Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

theage.com.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 107 posts

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#71

Post by nine_k »

shermozle wrote: post #38
cynicalbastard wrote: post #37

freedom-loving internet users will soon know how gun owners feel. every single bogus argument for gun control or "assault weapons" bans can, and will be, used against internet speech freedom and information privacy, now that the western political establishment has taken it upon themselves to strip you of your free speech rights after seeing how trivial it was stripping you of your guns, and how much enthusiasm their…

So if I go crazy armed with military grade encryption, how many school kids can I kill before the cops get me? Sorry, your argument is bullshit.

If you encrypt something, isn't it because you're trying to hide child molestation and sexual exploitation footage?

"Think of the children" is one of the most powerful cards there is, and it will be played in full force by governments, only less elegantly than you just did.

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#72

Post by xg15 »

roughcoat wrote: post #49
diego_moita wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You didn't even make an argument He did. He said the children in Newtown's kindergarden and Columbine School were not killed with encryption. It is a pretty big difference. For a non-American this is a pretty good argument, IMO.

What nonsense. It's obvious what the parent comment meant. Law abiding gun owners by definition do not kill innocent children, just like law abiding people do not use encryption nefariously. Encryption and guns are both tools, with nothing intrinsically good or evil about them. Yet law abiding gun owners were punished and had their rights stripped throughout most of the world on the pretense that it would somehow hel…

Nope. The argument was that law-violating gun owners kill children (and others) while law-violating encryption does not.

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#73

Post by cynicalbastard »

andy_ppp wrote: post #64
cynicalbastard wrote: post #37

freedom-loving internet users will soon know how gun owners feel. every single bogus argument for gun control or "assault weapons" bans can, and will be, used against internet speech freedom and information privacy, now that the western political establishment has taken it upon themselves to strip you of your free speech rights after seeing how trivial it was stripping you of your guns, and how much enthusiasm their…

This is a brilliant comment except for the fact these weapons you presumably own will never, ever be able to overthrow the US government; a few hackers employed by Russia already did that anyway. Secondly, if what you say is true I assume, given the refusal to follow large parts of the rest of the constitution, you are planning to overthrow them as we speak? Finally, I’m concerned that your dream of overthrowing a ba…

yeah, we're in agreement. there will be no overthrow, instead the government (and all governments) will simply take away more and more of your rights, until they're all gone. both the ones you like, and the ones you don't like. doesn't matter; they're all going out the window, slowly but surely.

next on the list: encryption and data privacy. and there are plenty of useful idiots out there who think encryption somehow harms children, they will come out of the woodwork at exactly the right time, and scream the loudest and make the least sense, you can be sure of that.

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#74

Post by xg15 »

roughcoat wrote: post #68
Thiez wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about having a monopoly on security and force, so the populace will be less independent and easier to manage. Having an entity with a monopoly on violence is like half the point of a government. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Uh huh. Have you studied the genocides of the 20th century? How does a disarmed and helpless populace look in those circumstances? And since you think the government should be trusted to mete out all force, I'm certain you'll have no trouble handing the government all your passwords and keys, right? Maybe mail them a copy of your car keys and house keys too, since they're so trustworthy? You trust them to protect you…

> Have you studied the genocides of the 20th century?

Have you?

Before Hitler came to power, the Weimar government was destabilized by - among other things - a latent civil war between armed paramilitary extreme-left and extreme-right groups. Hitler himself relied on such groups (from the right) to stage his first attemt to come to power via a coup. Even after he got elected, the groups were a cornerstone of his power.

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#75

Post by cynicalbastard »

barrkel wrote: post #66
roughcoat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nonsense. It's obvious what the parent comment meant. Law abiding gun owners by definition do not kill innocent children, just like law abiding people do not use encryption nefariously. Encryption and guns are both tools, with nothing intrinsically good or evil about them. Yet law abiding gun owners were punished and had their rights stripped throughout most of the world on the pretense that it would somehow hel…

The only purpose of a gun - a handgun in particular - is to wound and kill people, something civilians have no business doing. That's not the case with encryption.

> That's not the case with encryption.

sure it isn't.

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#76

Post by roughcoat »

xg15 wrote: post #72
roughcoat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nonsense. It's obvious what the parent comment meant. Law abiding gun owners by definition do not kill innocent children, just like law abiding people do not use encryption nefariously. Encryption and guns are both tools, with nothing intrinsically good or evil about them. Yet law abiding gun owners were punished and had their rights stripped throughout most of the world on the pretense that it would somehow hel…

Nope. The argument was that law- violating gun owners kill children (and others) while law-violating encryption does not.

I doubt encryption does anything all by itself. And apparently, encryption-using terrorists--who would be violating the law if such laws were in place--do kill children. Manchester, you know, it just happened. Nice. Berlin. Stockholm. Pretty soon, it'll just be a "name the city" game where the only question is how bad the most recent terrorist attack they suffered was compared to the rest.

And just as gun control laws do precisely dick to stop criminals from committing their crimes--because laws aren't magic, and they don't bend reality to make guns disappear as soon as the law is signed--encryption laws will be just as efficacious at stopping terrorists from using encryption. Like some wannabe martyr gives a shit about a fine he'll never pay and time he'll probably never serve in some resort prison?

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#77

Post by drdaeman »

cynicalbastard wrote: post #37

freedom-loving internet users will soon know how gun owners feel. every single bogus argument for gun control or "assault weapons" bans can, and will be, used against internet speech freedom and information privacy, now that the western political establishment has taken it upon themselves to strip you of your free speech rights after seeing how trivial it was stripping you of your guns, and how much enthusiasm their…

While the parent made a partially correct comparison, this whole thread is turning into a giant contest on highlighting where it doesn't work and then trying logic fallacies of all sorts. What's wrong with you, people?

Surely, not every argument. I don't think arguments like "legally owned guns are frequently stolen and used by criminals" works for strong cryptography. However, things like "more ____ control laws would reduce deaths", "high-____ should be banned because they too often ____", "____ are rarely used in self-defense" or "a majority of adults, including ____, support common sense ____ control" can be tried. I just took those from the first search result for "gun control", picking few that I was able to adapt without rephrasing too much.

Heck, I can see even how "more ____ control leads to fewer suicides" can be pulled. In glorious Russia we already have this train of thought running at full-speed, just with "Internet censorship" instead of "strong cryptography".

So while parent comment is obviously biased, it has some valid point. Not sure if its validity means anything useful, though.

____

Note, I explicitly don't evaluate any claims validity here, and must remind that even if "A does X" is true, and even though "A is similar to B in some respects", that doesn't mean that "B does X" is true.

Edit: ouch, can't flag myself. :(

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#78

Post by Freak_NL »

markvdb wrote: post #36
nikcub wrote: post #20

The story title mentions Australia but this is relevant to all the 5eye nations, as they're obviously pre-briefing the media on what the agenda will be and this is the first time that we're getting detail on what they'll be proposing (the UK proposals were vague) What they seem to be talking around is implementing an app-level CALEA-like capability. What I think how they think it would work: companies would be made t…

Following this logic, it's a question of time until GPG gets outlawed.

It would mean outlawing any software implementing asymmetric encryption; it would essentially mean making a specific application of maths illegal. Because this would also imply outlawing TLS as we know it, a lot of resistance can be expected from citizens and (parts of) governments and corporations alike.

That doesn't rule out such silliness from happening, but it will be a tough fight, so for now they'll probably stick to going after the silos (e.g., WhatsApp) and simply get them to substitute true end-to-end encryption for some backdoored solution — it's easier and more effective now.

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#79

Post by drdaeman »

nine_k wrote: post #17

Obviously, either encryption works flawlessly for both legal and criminal purposes, or it works for neither. What the proposal seems to concentrate is endpoints, where plaintext inevitably exists, and legal protocols for accessing it. OTOH any sane implementation would only generate plaintext for display purposes, and would clear the RAM as soon as display (or input) is done, so finding the plaintext anywhere may be…

For the phones, that can be pulled regardless of the app's security.

If the legal framework is laid out, government can tell Google or Apple (or phone vendor) to push a system-level update. It is trivial for both to push code that can run without any restrictions, have full access to screen, audio, camera and network.

Not sure why they bother, though. Wasn't it said many times almost every baseband module is already a black box with possibility of undetectable access to the main CPU/memory?

Re: How the Australian government plans to access encrypted messages

#80

Post by pdkl95 »

nikcub wrote: post #20

The story title mentions Australia but this is relevant to all the 5eye nations, as they're obviously pre-briefing the media on what the agenda will be and this is the first time that we're getting detail on what they'll be proposing (the UK proposals were vague) What they seem to be talking around is implementing an app-level CALEA-like capability. What I think how they think it would work: companies would be made t…

> that doesn't lead to a wack-a-mole game

Stored-program general purpose computers are a fundamentally a threat to any entrenched power that relies on being able to control any potential risk with physical, legal, economic, or social force. The only real way to control software that is no longer scarce is to find a way to hobble the "universal computing machine" so it is no longer universal.

Cory Doctorow's warning[1] about the War On General Purpose Computing received a lot of attention, but I suspect his far more important followup[2] about the looming Civil War over General Purpose Computing was had a much smaller audience. Dan Geer suggested[3] that this "Cold Civil War" has been ongoing for a long time already. With this new push by FVEY nations against crypto, it looks like the war is starting to heat up.

> where comms do go dark

That's just not true. Metadata is everywhere and will likely only get even more informative into the future. As Susan Landau explained[4] in her testimony to Congress, the only people "going dark" are the people trying to "preserve 20th century investigative techniques [while] our enemies are using 21st century technologies against us." Complaining about "going dark" is just misdirection away from a total failure to update investigative techniques to not just keep up with changing technology, but to take advantage of the new opportunities created by our growing sea of {,meta}data.

[1] http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

[2] http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

[3] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1GgnbN9oNw&t=3h35m50s

Post reply on HN