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We already require corporations to preserve all their email, voice, and other electronic communications in case the government wants to investigate it. Maybe yo
by MichaelBurge 9y ago
We already require corporations to preserve all their email, voice, and other electronic communications in case the government wants to investigate it. Maybe you're irresponsible for losing your key, and need to be held accountable.
We also require people to document their finances to accurately tax them. You're presumed 'guilty until proven innocent' in the sense that you're taxed on income unless you can document that it's untaxable(a business expense). There are penalties for failing to document things. What's wrong with requiring you to document your private keys, along with your receipts?
If you sell apples under the name "Loving Apples", you have to pay your state government to register that name. You can be fined for not registering your name, and your bank or other financial provider will want to see the government approval document. You could have the government maintain a central registry of all private keys, and make it a crime to encrypt a document with a key not documented in a state agency.
If you receive a document that is encrypted, you may be further required to tell the government who gave it to you, to ensure compliance with the encryption law; similar to how giving someone money requires you to tell the government about the transaction for compliance with tax law.
- Thiez 9y agoWouldn't the same reasoning apply to all communication? Do you keep transcripts and/or recordings of all private conversations you have (in meatspace) so that you can hand those to the government when they show up with a warrant? Would you like to live in a society where not keeping such records is a crime? If not, why should communication "on a computer" be held to a different standard?
- MichaelBurge 9y ago"One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens" Which direction of the implication you take is a matter of preference. People who agree with giving the government full power(and trust them not to abuse it) or who agree with not giving the government any of this power are both logically consistent with my argument. I'm only attempting to rule out people who are okay with all of the existing documentation requirements, but balk at documenting their encryption keys.