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Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives

Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every device, all the way down to the corporate desktop, in a way that not even the company executives themselves can read the email of their own employees, then lots of regulations the government applies to companies would be mooted. Taken to the extreme, if all communication is digital, and 100% impregnable, and people maintain good OpSec, then it will be hard to impossible to execute lawsuits or regulatory investigations into malfeasance because they'll be no paper trail. The end result of going full tilt on crypto is cryptoanarchy. This was pretty much well argued in the 90s among the cypherpunks community. Most of the libertarians and Objectivists were salivating over how strong crypto protocols would end fiat currency, end taxation, end regulation, and so on. So how far as a society are we willing to take this? Does it just extend to private data? Does it extend to transactions? To payments you make for things? To transfers of money? To business transactions? Will Democracy be able to audit nothing of the interactions of citizens or our institutions in the future? You don't have to agree with Obama's position to see that cryptoanarchy and Democracy are on a collision course, and it makes sense to discuss the possibilities openly without just plugging your ears and taking an absolutist position that demonizes anyone who disagrees.

mattmanser 11y ago
They can still plant bugs in offices, cars, homes, etc. That's specific and targeted and proportional, but expensive and hard. There's no good reason they have to have access to electronic devices, they can install cameras and mics. It's just easier going straight to the phones and emails. But they had that power and they abused it massively, and are now suffering the backlash, and why should privacy stop given they've demonstrated they can't be proportional in their surveillance? They were not specific with what they got from the phones and emails, so they've demonstrated they're not responsible or measured and now strong encryption is necessary as government has clearly shown that secret courts === warrantless mass surveillance. The other thing that's clear is that the US couldn't care less about privacy for anyone not in the US, so all us non-US citizen need this encryption to protect us from your peeping tom government.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  So you're in favor of the government bugging and installing cameras secretly? Because you can't really bug say, Enron's corporate office without a warrant served, and so they'd know they're being watched. The alternative is breaking and entering. So since retroactive paper trails will be devalued, the government will have to switch to preemptive collection and entrapment scenarios. I'm not sure this is better for privacy or democracy.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    > The alternative There are far more investigative alternatives than few you have mentioned. Serving warrants rarely involves "bugs", and warrants are not the only tool available. For example, a judge can order people to produce documents, enforced with the threat of contempt of court. Other witnesses can be found (with any data they bring), and simple observation of public actions can reveal a surprising amount. > so they'd know they're being watched So what. The warrant requirement is intended to be a burden to law enforcement. The entire point is that a civilized and fair society that follows the rule of law prioritizes the restrictions and procedures we call "due process" above the demands and desires of law enforcement. If letting some criminals walk free is a necessary consequence of the the rights retained by the people, then some crimes go unpunished. Anybody suggesting that we should accept punishing some small amount of innocent people as "collateral damage" is working against the foundation of a free society.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    This sounds like a bunch of crap (re: the warrant for Enron's corporate office). I admit I'm not aware of exactly what the legalities are right now, but for the sake of argument, I don't see why the government shouldn't be able to secretly bug a corporate office, provided that a proper warrant is in place. So yeah, if they get a warrant to do so and convince a judge that this is necessary, they should be able to get some government spy to be able to sneak in somehow (maintenance worker?) and plant bugs. The whole key here is having a warrant, a specific warrant for a specific target looking for specific things. I don't think most Americans have a problem with law enforcement being able to snoop on people of suspicion provided the proper channels are followed, only particular persons of interest are snooped on, and it isn't just a fishing expedition. This is exactly why we have warrants: so that law enforcement can gather evidence of crimes and prosecute people, but without overly infringing on the civil liberties of the people. So no, it wouldn't be "breaking and entering" if you have the correct warrant in place, just like it isn't "breaking and entering" when the police have a warrant to enter your house looking for evidence and they enter when you aren't home.
jes5199 11y ago
> 100% impregnable, and people maintain good OpSec fortunately, that never happens. Even the strongest defenses consistently fall to human error
- cromwellian 11y ago
  Yup. Just as Dredd Pirate Roberts. :) Satoshi Nakamoto is probably the only one I've seen to successfully do near perfect OpSec.
eigenvector 11y ago
You're completely right that there are undesirable consequences to mathematically absolute privacy that can't be compromised by any means. But I'd argue that the government has brought this scenario upon itself by blowing up the old system of procedural (rather than mathematical) safeguards. In the past, Apple had your iMessage data, or at least the ability to decrypt it on-demand. It was understood that this data would be private by default, but would be disclosed to the government through an established, case-by-case process supervised by the courts. Everyone was pretty much OK with this. You and I got our data kept private, unless there was some material, specific reason for the government to suspect it was related to a crime. The government got to dump the data of people under investigation, if a court thought there was good reason to do so. Then the government went nuclear. They said, here's a National Security Letter that compels you to give us everything you have. Bulk data. Any cooperation that is physically possible. You can't talk about it and you can't appeal to the courts. If you have to capability to MiTM all of your users and pipe everything to us, you have to do it. No oversight, no transparency and no safeguards. Whatever we do with the data is up to us. In this context, what alternative do tech companies have besides to similarly escalate and build systems that make it physically impossible for them to cooperate? The government destroyed the social compact between telecom providers and law enforcement with forced, secret bulk surveillance. If the government is willing to step back and make binding, unequivocal commitments that companies that do maintain the ability to decrypt their users' communications won't be forced to secretly use them en masse, maybe we can go back to the old status quo. But the government doesn't seem willing to do that. They want cooperation, but they also want the ability to bust in the back door with an NSL and say "give us everything, on everyone." The legal system has become so tilted in the government's favour (see: the inability to challenge the constitutionality of bulk surveillance, because you can't prove it happened to you), that companies will no longer trust in the old procedural safeguards. The only thing we can trust is the mathematically proven safety of encryption. And that's the government's fault. So now we are forced to chose between absolute privacy and zero privacy. So far, I think Apple is making the right choice.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  I'm in favor of Apple's choices, but I can see the government's side of this too, I don't think it's as cut and dried morally as people are making it. I like to mentally "game out" repercussions of various scenarios to see where they lead, and I don't think it is bad with such wide sweeping and powerful technologies, to play devils advocate and argue on both sides. A lot of people don't seem to want get into the fine details and debate at all. They just want to declare absolute privacy, like absolute freedom of speech, a done deal, and move on. I think there are interesting sociological, economic, and political issues to discuss not to curtail debate like that. I also don't like the way the sides are demonized. Perhaps the end result is to enact a shift in the way police work is done and the way regulations are prosecuted. Perhaps the government can rule that privacy is a right only for personal communications, and does not apply to computers used for business sectors that are regulated. They can mandate anti-privacy, mandate transparency and paper trails, for say, health insurers, or makers of chemicals. But the nuance and fine details need to be worked out.
BWStearns 11y ago
This is largely overblown though. Even with unfettered access to great and easy to use crypto your society doesn't collapse. It turns out that maintaining anonymity is a giant pain in the ass, no more people are going to go full on tinfoil ghost on society to dodge taxes any more than they already disappear and live off the grid. Most businesses are easier to conduct in public and even derive benefit from it. Regulatory enforcement is fairly easy: in order to have a license to operate your coal plant, you agree to hand over documents x, y, z. If in your crypto-dystopia I handed over encrypted docs instead of the plaintext for my coal plant I would just have my business fined out of existence just like would happen now. If I have incriminating documents and no crypto I'm not going to encrypt them, I'm going to slag the hard drives they're on and burn the paper copies. If you're a public official: make it illegal to use encryption beyond the provided email encryption (which the agency IT dept can also read). I think you can make the case that it is already illegal since an internally encrypted message that you refuse to decrypt (at the request of a superior, a court, or investigation) would have to have been misuse of gov't property (your first amendment rights do not allow you to use government systems for private use and you explicitly have no privacy with respect to the scenario mentioned above when you use them). People have always had plenty of ways to be shitheads and get away with it, and there have always been mechanisms to make those decisions costly. These things continue to be true despite the presence of strong crypto. The reason an "absolutist" position here makes sense is because this is a binary choice between everyone legally having security, or no one legally having security. Until now we haven't had to make this choice because neither was an option, we just all existed in a vague middle ground dictated by our circumstances, number of shits given, and technical acumen. True, you might not have had access to cryptography, but you didn't have data to encrypt so you lost nothing by having no encryption. Now everyone has a lot to lose but not everyone realizes that.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  The issue isn't that they won't hand over documents x,y,z, they'll just hand over fake documents x, y, and z, while the real documents remain encrypted. When the government asks why they can't read files Real_X, Real_y, and Real_Z, they'll claim they're private email communications between employees, and that you can't force them to turn over the keys. But in reality, they were secret bribery emails between corporate executives and local politicians. Prior to cryptography, you could pull this off as well, you could have fake books. Hide the real books offsite so warrants can't find them, etc. Cryptography doesn't change whether it's possible to do or not, it just makes it easier to do and scales better. I mean, even the Nazi's could have used one time pads by carrier pigeon if they wanted to, Enigma wasn't even needed. But the logistics of doing it are less convenient. As cryptography becomes more universal, more automatic, more user friendly, OpSec will become less of a burden for less diligent people. Infact, we hope it does, because sloppy OpSec is a huge problem for society right now. Just look at passwords.
revelation 11y ago
Way to burn a strawman the height of Mount Everest. Nobody is asking for cryptoanarchy, just freedom of backdoored communication. In any case, I surely hope my bank is already practicing that kind of opsec. That doesn't mean they suddenly stop giving reports to the government. Why would it? That's just.. what?
coldtea 11y ago
>Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. And there's nothing preventing law enforcement to find about these by tons of other means, including checking suspected bank transactions with a warrant. People determined to communicate without anyone hearing, e.g. to setup their tax-haven accouts-- can do it in 2000 ways. Mass surveillance is about all the others who casually exchange data and discussions. >The end result of going full tilt on crypto is cryptoanarchy. That sounds like, but is not, a thing.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  "People determined to communicate without anyone hearing, e.g. to setup their tax-haven accouts-- can do it in 2000 ways." That's pretty much the argument made against any gun regulation, because pretty much anyone who wants to commit a gun crime can find a workaround. "including checking suspected bank transactions with a warrant" Assuming one is not using cryptocurrency like bitcoin to store money and make transactions.
  - cyphar 11y ago
    > "including checking suspected bank transactions with a warrant" > Assuming one is not using cryptocurrency like bitcoin to store money and make transactions. All transactions in Bitcoin are public. It's a public ledger that is barely pseudonymous. So, it's actually even easier for law enforcement than with banks -- you don't need to pick up the phone to investigate a transaction history.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - yohui 11y ago
    I thought it was interesting that someone in a previous thread pointed out the parallels between encryption and firearm regulation. They presented it as a point in favor of gun ownership, but it made me take a step back and look at it the other way. My opinions haven't changed, but I'm a little more wary of the rhetoric being thrown around.
studentrob 11y ago
This is not a debate about privacy vs. security. It's about security vs. security. [1] [2] [3] On balance, putting backdoors in phones will make us less secure, because criminals will just use other methods to communicate, and the public will be putting their data within reach of every hacker in the world through a government-imposed weakness. The administration is unlikely to understand our privacy concerns. They do understand economic and public safety issues, and it is the facts around these issues that we must share with them. President Obama himself told President Xi last year that introducing backdoor legislation would hurt his economy [4]. Let's make Obama's argument back to him [1] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h35m52s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h35m52s [2] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h11m46s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h11m46s [3] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h19m39s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h19m39s [4] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-china-idUSKBN0LY2H520150302 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-china-idUSKBN0LY...
- skybrian 11y ago
  "the public will be putting their data within reach of every hacker in the world through a government-imposed weakness" You're reusing arguments about key escrow in a way that doesn't apply. This isn't key escrow. It's about software updates, which use digital signing in the way it's supposed to be used. Apple's software updates are guarded by a private key. Of course they need to keep the private key safe, but sometimes use it to sign releases. It's expensive but doable, and a good thing too, because the entire app ecosystem (not to mention https and Bitcoin) depends on keeping private keys safe. If keeping a private key safe is impossible even for a well-funded company like Apple, public key encryption doesn't work. Game over.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    > If keeping a private key safe is impossible even for a well-funded company like Apple, public key encryption doesn't work. Game over. Funny, FBI Director James Comey says the same thing [1] And, the DOJ has suggested that if Apple does create the requested tool, then they can just give the source code and key to the FBI [2] I think we know where you stand on this issue. [1] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=2h43m12s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=2h43m12s [2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/11/fbi-could-force-apple-to-hand-over-private-key http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/11/fbi-could-...
pas 11y ago
> cryptoanarchy and Democracy are on a collision course Yes, though I'd like to see your argument for that. However, the failure mode of crypto-anarchy is perfectly secret digital companies arising, who then proceed to affect the real world for digital currency. (Such as a hitman, or an army of anonymous mercenaries conducting irregular warfare for hire.) So, basically large scale terrorism. Probably much better than the failure mode of a bit overzealous police state. > some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. That's their shortsightedness. There are ways to tax that don't rely on looking into people's bank accounts. And a lot of the current expenditures could be replaced by projects that require proof of payment. So, you need to show a proof of payment otherwise no school for your kids, no healthcare, no pension, you can't use public roads, etc. And people can vote to enforce collection of money, just like now, foreclosure and repossession works on physical things. > companies People can vote to make records keeping mandatory (just like now), and employees have it in their interest to get things in writing. Otherwise they (also) go to jail if they did something really stupid. (It was an order is not an acceptable defense for some time.) > Will Democracy be able to audit nothing of the interactions of citizens or our institutions in the future? As it was unable to do so before digital records. And as it is unable to do so for criminal organizations. And since cryptography exists and computing is becoming more and more accessible, it's getting easier and easier to maintain a secret organization with a secret ledger. So, all in all, it's a bad thing to rely on those backdoors. It's not even a stopgap measure.
erkkie 11y ago
This as an argument is completely crazy and similarly absolutist. Having access to proper crypto at all, as an option, does not mean everything will inevitably be encrypted and not controlled for. Companies will still have the power to set their own device rules and so on. There's plenty of existing laws in place to allow for any kind of reporting still happen; you do not need to break all crypto forever.
mikeash 11y ago
Unbreakable encryption isn't new. One-time pads have been around for a long time. Book ciphers can be impenetrable when done properly. And there's always the tried-and-true technique of simply never writing anything down, and doing everything face to face. Even if you argue that this is too difficult and you need something modern and easy to use, uncrackable encryption programs have been available for maybe two decades now. Yet regulators seem to still be able to get the information they need. They're often nearly toothless, but that's because of politics, not technology.
stillsut 11y ago
Absolutely right. Imagine a white man goes on a spree shooting with hate-crime elements. We are trying to find out if more of these attacks will occur Now the suspect's money is in a Goldman Sachs account and the bank tells the gov't they couldn't just break into their client's financial records and find out who transferred them money. This is a "secret trust" account where nobody - not even Goldman employees - can recover transnational records. What kind of precedent would that set? What about if China wanted to find out bank transactions? Some say this is hate-crime is one of the worst in decades and it's worth finding out if we are at risk for more. Opponents say banking privacy is an absolute right. Can anyone tell me if they story ran in national news, the CEO of Goldman would not be facing charges of treason right now?

mattmanser 11y ago

They can still plant bugs in offices, cars, homes, etc. That's specific and targeted and proportional, but expensive and hard. There's no good reason they have to have access to electronic devices, they can install cameras and mics. It's just easier going straight to the phones and emails. But they had that power and they abused it massively, and are now suffering the backlash, and why should privacy stop given they've demonstrated they can't be proportional in their surveillance? They were not specific with what they got from the phones and emails, so they've demonstrated they're not responsible or measured and now strong encryption is necessary as government has clearly shown that secret courts === warrantless mass surveillance. The other thing that's clear is that the US couldn't care less about privacy for anyone not in the US, so all us non-US citizen need this encryption to protect us from your peeping tom government.

cromwellian 11y ago
So you're in favor of the government bugging and installing cameras secretly? Because you can't really bug say, Enron's corporate office without a warrant served, and so they'd know they're being watched. The alternative is breaking and entering. So since retroactive paper trails will be devalued, the government will have to switch to preemptive collection and entrapment scenarios. I'm not sure this is better for privacy or democracy.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > The alternative There are far more investigative alternatives than few you have mentioned. Serving warrants rarely involves "bugs", and warrants are not the only tool available. For example, a judge can order people to produce documents, enforced with the threat of contempt of court. Other witnesses can be found (with any data they bring), and simple observation of public actions can reveal a surprising amount. > so they'd know they're being watched So what. The warrant requirement is intended to be a burden to law enforcement. The entire point is that a civilized and fair society that follows the rule of law prioritizes the restrictions and procedures we call "due process" above the demands and desires of law enforcement. If letting some criminals walk free is a necessary consequence of the the rights retained by the people, then some crimes go unpunished. Anybody suggesting that we should accept punishing some small amount of innocent people as "collateral damage" is working against the foundation of a free society.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  This sounds like a bunch of crap (re: the warrant for Enron's corporate office). I admit I'm not aware of exactly what the legalities are right now, but for the sake of argument, I don't see why the government shouldn't be able to secretly bug a corporate office, provided that a proper warrant is in place. So yeah, if they get a warrant to do so and convince a judge that this is necessary, they should be able to get some government spy to be able to sneak in somehow (maintenance worker?) and plant bugs. The whole key here is having a warrant, a specific warrant for a specific target looking for specific things. I don't think most Americans have a problem with law enforcement being able to snoop on people of suspicion provided the proper channels are followed, only particular persons of interest are snooped on, and it isn't just a fishing expedition. This is exactly why we have warrants: so that law enforcement can gather evidence of crimes and prosecute people, but without overly infringing on the civil liberties of the people. So no, it wouldn't be "breaking and entering" if you have the correct warrant in place, just like it isn't "breaking and entering" when the police have a warrant to enter your house looking for evidence and they enter when you aren't home.

jes5199 11y ago

> 100% impregnable, and people maintain good OpSec fortunately, that never happens. Even the strongest defenses consistently fall to human error

cromwellian 11y ago
Yup. Just as Dredd Pirate Roberts. :) Satoshi Nakamoto is probably the only one I've seen to successfully do near perfect OpSec.

eigenvector 11y ago

You're completely right that there are undesirable consequences to mathematically absolute privacy that can't be compromised by any means. But I'd argue that the government has brought this scenario upon itself by blowing up the old system of procedural (rather than mathematical) safeguards. In the past, Apple had your iMessage data, or at least the ability to decrypt it on-demand. It was understood that this data would be private by default, but would be disclosed to the government through an established, case-by-case process supervised by the courts. Everyone was pretty much OK with this. You and I got our data kept private, unless there was some material, specific reason for the government to suspect it was related to a crime. The government got to dump the data of people under investigation, if a court thought there was good reason to do so. Then the government went nuclear. They said, here's a National Security Letter that compels you to give us everything you have. Bulk data. Any cooperation that is physically possible. You can't talk about it and you can't appeal to the courts. If you have to capability to MiTM all of your users and pipe everything to us, you have to do it. No oversight, no transparency and no safeguards. Whatever we do with the data is up to us. In this context, what alternative do tech companies have besides to similarly escalate and build systems that make it physically impossible for them to cooperate? The government destroyed the social compact between telecom providers and law enforcement with forced, secret bulk surveillance. If the government is willing to step back and make binding, unequivocal commitments that companies that do maintain the ability to decrypt their users' communications won't be forced to secretly use them en masse, maybe we can go back to the old status quo. But the government doesn't seem willing to do that. They want cooperation, but they also want the ability to bust in the back door with an NSL and say "give us everything, on everyone." The legal system has become so tilted in the government's favour (see: the inability to challenge the constitutionality of bulk surveillance, because you can't prove it happened to you), that companies will no longer trust in the old procedural safeguards. The only thing we can trust is the mathematically proven safety of encryption. And that's the government's fault. So now we are forced to chose between absolute privacy and zero privacy. So far, I think Apple is making the right choice.

cromwellian 11y ago
I'm in favor of Apple's choices, but I can see the government's side of this too, I don't think it's as cut and dried morally as people are making it. I like to mentally "game out" repercussions of various scenarios to see where they lead, and I don't think it is bad with such wide sweeping and powerful technologies, to play devils advocate and argue on both sides. A lot of people don't seem to want get into the fine details and debate at all. They just want to declare absolute privacy, like absolute freedom of speech, a done deal, and move on. I think there are interesting sociological, economic, and political issues to discuss not to curtail debate like that. I also don't like the way the sides are demonized. Perhaps the end result is to enact a shift in the way police work is done and the way regulations are prosecuted. Perhaps the government can rule that privacy is a right only for personal communications, and does not apply to computers used for business sectors that are regulated. They can mandate anti-privacy, mandate transparency and paper trails, for say, health insurers, or makers of chemicals. But the nuance and fine details need to be worked out.

BWStearns 11y ago

This is largely overblown though. Even with unfettered access to great and easy to use crypto your society doesn't collapse. It turns out that maintaining anonymity is a giant pain in the ass, no more people are going to go full on tinfoil ghost on society to dodge taxes any more than they already disappear and live off the grid. Most businesses are easier to conduct in public and even derive benefit from it. Regulatory enforcement is fairly easy: in order to have a license to operate your coal plant, you agree to hand over documents x, y, z. If in your crypto-dystopia I handed over encrypted docs instead of the plaintext for my coal plant I would just have my business fined out of existence just like would happen now. If I have incriminating documents and no crypto I'm not going to encrypt them, I'm going to slag the hard drives they're on and burn the paper copies. If you're a public official: make it illegal to use encryption beyond the provided email encryption (which the agency IT dept can also read). I think you can make the case that it is already illegal since an internally encrypted message that you refuse to decrypt (at the request of a superior, a court, or investigation) would have to have been misuse of gov't property (your first amendment rights do not allow you to use government systems for private use and you explicitly have no privacy with respect to the scenario mentioned above when you use them). People have always had plenty of ways to be shitheads and get away with it, and there have always been mechanisms to make those decisions costly. These things continue to be true despite the presence of strong crypto. The reason an "absolutist" position here makes sense is because this is a binary choice between everyone legally having security, or no one legally having security. Until now we haven't had to make this choice because neither was an option, we just all existed in a vague middle ground dictated by our circumstances, number of shits given, and technical acumen. True, you might not have had access to cryptography, but you didn't have data to encrypt so you lost nothing by having no encryption. Now everyone has a lot to lose but not everyone realizes that.

cromwellian 11y ago
The issue isn't that they won't hand over documents x,y,z, they'll just hand over fake documents x, y, and z, while the real documents remain encrypted. When the government asks why they can't read files Real_X, Real_y, and Real_Z, they'll claim they're private email communications between employees, and that you can't force them to turn over the keys. But in reality, they were secret bribery emails between corporate executives and local politicians. Prior to cryptography, you could pull this off as well, you could have fake books. Hide the real books offsite so warrants can't find them, etc. Cryptography doesn't change whether it's possible to do or not, it just makes it easier to do and scales better. I mean, even the Nazi's could have used one time pads by carrier pigeon if they wanted to, Enigma wasn't even needed. But the logistics of doing it are less convenient. As cryptography becomes more universal, more automatic, more user friendly, OpSec will become less of a burden for less diligent people. Infact, we hope it does, because sloppy OpSec is a huge problem for society right now. Just look at passwords.

revelation 11y ago

Way to burn a strawman the height of Mount Everest. Nobody is asking for cryptoanarchy, just freedom of backdoored communication. In any case, I surely hope my bank is already practicing that kind of opsec. That doesn't mean they suddenly stop giving reports to the government. Why would it? That's just.. what?

coldtea 11y ago

>Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. And there's nothing preventing law enforcement to find about these by tons of other means, including checking suspected bank transactions with a warrant. People determined to communicate without anyone hearing, e.g. to setup their tax-haven accouts-- can do it in 2000 ways. Mass surveillance is about all the others who casually exchange data and discussions. >The end result of going full tilt on crypto is cryptoanarchy. That sounds like, but is not, a thing.

cromwellian 11y ago
"People determined to communicate without anyone hearing, e.g. to setup their tax-haven accouts-- can do it in 2000 ways." That's pretty much the argument made against any gun regulation, because pretty much anyone who wants to commit a gun crime can find a workaround. "including checking suspected bank transactions with a warrant" Assuming one is not using cryptocurrency like bitcoin to store money and make transactions.
- cyphar 11y ago
  > "including checking suspected bank transactions with a warrant" > Assuming one is not using cryptocurrency like bitcoin to store money and make transactions. All transactions in Bitcoin are public. It's a public ledger that is barely pseudonymous. So, it's actually even easier for law enforcement than with banks -- you don't need to pick up the phone to investigate a transaction history.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- yohui 11y ago
  I thought it was interesting that someone in a previous thread pointed out the parallels between encryption and firearm regulation. They presented it as a point in favor of gun ownership, but it made me take a step back and look at it the other way. My opinions haven't changed, but I'm a little more wary of the rhetoric being thrown around.

studentrob 11y ago

This is not a debate about privacy vs. security. It's about security vs. security. [1] [2] [3] On balance, putting backdoors in phones will make us less secure, because criminals will just use other methods to communicate, and the public will be putting their data within reach of every hacker in the world through a government-imposed weakness. The administration is unlikely to understand our privacy concerns. They do understand economic and public safety issues, and it is the facts around these issues that we must share with them. President Obama himself told President Xi last year that introducing backdoor legislation would hurt his economy [4]. Let's make Obama's argument back to him [1] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h35m52s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h35m52s [2] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h11m46s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h11m46s [3] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h19m39s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h19m39s [4] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-china-idUSKBN0LY2H520150302 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-china-idUSKBN0LY...

skybrian 11y ago
"the public will be putting their data within reach of every hacker in the world through a government-imposed weakness" You're reusing arguments about key escrow in a way that doesn't apply. This isn't key escrow. It's about software updates, which use digital signing in the way it's supposed to be used. Apple's software updates are guarded by a private key. Of course they need to keep the private key safe, but sometimes use it to sign releases. It's expensive but doable, and a good thing too, because the entire app ecosystem (not to mention https and Bitcoin) depends on keeping private keys safe. If keeping a private key safe is impossible even for a well-funded company like Apple, public key encryption doesn't work. Game over.
- studentrob 11y ago
  > If keeping a private key safe is impossible even for a well-funded company like Apple, public key encryption doesn't work. Game over. Funny, FBI Director James Comey says the same thing [1] And, the DOJ has suggested that if Apple does create the requested tool, then they can just give the source code and key to the FBI [2] I think we know where you stand on this issue. [1] https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=2h43m12s https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=2h43m12s [2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/11/fbi-could-force-apple-to-hand-over-private-key http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/11/fbi-could-...

pas 11y ago

> cryptoanarchy and Democracy are on a collision course Yes, though I'd like to see your argument for that. However, the failure mode of crypto-anarchy is perfectly secret digital companies arising, who then proceed to affect the real world for digital currency. (Such as a hitman, or an army of anonymous mercenaries conducting irregular warfare for hire.) So, basically large scale terrorism. Probably much better than the failure mode of a bit overzealous police state. > some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. That's their shortsightedness. There are ways to tax that don't rely on looking into people's bank accounts. And a lot of the current expenditures could be replaced by projects that require proof of payment. So, you need to show a proof of payment otherwise no school for your kids, no healthcare, no pension, you can't use public roads, etc. And people can vote to enforce collection of money, just like now, foreclosure and repossession works on physical things. > companies People can vote to make records keeping mandatory (just like now), and employees have it in their interest to get things in writing. Otherwise they (also) go to jail if they did something really stupid. (It was an order is not an acceptable defense for some time.) > Will Democracy be able to audit nothing of the interactions of citizens or our institutions in the future? As it was unable to do so before digital records. And as it is unable to do so for criminal organizations. And since cryptography exists and computing is becoming more and more accessible, it's getting easier and easier to maintain a secret organization with a secret ledger. So, all in all, it's a bad thing to rely on those backdoors. It's not even a stopgap measure.

erkkie 11y ago

This as an argument is completely crazy and similarly absolutist. Having access to proper crypto at all, as an option, does not mean everything will inevitably be encrypted and not controlled for. Companies will still have the power to set their own device rules and so on. There's plenty of existing laws in place to allow for any kind of reporting still happen; you do not need to break all crypto forever.

mikeash 11y ago

Unbreakable encryption isn't new. One-time pads have been around for a long time. Book ciphers can be impenetrable when done properly. And there's always the tried-and-true technique of simply never writing anything down, and doing everything face to face. Even if you argue that this is too difficult and you need something modern and easy to use, uncrackable encryption programs have been available for maybe two decades now. Yet regulators seem to still be able to get the information they need. They're often nearly toothless, but that's because of politics, not technology.

stillsut 11y ago

Absolutely right. Imagine a white man goes on a spree shooting with hate-crime elements. We are trying to find out if more of these attacks will occur Now the suspect's money is in a Goldman Sachs account and the bank tells the gov't they couldn't just break into their client's financial records and find out who transferred them money. This is a "secret trust" account where nobody - not even Goldman employees - can recover transnational records. What kind of precedent would that set? What about if China wanted to find out bank transactions? Some say this is hate-crime is one of the worst in decades and it's worth finding out if we are at risk for more. Opponents say banking privacy is an absolute right. Can anyone tell me if they story ran in national news, the CEO of Goldman would not be facing charges of treason right now?