4 ms·

>Should the government be able to access citizen's digital data with a court order? I don't think that's a good question at all. Regardless of the ruling, they

>Should the government be able to access citizen's digital data with a court order? I don't think that's a good question at all. Regardless of the ruling, they aren't going to up and declare encryption illegal. You can't throw a legal requirement at math to stop working.

Bud 11y ago
This is dangerously naive. You think the government can't do something illogical? You just wait for it. You think the government can't outlaw the use of something, even if it's an ineffectual half-measure that does more harm than good? Were you alive during the "War on Drugs"?
- leonatan 11y ago
  Why "were"? We are still alive, humanity is still suffering from the "war on drugs".
- orionblastar 11y ago
  If you studied history they passed prohibition that banned alcohol. It did not work as bootleggers and gangsters would make their own alcohol and sell it at hidden clubs. Stores would sell fruit juice next to sugar and yeast and all the customer had to do was find a way to mix them to make alcohol. They eventually had to repeal Prohibition. When they banned drugs, they did the same thing. It is prohibition all over again. Criminals and gangs got into dealing drugs for money and people can't give them up. The war on drugs doesn't work because the CIA makes money from drug lords, and gangs and criminals make a lot of money selling drugs on the street. I managed to grow up without getting into drug but during the 1970s and 1980s there was a lot of peer pressure into doing drugs with others when I was growing up. It has become a social thing. Many prisoners are in prison for using drugs. So our prison system is over crowded as a result. All the war on drugs did was imprison drug users and not go after the gangs and dealers. The government doesn't get privacy rights. So they violate privacy in order to crack encryption on an iPhone via a backdoor or master key or modified iOS that gets rid of passcode penalties and brute forces the passcode. They only see getting the data off the iPhone to use as evidence, and don't care that it causes iPhone users to lose their privacy and make iPhones less secure. The government isn't logical about these things, judges and politicians are for the most part not tech savvy enough to understand the technology and the need for privacy. They studied law, and other things, and not technology in the most case to understand how it works. They see getting evidence on terrorists as a priority and don't care what rights it violates. They can pass a law that pressed criminal charges at Apple employees and management for not helping out and try to force them to do what they say. We faced the same issues on the war on terror that required domestic spying and collection of metadata via the US Patriot Act.
  - diskcat 11y ago
    Maybe if normals care enough about privacy to make a big deal out of any attempt to breach privacy it would be different. but as it is they just shrug and say "i got nothing to hide" smh
    - apricot 11y ago
      Not just "I got nothing to hide", but "You shouldn't be able to hide anything", which is scarier.
xorcist 11y ago
Not only that, seeing "the government" as a single entity is at best naive. Can a schoolteacher access a citizen's digital data with a court order? Can the FBI access a citizen's digital data with a court order? Can a court access a citizen's digital data with a court order? Those questions are fundamentally different and have varying support in lawmaking.
BuildTheRobots 11y ago
> You can't throw a legal requirement at math to stop working. Well, it's not stopped them trying in the past [1] - and we now live in a world where hilariously/terrifyingly certain numbers are just flat out illegal [2] In my mind, a large part of the problem comes from the fact that the people making these rules not only have no understanding of the underlying science, but they aren't even expected to _try_ and understand it, even at a cursory level. Which in itself might not actually be so bad, except we've seen examples time and time again (especially in the UK) where ministers feelings or beliefs trump expert opinion and/or hard science [3] [1] Indiana Pi Bill (an attempt to legislate math): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill [2] Illegal Numbers, see also Illegal Primes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number [3] Medical science vs war on drugs, see David Nutt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt [3a] Current "Snoopers Charter" discussions where industry experts still don't understand what's actually being legislated.

Bud 11y ago

This is dangerously naive. You think the government can't do something illogical? You just wait for it. You think the government can't outlaw the use of something, even if it's an ineffectual half-measure that does more harm than good? Were you alive during the "War on Drugs"?

leonatan 11y ago
Why "were"? We are still alive, humanity is still suffering from the "war on drugs".
orionblastar 11y ago
If you studied history they passed prohibition that banned alcohol. It did not work as bootleggers and gangsters would make their own alcohol and sell it at hidden clubs. Stores would sell fruit juice next to sugar and yeast and all the customer had to do was find a way to mix them to make alcohol. They eventually had to repeal Prohibition. When they banned drugs, they did the same thing. It is prohibition all over again. Criminals and gangs got into dealing drugs for money and people can't give them up. The war on drugs doesn't work because the CIA makes money from drug lords, and gangs and criminals make a lot of money selling drugs on the street. I managed to grow up without getting into drug but during the 1970s and 1980s there was a lot of peer pressure into doing drugs with others when I was growing up. It has become a social thing. Many prisoners are in prison for using drugs. So our prison system is over crowded as a result. All the war on drugs did was imprison drug users and not go after the gangs and dealers. The government doesn't get privacy rights. So they violate privacy in order to crack encryption on an iPhone via a backdoor or master key or modified iOS that gets rid of passcode penalties and brute forces the passcode. They only see getting the data off the iPhone to use as evidence, and don't care that it causes iPhone users to lose their privacy and make iPhones less secure. The government isn't logical about these things, judges and politicians are for the most part not tech savvy enough to understand the technology and the need for privacy. They studied law, and other things, and not technology in the most case to understand how it works. They see getting evidence on terrorists as a priority and don't care what rights it violates. They can pass a law that pressed criminal charges at Apple employees and management for not helping out and try to force them to do what they say. We faced the same issues on the war on terror that required domestic spying and collection of metadata via the US Patriot Act.
- diskcat 11y ago
  Maybe if normals care enough about privacy to make a big deal out of any attempt to breach privacy it would be different. but as it is they just shrug and say "i got nothing to hide" smh
  - apricot 11y ago
    Not just "I got nothing to hide", but "You shouldn't be able to hide anything", which is scarier.

xorcist 11y ago

Not only that, seeing "the government" as a single entity is at best naive. Can a schoolteacher access a citizen's digital data with a court order? Can the FBI access a citizen's digital data with a court order? Can a court access a citizen's digital data with a court order? Those questions are fundamentally different and have varying support in lawmaking.

BuildTheRobots 11y ago

> You can't throw a legal requirement at math to stop working. Well, it's not stopped them trying in the past [1] - and we now live in a world where hilariously/terrifyingly certain numbers are just flat out illegal [2] In my mind, a large part of the problem comes from the fact that the people making these rules not only have no understanding of the underlying science, but they aren't even expected to _try_ and understand it, even at a cursory level. Which in itself might not actually be so bad, except we've seen examples time and time again (especially in the UK) where ministers feelings or beliefs trump expert opinion and/or hard science [3] [1] Indiana Pi Bill (an attempt to legislate math): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill [2] Illegal Numbers, see also Illegal Primes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number [3] Medical science vs war on drugs, see David Nutt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt [3a] Current "Snoopers Charter" discussions where industry experts still don't understand what's actually being legislated.