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John McCain wants to outlaw encryption that the US government can't crack

285 points by declan 11y ago

beedogs 11y ago
John McCain has no idea what he's talking about with regards to technology and should probably refrain from talking about it.
biot 11y ago
"This move towards stronger encryption was largely brought about by the revelations of now-exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden..." It's encouraging to see publications referring to him as a whistleblower.
an_account 11y ago
I 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.
- deleted 11y ago
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- mucker 11y ago
  Keep your generalizations to yourself. There is a wide array of Republicans who believe in limited government not cracking private security because it doesn't belong there. McCain is a nice guy but is an extreme hawk.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    It's a political party. The whole point of one is to get people behind a general platform. Even keeping in mind that two-party systems tend to be extremely factional by practical necessity, the view that the GOP is the "party of limited government" is nothing but propaganda.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Somebody please explain to me how political parties aren't the dumbest idea ever, because I'm having trouble seeing it. I find the concept of buying into political beliefs wholesale - instead of considering them on a case-by-case basis - to be plain insanity.
      - zurn 11y ago
        Some pretty big advantages: They are voting blocs that are long lived enough for reputation to work. It makes representatives much easier to follow and predict (for media and citizens). They become much more efficient in wielding power and less vulnerable to divide-and-conquer adversaries. Relatively few people can keep track of what a handful of parties did in the last couple of years, imagine how short the public memory would be if it was single representatives. <cue comments suggesting technological solutions> Also, ideas in politics are interrelated. A big core value or strategic objective will pretty naturally lead to a bunch of other related ideas. You can view this as "buying into political beliefs wholesale" but it's a pretty natural thing to happen.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Thanks for the explanations. I don't buy them entirely, but I need to think about it more. > Also, ideas in politics are interrelated. A big core value or strategic objective will pretty naturally lead to a bunch of other related ideas. You can view this as "buying into political beliefs wholesale" but it's a pretty natural thing to happen. Ideas may be interrelated but it doesn't say anything about their validity. Whether it's natural or not, I still find it incredibly stupid. The focus on ideas seems wrong in itself. The usual discussions like whether Free Market or Government-Regulated Market are Better™ are pointless; we should be talking about whether a free-market solution or a top-down solution is better for a particular problem, like determining wages or building a power plant. I mean, the level of absurdity of buying ideas wholesale is obvious to everyone in almost every single discipline besides politics. Static vs. dynamic typing, or Lisp vs. rest of the world, or why PHP sucks are fun topics to discuss, but when push comes to shove, everyone knows that they should use the best tool for the job and get the job done. Imagine for a moment that we're tasked with writing a grep-like utility. If we were to run this project the way we run our countries, we'd have several opposing groups: - C supporters arguing for C, because everything fast and big is written in C! - Their little more progressive branch arguing for C++. - Perl supporters, saying that C is wrong because it was used by the Sov^H^H^HMicrosoft to write Windows, therefore it is evil. - Lisp supporters, saying that other languages are infringing on programmers' freedoms, and that the only rule should be the one of non-aggressive macro writing. - Fortranaries arguing we should write in Fortran because in Good Old Days everything was great and was written in Fortran. etc. Ultimately, running a country is about solving problems - some of the most important problems we ever face. Why do we accept this insanity where it matters the most?
  - WildUtah 11y ago
    McCain isn't a nice guy. He's always been opposed to every kind of civil rights and in favor of total central government power and total war. He introduced the campaign finance bill that forced the government to argue before the Supreme Court that it had the power to ban books with political opinions it didn't agree with, the same argument that led to the Citizens United decision. He made up a song about bombing Iran and sang it at campaign stops. (Tune of Beach Boys' Barbara Ann) That's just the start. This encryption but is of a piece with his whole career. McCain is as bad as they come.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      Not being from the US, I probably don't know as much about McCain as many of you, but I do recall him making the news for suggesting a murder suspect should be treated as an enemy combatant, which in turn seemed to mean essentially that they were no longer entitled to things like due process. I remember feeling very cold when I read that.
    - mikestew 11y ago
      To be pedantic, that Beach Boys parody dates back to the late 70s during the hostage taking of the U. S. Embassy. (Which causes me to wonder: did his campaign properly secure the rights from the song writer, or did they do like other candidates and "steal" it?)
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        There were quite a few different parodies of that song with the "Bomb Iran" theme from different groups, and all McCain did was the "Bomb, bomb, bomb" part, which made the message clear, but didn't really specifically invoke any of the particular parodies.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      He introduced the campaign finance bill that forced the government to argue before the Supreme Court that it had the power to ban books with political opinions it didn't agree with, the same argument that led to the Citizens United decision. Did you oppose that bill at the time, on the grounds that it would lead to such ridiculous arguments? If you had, you would have been the only one. Most First-Amendment nose-thumbers loved that bill. I suspect their hearts were in the right place, just as I suspect McCain's was (then, on that topic; various statements made since have been disconcerting). It would be nice if the rich bastards didn't play the body politic like a marionette, but this isn't the way to change that. The fact that you didn't lead off with a reference to the Keating Five indicates to me that you don't actually know much about McCain or his career.
- kylec 11y ago
  We need to somehow classify encryption as an armament, so that it'll be protected by the second amendment.
  - gnoway 11y ago
    We've done that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
  - sprawl_ 11y ago
    Yep... https://xkcd.com/504/ https://xkcd.com/504/
- gnoway 11y ago
  "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.
  - serge2k 11y ago
    >Hillary Clinton is equivocating; I think she's probably anti-encryption Damn, we need her on our side as a proven expert in computer security and privacy.
    - datashovel 11y ago
      Or maybe try and find non-establishment candidates to run (who are not out of their gourd) and vote for them :)
      - anonymfus 11y ago
        Do you humorously pretend in your comment that you don't know about Bernie Sanders?
        datashovel 11y ago
        No, just a general comment. My only regret about Bernie is there aren't more people like him running for office. It takes a lot to have a majority in Congress and so IMO we're not close to having enough non-establishment candidates like him to have faith our government will debate civilly and act reasonably.
        gnoway 11y ago
        Is he really non-establishment? I realize he's an Independent 'Social Democrat' or whatever, but he's been in Washington since 1991. He's pretty well established IMO.
        11y ago
- dogma1138 11y ago
  >Encryption methods are far easier to transport and spread illegally than gun are. I won't go that far, I would say that getting a Gun in the US or even in Europe (especially since the eastern European and Balkan states have joined (officially or unofficially Schengen) is by far easier than setting up your own secure crypto from scratch. This isn't an argument in favor of banning crypto, just a hard simple truth that the number of people that can setup a secure cryptographic system is small, the amount of people that can design them is even smaller, and a single operational mistake can ruin your entire encryption. Don't get me wrong at this moment in time it's "fairly" easy to get off the shelf (FOSS or commercial) encryption software that would prevent law enforcement from accessing the data, and it's possible to implement encryption that would also foil full state level (intelligence agencies, military intelligence etc.) actors from breaking your crypto in any given timely manner at least. But there are quite a few cutting edge attacks already on RSA, AES and other ciphers for key extraction, quite a few cryptographic systems were discovered to have horrific flaws in them, and some commercial solutions also have a backdoor/work reducer in them for lawful (and unlawful) access. That said if you currently eliminate the existing eco-system of "non-backdoored / non-broken" encryption don't expect for it to be easily revived, it will not be that hard to crush existing even FOSS crypto working groups and as time passes and agencies like the NSA can break existing encryption ciphers more easily it will only be harder and harder to build safe crypto without going into new cipher suits, and most cryptographers in the world today work for governments, or are heavily watched. So the dream of having the worlds most prominent math and computer science prodigies raising up to the challenge and building new cryptography in a dusky basement of a Berlin bar is a fairly romantic fantasy. Just look at how hard it was to get decent (for the time) encryption software when the US and most countries treated it as highly regulated commodities, and that was without an intentional crackdown on everyone who writes and distributes such software.
  - andrewchambers 11y ago
    > I would say that getting a Gun in the US or even in Europe (especially since the eastern European and Balkan states have joined (officially or unofficially Schengen) is by far easier than setting up your own secure crypto from scratch. No, it is far easier to download an openbsd cd image from canada than it is to physically carry a gun.
- duaneb 11y ago
  This kind of insanity isn't along party lines.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- vox_mollis 11y ago
  Republicans? Dianne Feinstein, who is supposed to be representing the interests of Silicon Valley, has been beating the anti-encryption drum for some time now. At least McCain's constituency doesn't include the people who are decrying this. DiFi is not only worse and earlier than McCain on this issue, but she's intentionally ignoring the people it is her job to represent. And you cry "Republicans!". Okay.
- oberstein 11y ago
  Liberals simultaneously believe they can outlaw guns but they can't outlaw drugs. Hypocrisy can be fun to notice in your hated enemy, but sometimes you have to dig into the details of each idea separately without analogies to similar surface level ideas.
cycrutchfield 11y ago
http://i.imgur.com/nnwVNui.png http://i.imgur.com/nnwVNui.png
dev1n 11y ago
We really need to set an age limit on how old people can get while staying in office before being forced to retire. We already prevent people younger than 40 from running for President. Why should we let people older than 65 do it? What's the difference?
- ComputerGuru 11y ago
  I upvoted you because I agree about the cognitive dissonance between having a lower limit but not having a higher one (as the old adage goes, don't tell me what's too little if you can't tell me what's considered too much), but I respectfully disagree. If one person is an idiot at 79, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 85. Then there's the premise of your argument: that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I counter that just like David Cameron of the UK, McCain knows full-well what he's proposing, but he just doesn't care about the cost. It's not about being out of the loop, it's about having a different agenda than the one you're seeing. His goal isn't to ban encryption so "terrorists" can't communicate, his goal is to ban encryption so that when someone currently not committing any crimes and without the intention of committing any crimes either does "something bad" in the future or otherwise falls afoul with the powers that be, decades of digital surveillance and intercepted communications would be instantly available for whatever nefarious (or otherwise) purposes the NSA, NSC, FBI, CIA, or whomever would have to serve their needs. EDIT: Part of my argument seems to have been misunderstood, my response about 79 vs 85 was just in direct counter to passing a maximum age limit; I don't believe we should have a minimum age limit, either.
  - stanleydrew 11y ago
    > If one person is an idiot at 79, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 85. If one person is an idiot at 35, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 30
    - workitout 11y ago
      Well informed and in touch does not replace years of life experience.
cblock811 11y ago
I swear the media has a bias too. So many articles are bashing encryption lately. I wish I could do more to fight misinformation and general ignorance than posting on my Facebook though. Ideas?
- jzd 11y ago
  Big media is controlled by powerful politicians.
- alextgordon 11y ago
  Encourage people to use HTTPS Everywhere. Encourage website owners to use TLS, and to get a good grade on ssllabs.com. Let's make it ubiquitous.
- gnoway 11y ago
  Data on people seems to be what everyone wants. We have big data collectors like Google and Facebook firmly on the pro-encryption side, ensuring your privacy. And that the only parties able to mine your Google and Facebook activities are Google and Facebook. On the other hand, some media companies are also ISPs now (Comcast, TWC). They don't really have destination sites collecting your general behavior, but they have something better - all your traffic in transit. Shame it's encrypted.
- will_pseudonym 11y ago
  Contact your Senators and Representative! https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup
mark-r 11y ago
Let's legislate Pi=3 while we're at it. I'd hate to live in a world where only criminals could be secure.
umeboshi 11y ago
I want to outlaw sputtering old gov officials who won't let go and gracefully head out to pasture.
javajosh 11y ago
John McCain also selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. People understand that McCain's heart is usually in the right place, his judgement isn't exactly sound.
vonklaus 11y ago
home encryption is killing government, ...and it's illegal. The US government is a monolithic institution that is governed by the mandate "move slow and break things". They can only legislate what they can enforce. They can't stop people sharing music, they can't stop people sharing data, and they sure as fuck won't be able to stop encryption. They definitely will be able to drive it underground and limit the average American's privacy though. It is just that, as far as anyone can be a typical America, they aren't a hardened radicalized terrorist. Let's take stock of the wars against nouns: * War on Drugs, massive failure. * War on Terror, not only failure, likely made problem worse. * War on Math, if we measure this by people prevented from using encryption, then we are losing. However, if we measure this by student test scores relative to other nations, we are def. winning the war against math.
cs702 11y ago
Evidently he doesn't realize that this is like asking for addition or subtraction to be outlawed, which is nonsensical. Like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, encrypting is a mathematical operation that transforms numbers into other numbers.
- serge2k 11y ago
  How is that relevant? I disagree with him too, but this is a lousy argument.
  - stanleydrew 11y ago
    It's a bit of a reducto-ad-absurdum simplification, but the argument is pointing out the fact that most people wouldn't ever consider valid a law that would prevent simpler mathematical operations, so why should we consider the validity of a law that would try to outlaw complicated mathematical operations. How would it even be possible to enforce it?
    - Spivak 11y ago
      >How would it even be possible to enforce it? Mass surveillance + "if we cant understand your data and isn't in one of the prescribed formats then you are a criminal and can be charged on that fact alone."
  - cortesoft 11y ago
    It is certainly relevant, because his point is that encryption is just math, and you can't outlaw math. Or, even if you did outlaw math, it won't have any effect because you can't enforce it.
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    I think he's pointing out that terrorists will still have access to PGP or other encryption tools.
- dingaling 11y ago
  > Like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, encrypting is a mathematical operation that transforms numbers into other numbers. Compressing plutonium beyond its point of criticality is a chemical & physical operation that transforms matter into energy. But building or possessing nuclear weapons is still illegal for civilians and most countries. i.e. they will dismiss such objections by saying it's not the principle or fundamentals they're banning but the specific application
colmvp 11y ago
> "...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-endless-demonization-encryption-police-find-paris-attackers-coordinated-via-unencrypted-sms.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...
- shaftway 11y ago
  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."
- dilippkumar 11y ago
  But... > CIA director John Brennan said that "there are a lot of technological capabilities that are available right now that make it exceptionally difficult, both technically as well as legally, for intelligence and security services to have the insight they need to uncover it ... And I do hope that this is going to be a wake-up call."
orliesaurus 11y ago
does that mean we'll find out what encyption the US gov can crack?
- antod 11y ago
  That was my first thought too. The bad guys will just make sure they stick to the uncrackable illegal stuff :)
vonklaus 11y ago
This is Edward Snowden's fault. Let's look at the facts: * Edward Snowden declared war against terrorists. * Edward Snowden started indescriminently bombing villages in the middle east. * Edward Snowden created massive ill will against America, then left a huge power vacuum in the region by pulling out after, dare I say it, conducting terrorism against the native inhabitants. So, Ed, wherever you are, this is your fault.
- samstave 11y ago
  Edward Snowden then had the audacity to leak our ways and means to the same terrorists and put the lives and safety of our men in the field at risk! Edward Snowden then had the balls to tell the American people that the NSA was sharing their nude selfies amongst NSA employees and put the lives and safety of our men in the field at risk!
- stvswn 11y ago
  "Indescriminately(sic) bombing?" "conducting terrorism?" I led a platoon in Iraq, and we did nothing of the sort. I'm fine with opposition to U.S. foreign policy; this is just lazy slander, and it shows a very shallow understanding of what actually happened.
  - woodman 11y ago
    > I led a platoon in Iraq, and we did nothing of the sort. I fought in Fallujah; I would be very surprised to hear from the residents that they did not feel terrorized or modify their behavior in response to our activities. I have no doubt that you don't see yourself in that light, but your intents mean very little to those people. Putting too much weight on either perspective, the action's originator or recipient, leads to all sorts of silliness (the concept of hate crimes, donglegate, etc). Try to detach yourself and just consider the facts.
    - stvswn 11y ago
      You equate "they felt terrorized" with "terrorism." Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians in order to cause fear for political ends. It's not "civilians being scared" and definitely not "civilians modified their behavior." I have no doubt civilians lived (and sometimes died) through horrible battles. In examining the ethics of violent conflict it absolutely does matter whether civilians were targeted or not. If you saw anyone deliberately harm civilians, or use disproportionate force against an enemy that resulted in needless civilian death, you should report it and hopefully that person goes to jail. I have no doubt some people did terrible things. That's a far, far distance from the general claim that the U.S. was "indiscriminate" or "conducted terrorism."
idibidiart 11y ago
John McCain is partly responsible for the rise of ISIS by having architected the funding of the Free Syrian Army whose members went off to form ISIS and who continues to be funded by us, with a great deal of the resources finding their way into ISIS hands.
- GavinMcG 11y ago
  I've seen this claim floating around that we're funding the FSA which is just channeling money to ISIS, but I haven't been able to find any reliable source. Could you please link to something that backs that up?
  - mavdi 11y ago
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11882195/US-trained-Division-30-rebels-betrayed-US-and-hand-weapons-over-to-al-Qaedas-affiliate-in-Syria.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1... http://abcnews.go.com/International/top-syrian-warns-congress-moderate-rebels-sell-weapons/story?id=25539314 http://abcnews.go.com/International/top-syrian-warns-congres... http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-fighters-using-us-arms-study-085735376.html http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-fighters-using-us-arms-s...
SCAQTony 11y ago
This would be a suspension of the 4th and 5th amendment. Correct me if I am wrong. "...A valid search warrant must meet four requirements: (1) the warrant must be filed in good faith by a law enforcement officer; (2) the warrant must be based on reliable information showing probable cause to search; (3) the warrant must be issued by a neutral and detached magistrate; and (4) the warrant must state specifically the place to be searched and the items to be seized..." https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/search-seizure-faq.html https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/search-seizure-faq.html This McCain B.S. implies that the defendant will never be served with a warrant. This secret warrant will be issued by eleven secret judges, serving a seven year term, picked by one man "...without any supplemental confirmation from the other two branches of government." This does not meet the standards of being neutral per point number 3 above. WOW! http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/17/politics/surveillance-court/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/17/politics/surveillance-court/
- nicholaides 11y ago
  It's also a 2nd amendment issue. From wikipedia: Since World War II, many governments, including the U.S. and its NATO allies, have regulated the export of cryptography for national security considerations, and, as late as 1992, cryptography was on the U.S. Munitions List as an Auxiliary Military Equipment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
ecdavis 11y ago
Is 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 banking? To protect against attacks like the Sony hack? Do they know that there is a huge segment of the economy that relies on strong encryption to do business? It's pretty clear at this point that they don't care about privacy. Perhaps if the ramifications are explained to them in a different way they would be more open to dissenting points of view. EDIT: The recent news stories have motivated me to renew my support for the EFF. I'd encourage anyone with disposable income to do the same.
- datashovel 11y ago
  I think Congress needs their own dedicated ELI5 hotline :)
  - jdoliner 11y ago
    r/ELIaEO - Explain like I'm an elected official
    - tolmasky 11y ago
      "if you do this then I'll give you this campaign donation", is that the kind of explanation it would provide? Otherwise I don't see it getting very far.
      - delinka 11y ago
        This makes me think we need to implement a cryptographic protocol to revoke donations when politicians go back on the words that solicited the donation.
        alxndr 11y ago
computronus 11y ago
Including the one-time pad? I suppose paper memo pads need to be outlawed as encryption technology then.
pera 11y ago
How can you tell the difference between, say, an OTP encrypted message and a random number? To outlaw encryption that "the US govt can't crack" they have to outlaw random numbers hah, yeah.. I totally can imagine a future where PRNGs must be approved by the US government.
deleted 11y ago
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andrewchambers 11y ago
Whoever tries to pass that law is going to realize the mistake they made when it comes time to enforce it and they have to delete code from nearly every computer in the country. Other countries like Russia will be able to laughably crack US citizens bank accounts, email accounts etc if this was actually done. It will be a massive public relations nightmare for anyone who actually tries to make this reality.
such_a_casual 11y ago
So basically he wants to ensure that black hatters will be able to crack all encryption in the United States? If the U.S. Government can crack something, than that means there is a human element that will always be exploitable. If a group of people can crack an encryption, than that group of people is the weakness. Someone will be social engineered, hacked, or compromised successfully eventually. They might even just make a stupid mistake. This basically ensures that whatever the United States is using to crack encryptions will leak eventually causing legal encryption to be completely insecure until the government releases its next update, until that leaks as well, and we end up with a cycle of fuckery on our hands. Yeah, let's not do that. > Obama administration says it has no plans to legislate against strong encryption, and the UK government says it doesn't either. So It doesn't look like we have to worry. The argument for legislation is idiotic. Terrorists won't care if it's legal or not to use strong encryption. You would only be forcing law abiding citizens to use weak encryption.
deleted 11y ago
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grandalf 11y ago
If there was ever a stupid and despicable human being who managed to become relatively powerful, it's John McCain.
whoopdedo 11y ago
Can we have a new rule when laws are proposed? Whenever you see the headline "(name of politician) wants to pass a law which will do ____" it should be rewritten to "Lobbyists have convinced (name of politician) that they need a law which will do _____". From opensecrets.org: Industry Favorite John McCain is a top recipient from the following industries in 2015-2016: Cable & satellite TV production (#1) Defense Aerospace (#1) Defense Electronics (#1) For-profit Education (#1) Misc Defense (#1) Total PAC Money for 2015-2016: $700,600 Ideological/Single-Issue $185,900 Defense $116,800 Communications/Electronics $61,600 Energy & Natural Resources $75,300 Finance, Insurance & Real Estate $71,500 Lawyers & Lobbyists $51,400
- mrsharpoblunto 11y ago
  Personally I'd love it if TV networks would bring up ESPN style player stats summary sheets on politicians involved in a story listing a few key 'stats' such as what their top 3 sources of funding are, former employers, brief voting record summary etc. For so many politicians their motivations are so obvious when you see their records, but for most people that aren't willing to do a bit of digging, its essentially hidden in plain sight.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  It's amazing how cheaply the public interest gets sold out for.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Really! To me, this suggests that the fundamental problem is the enormous size of USA. If it were replaced by twenty other nations each a twentieth the size, could the parasites even afford to subvert the popular will and well-being? Divide all those bribes by 20, and you're not left with much to corrupt a reasonable person.
    - whoopdedo 11y ago
      > twenty other nations Why not fifty-seven?
sandyvid 11y ago
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.
csn 11y ago
USA 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.
crdb 11y ago
Thought: 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.
Reason077 11y ago
So, privacy is like guns? Nice to have, but something we need to give up in order to live in a safer society?
workitout 11y ago
Earth to Republicans, if you want to alienate people under 30, please listen to John McCain.
- mavdi 11y ago
  They don't give a shit as under 30s don't vote anyway.
lasermike026 11y ago
I refuse to give up my liberty and security over terrorism or some other infantile boogeyman.
will_pseudonym 11y ago
I just wrote to both Senators and my Representative telling them not to support this legislation. I linked to this discussion for them to learn more. Please contact your Congressional representatives today! https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup
echaozh 11y ago
Why not outlaw locks the government cannot pick and vaults the government cannot break into? They're quite the same thing, just less digital.
psyonix 11y ago
If we outlaw such encryption only outlaws will have it.
Spooky23 11y ago
Can we outlaw John McCain? This is the guy who gave us Sarah Palin. He needs to go away.
rezashirazian 11y ago
John McCain also wanted to be president. I wouldn't worry too much about what John McCain wants.
Shivetya 11y ago
and people wonder why Republicans (Libertarians mostly) didn't turn out to vote for him 2008, here is a hint - it wasn't Palin that was the stain on that ticket. We remember McCain/Feingold
sharjeel 11y ago
Another idea: Outlaw terrorism
sharemywin 11y ago
it's funny they are ok with everyone having guns but encryption that's the worst kind of evil.
HillaryBriss 11y ago
This is a bit like a Republican version of gun control laws. If real encryption is outlawed, only criminals will have real encryption.
dulob 11y ago
why we call a technology encryption if it can be cracked?
heapcity 11y ago
Sounds like a good pretext for putting anyone politically inexpedient into prison.
davesque 11y ago
Let's just outlaw math.
programminggeek 11y ago
If our government can crack it, so can many other governments, hacker groups, corporations, and so on. Oh well, back to rot13.
jmspring 11y ago
The Senior Senator from Arizona needs to just retire and enjoy his twilight years. There was a time where I found him interesting, engaging, and worth voting for. It's been several years since that was the case.
martin1975 11y ago
How about we (the USA) as a country re-adjust our attitude/foreign policy? That goes light years further toward averting any future terrorist attacks. I don't condone ISIS even one bit, but we would be fools to not admit our role in shaping their current behavior. So either we give - by adjusting our attitude or if we choose to stay entrenched on our position, then go all the way and nuke the crap out of them. I don't like middle of the road solutions... maybe it's just me.
ankurdhama 11y ago
I can summarize all the comments in one comment - Unfortunately the world(human society) is run by politicians.
thetruthseeker1 11y ago
I am not sure how this can be implemented effectively in a globalized world! Lets say we take John McCain's advice and corporations give america a back door to read encrypted data, what would other countries do? Would they make laws forcing corporations to give back-doors on the encrypted data as well? Eventually, one of these countries could sell that information to unscrupulous hackers? Also, such a mechanism will only catch unwitting gmail like app using terrorists (assuming google co-operates with USA). I would guess vast majority of terrorists will still encrypt the data themselves without relying on underlying app to do so?
DanBC 11y ago
CLIPPER CHIP & KEY ESCROW. We had this argument in 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip There's plenty of discussion from then around the problems caused by this arrangement, so it might be a good idea to find the best of it, and dust it off.
cjsthompson 11y ago
Incredible how people here are so dumb to believe that the ruling caste are just misguided but well intentioned.

285 points by declan 11y ago

John McCain has no idea what he's talking about with regards to technology and should probably refrain from talking about it.

biot 11y ago

"This move towards stronger encryption was largely brought about by the revelations of now-exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden..." It's encouraging to see publications referring to him as a whistleblower.

an_account 11y ago

I 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.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mucker 11y ago
Keep your generalizations to yourself. There is a wide array of Republicans who believe in limited government not cracking private security because it doesn't belong there. McCain is a nice guy but is an extreme hawk.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  It's a political party. The whole point of one is to get people behind a general platform. Even keeping in mind that two-party systems tend to be extremely factional by practical necessity, the view that the GOP is the "party of limited government" is nothing but propaganda.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Somebody please explain to me how political parties aren't the dumbest idea ever, because I'm having trouble seeing it. I find the concept of buying into political beliefs wholesale - instead of considering them on a case-by-case basis - to be plain insanity.
    - zurn 11y ago
      Some pretty big advantages: They are voting blocs that are long lived enough for reputation to work. It makes representatives much easier to follow and predict (for media and citizens). They become much more efficient in wielding power and less vulnerable to divide-and-conquer adversaries. Relatively few people can keep track of what a handful of parties did in the last couple of years, imagine how short the public memory would be if it was single representatives. <cue comments suggesting technological solutions> Also, ideas in politics are interrelated. A big core value or strategic objective will pretty naturally lead to a bunch of other related ideas. You can view this as "buying into political beliefs wholesale" but it's a pretty natural thing to happen.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Thanks for the explanations. I don't buy them entirely, but I need to think about it more. > Also, ideas in politics are interrelated. A big core value or strategic objective will pretty naturally lead to a bunch of other related ideas. You can view this as "buying into political beliefs wholesale" but it's a pretty natural thing to happen. Ideas may be interrelated but it doesn't say anything about their validity. Whether it's natural or not, I still find it incredibly stupid. The focus on ideas seems wrong in itself. The usual discussions like whether Free Market or Government-Regulated Market are Better™ are pointless; we should be talking about whether a free-market solution or a top-down solution is better for a particular problem, like determining wages or building a power plant. I mean, the level of absurdity of buying ideas wholesale is obvious to everyone in almost every single discipline besides politics. Static vs. dynamic typing, or Lisp vs. rest of the world, or why PHP sucks are fun topics to discuss, but when push comes to shove, everyone knows that they should use the best tool for the job and get the job done. Imagine for a moment that we're tasked with writing a grep-like utility. If we were to run this project the way we run our countries, we'd have several opposing groups: - C supporters arguing for C, because everything fast and big is written in C! - Their little more progressive branch arguing for C++. - Perl supporters, saying that C is wrong because it was used by the Sov^H^H^HMicrosoft to write Windows, therefore it is evil. - Lisp supporters, saying that other languages are infringing on programmers' freedoms, and that the only rule should be the one of non-aggressive macro writing. - Fortranaries arguing we should write in Fortran because in Good Old Days everything was great and was written in Fortran. etc. Ultimately, running a country is about solving problems - some of the most important problems we ever face. Why do we accept this insanity where it matters the most?
- WildUtah 11y ago
  McCain isn't a nice guy. He's always been opposed to every kind of civil rights and in favor of total central government power and total war. He introduced the campaign finance bill that forced the government to argue before the Supreme Court that it had the power to ban books with political opinions it didn't agree with, the same argument that led to the Citizens United decision. He made up a song about bombing Iran and sang it at campaign stops. (Tune of Beach Boys' Barbara Ann) That's just the start. This encryption but is of a piece with his whole career. McCain is as bad as they come.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    Not being from the US, I probably don't know as much about McCain as many of you, but I do recall him making the news for suggesting a murder suspect should be treated as an enemy combatant, which in turn seemed to mean essentially that they were no longer entitled to things like due process. I remember feeling very cold when I read that.
  - mikestew 11y ago
    To be pedantic, that Beach Boys parody dates back to the late 70s during the hostage taking of the U. S. Embassy. (Which causes me to wonder: did his campaign properly secure the rights from the song writer, or did they do like other candidates and "steal" it?)
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      There were quite a few different parodies of that song with the "Bomb Iran" theme from different groups, and all McCain did was the "Bomb, bomb, bomb" part, which made the message clear, but didn't really specifically invoke any of the particular parodies.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    He introduced the campaign finance bill that forced the government to argue before the Supreme Court that it had the power to ban books with political opinions it didn't agree with, the same argument that led to the Citizens United decision. Did you oppose that bill at the time, on the grounds that it would lead to such ridiculous arguments? If you had, you would have been the only one. Most First-Amendment nose-thumbers loved that bill. I suspect their hearts were in the right place, just as I suspect McCain's was (then, on that topic; various statements made since have been disconcerting). It would be nice if the rich bastards didn't play the body politic like a marionette, but this isn't the way to change that. The fact that you didn't lead off with a reference to the Keating Five indicates to me that you don't actually know much about McCain or his career.
kylec 11y ago
We need to somehow classify encryption as an armament, so that it'll be protected by the second amendment.
- gnoway 11y ago
  We've done that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
- sprawl_ 11y ago
  Yep... https://xkcd.com/504/ https://xkcd.com/504/
gnoway 11y ago
"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.
- serge2k 11y ago
  >Hillary Clinton is equivocating; I think she's probably anti-encryption Damn, we need her on our side as a proven expert in computer security and privacy.
  - datashovel 11y ago
    Or maybe try and find non-establishment candidates to run (who are not out of their gourd) and vote for them :)
    - anonymfus 11y ago
      Do you humorously pretend in your comment that you don't know about Bernie Sanders?
      - datashovel 11y ago
        No, just a general comment. My only regret about Bernie is there aren't more people like him running for office. It takes a lot to have a majority in Congress and so IMO we're not close to having enough non-establishment candidates like him to have faith our government will debate civilly and act reasonably.
      - gnoway 11y ago
        Is he really non-establishment? I realize he's an Independent 'Social Democrat' or whatever, but he's been in Washington since 1991. He's pretty well established IMO.
        11y ago
dogma1138 11y ago
>Encryption methods are far easier to transport and spread illegally than gun are. I won't go that far, I would say that getting a Gun in the US or even in Europe (especially since the eastern European and Balkan states have joined (officially or unofficially Schengen) is by far easier than setting up your own secure crypto from scratch. This isn't an argument in favor of banning crypto, just a hard simple truth that the number of people that can setup a secure cryptographic system is small, the amount of people that can design them is even smaller, and a single operational mistake can ruin your entire encryption. Don't get me wrong at this moment in time it's "fairly" easy to get off the shelf (FOSS or commercial) encryption software that would prevent law enforcement from accessing the data, and it's possible to implement encryption that would also foil full state level (intelligence agencies, military intelligence etc.) actors from breaking your crypto in any given timely manner at least. But there are quite a few cutting edge attacks already on RSA, AES and other ciphers for key extraction, quite a few cryptographic systems were discovered to have horrific flaws in them, and some commercial solutions also have a backdoor/work reducer in them for lawful (and unlawful) access. That said if you currently eliminate the existing eco-system of "non-backdoored / non-broken" encryption don't expect for it to be easily revived, it will not be that hard to crush existing even FOSS crypto working groups and as time passes and agencies like the NSA can break existing encryption ciphers more easily it will only be harder and harder to build safe crypto without going into new cipher suits, and most cryptographers in the world today work for governments, or are heavily watched. So the dream of having the worlds most prominent math and computer science prodigies raising up to the challenge and building new cryptography in a dusky basement of a Berlin bar is a fairly romantic fantasy. Just look at how hard it was to get decent (for the time) encryption software when the US and most countries treated it as highly regulated commodities, and that was without an intentional crackdown on everyone who writes and distributes such software.
- andrewchambers 11y ago
  > I would say that getting a Gun in the US or even in Europe (especially since the eastern European and Balkan states have joined (officially or unofficially Schengen) is by far easier than setting up your own secure crypto from scratch. No, it is far easier to download an openbsd cd image from canada than it is to physically carry a gun.
duaneb 11y ago
This kind of insanity isn't along party lines.
deleted 11y ago
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vox_mollis 11y ago
Republicans? Dianne Feinstein, who is supposed to be representing the interests of Silicon Valley, has been beating the anti-encryption drum for some time now. At least McCain's constituency doesn't include the people who are decrying this. DiFi is not only worse and earlier than McCain on this issue, but she's intentionally ignoring the people it is her job to represent. And you cry "Republicans!". Okay.
oberstein 11y ago
Liberals simultaneously believe they can outlaw guns but they can't outlaw drugs. Hypocrisy can be fun to notice in your hated enemy, but sometimes you have to dig into the details of each idea separately without analogies to similar surface level ideas.

cycrutchfield 11y ago

http://i.imgur.com/nnwVNui.png http://i.imgur.com/nnwVNui.png

dev1n 11y ago

We really need to set an age limit on how old people can get while staying in office before being forced to retire. We already prevent people younger than 40 from running for President. Why should we let people older than 65 do it? What's the difference?

ComputerGuru 11y ago
I upvoted you because I agree about the cognitive dissonance between having a lower limit but not having a higher one (as the old adage goes, don't tell me what's too little if you can't tell me what's considered too much), but I respectfully disagree. If one person is an idiot at 79, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 85. Then there's the premise of your argument: that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I counter that just like David Cameron of the UK, McCain knows full-well what he's proposing, but he just doesn't care about the cost. It's not about being out of the loop, it's about having a different agenda than the one you're seeing. His goal isn't to ban encryption so "terrorists" can't communicate, his goal is to ban encryption so that when someone currently not committing any crimes and without the intention of committing any crimes either does "something bad" in the future or otherwise falls afoul with the powers that be, decades of digital surveillance and intercepted communications would be instantly available for whatever nefarious (or otherwise) purposes the NSA, NSC, FBI, CIA, or whomever would have to serve their needs. EDIT: Part of my argument seems to have been misunderstood, my response about 79 vs 85 was just in direct counter to passing a maximum age limit; I don't believe we should have a minimum age limit, either.
- stanleydrew 11y ago
  > If one person is an idiot at 79, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 85. If one person is an idiot at 35, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 30
  - workitout 11y ago
    Well informed and in touch does not replace years of life experience.

cblock811 11y ago

I swear the media has a bias too. So many articles are bashing encryption lately. I wish I could do more to fight misinformation and general ignorance than posting on my Facebook though. Ideas?

jzd 11y ago
Big media is controlled by powerful politicians.
alextgordon 11y ago
Encourage people to use HTTPS Everywhere. Encourage website owners to use TLS, and to get a good grade on ssllabs.com. Let's make it ubiquitous.
gnoway 11y ago
Data on people seems to be what everyone wants. We have big data collectors like Google and Facebook firmly on the pro-encryption side, ensuring your privacy. And that the only parties able to mine your Google and Facebook activities are Google and Facebook. On the other hand, some media companies are also ISPs now (Comcast, TWC). They don't really have destination sites collecting your general behavior, but they have something better - all your traffic in transit. Shame it's encrypted.
will_pseudonym 11y ago
Contact your Senators and Representative! https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup

mark-r 11y ago

Let's legislate Pi=3 while we're at it. I'd hate to live in a world where only criminals could be secure.

umeboshi 11y ago

I want to outlaw sputtering old gov officials who won't let go and gracefully head out to pasture.

javajosh 11y ago

John McCain also selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. People understand that McCain's heart is usually in the right place, his judgement isn't exactly sound.

vonklaus 11y ago

home encryption is killing government, ...and it's illegal. The US government is a monolithic institution that is governed by the mandate "move slow and break things". They can only legislate what they can enforce. They can't stop people sharing music, they can't stop people sharing data, and they sure as fuck won't be able to stop encryption. They definitely will be able to drive it underground and limit the average American's privacy though. It is just that, as far as anyone can be a typical America, they aren't a hardened radicalized terrorist. Let's take stock of the wars against nouns: * War on Drugs, massive failure. * War on Terror, not only failure, likely made problem worse. * War on Math, if we measure this by people prevented from using encryption, then we are losing. However, if we measure this by student test scores relative to other nations, we are def. winning the war against math.

cs702 11y ago

Evidently he doesn't realize that this is like asking for addition or subtraction to be outlawed, which is nonsensical. Like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, encrypting is a mathematical operation that transforms numbers into other numbers.

serge2k 11y ago
How is that relevant? I disagree with him too, but this is a lousy argument.
- stanleydrew 11y ago
  It's a bit of a reducto-ad-absurdum simplification, but the argument is pointing out the fact that most people wouldn't ever consider valid a law that would prevent simpler mathematical operations, so why should we consider the validity of a law that would try to outlaw complicated mathematical operations. How would it even be possible to enforce it?
  - Spivak 11y ago
    >How would it even be possible to enforce it? Mass surveillance + "if we cant understand your data and isn't in one of the prescribed formats then you are a criminal and can be charged on that fact alone."
- cortesoft 11y ago
  It is certainly relevant, because his point is that encryption is just math, and you can't outlaw math. Or, even if you did outlaw math, it won't have any effect because you can't enforce it.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  I think he's pointing out that terrorists will still have access to PGP or other encryption tools.
dingaling 11y ago
> Like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, encrypting is a mathematical operation that transforms numbers into other numbers. Compressing plutonium beyond its point of criticality is a chemical & physical operation that transforms matter into energy. But building or possessing nuclear weapons is still illegal for civilians and most countries. i.e. they will dismiss such objections by saying it's not the principle or fundamentals they're banning but the specific application

colmvp 11y ago

> "...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-endless-demonization-encryption-police-find-paris-attackers-coordinated-via-unencrypted-sms.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...

shaftway 11y ago
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."
dilippkumar 11y ago
But... > CIA director John Brennan said that "there are a lot of technological capabilities that are available right now that make it exceptionally difficult, both technically as well as legally, for intelligence and security services to have the insight they need to uncover it ... And I do hope that this is going to be a wake-up call."

orliesaurus 11y ago

does that mean we'll find out what encyption the US gov can crack?

antod 11y ago
That was my first thought too. The bad guys will just make sure they stick to the uncrackable illegal stuff :)

vonklaus 11y ago

This is Edward Snowden's fault. Let's look at the facts: * Edward Snowden declared war against terrorists. * Edward Snowden started indescriminently bombing villages in the middle east. * Edward Snowden created massive ill will against America, then left a huge power vacuum in the region by pulling out after, dare I say it, conducting terrorism against the native inhabitants. So, Ed, wherever you are, this is your fault.

samstave 11y ago
Edward Snowden then had the audacity to leak our ways and means to the same terrorists and put the lives and safety of our men in the field at risk! Edward Snowden then had the balls to tell the American people that the NSA was sharing their nude selfies amongst NSA employees and put the lives and safety of our men in the field at risk!
stvswn 11y ago
"Indescriminately(sic) bombing?" "conducting terrorism?" I led a platoon in Iraq, and we did nothing of the sort. I'm fine with opposition to U.S. foreign policy; this is just lazy slander, and it shows a very shallow understanding of what actually happened.
- woodman 11y ago
  > I led a platoon in Iraq, and we did nothing of the sort. I fought in Fallujah; I would be very surprised to hear from the residents that they did not feel terrorized or modify their behavior in response to our activities. I have no doubt that you don't see yourself in that light, but your intents mean very little to those people. Putting too much weight on either perspective, the action's originator or recipient, leads to all sorts of silliness (the concept of hate crimes, donglegate, etc). Try to detach yourself and just consider the facts.
  - stvswn 11y ago
    You equate "they felt terrorized" with "terrorism." Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians in order to cause fear for political ends. It's not "civilians being scared" and definitely not "civilians modified their behavior." I have no doubt civilians lived (and sometimes died) through horrible battles. In examining the ethics of violent conflict it absolutely does matter whether civilians were targeted or not. If you saw anyone deliberately harm civilians, or use disproportionate force against an enemy that resulted in needless civilian death, you should report it and hopefully that person goes to jail. I have no doubt some people did terrible things. That's a far, far distance from the general claim that the U.S. was "indiscriminate" or "conducted terrorism."

idibidiart 11y ago

John McCain is partly responsible for the rise of ISIS by having architected the funding of the Free Syrian Army whose members went off to form ISIS and who continues to be funded by us, with a great deal of the resources finding their way into ISIS hands.

GavinMcG 11y ago
I've seen this claim floating around that we're funding the FSA which is just channeling money to ISIS, but I haven't been able to find any reliable source. Could you please link to something that backs that up?
- mavdi 11y ago
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11882195/US-trained-Division-30-rebels-betrayed-US-and-hand-weapons-over-to-al-Qaedas-affiliate-in-Syria.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1... http://abcnews.go.com/International/top-syrian-warns-congress-moderate-rebels-sell-weapons/story?id=25539314 http://abcnews.go.com/International/top-syrian-warns-congres... http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-fighters-using-us-arms-study-085735376.html http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-fighters-using-us-arms-s...

SCAQTony 11y ago

This would be a suspension of the 4th and 5th amendment. Correct me if I am wrong. "...A valid search warrant must meet four requirements: (1) the warrant must be filed in good faith by a law enforcement officer; (2) the warrant must be based on reliable information showing probable cause to search; (3) the warrant must be issued by a neutral and detached magistrate; and (4) the warrant must state specifically the place to be searched and the items to be seized..." https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/search-seizure-faq.html https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/search-seizure-faq.html This McCain B.S. implies that the defendant will never be served with a warrant. This secret warrant will be issued by eleven secret judges, serving a seven year term, picked by one man "...without any supplemental confirmation from the other two branches of government." This does not meet the standards of being neutral per point number 3 above. WOW! http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/17/politics/surveillance-court/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/17/politics/surveillance-court/

nicholaides 11y ago
It's also a 2nd amendment issue. From wikipedia: Since World War II, many governments, including the U.S. and its NATO allies, have regulated the export of cryptography for national security considerations, and, as late as 1992, cryptography was on the U.S. Munitions List as an Auxiliary Military Equipment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

ecdavis 11y ago

Is 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 banking? To protect against attacks like the Sony hack? Do they know that there is a huge segment of the economy that relies on strong encryption to do business? It's pretty clear at this point that they don't care about privacy. Perhaps if the ramifications are explained to them in a different way they would be more open to dissenting points of view. EDIT: The recent news stories have motivated me to renew my support for the EFF. I'd encourage anyone with disposable income to do the same.

datashovel 11y ago
I think Congress needs their own dedicated ELI5 hotline :)
- jdoliner 11y ago
  r/ELIaEO - Explain like I'm an elected official
  - tolmasky 11y ago
    "if you do this then I'll give you this campaign donation", is that the kind of explanation it would provide? Otherwise I don't see it getting very far.
    - delinka 11y ago
      This makes me think we need to implement a cryptographic protocol to revoke donations when politicians go back on the words that solicited the donation.
      - alxndr 11y ago

computronus 11y ago

Including the one-time pad? I suppose paper memo pads need to be outlawed as encryption technology then.

pera 11y ago

How can you tell the difference between, say, an OTP encrypted message and a random number? To outlaw encryption that "the US govt can't crack" they have to outlaw random numbers hah, yeah.. I totally can imagine a future where PRNGs must be approved by the US government.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

andrewchambers 11y ago

Whoever tries to pass that law is going to realize the mistake they made when it comes time to enforce it and they have to delete code from nearly every computer in the country. Other countries like Russia will be able to laughably crack US citizens bank accounts, email accounts etc if this was actually done. It will be a massive public relations nightmare for anyone who actually tries to make this reality.

such_a_casual 11y ago

So basically he wants to ensure that black hatters will be able to crack all encryption in the United States? If the U.S. Government can crack something, than that means there is a human element that will always be exploitable. If a group of people can crack an encryption, than that group of people is the weakness. Someone will be social engineered, hacked, or compromised successfully eventually. They might even just make a stupid mistake. This basically ensures that whatever the United States is using to crack encryptions will leak eventually causing legal encryption to be completely insecure until the government releases its next update, until that leaks as well, and we end up with a cycle of fuckery on our hands. Yeah, let's not do that. > Obama administration says it has no plans to legislate against strong encryption, and the UK government says it doesn't either. So It doesn't look like we have to worry. The argument for legislation is idiotic. Terrorists won't care if it's legal or not to use strong encryption. You would only be forcing law abiding citizens to use weak encryption.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

grandalf 11y ago

If there was ever a stupid and despicable human being who managed to become relatively powerful, it's John McCain.

whoopdedo 11y ago

Can we have a new rule when laws are proposed? Whenever you see the headline "(name of politician) wants to pass a law which will do ____" it should be rewritten to "Lobbyists have convinced (name of politician) that they need a law which will do _____". From opensecrets.org: Industry Favorite John McCain is a top recipient from the following industries in 2015-2016: Cable & satellite TV production (#1) Defense Aerospace (#1) Defense Electronics (#1) For-profit Education (#1) Misc Defense (#1) Total PAC Money for 2015-2016: $700,600 Ideological/Single-Issue $185,900 Defense $116,800 Communications/Electronics $61,600 Energy & Natural Resources $75,300 Finance, Insurance & Real Estate $71,500 Lawyers & Lobbyists $51,400

mrsharpoblunto 11y ago
Personally I'd love it if TV networks would bring up ESPN style player stats summary sheets on politicians involved in a story listing a few key 'stats' such as what their top 3 sources of funding are, former employers, brief voting record summary etc. For so many politicians their motivations are so obvious when you see their records, but for most people that aren't willing to do a bit of digging, its essentially hidden in plain sight.
Gibbon1 11y ago
It's amazing how cheaply the public interest gets sold out for.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Really! To me, this suggests that the fundamental problem is the enormous size of USA. If it were replaced by twenty other nations each a twentieth the size, could the parasites even afford to subvert the popular will and well-being? Divide all those bribes by 20, and you're not left with much to corrupt a reasonable person.
  - whoopdedo 11y ago
    > twenty other nations Why not fifty-seven?

sandyvid 11y ago

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.

csn 11y ago

USA 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.

crdb 11y ago

Thought: 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.

Reason077 11y ago

So, privacy is like guns? Nice to have, but something we need to give up in order to live in a safer society?

workitout 11y ago

Earth to Republicans, if you want to alienate people under 30, please listen to John McCain.

mavdi 11y ago
They don't give a shit as under 30s don't vote anyway.

lasermike026 11y ago

I refuse to give up my liberty and security over terrorism or some other infantile boogeyman.

will_pseudonym 11y ago

I just wrote to both Senators and my Representative telling them not to support this legislation. I linked to this discussion for them to learn more. Please contact your Congressional representatives today! https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup

echaozh 11y ago

Why not outlaw locks the government cannot pick and vaults the government cannot break into? They're quite the same thing, just less digital.

psyonix 11y ago

If we outlaw such encryption only outlaws will have it.

Spooky23 11y ago

Can we outlaw John McCain? This is the guy who gave us Sarah Palin. He needs to go away.

rezashirazian 11y ago

John McCain also wanted to be president. I wouldn't worry too much about what John McCain wants.

Shivetya 11y ago

and people wonder why Republicans (Libertarians mostly) didn't turn out to vote for him 2008, here is a hint - it wasn't Palin that was the stain on that ticket. We remember McCain/Feingold

sharjeel 11y ago

Another idea: Outlaw terrorism

sharemywin 11y ago

it's funny they are ok with everyone having guns but encryption that's the worst kind of evil.

HillaryBriss 11y ago

This is a bit like a Republican version of gun control laws. If real encryption is outlawed, only criminals will have real encryption.

dulob 11y ago

why we call a technology encryption if it can be cracked?

heapcity 11y ago

Sounds like a good pretext for putting anyone politically inexpedient into prison.

davesque 11y ago

Let's just outlaw math.

programminggeek 11y ago

If our government can crack it, so can many other governments, hacker groups, corporations, and so on. Oh well, back to rot13.

jmspring 11y ago

The Senior Senator from Arizona needs to just retire and enjoy his twilight years. There was a time where I found him interesting, engaging, and worth voting for. It's been several years since that was the case.

martin1975 11y ago

How about we (the USA) as a country re-adjust our attitude/foreign policy? That goes light years further toward averting any future terrorist attacks. I don't condone ISIS even one bit, but we would be fools to not admit our role in shaping their current behavior. So either we give - by adjusting our attitude or if we choose to stay entrenched on our position, then go all the way and nuke the crap out of them. I don't like middle of the road solutions... maybe it's just me.

ankurdhama 11y ago

I can summarize all the comments in one comment - Unfortunately the world(human society) is run by politicians.

thetruthseeker1 11y ago

I am not sure how this can be implemented effectively in a globalized world! Lets say we take John McCain's advice and corporations give america a back door to read encrypted data, what would other countries do? Would they make laws forcing corporations to give back-doors on the encrypted data as well? Eventually, one of these countries could sell that information to unscrupulous hackers? Also, such a mechanism will only catch unwitting gmail like app using terrorists (assuming google co-operates with USA). I would guess vast majority of terrorists will still encrypt the data themselves without relying on underlying app to do so?

DanBC 11y ago

CLIPPER CHIP & KEY ESCROW. We had this argument in 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip There's plenty of discussion from then around the problems caused by this arrangement, so it might be a good idea to find the best of it, and dust it off.

cjsthompson 11y ago

Incredible how people here are so dumb to believe that the ruling caste are just misguided but well intentioned.