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I do believe that the U.S. can't "ban encryption", any more than it could "ban mathematics". That doesn't mean the intelligence value to legally enforced backd

I do believe that the U.S. can't "ban encryption", any more than it could "ban mathematics". That doesn't mean the intelligence value to legally enforced backdoors in popular US-created or US-marketed products isn't significant. For one thing, your target might not be sophisticated or suspicious enough to avoid these products, or they may be communicating with folks who aren't (for example, if you're studying recruitment). For another, requiring anyone desiring to hide their communication to eschew popular products itself provides a signal that may be of interest. And a diversity of smaller encrypted products may end up being more vulnerable to subversion and exploitation, vs. widely used, deeply studied systems. I am not arguing that this value is worth the massive privacy and civil liberties tradeoff of giving the government access to products like iMessage. But it's not, I think, as simple as saying, "the bad guys will just switch to using other tools".

Grishnakh 11y ago
They absolutely can ban encryption if they want. Just like they can ban mathematics. What makes you think it's impossible? It wouldn't immediately eliminate all encryption, but it'd be easy to go after any corporations operating in the US and either force them to follow the ban or throw their execs in jail. After that, they could put up a Great Firewall and block downloads from foreign servers. They can use the Great Firewall to snoop on internet traffic, doing deep packet inspection, and look for unrecognized traffic, VPNs, encrypted emails, any markers of common unauthorized encryption protocols, etc. They don't have to catch every single person, they just have to catch some and then make an example out of them. You're probably thinking that this is just too extreme. Has everyone forgotten what life was like in East Germany under the Stasi? That lasted until the late 1980s! Now of course, you can debate how unlikely this scenario is to play out, but I'm just pointing out that it isn't impossible, not at all, and we've seen a society much like this in the very recent past.

Grishnakh 11y ago

They absolutely can ban encryption if they want. Just like they can ban mathematics. What makes you think it's impossible? It wouldn't immediately eliminate all encryption, but it'd be easy to go after any corporations operating in the US and either force them to follow the ban or throw their execs in jail. After that, they could put up a Great Firewall and block downloads from foreign servers. They can use the Great Firewall to snoop on internet traffic, doing deep packet inspection, and look for unrecognized traffic, VPNs, encrypted emails, any markers of common unauthorized encryption protocols, etc. They don't have to catch every single person, they just have to catch some and then make an example out of them. You're probably thinking that this is just too extreme. Has everyone forgotten what life was like in East Germany under the Stasi? That lasted until the late 1980s! Now of course, you can debate how unlikely this scenario is to play out, but I'm just pointing out that it isn't impossible, not at all, and we've seen a society much like this in the very recent past.