Either pass a law to do this or shut the fuck up. No one cares about his opinion and the justice department itself has no way to enforce this without a law being passed first which is not their purview. Otherwise this fucking moron should shut the fuck up because he clearly doesn't understand the technology and the rest of us are not interested in his stupid fucking rantings.
Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
41–50 of 230 posts
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but I can just refuse to decrypt my data. They can just break physical locks.
This is what a lot of people in our community seemingly refuse to recognize. For all intents and purposes, encryption is a unbreakable lock that can serve to perfectly hide valuable criminal evidence. Such a thing wasn't possible when our laws were written and has never before been possible in the physical world. Its existence has potential to be a huge shift in how we enforce the law. Regardless of our views on encr…
Except it’s not a discussion worth having.
If you have a back door, it’s there for everybody not just the people it’s intended for. Additionally, there’s not going to be a way to force people to use the encryption that happens to have a backdoor.
It’s an algorithm. People who don’t obey the rules will just use a more secure method when they need to protect something.
This is why there’s no point to having the conversations except to explain it to people.
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#43Did he basically just announce a false flag? "Obviously, the Department would like to engage with the private sector in exploring solutions that will provide lawful access. While we remain open to a cooperative approach, the time to achieve that may be limited. Key countries, including important allies, have been moving toward legislative and regulatory solutions. I think it is prudent to anticipate that a major inci…
I'm no fan of Bill Barr, but I don't read this that way, no. It reads to me more like he's saying that from a planning perspective it's better to figure the worst thing that could happen and have a plan already developed that could handle that, rather than being caught by surprise and then having law and policy made in a mad, panicked rush. (In other words, let's not do with cybersecurity policy what we did with coun…
> have a plan already developed that could handle that
But... we do have a plan, which is to just not do it in spite of any crisis or whatever. He is misleadingly framing it here like we don't have the ability to backdoor encryption which has never been the problem.
He clearly states that what we need to be weary about is public opinion changing, which is basically like saying that we should just get ready to compromise our standards in preparation for the day where reactionary desire is able to overcome our "sober" thinking of the present, or else fear the government coming in and doing it sloppily and by force.
Clearly that's irrational. We should resist it now and we should resist it then too, for just the same reasons we resist it now. There's no technology issue here, just an ethical/political one.
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#44Did he basically just announce a false flag? "Obviously, the Department would like to engage with the private sector in exploring solutions that will provide lawful access. While we remain open to a cooperative approach, the time to achieve that may be limited. Key countries, including important allies, have been moving toward legislative and regulatory solutions. I think it is prudent to anticipate that a major inci…
It's either a false flag or fear mongering, neither of which should be used to take away rights.
You are missing a third rail, but because YC censors, in its idiocy, those types of things will never penetrate the echo chambers of smug.
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what a lot of people in our community seemingly refuse to recognize. For all intents and purposes, encryption is a unbreakable lock that can serve to perfectly hide valuable criminal evidence. Such a thing wasn't possible when our laws were written and has never before been possible in the physical world. Its existence has potential to be a huge shift in how we enforce the law. Regardless of our views on encr…
The problem is that there's no way for the government to actually enforce this 100% - sure, on the average person, but we have to assume that someone engaged in espionage / terrorism / etc. is going to take additional precautions. The threat doesn't go away by doing this.
Yeah you get the majority easy enough. They’re mostly law abiding anyway, so you conjure up as much petty crap to pin on them to justify the police state.
Meanwhile the connected and savvy minority coddle pedophiles and grifters among their lot.
These are not really new concerns or ideas. The context has shifted from “meatspace” to “cyber space”. Generally the old ideas of trust and verify, avoid unenforceable, spurious, overreach still apply.
There’s an interesting parallel to the Pareto principle here, IMO. Society is pushing for more and more policing of the 80%ish and less on the 20%ish.
Wealth inequality, and civil rights inequality, filter into our tech contexts.
Too bad we largely focus on these things in our favored context rather than see it as the general political plight of the masses, as it really should be considered, IMO.
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but I can just refuse to decrypt my data. They can just break physical locks.
This is what a lot of people in our community seemingly refuse to recognize. For all intents and purposes, encryption is a unbreakable lock that can serve to perfectly hide valuable criminal evidence. Such a thing wasn't possible when our laws were written and has never before been possible in the physical world. Its existence has potential to be a huge shift in how we enforce the law. Regardless of our views on encr…
> Regardless of our views on encryption, we need to have a conversation about that shift.
Not trying to be snarky here: I don't understand what this conversation looks like. What does it look like? What purpose does it serve, what it's ultimate goal?
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but I can just refuse to decrypt my data. They can just break physical locks.
This is what a lot of people in our community seemingly refuse to recognize. For all intents and purposes, encryption is a unbreakable lock that can serve to perfectly hide valuable criminal evidence. Such a thing wasn't possible when our laws were written and has never before been possible in the physical world. Its existence has potential to be a huge shift in how we enforce the law. Regardless of our views on encr…
But we do have this discussion, but the authorities don't want it. We say "either we have secure communications, or not", they say "I don't believe you, let us have access".
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#48He claims encryption is "warrant proof" which is not true. You can have a court order someone to open the lock. They want the ability to dig through people's stuff without them knowing. That's what it's really about.
Sure, but I can just refuse to decrypt my data. They can just break physical locks.
And when a physical lock is broken it's known by anyone who can observe the lock.
When a decryption has a backdoor, who knows when it's been decrypted?
Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#49Did he basically just announce a false flag? "Obviously, the Department would like to engage with the private sector in exploring solutions that will provide lawful access. While we remain open to a cooperative approach, the time to achieve that may be limited. Key countries, including important allies, have been moving toward legislative and regulatory solutions. I think it is prudent to anticipate that a major inci…
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Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Refusing to decrypt is itself a crime (contempt of court?), so the government can jail you for years that way. Edit: this doesn’t help in cases like terrorism where the owner of the device has already been killed of course.
I am not sure you can be compelled to remember something you forgot. And nobody can tell you if you remember or not, or if you will ever remember again. So no, some judge may try to hold you in contempt of court, and it may work for a while, but at some point -- if you have a good lawyer it will turn in to a civil rights issue. Also, you could plead the 5th as well. NOTE: I am not a lawyer, and these are just my opin…