as an improved key management solution that allows more frequent key rotations and revocations. Might even start with being required for government projects, resulting in supported implementations by cloud providers that want lucrative government contracts. Then they just wait for a crisis opportunity like a cyberattack to force ISPs to block non-PKI-based SSH traffic in the name of national security.

And the largest and most paranoid companies that host their own mail and authentication services on-perm would probably be allowed to use those. But most everyone else is left doing key escrow with Google and O365 for their work and personal accounts...

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#24

Post by killjoywashere » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:02 AM UTC

tqi wrote: post #16

snowwrestler wrote: post #8

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who h…

I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this. Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. It seems everyone is so eager to paint the other side as objectively wrong / motivated by bad intentions, when in reality I don't believe this is an objectively right answer. As a society we have to decide how much freedom and security we…

A nice example of the complexity in this space: the Ben Franklin quote "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" means something rather different when taken in context (1).

(1) https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#25

Post by tqi » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

tqi wrote: post #16

snowwrestler wrote: post #8

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who h…

I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this. Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. It seems everyone is so eager to paint the other side as objectively wrong / motivated by bad intentions, when in reality I don't believe this is an objectively right answer. As a society we have to decide how much freedom and security we…

Also I think "Security" was the wrong term to use - maybe "Societal Order" is better?

What I mean is if companies are required to build in law enforcement backdoors, we could see X benefit (ie some % reduction in certain types of crime) and Y damage (some reduction in technical security, some reduction in govt accountability, etc).

Personally, I place a lot of value on the Y damage, so I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. But those are just my values, and I think it's possible / reasonable to have different values that change the balance.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#26

Post by BLKNSLVR » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:04 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #8

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who h…

Child protection should be treated much more as a "local" than "global" issue. If it's "scale" they want, to really protect children, then local boots on the ground is still the best defense.

Rather than talking about encryption, Interpol should be espousing the benefits of local investigation and intervention based on mandatory reporting.

Removing child abuse content from the Internet is a digital issue. Protecting children from harm is a meatspace issue, and exponentially more important (but also more difficult and fraught with subjectivity).

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#27

Post by BLKNSLVR » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:17 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #19

I had an idea that a decent compromise is to limit keystrength, but not have any kind of backdoor. This way the vast majority of communication is protected, and the government can't just spy en mass. But, if there was some specific target they could throw a lot of computing resources at it. But they would need to know in advance who to target, they couldn't just have a wide dragnet. Thoughts?

Throwing computing resources at it can be fairly accessible to small groups or even individuals as a result of 'cloud' computing. There are examples of people coordinating a large number of cloud instances for a short amount of time to crack hashes, and it was surprisingly cheap.

I don't have a reference on hand though.

This also makes it trivial for nation states and larger groups to decrypt whatever data they're able to sniff. It would actually encourage more groups to get into more places where they can sniff more data.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#28

Post by sneak » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

tqi wrote: post #16

snowwrestler wrote: post #8

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who h…

I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this. Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. It seems everyone is so eager to paint the other side as objectively wrong / motivated by bad intentions, when in reality I don't believe this is an objectively right answer. As a society we have to decide how much freedom and security we…

Privacy is a human right. Encryption backdoors for governments are human rights abuses.

It has nothing to do with safety; it is not a debate about “how much safety do we purchase with reduced privacy”.

It’s just as firearms rights have nothing to do with hunting, or a militia.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#29

Post by Gatsky » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

Lots of criticism here, fair enough, it’s very worrying to give non-transparent institutions this kind of power, not to mention the technical feasibility.

But... what should be done about child pornography, then? The ability to disseminate it with impunity is a problem we can’t just pretend doesn’t exist. Using online platforms pedophiles can monetize and go full time professional in countries where children are easily exploited. Nobody is coming to save those kids.

Re: Interpol plans to condemn encryption spread, citing predators

#30

Post by flukus » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:39 AM UTC

tqi wrote: post #16

snowwrestler wrote: post #8

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who h…

I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this. Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. It seems everyone is so eager to paint the other side as objectively wrong / motivated by bad intentions, when in reality I don't believe this is an objectively right answer. As a society we have to decide how much freedom and security we…

> I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this

It's also important to remember that not every nation will have the same set of values on this and that as the world becomes more international you're relationship with other world governments becomes more M * N.

Imagine a world without encryption where the Saudi government had our access logs and decided to share what porn we were looking up. Or for something closer to the real world, imagine the CCP leveraging their influence to cut off services to anyone sharing Winnie the Pooh pictures.