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Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

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Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#81

Post by jfarmer »

tptacek wrote: post #75
chernevik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very little about you. I've been talking about the signature shape of your arguments. And I don't know anything of your motivations. Have you read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"? If so you'll understand that it is possible, indeed sometimes common, for people to take rhetorical stances without actually understanding the position they are taking, out of a reflexive support for their party / factio…

Oh for fuck's sake. Never mind.

chernevik, speaking as a neutral-but-technically-minded third party: between the two of you, Thomas comes off as as much more sensible and convincing.

Maybe your your argument is too smart for me, though.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#82

Post by chernevik »

FreakLegion wrote: post #80
chernevik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very little about you. I've been talking about the signature shape of your arguments. And I don't know anything of your motivations. Have you read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"? If so you'll understand that it is possible, indeed sometimes common, for people to take rhetorical stances without actually understanding the position they are taking, out of a reflexive support for their party / factio…

I won't speak for Thomas, but I used to teach "Politics and the English Language" in rhetoric and argumentation courses. There are two important things worth pointing out here: 1. Your understanding of the problem domain of language and politics, at least in this post, is incredibly naive. For a rigorous analysis of the subject, try something like Chaïm Perelman's Treatise on Argumentation or one of Ronald Dworkin's…

Ooh, wow, arguments from authority.

As you are so learned, and Chaïm and Ronald aren't here, perhaps you'd care to offer their more proper reading of Orwell. And as you're so learned, you'll immediately know my remark as a paraphrase, and of whom. Right? Because when I read a book, I do so in such a fashion as to repeat its argument, rather than assign others reading I couldn't do properly in the first place.

Nor can I understand how my reading of Orwell can be "naive". Wrong, maybe. Unless you mean that Orwell argued that these aspects of rhetoric can be deliberately manipulated to bring about otherwise unjustifiable outcomes? And that his chief purpose was to warn others of this manipulation and suggest danger signals of it? I am completely alert to that purpose, and you can be sure my neglect of that theme in my remarks here reflects a very deliberate desire to avoid suggesting anything so ugly of someone about whom I know nothing.

Now as to "moving the goal posts." What I said, from the very start, was that his construction was wrong _for_a_layman_, that it could be right _for_lawyers_, and that the former was here the important context. So my argument acknowledged the sense in which he could be right and dismissed it.

And so forth. I don't really care what you've taught. Bring an _argument_. Because your pompous _assertions_ don't do much more than piss me off.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#83

Post by chernevik »

jfarmer wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh for fuck's sake. Never mind.

chernevik, speaking as a neutral-but-technically-minded third party: between the two of you, Thomas comes off as as much more sensible and convincing. Maybe your your argument is too smart for me, though.

I'm arguing first that he's wrong about Biden not proposing "law".

Second, and more obsessively, that his insistence on a point so obviously wrong suggests his purpose is rhetorical rather than clarifying. I.e. he cares more about how things appear than helping people see what they really are.

Subsequently I don't seem to be doing much more than throwing food. Maybe I should unplug my computer until I'm in a better mood.

It's an argument over rhetoric, and those suck. Alas it's one reason people get away with rhetoric -- it's hard to tell who's being rhetorical and who's in earnest.

You know "learn to program or be programmed?" Argument is like that, only far more important. Please learn to recognize good arguments from bad, so you can call people like me on my shit. Because otherwise you're reliant on people like me for that, and, well, we'll abuse your trust.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#84

Post by yummyfajitas »

tptacek wrote: post #69
chernevik wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sense of Congress resolutions don't create law. They're literally just statements of opinion. So the idea that this amendment would have "outlawed SSH" is directly mistaken." This is not correct, or if correct, is so in a manner meaningless for any layman. "Sense of the Senate" language is often important in judicial and / or executive interpretation. It may not be "law" but can often matter a great deal in the impl…

You don't have to read tea leaves to figure out what Biden actually believed. His name is on CALEA, which passed less than a year later. CALEA explicitly does not criminalize encryption.

I'm curious - is it your belief that Biden would never, under any circumstances, push a law which gets him some (but not all) of what he wants?

Also, if "sense of congress" is an opinion, and Biden sponsored the bill, is it unreasonable to assume that that is Biden's opinion?

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#85

Post by bediger4000 »

Why does it surprise anyone that the US government tried to ban encryption early on? That's the general direction the US government has taken for a long time. The Supreme Court has shaved the "unreasonable search and seizure" protection so thin, that it almost doesn't ever apply. The COINTELPRO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) efforts in the 60s shows that the US government hasn't really respected any kind of privacy for a very long time. Banning encryption is the end point of a couple of trends, copy protection (a.k.a. "Digitial Rights Management") and "The War on Terrorism"/"The War on Drugs". The US government just can't make certain that nobody's "Intellectual Property" isn't being "stolen" if any encrypted information flows. Similarly, encryption only helps "terrorists" and "drug dealers" trying to "launder money" or recruit other terrorists to sell crack or something, I get all confused.

But seriously folks, read the writing on the wall: banning encryption is the end point of some trends with a lot of power behind them.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#86

Post by tptacek »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #84
tptacek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to read tea leaves to figure out what Biden actually believed. His name is on CALEA, which passed less than a year later. CALEA explicitly does not criminalize encryption.

I'm curious - is it your belief that Biden would never, under any circumstances, push a law which gets him some (but not all) of what he wants? Also, if "sense of congress" is an opinion, and Biden sponsored the bill, is it unreasonable to assume that that is Biden's opinion?

No. I'd ask in response: what is the partial goal, and the total long-term goal towards which it moves, that Biden achieved in CALEA?

To your latter point, I'd say only that if Biden's opinion was anti-crypto in 1993, it became pro-crypto very shortly thereafter.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#87

Post by ghshephard »

chernevik wrote: post #73
tptacek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of your comment is right? That sense of the Senate resolutions make law? No, they don't. That sense of the Senate resolutions can matter in later court cases? Maybe, but I'm guessing a failed resolution on a failed bill matters a lot less in court than the successfully passed bill by the same author that became public law less than a year later that says the opposite . Beyond that, it's hard to even imagine…

I know very little about you. I've been talking about the signature shape of your arguments. And I don't know anything of your motivations. Have you read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"? If so you'll understand that it is possible, indeed sometimes common, for people to take rhetorical stances without actually understanding the position they are taking, out of a reflexive support for their party / factio…

Thomas is a fairly well known, consistent, and rational individual on HN. As one who has been other side of being corrected (curtailed?) by him, I can say he's the type of individual who, in my experience, just makes sense - particularly if you take a deep breath and step away from. The keyboard for a few minutes. His position here is pretty straightforward "Biden's name was on a document that had no force of law, and then a year later, his name was on a law that did not restrain crypto."

I'm not sure what your argument is, you kind of lost me when you started suggesting Thomas was arguing in a way dangerous to his soul - that kind of hyperbole is usually not helpful - particularly when it's directed to someone as levelheaded, rational and knowledgeable as Thomas.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#88

Post by yuhong »

tptacek wrote: post #7

The whole US government tried to ban encryption wholesale in the 1990s; they even attempted to standardize a bespoke algorithm (Skipjack) that provided key escrow for law enforcement. During the same period, they religiously enforced export controls that classified any encryption code, including simple hash functions, as munitions. I remember buying a "this t-shirt is a munition" shirt in '95 by giving a website the…

Remember 40-bit and 56-bit "exportable" encryption?

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#89

Post by tptacek »

yuhong wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #7

The whole US government tried to ban encryption wholesale in the 1990s; they even attempted to standardize a bespoke algorithm (Skipjack) that provided key escrow for law enforcement. During the same period, they religiously enforced export controls that classified any encryption code, including simple hash functions, as munitions. I remember buying a "this t-shirt is a munition" shirt in '95 by giving a website the…

Remember 40-bit and 56-bit "exportable" encryption?

Vividly. I was part of a team that shipped commercial security products containing crypto in the '90s. From Canada, no less.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#90

Post by asveikau »

downandout wrote: post #44

On this issue, Biden was clearly on the wrong side of history (and some of the fundamental tenets upon which the US was founded). But I don't think anyone, even ardent Obama supporters, would argue that he's the brightest star in the sky anyway. He is perhaps the strongest protection against an Obama assassination, since no one would want him to take office. Fortunately, the system worked in this case. A dangerous la…

I personally consider myself a Biden fan. I have witnessed him talk sense on a number of issues in ways many politicians do not. (Example: several statements on Iraq, from before it was common in US politics to think that war was a bad idea.) The "Biden is dumb" narrative IMO mainly comes from DC-based press that exaggerates gaffes (real and perceived) and tends to blindly re-state existing DC press narratives.

I think the real story here is that US senator is not a good qualification for understanding crypto or technology as a whole. I don't believe that Biden inserted this language out of maliciousness. So our task then becomes to educate our representatives, or if it gets to that point on a single issue vote them out, though my impression is that Biden's opponents are also unlikely to understand crypto or do anything different about what is honestly something of a fringe issue - my vote this year was certainly not about sound crypto policy, and I doubt yours was either.

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