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People vastly underestimate the power of the US government to ban encryption within its borders. It simply can stop the sale of all offending devices, confiscat

People vastly underestimate the power of the US government to ban encryption within its borders. It simply can stop the sale of all offending devices, confiscate said devices, and even go after the profits from sale of the devices both new and old. If pushed they could theoretically go after those who run the companies. It really depends on who is behind it and how much political power they have relative to their next election prospects.

2close4comfort 11y ago
The only thing that is as dangerous as ignorance is greed.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
You're talking like encryption is hardware. It's software. You can confiscate eight billion copies but miss one and tomorrow there will be nine billion more. And it doesn't come from companies. Originally it comes from academics, but nobody actually gets their copy of AES from Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. It's software on the internet. You can get it from Mozilla or Google. If you can't get it from them then you can get it from anyone at CCC or Debian servers in France or Brazil or your cousin in Russia or the Venezuelan government that loves any excuse to stick it to the US. But let's pretend they're willing to cut all the fiber and close all the borders to keep encryption from crossing in from other countries. Your proposal is that they're going to go house to house and search your attic for the last of those t-shirts the EFF printed the last time this happened? Now mind you, that doesn't mean banning encryption would have no effect. It would mean that your bank and your doctor couldn't use it to protect your finances and medical records, and they're the type of organization that could be compelled to comply with such a thing.
- chopin 11y ago
  >Your proposal is that they're going to go house to house and search your attic for the last of those t-shirts the EFF printed the last time this happened? As every comms is under surveillance its vastly easier than that. You just need to look for traffic you can't read. And then go after the sender. If you make encrypted communication a criminal offense, that's an easy task.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > You just need to look for traffic you can't read. And what precisely is that supposed to mean? If I send you a spreadsheet purporting to be "the latest numbers for the current period" but the low bits of each field (which would reasonably be statistically random) are really encrypted data, how do you propose an observer can figure that out?
  - mirimir 11y ago
    It's not that simple. There may also be covert channel traffic that you don't see, encoded in packet timing. You can only use maybe 1% of "carrier" throughput. But that's easily enough for text messages hidden in HD video streams.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Then people resort to stenography. And activists start throwing binary chaf into emails and webpages. Or they do weird things like setup a weak encryption channel that encapsulates a stronger encrypted tunnel. The amount of ways around this is kind of silly.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- the8472 11y ago
  All you need to do is ban general purpose computing first. And smartphones are pretty close to that. If vendors enforced their walled gardens a bit more and disallowed cryptography apps you would already have a crypto-free zone on billions of devices.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > All you need to do is ban general purpose computing first. And while we're at it we can prevent traffic accidents by banning the wheel and prevent heart disease by banning food.
    - the8472 11y ago
      I'm not sure what you're trying to say. That it may not be attempted? The step from walled gardens to demanding that the the gatekeeper keeps out certain crypto apps is small. Especially if they start with a small blacklist and contiously expand it. Similar to domain blocking (first child porn, then piracy, then leak sites...) Mandating that they (or carriers) should not turn a blind eye because terrorists/think of the children is not a big leap either, because ostensibly rooting is a security flaw anyway. That way only apps compliant with government regulation (read: backdoored) would run on most devices. Sure, a small percentage of people might still find their way around it. But should we only care about the most tech-savy while leaving everyone else exposed to a snooping government?
      - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        > The step from walled gardens to demanding that the the gatekeeper keeps out certain crypto apps is small. The step from walled gardens to demanding that the the gatekeeper keeps out certain crypto apps is what causes the walls to fall. If you can't get secure messaging on an iPhone but you can get it on Android or Ubuntu phone and many people start buying competing hardware because of it, Apple would sooner give up the walled garden than lose that much business. And you can't draw any kind of meaningful distinction between a phone and a 7" touchscreen laptop, so the only way this would actually work is to ban PCs. Javascript is Turing-complete. Microsoft Office is Turing-complete. So you would have to stop people from running Javascript or Office or shell scripts or Minecraft or graphing calculators. And you would obviously have to ban anything that resembles a REPL, which might create some difficulties for software development or anyone trying to learn it. It's not possible for the enemies of general purpose computing to win the war. What is possible is that they be allowed to make the attempt and end up killing lots of innocent people, both figuratively and literally.
- such_a_casual 11y ago
  Honestly, it's pretty rude of you to make me spit out my coffee. T-shirt in question: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Munitions_T-shirt_%28front%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Munition... from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
marcosdumay 11y ago
Cryptography is mostly done by software, not hardware. How successful has been the war on movie and music piracy? And the war on leaked documents? A government can certainly make most if its residents give up on cryptography. But it takes more severe measures than banning a device or another.

2close4comfort 11y ago

The only thing that is as dangerous as ignorance is greed.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

You're talking like encryption is hardware. It's software. You can confiscate eight billion copies but miss one and tomorrow there will be nine billion more. And it doesn't come from companies. Originally it comes from academics, but nobody actually gets their copy of AES from Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. It's software on the internet. You can get it from Mozilla or Google. If you can't get it from them then you can get it from anyone at CCC or Debian servers in France or Brazil or your cousin in Russia or the Venezuelan government that loves any excuse to stick it to the US. But let's pretend they're willing to cut all the fiber and close all the borders to keep encryption from crossing in from other countries. Your proposal is that they're going to go house to house and search your attic for the last of those t-shirts the EFF printed the last time this happened? Now mind you, that doesn't mean banning encryption would have no effect. It would mean that your bank and your doctor couldn't use it to protect your finances and medical records, and they're the type of organization that could be compelled to comply with such a thing.

chopin 11y ago
>Your proposal is that they're going to go house to house and search your attic for the last of those t-shirts the EFF printed the last time this happened? As every comms is under surveillance its vastly easier than that. You just need to look for traffic you can't read. And then go after the sender. If you make encrypted communication a criminal offense, that's an easy task.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > You just need to look for traffic you can't read. And what precisely is that supposed to mean? If I send you a spreadsheet purporting to be "the latest numbers for the current period" but the low bits of each field (which would reasonably be statistically random) are really encrypted data, how do you propose an observer can figure that out?
- mirimir 11y ago
  It's not that simple. There may also be covert channel traffic that you don't see, encoded in packet timing. You can only use maybe 1% of "carrier" throughput. But that's easily enough for text messages hidden in HD video streams.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Then people resort to stenography. And activists start throwing binary chaf into emails and webpages. Or they do weird things like setup a weak encryption channel that encapsulates a stronger encrypted tunnel. The amount of ways around this is kind of silly.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
the8472 11y ago
All you need to do is ban general purpose computing first. And smartphones are pretty close to that. If vendors enforced their walled gardens a bit more and disallowed cryptography apps you would already have a crypto-free zone on billions of devices.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > All you need to do is ban general purpose computing first. And while we're at it we can prevent traffic accidents by banning the wheel and prevent heart disease by banning food.
  - the8472 11y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say. That it may not be attempted? The step from walled gardens to demanding that the the gatekeeper keeps out certain crypto apps is small. Especially if they start with a small blacklist and contiously expand it. Similar to domain blocking (first child porn, then piracy, then leak sites...) Mandating that they (or carriers) should not turn a blind eye because terrorists/think of the children is not a big leap either, because ostensibly rooting is a security flaw anyway. That way only apps compliant with government regulation (read: backdoored) would run on most devices. Sure, a small percentage of people might still find their way around it. But should we only care about the most tech-savy while leaving everyone else exposed to a snooping government?
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      > The step from walled gardens to demanding that the the gatekeeper keeps out certain crypto apps is small. The step from walled gardens to demanding that the the gatekeeper keeps out certain crypto apps is what causes the walls to fall. If you can't get secure messaging on an iPhone but you can get it on Android or Ubuntu phone and many people start buying competing hardware because of it, Apple would sooner give up the walled garden than lose that much business. And you can't draw any kind of meaningful distinction between a phone and a 7" touchscreen laptop, so the only way this would actually work is to ban PCs. Javascript is Turing-complete. Microsoft Office is Turing-complete. So you would have to stop people from running Javascript or Office or shell scripts or Minecraft or graphing calculators. And you would obviously have to ban anything that resembles a REPL, which might create some difficulties for software development or anyone trying to learn it. It's not possible for the enemies of general purpose computing to win the war. What is possible is that they be allowed to make the attempt and end up killing lots of innocent people, both figuratively and literally.
such_a_casual 11y ago
Honestly, it's pretty rude of you to make me spit out my coffee. T-shirt in question: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Munitions_T-shirt_%28front%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Munition... from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

marcosdumay 11y ago

Cryptography is mostly done by software, not hardware. How successful has been the war on movie and music piracy? And the war on leaked documents? A government can certainly make most if its residents give up on cryptography. But it takes more severe measures than banning a device or another.