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Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

act.eff.org

301–310 of 361 posts

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#301

All of you smart arses out here and there, we know it, we know. We know, VPNs and other stuff in between are not so secure and not private. Stop saying it, don't you have some other piece of knowledge to be proud of? for god's sake. Tor and Signal are better than Public Cloud, Chrome & SMS if you're looking for privacy. Don't you have common sense? - HTTPS is more secure and private than HTTP - Signal is more secure…

You know because some smart arse said it.

I don't have the technical skills to improve it. Someone I inform might.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#302

All of you smart arses out here and there, we know it, we know. We know, VPNs and other stuff in between are not so secure and not private. Stop saying it, don't you have some other piece of knowledge to be proud of? for god's sake. Tor and Signal are better than Public Cloud, Chrome & SMS if you're looking for privacy. Don't you have common sense? - HTTPS is more secure and private than HTTP - Signal is more secure…

I don't understand what people have against VPNs. I don't want my ISP knowing when I use Tor, since my ISP is in the same country as me and that makes it easier for them to have access to me if they wanted to. Using a VPN means my ISP only sees me connecting to a VPN (which is arguably more innocuous). Then you can use Tor from there. And if you only use HTTPS sites, then only you and the end site can read the traffi…

[deleted]

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#303
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, its not the best marketing campaign but I'm not marketing for them so its fine as an opinion, isn't it?

EFF is doing something . Countless organizations are working on climate change in meaningful ways. Spouting hopeless negativity about their efforts isn't interesting or helpful. In fact I think it is harmful because it perpetuates toxic hopelessness and discourages people from taking action. You're entitled to your opinion and you have a right to express yourself but you don't have an obligation. Please consider the…

> You're entitled to your opinion and you have a right to express yourself but you don't have an obligation. Please consider the effect your words can have.

What you say is nice, what you mean is rude. You wanna work on your manners there.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#304

I have been wondering if there is a way to satisfy law enforcement without breaking encryption or adding backdoors. An idea: what if platforms allowed law enforcement (with a warrant) to conduct rainbow table attacks against encrypted content of a specific user? In other words, what if platforms allowed law enforcement to determine whether a specific known object (e.g. a known photo or video) was sent / stored by a u…

>to determine whether a specific known object (e.g. a known photo or video) was sent / stored by a user rather than decrypting all sent or stored objects?

It is standard practice to make it so that it is impossible to detect identical plaintext. What you are describing would count as a backdoor. So you might as well instead make it explicit and save any sort of brute forcing (rainbow tables?).

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#305

Back in late medieval europa most postal services had a back room, called cabinet noir where letters where carefully opened, read and resealed to check them for signs of treason against the crown or cross. These were often abused for what we today would call economic espionage. For these reasons many rich people employed private couriers who traveled to their business partners in person to hand over messages. Those w…

> Today many argue the state has a need to access such correspondence to prevent crime, but such a need is like the need of an addict: nothing good can come from it and the people should not enable these institutions to satisfy an ever growing demand for insight into their private lives. One must remember that democracy is founded on the believe that thoughts and words are not crimes and everyone must be free to expr…

> We need to rather argue that the moral cost and side-effects of public surveillance far outweighs its usefulness.

The argument I make is that it is more cost effective to develop a society where one does not need to commit crimes to get by in the first place. Law enforcement is reactionary and can only punish when crimes are already committed. While we shouldn't get rid of law enforcement, because crime will always exist, let's look to societies that have low crime (and societies that have high crime) and see what we can learn from them (and improve upon). Such policy is far more advantageous for citizens.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#306
post #254

Back in late medieval europa most postal services had a back room, called cabinet noir where letters where carefully opened, read and resealed to check them for signs of treason against the crown or cross. These were often abused for what we today would call economic espionage. For these reasons many rich people employed private couriers who traveled to their business partners in person to hand over messages. Those w…

To paraphrase someone I know, "once they run out of criminals, they'll just start catching people they don't like". Once they have this ability, it will be much harder to make them give it up.

>To paraphrase someone I know, "once they run out of criminals, they'll just start catching people they don't like".

>Once they have this ability, it will be much harder to make them give it up.

There's an argument to be made that this is already happening and, in fact, has been happening for decades.

I'm of course referring to the "War on Drugs."

There's quite a bit of analysis in the literature to show that restrictions on mind-altering substances was explicitly introduced to disadvantage particular populations.

What's more, despite popular perception[0], the "crime" rate is at its lowest levels in more than 50 years[1], yet we continue to fund[2] law "enforcement" at levels even higher than when we were at the peak of the "crime" rate during that time.

So. Since crime rates have plummeted, yet we're spending more than ever, it's likely your paraphrase is already the case right now.

More's the pity.

[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/17/facts-about...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/america-s...

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#307
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFF is doing something . Countless organizations are working on climate change in meaningful ways. Spouting hopeless negativity about their efforts isn't interesting or helpful. In fact I think it is harmful because it perpetuates toxic hopelessness and discourages people from taking action. You're entitled to your opinion and you have a right to express yourself but you don't have an obligation. Please consider the…

> You're entitled to your opinion and you have a right to express yourself but you don't have an obligation. Please consider the effect your words can have. What you say is nice, what you mean is rude. You wanna work on your manners there.

[deleted]

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#308
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the cops ever needed widespread surveillance capability. They can park a van across the street from my house or office. They don't need access to the telco infrastructure to do their jobs. The lack of foresight in previous generations is not an excuse to perpetuate their mistakes.

I'm not talking about widespread surveillance. Decades ago, if they had evidence you were involved in crime, they could apply for a warrant to tap your phone, search your house, or read your mail. That's focused surveillance, not mass, and it's under the oversight of a judge. In a world of end-to-end encryption, they can't realistically find useful evidence by doing those things any more. Parking their van outside do…

I don't think they ever needed the ability to tap phones or read mail. Capabilities that were repeatedly abused, just like internet surveillance.

Where will I commit this crime? Somewhere in meatspace or it doesn't matter. Cops can work backward from there.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#309
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about widespread surveillance. Decades ago, if they had evidence you were involved in crime, they could apply for a warrant to tap your phone, search your house, or read your mail. That's focused surveillance, not mass, and it's under the oversight of a judge. In a world of end-to-end encryption, they can't realistically find useful evidence by doing those things any more. Parking their van outside do…

I don't think they ever needed the ability to tap phones or read mail. Capabilities that were repeatedly abused, just like internet surveillance. Where will I commit this crime? Somewhere in meatspace or it doesn't matter. Cops can work backward from there.

I'm pretty confident you can commit crimes that matter without physical presence.

Most people don't approve of making millions from insider trading, for example.

Or of cryptolocking beloved photo collections and holding them ransom for bitcoin.

Re: Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

#310

Back in late medieval europa most postal services had a back room, called cabinet noir where letters where carefully opened, read and resealed to check them for signs of treason against the crown or cross. These were often abused for what we today would call economic espionage. For these reasons many rich people employed private couriers who traveled to their business partners in person to hand over messages. Those w…

> Today many argue the state has a need to access such correspondence to prevent crime, but such a need is like the need of an addict: nothing good can come from it and the people should not enable these institutions to satisfy an ever growing demand for insight into their private lives. One must remember that democracy is founded on the believe that thoughts and words are not crimes and everyone must be free to expr…

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