Well, she could start herself publishing all her emails, how can we know she isn't a covert terrorist?
UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
91–100 of 394 posts
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. 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 always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive. You rightly said that I will answer that it was the adults fault. The bad act done with the weapon was giving it to a child, not the childs shooting someone. It gets clearer if the adult hands the weapon to a monkey or a randomized shooting machine. All three scenarios change nothing in regard to the mor…
> I always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive.
Well I meant evasive argument as in statements which directly avoid the question. Because the thing is, we don't live in a perfect world. So putting the blame on agents doesn't solve the problem. That's why I brought up that sometimes things have to be taken away from people. The question is when and how.
> The bad act done with the weapon was giving it to a child
I didn't say the adult gave the weapon. I just said the adult left it within the reach of the child. One is direct, the other is indirect. I wouldn't even say indirect, but lets go with it.
> I'd point at the attacker
It gets blurry deciding who the attacker is, depending on whose side you are on. Things aren't always so clear.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#93> "That is my view - it is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide." I am sure a ban on encryption would work. Hey, guys, I just had a great idea. Let's ban bombs, knifes, and driving into people. That would fix the terrorism problem. Once it is illegal, no terrorist would dare do it!!! I'm wondering why Churchill didn't think to ban the Enigma machine. If only England was led by smar…
Well, he wants to ban secret hiding places, not bombs. I am sure that might work. Come to think of it... Sorry, he is a she.
I'll be surprised if you don't get a full HN ban for this.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#94Dear minister, can I whisper in my wife's ear while having sex or do I have to get permission from government?
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#95> "That is my view - it is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide." I am sure a ban on encryption would work. Hey, guys, I just had a great idea. Let's ban bombs, knifes, and driving into people. That would fix the terrorism problem. Once it is illegal, no terrorist would dare do it!!! I'm wondering why Churchill didn't think to ban the Enigma machine. If only England was led by smar…
> Hey, guys, I just had a great idea. Let's ban bombs, knifes, and driving into people. That would fix the terrorism problem.
They started banning guns almost a century ago. While it did probably reduce the number of gun murders, it certainly didn't make terrorist organisation like the IRA any less effective — and it probably made non-gun crime worse.
Possessing encryption tools, lockpicks, knives, guns &c. is a fundamental human right of free men.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#96Hmm, 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…
Terrorism, and crime in general is a nuisance that we have to live with. You can have a society with no crime. All you need is a super repressive totalitarian state, total transparency with citizens reporting on each others, state surveillance everywhere. It will work. But first I don't want to live in such a state. And second these totalitarian states slide invariably toward corruption and state crimes.
So we have to live with some level of crime. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be tough on criminals, but we have to accept that it is not possible in a free society to reach zero criminality.
I think the paradox is that people are reasonably relaxed with some level of criminality but are absolutely intolerant to any form of terrorism. And this intolerance is a new phenomenon. Terrorism isn't new. There isn't more terrorism in Europe than 20 or 40 years ago. In fact a few months ago I compiled the number of incidents and victims from a wikipedia page [1]:
https://zbpublic.blob.core.windows.net/public/Deads.png
https://zbpublic.blob.core.windows.net/public/Injured.png
https://zbpublic.blob.core.windows.net/public/Incidents.png
As you can tell, the 70s and 80s were rather more brutal, with far-left, IRA and Palestinian terrorism. And our democracies resisted much better the temptation to introduce more surveillance.
Now why have we become intolerant to terrorism? There are literally tens of thousands of knife attacks every year just in London. Most don't even make it to the local news. Why would this particular incident be treated as a state affair? Terrorism is the buzz of a mosquito. In itself pretty much harmless. But most people will not sleep in a room where they can hear the buzz. I don't have a good explanation. The only thing I can think of is the 24h news cycle where the media will make a big deal of anything that can push the audience up. But that doesn't explain everything. They do the same with plane crashes, but still repeat over and over that though spectacular, plane crashes are extremely rare and flying is extremely safe. Whereas when there is a terrorist attack, the message is "this could happen to YOU!"
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course, we need to make sure it is used for anti-terrorism only. See that's the problem everyone is talking about. The thing, is, turns out you can't. That's was the ENTIRE point of the Snowden revelations. No sane person is okay with terrorism, but at what point are you going to stop relinquishing your rights? First, texts with Whatsapp. Then your phone calls. Then your bags and notes when you go through airpor…
One solution in my mind is the source code of the monitoring software must be reviewed by independent and trusted software engineers/experts.
That's a perfect solution actually. But sadly, we aren't there just yet. There are nuances with these things that software can't (yet) pickup.
So humans have to do it till then. We were maybe born too early. But I think it makes things interesting.
That means there are still problems for you and me to solve.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to play devils advocate here, I also dislike the erosion of privacy (enough that I even left the UK). But you _can_ make the argument that if only outlaws use encryption then they're painting a target on their back, which leads to greater scrutiny by security services. This is reasonably achieved by the current dragnet surveillance systems in place, along with ISP's logging everything. I don't agree with it…
"What could we have done to prevent this attack" Actually there is a lot they could have done to help him in his obviously troubled life but that doesn't fit with conservative ideology.
We can't help everyone. It's naïve to think we can, 100% of the time, help all people.
Even the most socially progressive system on the planet will have people slipping through the cracks- we have to be able to deal with that eventuality too.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#99Thought-experimentally: could we potentially be able to scan message databases for the absence of certain phrases, using something like [1], but in a probabilistic manner akin to that of a Bloom filter? This would ensure that law enforcement would be able to flag certain keywords with a nonzero (and nontrivial) false-positive rate. That way, repeated flags end up identifying potentially interesting members of society, without proof and with data inadmissible as reliable evidence in a court of law.
Of course, one runs the risk of the existence of false positives being forgotten, TLA/government pressure to reduce the false positive rate, and so on. But I think this is a slightly interesting way to (partially) preserve privacy while satisfying lawmakers who demand that there be some way for them to listen in on (what should ideally be completely private) data. (This is, of course, only possible once one drops the axiom of privacy being an absolute right: I don't personally support doing this at all.)
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#100Best ban everything that can be misused by terrorists... cars, knives, encrypted messaging.
that's the blindspot isn't it ? What's the one common thing about recent terrorist acts ? Vehicles used as weapons. Yet nobody's calling for a ban on the use of vehicles