51–60 of 394 posts
If people knew the damage these idiots do, they would be in the streets.
Oh wait, they already are in the streets...
How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? It may use other protocols to encode content (images, tweets, fb posts etc.). For me it seems to be more in a direction of so called "Big Brother" than real counter-terrorism.
How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? That's not an issue. Writing solid encryption software is very difficult on its own. You will hear "do not roll your own crypto" all the time from security experts. We don't live in a James Bond universe and it's beyond the reach of terrorist organisations.
Sure that can go wrong as anything can, but it's far from rolling your own crypto and makes things a lot easier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. A hammer, a knife or a government can be pretty useful, or pretty violent - depending on how you use it. This alone does not imply that a hammer, a knife or a government should not exist or be banned. edit: words
What about guns, tanks or hydrogen bombs?
How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? It may use other protocols to encode content (images, tweets, fb posts etc.). For me it seems to be more in a direction of so called "Big Brother" than real counter-terrorism.
How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? That's not an issue. Writing solid encryption software is very difficult on its own. You will hear "do not roll your own crypto" all the time from security experts. We don't live in a James Bond universe and it's beyond the reach of terrorist organisations.
Are you suggesting gpg has been backdoored? A simple wrapper around gpg is not-beyond terrorist organisations.
Hmm, this definitely brings up an interesting discussion I don't think HN has had before, especially something in a similar vein since Apple+San Bernardino fiasco. Obviously privacy is something that HN holds very close to its heart. But I'm interested in what do people here have to say about the privacy features are used by terrible people to do terrible things. And I want to share something that I think is one of t…
I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. A hammer, a knife or a government can be pretty useful, or pretty violent - depending on how you use it. This alone does not imply that a hammer, a knife or a government should not exist or be banned. edit: words
Well, that's a very evasive argument in my opinion. It's absolutely true that objects are neutral, but you can't make a blanket argument with topics like these. That argument has been made lots of times by many (including me).
But it eventually breaks down. You can't give a child a gun and when the kid shoots someone say it was the kid's fault. Whose fault is it? I'm guessing you're going to say the adult responsible for putting the gun within the reach of a child. You're still taking away an object from the kid. In this case it was a kid who didn't know better.
Now this isn't a narrow argument. This becomes interesting when you get to powerful things, like say nuclear weapons. They aren't inherently evil too. But if you look around, UN is trying to ban them[1]. Shouldn't UN ban them?
What I'm trying to get at is that you can't always but the blame on people. Just like you can't blame a child for not knowing better, you can't blame a person for knowing better (although people do). Sometimes you just have to take the gun (or nuclear weapons or encryption) away.
How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? It may use other protocols to encode content (images, tweets, fb posts etc.). For me it seems to be more in a direction of so called "Big Brother" than real counter-terrorism.
She's probably being led by the intelligence services on this, and of course they have ulterior motives, their ultimate project is to collect all signals, or as many as they can manage, which apps like whatsapp are thwarting at present. Why can't we collect all the signals all the time? This is incredibly dangerous for our society, no-one should have that much power. That power isn't about terrorism (or even very use…
How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? It may use other protocols to encode content (images, tweets, fb posts etc.). For me it seems to be more in a direction of so called "Big Brother" than real counter-terrorism.
How do they want to prevent someone from creating his own end-to-end encryption app? That's not an issue. Writing solid encryption software is very difficult on its own. You will hear "do not roll your own crypto" all the time from security experts. We don't live in a James Bond universe and it's beyond the reach of terrorist organisations.
Beyound the reach of the terrorist organisations? We have already seen pretty sophisticated operations by relatively small crime organizations (like exploiting pseudorandom generators in casino slot machines). There's an established black market for exploits. I think writing an end-to-end encryption app is not much more difficult compared to this. What's more, it will even be perfectly legal in many countries, meaning you could legally hire professionals to do the job. Terrorist organisations won't need to esablish a development office in SV to write the app, they will only need to know how to use Tor and wire money to the app producer. Which isn't such a huge competence to ask for.
Update: One solution of 'make sure' is the source code of the monitoring software must be reviewed by independent and trusted software engineers/experts.
PS. Downvoting my post doesn't solve any problem. If you have any better idea, welcome to post it out. Thanks
It's an incredibly foolish thing for a minister to suggest. She demonstrates a complete lack of understanding on the subject and has commited political seppuku. Has she never read Orwell, Huxley, seen articles about tyrannical governments or even heard about the reasons the US constitution was drawn up?
Since the current prime minister supports her, I doubt it. It's an absurd position, but not without support in the current administration, just like her outspoken views on immigration.
Hmm, this definitely brings up an interesting discussion I don't think HN has had before, especially something in a similar vein since Apple+San Bernardino fiasco. Obviously privacy is something that HN holds very close to its heart. But I'm interested in what do people here have to say about the privacy features are used by terrible people to do terrible things. And I want to share something that I think is one of t…
Although we should have mechanism to protect from mass random surveillance.