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I feel like the people who understand encryption and privacy advocates (myself included) are not engaging enough (or maybe effectively enough) with the public i

by dm319 9y ago

I feel like the people who understand encryption and privacy advocates (myself included) are not engaging enough (or maybe effectively enough) with the public in communicating the concerns around trying to 'backdoor' encryption or giving up more of our privacy. While I think these political statements are often ridiculous, they actually have widespread public support, if my cohort of friends and family are anything to go by. Do we have people who are better communicators? I don't think even Cory Doctorow's posts/talks are aimed at the non-technical audience.

stefs 9y ago
i think the problem is it's a highly technical, mathematical and social problem that isn't easily explained. well, the technical part is even comparatively simple. but the negative implications are usually harder to communicate. the "slippery slope" argument only gets one so far and non-criminals usually can't imagine how it would negatively affect them. "only metadata" doesn't sound too bad! the opponents of full encryption though have it quite easy by name-dropping the FUD buzzwords - i.e. security and terrorism. and anyway, it's only metadata!
chii 9y ago
I found the John Oliver episode about Snowden to be very good at conveying the ideas of privacy. Just mention that the govt can decrypt your dick pics and sexting if these laws pass.
- dm319 9y ago
  You know this argument might well work for Theresa May.
  - kitd 9y ago
    "You mean GCHQ can see running through wheat field pics? Let's ... let's just take a step back, shall we?"
    - daemin 9y ago
      "But oh no, they would never do that ... they would only use this technology for productive purposes ... like catching bad guys".
  - freehunter 9y ago
    I don't want to see Theresa May's dick pics.
gargravarr 9y ago
I've read so many arguments advocating strong encryption, all of which I agree with, and many of them are simplified as best we techies can - check out some of Troy Hunt's posts. But even avoiding the tech aspect completely, there is one thing the government simply refuses to accept. Banning strong encryption will not stop people using it. It will stop the 'good' and generally innocent populace using it and severely infringe on their right to privacy, but the 'bad' people will just fork an open-source messaging system that uses E2E encryption and start using that. As commented in the article, strong encryption cannot be 'de-invented' now it's out in the open. Each and every one of these government statements is a drastically oversimplified knee-jerk reaction to the problem. Bet they think they can get tech companies to implement RFC 3514 to stop hackers.
- hendzen 9y ago
  The government can legislate the pipes. It's possible to DOS strong encryption at the ISP level. Look at China...
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    Yep, look at China and see how it only affects common people. Anybody with a minimum of knowledge is able to open a VPN out of the country.
- zebrafish 9y ago
  I think the strongest argument for an American audience who is unfamiliar with technology is that encryption should be included under second amendment rights. "Guns don't hurt people, people hurt people", "blaming the manufacturer for the actions of the operator", "even if we ban them, bad guys will still use them", etc. If the right to bear arms is defined as the right to protection against totalitarian government I would think that encryption falls into that bucket. Maybe we should get the NRA involved in this argument...
  - gargravarr 9y ago
    As predicted by Randall Munroe some years ago: https://xkcd.com/504/ https://xkcd.com/504/
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
I like to take the backdoor argument to its logical conclusion - if we're not going to allow terrorists to hide by encryption, why should we allow them to hide by speaking in private? It's about time construction companies and car manufacturers stopped giving terrorists a place to hide - make always-on microphones mandatory in all homes and cars. Don't worry - they'll need a warrant to access the recordings!
- gargravarr 9y ago
  All private homes. Government homes and offices are special. The general public is not allowed to know what goes on behind their doors. Seriously, don't give the government ideas :( I am of the opinion that our current PM would gladly shove cameras up people's *sses if she thought it could catch terrorists.
izacus 9y ago
Thing is, the best vessel for that might be pop culture - Cory Doctorows books convey the issues of surveilance state to the general public way better than any kind of preaching does. The issue, I think, is that mostly the issues are focusing on fringe activities which aren't approved by most of society (sexting, "hiding things") instead of taking lessons from history of our socialist countries and other widespread abuses of governmental power. We already had surveilance society and it sucked even for people who didn't do anything wrong - we need to repeat those lessons more. Especially since it seems that history in schools seems to be failing at that.
- dm319 9y ago
  There is too much complacency and faith in our democracy in the UK. No one really believes a despot will get into power, despite it happening in recent history to similar european countries.
shakna 9y ago
> or maybe effectively enough I'm not sure it is that, or if there is a way to communicate with some of the governments implementing these laws. Take Australia, recently. The government came out in favour of weakening encryption, after consultation with security and privacy experts, as well as some economics experts and the like. The thing was though, the usual man who advised them, and has in past similar investigations before creating laws to do with technology, advised them that it was a terrible idea. He was then dismissed, and a series of other experts were called in, until the government were able to get an expert who saw things their way. If the decision has already been made, how is anybody supposed to influence it?
k-mcgrady 9y ago
I think the problem isn't that the ideas/reasons for privacy aren't being communicated. It's that a lot of people are seriously worried they will be a victim of a terrorist attack (and the government tells them this invasion of privacy will protect them from that) and when they hear the other side's arguments they are happy to fall back on the 'I've got nothing to hide' argument. Honestly it's a nice mindset to be in so I understand why it's hard to convince them otherwise.
- EugeneAZ 9y ago
  Let them read George Orwell "1984"
MarcScott 9y ago
I tried to be as non-technical as possible when I wrote this as an introduction to what cryptography is all about. http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear-theresa/ http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear-theresa/ The problem is that the subject is inherently complex, and abstractions and analogies can only go so far.
- dm319 9y ago
  That's pretty good, but for the people I'm thinking of, including Theresa May, that's about 10X too long. I like the last 5 points. It reminded me of Cory Doctorow's 'and now you've got two problems'. Sadly we need something that is not much more than a paragraph. Maybe something that would fit in a tweet. Something that competes with 'people want to blow you up, surrender your privacy so we can catch them'.

by dm319 9y ago

stefs 9y ago

i think the problem is it's a highly technical, mathematical and social problem that isn't easily explained. well, the technical part is even comparatively simple. but the negative implications are usually harder to communicate. the "slippery slope" argument only gets one so far and non-criminals usually can't imagine how it would negatively affect them. "only metadata" doesn't sound too bad! the opponents of full encryption though have it quite easy by name-dropping the FUD buzzwords - i.e. security and terrorism. and anyway, it's only metadata!

chii 9y ago

I found the John Oliver episode about Snowden to be very good at conveying the ideas of privacy. Just mention that the govt can decrypt your dick pics and sexting if these laws pass.

dm319 9y ago
You know this argument might well work for Theresa May.
- kitd 9y ago
  "You mean GCHQ can see running through wheat field pics? Let's ... let's just take a step back, shall we?"
  - daemin 9y ago
    "But oh no, they would never do that ... they would only use this technology for productive purposes ... like catching bad guys".
- freehunter 9y ago
  I don't want to see Theresa May's dick pics.

gargravarr 9y ago

I've read so many arguments advocating strong encryption, all of which I agree with, and many of them are simplified as best we techies can - check out some of Troy Hunt's posts. But even avoiding the tech aspect completely, there is one thing the government simply refuses to accept. Banning strong encryption will not stop people using it. It will stop the 'good' and generally innocent populace using it and severely infringe on their right to privacy, but the 'bad' people will just fork an open-source messaging system that uses E2E encryption and start using that. As commented in the article, strong encryption cannot be 'de-invented' now it's out in the open. Each and every one of these government statements is a drastically oversimplified knee-jerk reaction to the problem. Bet they think they can get tech companies to implement RFC 3514 to stop hackers.

hendzen 9y ago
The government can legislate the pipes. It's possible to DOS strong encryption at the ISP level. Look at China...
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  Yep, look at China and see how it only affects common people. Anybody with a minimum of knowledge is able to open a VPN out of the country.
zebrafish 9y ago
I think the strongest argument for an American audience who is unfamiliar with technology is that encryption should be included under second amendment rights. "Guns don't hurt people, people hurt people", "blaming the manufacturer for the actions of the operator", "even if we ban them, bad guys will still use them", etc. If the right to bear arms is defined as the right to protection against totalitarian government I would think that encryption falls into that bucket. Maybe we should get the NRA involved in this argument...
- gargravarr 9y ago
  As predicted by Randall Munroe some years ago: https://xkcd.com/504/ https://xkcd.com/504/

DarkKomunalec 9y ago

I like to take the backdoor argument to its logical conclusion - if we're not going to allow terrorists to hide by encryption, why should we allow them to hide by speaking in private? It's about time construction companies and car manufacturers stopped giving terrorists a place to hide - make always-on microphones mandatory in all homes and cars. Don't worry - they'll need a warrant to access the recordings!

gargravarr 9y ago
All private homes. Government homes and offices are special. The general public is not allowed to know what goes on behind their doors. Seriously, don't give the government ideas :( I am of the opinion that our current PM would gladly shove cameras up people's *sses if she thought it could catch terrorists.

izacus 9y ago

Thing is, the best vessel for that might be pop culture - Cory Doctorows books convey the issues of surveilance state to the general public way better than any kind of preaching does. The issue, I think, is that mostly the issues are focusing on fringe activities which aren't approved by most of society (sexting, "hiding things") instead of taking lessons from history of our socialist countries and other widespread abuses of governmental power. We already had surveilance society and it sucked even for people who didn't do anything wrong - we need to repeat those lessons more. Especially since it seems that history in schools seems to be failing at that.

dm319 9y ago
There is too much complacency and faith in our democracy in the UK. No one really believes a despot will get into power, despite it happening in recent history to similar european countries.

shakna 9y ago

> or maybe effectively enough I'm not sure it is that, or if there is a way to communicate with some of the governments implementing these laws. Take Australia, recently. The government came out in favour of weakening encryption, after consultation with security and privacy experts, as well as some economics experts and the like. The thing was though, the usual man who advised them, and has in past similar investigations before creating laws to do with technology, advised them that it was a terrible idea. He was then dismissed, and a series of other experts were called in, until the government were able to get an expert who saw things their way. If the decision has already been made, how is anybody supposed to influence it?

k-mcgrady 9y ago

I think the problem isn't that the ideas/reasons for privacy aren't being communicated. It's that a lot of people are seriously worried they will be a victim of a terrorist attack (and the government tells them this invasion of privacy will protect them from that) and when they hear the other side's arguments they are happy to fall back on the 'I've got nothing to hide' argument. Honestly it's a nice mindset to be in so I understand why it's hard to convince them otherwise.

EugeneAZ 9y ago
Let them read George Orwell "1984"

MarcScott 9y ago

I tried to be as non-technical as possible when I wrote this as an introduction to what cryptography is all about. http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear-theresa/ http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear-theresa/ The problem is that the subject is inherently complex, and abstractions and analogies can only go so far.

dm319 9y ago
That's pretty good, but for the people I'm thinking of, including Theresa May, that's about 10X too long. I like the last 5 points. It reminded me of Cory Doctorow's 'and now you've got two problems'. Sadly we need something that is not much more than a paragraph. Maybe something that would fit in a tweet. Something that competes with 'people want to blow you up, surrender your privacy so we can catch them'.