I am picturing a scene in which few of our ancestors, out of fear for fire, and seeing someone hurt by fire, decided to ban making fire altogether. Since they don't know about "fire", we better educate them.
John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
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Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#72Is it really worth leaving a thoughtful comment about such an ignorant statement? It's clear to me that these people have no idea what encryption actually is and only have a cursory understanding of what it does. They're aware that criminals and terrorists can use encryption to communicate covertly. That's why they want to ban it. Are they also aware that the exact same technology is used to protect their online bank…
I think Congress needs their own dedicated ELI5 hotline :)
r/ELIaEO - Explain like I'm an elected official
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#73USA to ban too difficult math problems?
Doesn't this mean their citizens would be less safe from foreign (and domestic) spies than foreigners are from their spies? Doesn't this mean that foreign businesses who actually care about their security would abandon their software and IT services? If they can crack it, others can, or will learn soon to, crack it.
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#74Is it really worth leaving a thoughtful comment about such an ignorant statement? It's clear to me that these people have no idea what encryption actually is and only have a cursory understanding of what it does. They're aware that criminals and terrorists can use encryption to communicate covertly. That's why they want to ban it. Are they also aware that the exact same technology is used to protect their online bank…
These are simply power hungry politicians trying to control our lives. The only way to solve this is to create a strong voter base that cares. What I really love about the 2nd amendment is the kind of public support it enjoys and the politicians are forced to support it in either letter or spirit.
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#75> "...News emerging from Paris — as well as evidence from a Belgian ISIS raid in January — suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted." https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...
Does it matter? I can hear it now:
"B-b-but they could have, and if they had we wouldn't have been able to intercept it."
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#76Thought: s/encryption/guns/
Why do politicians not have identical positions on both guns and privacy? The root argument is the same: that citizen can, or can't, be trusted.
Yet almost all the pro guns are anti privacy and vice versa.
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#77I love how Republicans believe that outlawing guns won't stop criminals from having guns while at the same time believing that outlawing encryption will keep criminals from using encryption. Encryption methods are far easier to transport and spread illegally than gun are.
"Republicans" Rand Paul is pretty openly pro-encryption. Hillary Clinton is equivocating; I think she's probably anti-encryption. These may be exceptions that prove the rule but I think what we're really seeing is a combination of ignorance, pandering and authoritarianism across the spectrum.
Hillay clinton is probably pro-hide-that-hardisk.
Rand Paul is libertarian and mostly anti-gov. We need more people like him in Washington.
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
OpenBSD cd image would give you absolutely nothing when it comes to defending against state level actors sorry. And you are assuming that in their proposed reality that would be as easily achievable as it is today, you'll be surprised how effective can a crackdown be once a government sets its mind to it.
You are living in a delusion, they can't crack the standard encryption that comes with openssh, and that is the type of thing they want to ban. People can easily hide data streams inside video-streams/ text-files/images to circumvent trivial screening. The government won't be able to do anything effective without massive costs and draconian measures. Not to mention people outside the US can carry on however they like…
You've missed the 2nd half of my post I see, I said that if any even half arsed measures are going to be in place the crackdown will become more effective with time.
If you can stall or slow down the evolution of open encryption sufficiently so state actors can catch up then that's effectively makes that encryption useless.
Today for example the NSA can break weak DSA configurations, and factor weak RSA keys in 2-3 years they'll gain other capabilities.
What will happen if say we do wake up to a post quantum world with much of our asymmetric cryptography being worthless. Do you really see people being able to develop a new RSA level family of algorithms at a hackaton?
If you can't increase the work that needed to be done to break your encryption at the same rate as your adversary increases their capabilities you are going to lose and lose badly.
And draconian measures and extreme costs is just what they are proposing, I'm not advocating that it's going to be effective at first or cheap, but dismissing it as even if they want too they will never be able too is just as foolish as voting for Trump ironically to give him a sympathy vote.
Go ask people from East Germany, pre-Glasnost Russia and even some countries that exist today how easy it is going to be to evade surveillance enmass.
You should never be dismissive of threats no matter how far fetched or unlikely they are or how incapable your opponent at executing them might be, this is probably one of the more important lessons one can take from history.
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#79Is it really worth leaving a thoughtful comment about such an ignorant statement? It's clear to me that these people have no idea what encryption actually is and only have a cursory understanding of what it does. They're aware that criminals and terrorists can use encryption to communicate covertly. That's why they want to ban it. Are they also aware that the exact same technology is used to protect their online bank…
Keep in mind that McCain is up for re-election next year. Some of this is overstated, although I figure he probably does believe the government should have a backdoor and doesn't fully understand the implications of that.
It's true that the title is somewhat overstated, however the statement that really motivated my comment was the one from the head of the NYPD.
> We have a huge operation in New York City working closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force where we’re monitoring and they go dark, because basically they go onto an encrypted app, they’re going onto sites that we can’t access.
Re: John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack
#80I love how Republicans believe that outlawing guns won't stop criminals from having guns while at the same time believing that outlawing encryption will keep criminals from using encryption. Encryption methods are far easier to transport and spread illegally than gun are.
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