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Encryption Is Not a Crime

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Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#71

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

wulfstan wrote: post #48
shawabawa3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> issued by the device manufacturer or application creator The problem is that if the application has the power to do this then the rest is irrelevant The means hackers/governments/the CIA can force the application creator to do their bidding and enable mass surveylance

I don't accept that. We have "master keys" for some forms of encryption right now in the form of root certificates; knowing that root cert authorities could issue certificates that might allow people to sniff my network traffic doesn't keep me awake at night.

Not really. You can get around with pinning public keys like IoT devices and Tor and i2p do

A proposal to backdoor all cryptography is worse than having pki as a think we opt in to for the sake of convenience

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#72

Post by wulfstan »

inglor_cz wrote: post #55
wulfstan wrote: post #29

Playing devil's advocate here... What is wrong with: * an expiring certificate * issued by the device manufacturer or application creator * to law enforcement * once a competent court of law has given approval * that would allow a specific user's content to be decrypted prior to expiry There are a million gradations of privacy from "completely open" to "e2e encrypted". Governments (good ones!) are rightly complaining…

Which governments are the good ones? Is Indian government a good one, or Hungary's, or Turkish, German, or British, or the US? In the last case (well, in all cases), does "goodness" of a government depend on the current incumbent? What if a previously "good" government turns into an atrocious one? See also: the detailed Dutch census, which was mostly harmless, until it fell into hands of the Nazis in 1940 and helped…

Every system of authority carries with it the risk of abuse; but we still accept legitimate authorities carrying out breaches of personal privacy for the sake of law enforcement - the warrant system being the obvious one. That's part of the compromise we make in society.

Good governments ensure that a breach of personal privacy has to travel through a legitimate process with an independent judiciary to limit the risk.

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#73

Post by socalgal2 »

9rx wrote: post #14

> It's not a crime to lock your home's door for protection, why would it be a crime to lock your digital door? A locked home's door is still trivially opened. You can pick the lock or even apply simple brute force, neither of which all that difficult, and open happily it will. Similarly, I don't suppose anyone would be concerned about you using rot13 encryption. If a home could be sealed to the same degree as strong…

That analogy breaks because a home's locked door as the constaint that it can effectively only be visited by someone coming to that door physically. On the internet, multiple crimimals can attack all doors at all times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPBH1eW28mo

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#74

Post by stronglikedan »

gambiting wrote: post #63
Fokamul wrote: post #60

I'm not surprised, UK became literal African/Middle-East hell hole. They've kicked out all working immigrants and replaced them with ultra-religious freaks. And of course, UK being a country, where every form of self-defense is the most serious crime, when attacked you must call police, then lay on the ground and die, is cherry on top.

>>I'm not surprised, for years UK become literal African/Middle-East hell hole. I wonder where in the UK you live, because up here in the North that definitely doesn't seem right - it's rare to see anyone non-white on the street.

It's pretty universally known that where you live could now be considered a microcosm relative to the rest of the country. Although, I wouldn't necessarily have used "hell hole" to describe the rest.

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#75

Post by hilbert42 »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #54
i5heu wrote: post #34

I do not like these framings of "not a" because it always sounds so suspicious like "we are not a cult". It puts the idea into the world that it could be a crime and maybe that it is the status quo. Much better IMHO is something like "Encryption is a fundamental right.", "Encryption protects everyone.", "Without encryption there is no democracy." and so on. Maybe "Don’t let them take your right to privacy."

I wish Americans still believed in American freedoms Encryption is free association and free speech. Talking to someone about what I like without eavesdroppers Transitioning gender is also free speech, freedom of expression. Presenting how I like and not how some wannabe king wants me to

"I wish Americans still believed in American freedoms"

Yeah, as someone who's viewed America from the outside for decades tragically it's no longer the country I once knew.

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#76

Post by kube-system »

123pie123 wrote: post #45
kube-system wrote: post #26

This is too many words to convince someone who already doesn’t believe this. Put more simply: the modern internet doesn’t work without encryption, it is a fundamental part of the technology. Without it, anyone could log into any of your accounts, take your money, messages, photos, anything.

>Put more simply: the modern internet doesn’t work without encryption being pandantic that should read - the modern usage of the internet.. the internet does work ok without encryption, has it has done from a long time ago

That’s exactly the pedantry that muddies the water and confuses people on this issue. Colloquially, it is a distinction without a difference. The internet as normal people know it does not work without encryption.

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#77

Post by like_any_other »

9rx wrote: post #35
kube-system wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under what law? High security vaults are not legally controlled or prohibited in the US.

Which high security vault can the government not gain access to under any circumstances? I expect you'll find decent explosives or a bulldozer will get them in just fine.

So will a hardware backdoor planted by your maid, or a telescopic lens pointed at your screen, or laser microphone on your window, get them into your e2e encrypted chats.

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#78

Post by cjs_ac »

End-to-encryption is a good thing, and so is this website providing information about how to use it.

But this particular article represents a particular pathology surrounding freedom. Freedom is supposed to be about doing what you want. It's not about making florid speeches about how free you supposedly are. If you want to use end-to-end encryption, just use it, and maybe offer advice to others on how to use it.

There are some politicians who have decided that only bad people use encryption. Going up to one of these politicians and trying to explain that you use encryption but you're actually a good person won't convince them that encryption's okay, it'll just convince them that you're a bad person. Politics is one of those things that attracts people who just want to find the shortest route to a decision about who are the good people and who are the bad people, and keeping secrets isn't something that those sorts of people like other people doing.

Unless you have evidence that the government is rounding up people just for using encryption, all this sort of advocacy does is to draw attention to you having something to hide, and therefore probably being some sort of wrong'un. If the government is rounding up people for using encryption, that's a specific threat you need to respond to, and starting a public campaign is not the right response.

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#79

Post by jagger27 »

Encryption is a threat to power structure. Of course if you're in power, and you're under threat, you criminalize threat.

As long as we preserve the knowledge of one-time pads, they will not take this power from us.

Re: Encryption Is Not a Crime

#80

Post by wulfstan »

ziddoap wrote: post #69
wulfstan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't accept that. We have "master keys" for some forms of encryption right now in the form of root certificates; knowing that root cert authorities could issue certificates that might allow people to sniff my network traffic doesn't keep me awake at night.

To reduce any risks, almost everything PKI-related is conducted in public, is auditable by anyone, and is a cooperation between dozens of distinct entities located globally. This is not analogous to a single government having non-transparent, non-auditable access to decrypt communications of its own citizens.

Then setup the system to be more analogous. Make the publication of key issuance under this mechanism public after a period of time.

Again, I see us falling back into an "all or nothing" view of privacy and I just don't think those are the only options.

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