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Illegal Math

blog.prakashvenkat.com

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Re: Illegal Math

#51

Post by dahart »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31
slg wrote: post #14

>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government. I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a ve…

>Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. But it hasn't been able to trawl for evidence mechanically and automatically. Now it has the technology to do that. The default has always been privacy, for practical reasons. Encryption simply continues that tradition by continuing to make evidence gathering non-trivial.

Wiretap warrants aren't practical, nor were they the default; they are the result of years of public discussion and legal battles.

I agree that the situation is changing; the technology to batch surveil everyone at once is new, but the argument over privacy and where governments bounds are isn't.

Re: Illegal Math

#52

Post by Zigurd »

slg wrote: post #14

>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government. I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a ve…

Our government, nor any government, has ever been able to do the impractical, never mind the provably impossible.

The question is not whether we are restraining the government from knocking down some special doors. The question is more like whether we are preventing the government from using telepathy or defying gravity. No, nobody is preventing that except reality itself.

Re: Illegal Math

#53

Post by dbpokorny »

slg wrote: post #14

>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government. I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a ve…

Our government has been prevented from knocking down whichever door it has wanted to by things like guns and revolutions.

The elite have been revealed as perverts and mass murderers.

Rip their genitals out. Kill their children. Fuck government.

There will be blood in the streets.

Re: Illegal Math

#54

Post by Zigurd »

tptacek wrote: post #13
natch wrote: post #12

Buried in the article below the clever though not original point that encryption is not math, is a much more important point: This debate should really be about whether or not people have the right to have secrets. If your answer is "no" then you ought to explain how you square that with the fact that many of our everyday activities can be considered criminal in some jurisdictions.

I understand where the sentiment is coming from, but the point you are making here is incoherent . Your argument is literally this: people need encryption so that they can conceal evidence of crimes . I think next time you pose this argument, you should remove the bit about how your actions might be illegal in some jurisdiction or other. It isn't doing the work for you that you think it is.

Encryption is part of reality, like gravity. We can say "government agents have been able to vault fences for hundreds of years." So fences should only be four feet high, so they can't conceal crimes or prevent entry?

Government is limited by reality, math, physics, the height of walls, the fact that telepathy isn't a thing, etc. Encryption is just one more limitation.

Re: Illegal Math

#55

Post by yoklov »

dbpokorny wrote: post #53
slg wrote: post #14

>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government. I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a ve…

Our government has been prevented from knocking down whichever door it has wanted to by things like guns and revolutions. The elite have been revealed as perverts and mass murderers. Rip their genitals out. Kill their children. Fuck government. There will be blood in the streets.

At the risk of invoking a meme... That escalated quickly.

Re: Illegal Math

#56

Post by joeyo »

bfstein wrote: post #3

Disclaimer: I agree with the author on the encryption debate. However, it's a slippery slope to say that encryption can't be illegal because in is math, and math can't be illegal. It's equivalent to say that making bombs is chemistry, and chemistry can't be illegal. It's an oversimplification. Presenting the practical consequences of a backdoor produces a far more sound argument.

The math-cannot-be-illegal argument gets more difficult when you consider that the digital representations of files are just really long numbers: Copyright infringement is making a copy of a (really secret) number. Possession of child pornography is the possession of a (really bad) number. etc.

I think the banning of encryption or forcing encryption products to have government backdoors would be horrifically bad policies, I don't think there is anything in our current legal framework that prevents it.

Re: Illegal Math

#57

Post by nekopa »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #27
programmer_dude wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doing physics or chemistry can directly harm people. Doing math or drawing pictures can't. Like the article said analogies are no fun. I agree with your premise but not with your conclusion. You will perhaps agree that encryption has the potential to directly harm people just as physics or chemistry?

Doing physics or chemistry can directly harm people. Doing math or drawing pictures can't. This argument might have worked, up until the point when they criminalized cartoon child pornography. You will perhaps agree that encryption has the potential to directly harm people just as physics or chemistry? No.

From what I remember, the child pon drawing law was about people taking child pon photography, and running it through a Photoshop filter to make it look like a drawing. That way people were trying to get around the law. Also, it was trivial to return the 'drawing' back into a photo by reversing the filter.

Re: Illegal Math

#58

Post by partomniscient »

guelo wrote: post #49
slg wrote: post #14

>Various government agencies are crooning that they should be able to knock down whichever doors they please because they're the government. I think this analogy is apt but it actually works against the author's point. Our government has legally been allowed to knock down whichever door it has wanted to for centuries assuming it has received the proper warrants. An encryption door cannot be knocked down. That is a ve…

A smartphone and the network services that power it have way more information then any personal journal ever did. It has every one you're associated with, every topic you're interested in, everywhere you've been, etc. Society did not fall apart back when the government did not have access to the complete life record of every potential criminal.

Yet the government, the corporations _and_ the criminals now all want access to the complete life record of every citizen.

Re: Illegal Math

#60

Post by hahagavkdr »

Clearly the writer is not a mathematician. It is easy to see that math can be illegal. It is enough to consider the obvious example of encryption in violation of various export laws and we are done.
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