When you take away our freedom in order to stop terrorism, then the terrorists win. This is one guy in an estate car. Amber Rudd is not a democrat if she really believes this
UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
291–300 of 394 posts
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#292One reason it's good that governments cannot force WhatsApp to disable end-to-end encryption is that different governments have different definitions of nefarious activity. While the British Government could arguably use a backdoor to stop terrorist attacks, what would stop Pakistan or Saudi Arabia from using the same back door to enforce blasphemy laws? The issue is the same: should a private company help law enforcement by disabling encryption?
It's nice to know WhatsApp can help people break the law in places where the law itself is immoral.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't seem very thin from here. Encrypted messaging is a mathematical fact that your government is attempting to deny. If I need a communication to be secret, I will encrypt it, and I don't need special software.
Not all people who need it can write their own encryption.
I'm sure a 6 years old kid can learn how to use OTP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad) with friends.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#294We're a very long way from being a totalitarian state and likely to remain so for quite some time but, make no mistake, this is the thin end of a very long and ultimately very fat wedge. It therefore behooves us well to hold the government to account when they try to get us to swallow more of that wedge. Sure, encryption helps terrorists as well as ordinary citizens but it's my belief that freedom and privacy are mor…
Suppose we came upon a time where some new technology had emerged allowing anyone with an average intelligence to be able to create a virulent bio weapon from materials so common and available that their restriction is impossible. In this world, we are almost surely doomed, but perhaps the only hope for survival on earth (ignore space diaspora for the moment) would be from instituting an all pervasive surveilance pr…
Disagree should not equal downvote.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point, some politician is going to have to man up and speak the truth. The public will have to either accept that the government can try and protect it from low probability events by invading every aspect of our lives or people will have to accept the idea that there is a sub 1% chance of being killed by a crazy person.
> sub 1% chance of being killed by a crazy person. Please don't attribute homicidal political views to insanity. These people don't have schizophrenia, and people with schizophrenia aren't terrorists.
Terrorists are politically motivated murderers. So are soldiers in any army.
The only difference is in who they answer to.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing that concerns me about this perspective that everyday use of encryption is bad is that it makes no damn sense. Pandora's box is opened; if you force software solutions to backdoor their technology, someone will just step up who doesn't care about your laws. There are no global treaties on software development, and we aren't going to be signing any such thing any day soon. Even if we could force something li…
People can simply send random binary data to keep authorities busy.
That would be somewhat entertaining, and reminds me of someone I read about years ago who was accidentally added to a watchlist, and no one was willing to remove him, so he started generating as much data as he could, just to keep them busy. I can't find a link, sadly.
I don't think it's a good solution, though. This is going to sound like an argument that you hear about privacy by people who don't understand why privacy matters, but I think on this issue, it holds a little more truth: To be honest, I think the people who are likely to care to do this are people who are advocates for privacy and are tech savvy, and people who have something to hide. I don't think it's terribly difficult, with the resources the global Intelligence Community has to build a profile and dump people into those two buckets with a fair degree of accuracy. Everyone who's not generating random garbage data would still be observable, so it wouldn't really change much outside of the group that's acting. But for those acting, suddenly there's a red flag that they can look for, and then when they see it, start building a profile to figure out if you're a tech person with an interest in privacy, or someone doing something they don't want seen, and act accordingly. In the mean time, we waste time generating garbage instead of just using good enough encryption, and making it so easy to use that people don't even have to know they're using it.
Now, if we could somehow implant babies with a chip that causes them to generate random noise (something babies are already pretty good at, mind you) from birth, that might be worth something. There's no profile building if the noise is just something that humans make by being alive.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#297Amber Rudd is the UK's Home Secretary not just any minister. "We need to make sure that our intelligence services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted Whatsapp." She has said she is "calling in" technology companies this week to try to "deliver a solution". Marr asks if they refuse to do that, will you legislate to force them to change? She's not drawn on that. Interview is here: http://www.bbc.co.u…
I'm surprised I haven't heard the IP bill mentioned other than here in this whole matter. Why all the fanfare? Especially if it's something they can already just do quietly; the public controversy from that law has mostly passed over.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suppose we came upon a time where some new technology had emerged allowing anyone with an average intelligence to be able to create a virulent bio weapon from materials so common and available that their restriction is impossible. In this world, we are almost surely doomed, but perhaps the only hope for survival on earth (ignore space diaspora for the moment) would be from instituting an all pervasive surveilance pr…
> I do not see the value of privacy trumping survival. Survival is not a value. Survival is a prerequisite for a lot of other values, but it's not a value in and of itself. As many people have difficulty grasping what living in a world without privacy would be like, let me propose a different solution: We'll put everyone into solitary confinement, to ensure everyone's survival, as I do not see the value of freedom of…
You presuppose many things about my intentions. I frequently post on the internet about the need for freedom and privacy today. However, as I briefly laid out, I do wonder whether technological innovations will at one point allow lone individuals to kill not a few dozen (with semiautomatics), but tens of thousands, and if at that point our current models will be insufficient for the purpose of survival...that is, no survival without giving up many freedoms. This is not a value judgement, indeed I would applaud the many who would rather die than be controlled completely.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#299We're a very long way from being a totalitarian state and likely to remain so for quite some time but, make no mistake, this is the thin end of a very long and ultimately very fat wedge. It therefore behooves us well to hold the government to account when they try to get us to swallow more of that wedge. Sure, encryption helps terrorists as well as ordinary citizens but it's my belief that freedom and privacy are mor…
> The work of police and security services has never been easy in a free society,
I think the work of security services have never been easier as it is now thanks to the massive use of social networks and mobile phones, CCTVs everywhere, GEOINT, etc. At least for the Five Eyes.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not all people who need it can write their own encryption.
You don't have to, because it is already written and fairly easy to use. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to encrypt a message using asymmetric cryptography, that will be difficult - if possible to break. People who will want to conceal contents of their messages could still send them encrypted via WhatsApp or other platform regardless if there is a backdoor or not. UK Home Secretary has just displayed unprece…
> People who will want to conceal contents of their messages could still send them encrypted via WhatsApp or other platform
Even if posession of encrypted messages without the ability to decrypt carries a 10 year prison sentence?
(Yes, this has serious enforceability problems, but that doesn't mean it can't become law)