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Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

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Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#231

Increasingly we're seeing 'encryption' discussed in mainstream media as a tool that can only be used for nefarious ends. Kind of like how they talked about "cookies" in the late 90s and early 00s. It's unfortunate that there's no way [without a lot of money] to launch a campaign that highlights the fact that most sensitive online transactions rely on encryption - banking, purchasing, etc - to protect you from The Bad…

"Home and mobile working, including use of personal devices for work: ensure that sensitive data is encrypted when stored or transmitted online so that data can only be accessed by authorised users."

Quote from UK government advice to small business people, see

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

I suspect that GCHQ people want people using encryption but encryption that they have a feasible way of breaking if needed. Yes, I know, no way of stopping back-doors being used by other agencies/bad actors.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well if you want to get really pedantic, nothing is inherently anything because all meaning is constructed in our minds. Evil is a word humans use to categorize things, not a description of objective reality. I would agree that most people don't think of themselves as bad, but since there's no objective 'bad', wether or not they're 'actually bad' is up to the observer. When a person is labeled as 'evil' it's not a de…

I would argue that, while "evil" cannot be defined in precise terms, you can definitely say that evil acts are unnatural acts that only humans are capable of. Why? Well for one because a natural foodchain is balanced and biased towards long term survival of all the species it involves and towards further creation of life. It's a little ironic that human beings are the only ones in the entire animal kingdom that can choose how to live, we are the only ones able to choose what are, our intellect transcending our DNA coding, yet we are also the only ones destroying our habitat and each other. Isn't that funny?

But back to Hitler, if you're trying to make the case that his evilness is subjective, I mean no offense but that's a really dumb argument. Hitler was in no small part evil because his actions were, on one hand irrational, fueling and amplifying his people's potential for hatred and destruction and on the other hand detrimental to the survival of our species and of Earth itself. And again, genocide is not natural. You see, in nature animals kill to eat, but that's to satisfy a basic necessity and not out of some wicked sense of justice and animals can definitely not kill on an industrial scale like we do. Whatever definition for "evil" you find, genocide on an industrial scale is pure evil by definition.

And if that doesn't sound objective enough, consider that culture is a part of who we are. We aren't DNA-coded to eat certain foods, or to live in a certain place, or in a certain way. Compared with rats, we can rely on the wisdom of our elders in order to survive. And we've survived this way for a long time. As an example, our rich culture, which includes preconceptions and taboos, is what prevents us to eat each other, or to have sex with our siblings, or to bring human sacrifices to our gods. Actually some preconceptions are more subtle and newer than others - for example the notion that children are fragile beings that need to be loved and protected, instead of someone's property, is pretty new, being popularized by Christianity.

So you know, if popular conception is that doing this or that is evil or toxic or taboo, there's a high probability that such judgments are correct, helping us to survive and thrive. Even with all the false positives (which tends to be the lack of tolerance towards people that are different from us), dismissing our heritage would not be wise. Plus usually the guidelines are simple, like being a murdering maniac counts as evil, though somebody should tell those jihadists.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#233
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Typical HN. How about someone answering the argument that will really be made by governments instead of the pointless one the NSA, etc have already answered. You can downvote me but you don't get a downvote in governments around the world when they outlaw real encryption. I was ready to up-vote your argument because I agree with the first two paragraphs but the snark turned me off from supporting you. Leave it out…

[deleted]

The up-vote wasn't about giving you karma, it's about making your comment more visible. If you didn't care about visibility than you wouldn't be posting in the first place.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't. The government would just have the private keys so they could decrypt traffic easily.

Kind of like the TSA approved locks for your baggage. Those are very secure and can be opened only by the government officials, last I heard. The only downside is that those TSA master keys might become available to the third party somehow, but I don't see that happening anytime soon, since we can always trust the government to keep such information secure.

No lock is secure, ever.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#235
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

The up-vote wasn't about giving you karma, it's about making your comment more visible. If you didn't care about visibility than you wouldn't be posting in the first place.

Good point. In the future, I'll try to remember that I'm wasting my time. Too late to delete most of them.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#236

"One key premise here seems to be that prior to the Snowden reporting, The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so Western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks. That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April 2013 at the Boston Ma…

This argument misses the point IMHO: the US government was investing astronomically large sums of money in an infrastructure that was fated to quickly become less and less effective. In doing so, they were even willing to violate basic constitutional rights.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#237
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, character encoding is clearly the work of terrorists.

If you come to America, you should have to learn the AMERICAN Standard Code for Information Interchange. Speak the language. None of this Unicode i18n nonsense!

"Press  for billing, or please hold for an attendant."

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#238
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of like the TSA approved locks for your baggage. Those are very secure and can be opened only by the government officials, last I heard. The only downside is that those TSA master keys might become available to the third party somehow, but I don't see that happening anytime soon, since we can always trust the government to keep such information secure.

Not "might become available", they already are - https://github.com/Xyl2k/TSA-Travel-Sentry-master-keys Someone posted a photo of master keys and Internet was, as usual, the Internet.

Call me crazy, but I think that may have been the joke.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought is that if we implement a back door policy, the public will have communication links which are much easier to compromise by any party, while terrorists can still easily use encryption and/or steganography to secure their communications. All the back doors accomplish in the end is harming the general public.

It's not just that federally-mandated backdoors increase the chance of compromise (although they certainly do). If the U.S. government can mandate that technology companies provide access through encryption, then so can other countries. Sovereignty is still a powerful concept under international law. So imagine if Apple, upon condition of selling iPhones within China, must provide the Chinese government with a backdo…

> I don't think that federal intelligence and law enforcement officials calling for backdoors have fully thought through the consequences

I think assuming that level of incompetence is a big claim.

It's simply much more likely that the actual plans/goals and the talking points and press releases about the plans/goals are mostly unrelated, as usual. You can infer that those calling for backdoors have decided that calling for backdoors is the best thing to say, inferring anything more requires more information.

Re: Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror Attack

#240
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with having everybody possess potentially deathly tools is not terrorism, but crime in general. I, for myself, can think of a lot more crimes committed by normal people than the government. The historical argument is of course not completely unreasonable, but there are also an awful lot of discrepancies when looking at states government today and 300 years ago. At least in Europe, where I live, the govern…

At least in Europe, where I live, the government can be trusted in a lot of issues --- especially it is highly likely that they _try_ to do what is best and are no "evil emperors". The Europeans are fond of reminding Americans that we think 200 years is a long time. So, how long ago was the Stasi disbanded, again?

You can not compare our situation to that of the DDR. If there is more surveillance going on than we currently know, it is certainly not as much as in that time -- a big chunk of the population were reporting to the "Ministerium für Staatssicherheit" directly, which was a well known fact.
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