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Think of something you don't do yourself, but would like to see banned. Could be guns, drugs, fox hunting, cars, eating meat, religion, anything, it doesn't mat

• semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  This reduces to "no-one should restrict the right of anyone to do anything". Why draw the line where you've done? Why shouldn't we also allow explicit torture of animals? Why shouldn't we legalize the making of death threats? Etc.
  • CamperBob2 9y ago
    A good place to draw the line is one that places responsibility on the tool-wielders, and not on the mere existence or possession of the tools themselves. Many of us object to gun control on that basis, and the same reasoning can be applied to encryption. In fact, there's really not a lot you can say about one that you can't say about the other. No private citizen "needs" access to encryption so strong that even intelligence agencies can't break it, any more than any private citizen "needs" to own a weapon whose only purpose is killing. Right?
    • yomly 9y ago
      I can see your point, but I think you are glossing over nuance that is specific to tech. The Internet is pervasive and technology is ubiquitous. With a single gun, a man can only kill as many people as he can see with the number of bullets on his person. With a computer and a connection to the internet, his reach and potential scale is much greater. That is why such powerful encryption is required for your average citizen.
      • CamperBob2 9y ago
        With a computer and a connection to the internet, his reach and potential scale is much greater. That is why such powerful encryption is required for your average citizen. I wonder if the encryption dilemma will ultimately be resolved with blockchain-like techniques. Cryptocurrencies work because their underlying trust processes are deliberately designed to require ever-increasing amounts of CPU time. They can be attacked, but only by spending enough resources to out-mine the other nodes. While possible in theory, it's simply not worthwhile for an attacker to marshal the kinds of resources that would be required to attack Bitcoin or similar blockchains. So, while back doors for government access are stupid and unworkable for all of the reasons that people have stated, what about requiring a hypothetical encryption standard with no known backdoors or attack surfaces, but that is just strong enough to be broken by agencies like the GCHQ or NSA who can throw gigawatt-hours of computer time at the problem? Basically, if the government really wants to read my mail, they can, but it will cost them. It might take them hours to discover a given key, while nobody with a room full of GPUs or even a botnet could do it in less than several years. In such a scenario, we'd be sufficiently safe from attack by cybercriminals, and most of the time, from our governments as well. Governments would still be able to target anybody, but unlike the case where a back door is mandated, they wouldn't be able to target everybody. That could limit the amount of harm that bad actors in the government could do. It would be similar to the rationale of banning ownership of high-capacity magazines, except unlike that sort of feel-good measure, it might actually work.
        • yomly 9y ago
          I could live with this reality. As citizens, we will more or less be at the mercy of government to some extent, if only due to the scale of their operations. I see this as the equivalent to governments having access to tanks, artillery, airforce and nukes while civilians have mere access to guns and knives. Whether civilians should have access to guns is a discussion I would like to remain not a part of.
        • int_19h 9y ago
          The immediate problem that I can see with this is that any government can target you, not just your own. Which means that, 1) you might not have any recourse, nor even demand any accountability, from your attacker, and 2) a foreign government might attack crucial private entities, or even public infrastructure that is below the "unbreakable" protection level. But ultimately, the real question is - how do you enforce this, short of a massive censorship effort (and even then)? We already know how to make strong crypto. You can make it illegal, but unless you have a specific plan as to how to prevent me from coding, say, AES from scratch, I don't see how this would actually help prevent secure communications between terrorists and other high-risk criminals (and I would argue that criminal activity that is not severe enough that its perpetrators wouldn't invest into crypto even if it's banned, is not the kind that can be reasonably used to justify banning crypto in the first place). So it is actually a lot like the high-cap mag bans - it's so simple to make them, that someone who would really derive benefit from having one would just do so. Same thing here.
    • avar 9y ago
      > A good place to draw the line is one that places > responsibility on the tool-wielders [...] many of us > object to gun control on that basis. I've yet to see someone make this argument who doesn't acknowledge that the mere posession of certain weaponry should be banned because it's too powerful, the difference is just whether you think guns should fall under that umbrella. Or do you think private people should be allowed to buy hydrogen bombs?
      • CamperBob2 9y ago
        Or do you think private people should be allowed to buy hydrogen bombs? On what planet do you anticipate gun control laws having any effect whatsoever on the plans of someone who is inclined to acquire a hydrogen bomb?
        • avar 9y ago
          On a planet that follows your advice that the line shouldn't be drawn at outlawing tools, and instead certain usage should be made illegal, "not [..] the mere existence or possession of the tools themselves". I'm just taking your argument to its logical conclusion. I think that argument makes no sense, since it clearly leads to absurd outcomes, such as being able to purchase nukes, armed fighter jets, tanks, MRAPs, mines, chemical weapons etc.
          • CamperBob2 9y ago
            For the most part, the examples you cite aren't "militia"-class weapons. They fall under the purview of multinational agreements like ITAR, not the Second Amendment. The argument is ridiculous because if you possess things like nukes, you're either a sovereign state or a non-state actor at the international level. You're not playing the role of a US citizen subject to Constitutional laws and protections. Absolutely no enlightenment can be had on the subject of gun control by bringing up thermonuclear weapons and saying, "So there!" You're in good company, though, because the ACLU does the same thing in attempting to wriggle out of supporting Second Amendment rights.
• lazaroclapp 9y ago
  But there are things we do ban other people from doing (e.g. murder or owning slaves, to pick uncontroversial examples). There are some principles that are personal, but also some that are agreed on collectively, as a society or civilization. Of course, then nobody "leaves us alone" on these things, but we agree by majority on first principles and then argue from those to collectively decide what is allowed and what isn't (i.e. allowed from the people and allowed from the government). Free speech and privacy are examples of such principles. So you can definitely have a social contract where mass surveillance is unacceptable, but rules on not hunting endangered species or owning certain type of weapons can exist[1]. I don't think May should be prevented from arguing for surveillance, but by the same token, people also have a right to oppose her on it. Yes, this opens us to the possibility of losing the debate on encryption, at particular times and historical periods. Whereas having the iron clad rule that all can do as they please does not. But the later rule, applied in extremis, makes civilization impossible. Because again, we do want to ban people from doing certain things, that is what civilization means. The point that we need to argue is that banning people from having privacy causes more harm to what makes us human than a few horrific crimes do. The anarchist posture is... complex. But the (absolute) libertarian posture is hypocritical. It wants a very particular set of rules to apply and be enforced by the state (e.g. private property), whereas decrying rules and state enforcement in general. [1] And U.S. gun-owning folks agree on having rules against owning some kinds of weapons, I would think. At the very least I have never heard one argue for their god given right to own an ICBM on 2nd amendment grounds... is just that we disagree on the type of weapons that should be controlled.
  • gaius 9y ago
    Both murder and slavery involve other people directly, so they are obviously out of scope for this
    • lazaroclapp 9y ago
      That's a valid point, I think, but I am not sure the line is as clear as you make it out to be. What is your definition of 'directly' here? I can think of ways in which e.g. hunting endangered species, owning weapons or eating meat affect others. Note that, of those: I revile one, I am undecided on one and I personally do another, but in all three cases I can think of ways they affect me when others do each of those things. Sure, they affect me in a way that is perhaps different than being the target of murder or slavery would, I'll definitely agree with you on that. But it is a leap from there to saying that those are matters society should not be involved in. Consider nuclear proliferation: in theory it does not affect people 'directly', until it does (note that any logic about increased potential risk applies to gun ownership too, at a different scale). Now consider pollution: affects people directly, but in a diffuse degree. Vaccinations? (I was born in a country where a specific set of those are mandatory, I approve of that [1]). There is a limit to how much a man is an island. I am a firm believer in having a right to privacy; a strong, fundamental, constitutional right. I would consider forms of deflection or civil disobedience in a society that aligned itself too strongly against that right. But that doesn't mean is not ultimately a matter of societal values of societal construction. [1] Obviously they are mandatory to those with a healthy immune system who can be vaccinated, and a number of other caveats, but still, the state makes it its business whether or not you vaccinate your kids, and we are better off for it...