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The premise of the crypto wars are that we don't really have a right to encryption. Shouldn't we stop pussyfooting around this issue and instead demand that en

• alfiedotwtf 11y ago
  The right to encryption falls under Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
  • xanthopan 11y ago
    As far as international rights go, but what happens if this is in conflict with federal law?
  • thomasahle 11y ago
    It appears to be more about being allowed to communicate, than being allowed to do so privately.
    • MajesticHobo 11y ago
      The line of reasoning, is, IMO: You have the right to communicate freely -> encryption is just a form of (ostensibly garbled) communication -> you have the right to use encryption freely. Nothing in that clause says the communication must be understandable or even interpretable by all people.
      • progressive_dad 11y ago
        That's either ridiculously tortured reasoning or a brilliant legal shenanigan. I don't sit on the supreme court so I couldn't begin to say.
      • alkonaut 11y ago
        You could argue that freedom to communicate covers the use of encryption. If encryption was outlawed however, it wouldn't be the right for individuals to use it that would be outlawed, it would be the right for companies to sell products with strong encryption, or to do so without backdoors. That in turn would deny many the use of crypto, but it would not deny them the freedom to communicate. I don't think outlawing maths or outlawing companies from making an iPhone that they themselves can't break into is even remotely possible. The conclusion from that is that what we have can't really be a war on crypto, it must simply be the noise of people who realized they already lost.
    • Retra 11y ago
      Is there some restriction on what language in which you're allowed to communicate? Encryption is just a language. To say I don't have a right to use encryption is to say I don't have a right to speak things that other can't understand. And I see: it's not my fault you don't understand. If you want access to encrypted information, break the encryption. Outsmart me. Don't make it illegal for me to outsmart you.
  • devishard 11y ago
    That's not clear enough. I agree that you can't have those things without private communication but not everyone does.
    • Godel_unicode 11y ago
      But why does that private communication have to be digital? Does "it would be really annoying not to have this" rise to the level of a fundamental right? Does this right to expression apply to data at rest?
      • devishard 11y ago
        This way of approaching human rights as a set of legalistic technicalities nauseates me.
  • EvanPlaice 11y ago
    The widespread dragnet of data collection currently used is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. > "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." This should be amended to include data but from a legal standpoint it should stand that information/communications that are stored/accessed locally on a personal computer fall under 'effects'. Backdooring into your computer without prior authorization and/or the justification backed by a warrant is illegal and a violation of the rights of US citizens.
  • decasteve 11y ago
    This also falls under Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms#Fundamental_freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and...
• dbcurtis 11y ago
  Yes, we should assert that right. And there is no reason not to go after a constitutional amendment to clarify the right. It should not be necessary, I believe it is already covered. But the equal rights amendment should not have been necessary, either. In fact, the federalists thought the bill of rights was unnecessary. It was the Anti-Federalists that drove the first 10 Amendments.
  • mgraczyk 11y ago
    I agree with your main point, but the equal rights amendment was never passed. Due to the broadening of interpretation of the fourteenth amendment over time, it has not been necessary.
• chongli 11y ago
  Fundamental rights are not a whitelist of approved behaviours. Just because there's no official document sitting in archive saying we have the right to encryption doesn't mean it's not a fundamental right.
  • paulddraper 11y ago
    It means that right is protected by law. That is a whitelist.
  • jackfoxy 11y ago
    Amendment 9 - Ratified 12/15/1791. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
• JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  In the US its always been a contentious issue - are human rights limited to a list? We have a bill that enumerates some of them. Its very creation was seen as a problem by some, since that would imply no others exist. And that's what's happened through history. Freedom of the press and of speech should have been extended to electronic communications. But they have, so far, not been.
• treebeard901 11y ago
  Is there another example where math has been made illegal?
  • programmarchy 11y ago
    Yup, whenever it threatens the power of the priesthood / bureaucracy. The Roman Catholic Inquisition condemning Galileo for heliocentrism comes to mind.
    • drdeca 11y ago
      Recently I heard that this was more based on /how/ he went about talking about it, more than just that he claimed it.
• djillionsmix 11y ago
  Freedom of speech isn't the freedom to commit criminal acts, though. In a very real sense, crypto is such a freedom. I don't think that's something that governments can accept, in the long term.
  • fweespee_ch 11y ago
    It is also the freedom not to have your bank account looted. Or are you also planning to give up things like online banking? The reality is the more you pass the keys to this sort of thing around the greater the risks. EDIT: Since I'm rate limited... You do realize the Freedom of Speech was literally created to enable political dissent that used to involve criminal acts? http://www.lectlaw.com/files/con01.htm http://www.lectlaw.com/files/con01.htm > The inhabitants of the North American colonies did not have a legal right to express opposition to the British government that ruled them. Nonetheless, throughout the late 1700s, these early Americans did voice their discontent with the Crown. For example, they strongly denounced the British parliament's enactment of a series of taxes to pay off a large national debt that England had incurred in its Seven Years War with France. In newspaper articles, pamphlets and through boycotts, the colonists raised what would become their battle cry: "No taxation without representation!" And in 1773, the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony demonstrated their outrage at the tax on tea in a dramatic act of civil disobedience: the Boston Tea Party. > The colonies' most celebrated seditious libel prosecution was that of John Peter Zenger in 1735. Zenger, publisher of the 'New York Weekly Journal', had printed a series of scathing criticisms of New York's colonial governor. Although the law was against Zenger, a jury found him not guilty -- in effect, nullifying the law and expressing both the jurors' contempt for British rule and their support for a free and unfettered press. After Zenger's acquittal, the British authorities abandoned seditious libel prosecutions in the colonies, having concluded that such prosecutions were no longer an effective tool of repression.
    • ethbro 11y ago
      Substituting a straw man doesn't undercut parent's point. Right to true encryption is tantamount to right to perfect privacy, including privacy for committing crimes. This has been the current situation if true crypto was properly used for a while but we seem to be moving into a world beyond that - where such crypto is available to anyone who purchases a mobile phone and configures a few options. I believe (and I would assume you do to) that widespread encryption is the preferable choice over key escrow, but let's not pretend that ready accessible consumer hard encryption doesn't fundamentally alter the balance between government and its citizens (including in some morally questionable ways).
• peteretep 11y ago
  > demand that encryption is a fundamental right just as > freedom of speech is a fundamental right Is it though? Most human rights prevent law enforcement from random trespass in to your home to look through your things, which is arguably a human right too. But these are specifically overruled by a warrant. Why should the content of your electronic data be more protected than the content of the paperwork (bank records, health records, etc) in your home?
  • natch 11y ago
    Not sure if you're open to hearing an answer to your "why should" question, which may have been rhetorical. The electronic data is a lot richer and more personal than just documents. It's more like an extension of your brain, than an extension of your home. It also features live incoming personal and private data from friends, family, and other contacts who may be put in danger if their information (location, for example) is exposed to unsavory people. (Note, governments can and do sometimes have unsavory people working alongside the good people.) To the extent that encryption protects all this information, yes it should be considered as much a right as the right to have private thoughts, which seems to be fairly widely accepted.
    • peteretep 11y ago
      It certainly does. Whether or not that's a substantial enough difference is going to be one for the courts - I note in the US that cops can't search your phone (but can search your wallet) on a routine stop for exactly the reasons you outline. I guess my point was that it doesn't seem prima facie to me that your electronic data is more privileged than your non-electronic data is all, and your non-electronic data is certainly subject to warrant
      • nitrogen 11y ago
        The use of a warrant and the use of encryption should be completely orthogonal. It has nothing to do with "privilege" of electronic information. It's simply about the format in which information is stored.
• omginternets 11y ago
  If we frame this as a right to privacy, we already have a lot lof legal precedent. Roe v. Wade comes readily to mind.
  • s_q_b 11y ago
    The right exists.. It's called the "right to private corespondence. There was discussion about putting it into the first amendment, but it never happened.
• deleted 11y ago
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