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Building on this line of thought, I never completely understood the description of crypto as a safe to the public. To me, it's more about mandating how I decid

by sbov 9y ago

Building on this line of thought, I never completely understood the description of crypto as a safe to the public. To me, it's more about mandating how I decide to communicate: requiring I speak a language the FBI can understand, that I always speak loudly and clearly enough such that their recording devices can accurately capture what I'm saying, that I always write my letters in a language they can understand, etc. Crypto isn't a safe, it's the ability to talk in a language only two people understand. Unlike a safe, they have access to the data. They just can't understand it.

tetrep 9y ago
> ...that I always write my letters in a language they can understand, etc. And more importantly, with legible handwriting! The FBI has limited resources and we wouldn't want them to waste time deciphering your handwriting only to learn what you've said to your lover, while a terrorist's handwriting goes unanalyzed. I like this line of reasoning, that we must modify our behavior to enable surveillance. It switches things around from the traditional perspective, which is that we're doing extra things to increase our privacy, to instead be that we're doing extra things to decrease our privacy (using weak crypto, no crypto, adding and removing ssl here, etc).
cavanasm 9y ago
I agree about the importance of keeping crypto secure, but I think the safe analogy is pretty apt (in situations without illegal stuff happening, which you seem to be implying). People can't understand encrypted data (at least, I'd be super impressed with you if you could understand encrypted data as is), people have to decrypt the data using an encryption key. The FBI's current issue is that with data in a safe, there's a clearly defined legal penalty for refusing to unlock a safe when given a legitimate court order if you're the only person with the safe combo (you can't plead the 5th to unlocking the safe). With encryption, there's currently no corresponding penalty.
schoen 9y ago
Eben Moglen made this point during the first crypto wars, in 1999: http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/yu-encrypt.html http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/yu-encrypt.html ("The right to speak PGP is the right to speak Navajo")

by sbov 9y ago

tetrep 9y ago

> ...that I always write my letters in a language they can understand, etc. And more importantly, with legible handwriting! The FBI has limited resources and we wouldn't want them to waste time deciphering your handwriting only to learn what you've said to your lover, while a terrorist's handwriting goes unanalyzed. I like this line of reasoning, that we must modify our behavior to enable surveillance. It switches things around from the traditional perspective, which is that we're doing extra things to increase our privacy, to instead be that we're doing extra things to decrease our privacy (using weak crypto, no crypto, adding and removing ssl here, etc).

cavanasm 9y ago

I agree about the importance of keeping crypto secure, but I think the safe analogy is pretty apt (in situations without illegal stuff happening, which you seem to be implying). People can't understand encrypted data (at least, I'd be super impressed with you if you could understand encrypted data as is), people have to decrypt the data using an encryption key. The FBI's current issue is that with data in a safe, there's a clearly defined legal penalty for refusing to unlock a safe when given a legitimate court order if you're the only person with the safe combo (you can't plead the 5th to unlocking the safe). With encryption, there's currently no corresponding penalty.

schoen 9y ago

Eben Moglen made this point during the first crypto wars, in 1999: http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/yu-encrypt.html http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/yu-encrypt.html ("The right to speak PGP is the right to speak Navajo")