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Wouldn't it be better if we adopt the position that unbreakable crypto is a basic human right? Every time we hear about government demands for backdoors, we tec

Wouldn't it be better if we adopt the position that unbreakable crypto is a basic human right? Every time we hear about government demands for backdoors, we technies, cryptographers, thought-leaders, and journalists respond that backdoors are a security risk and can't be implemented safely. I feel this invites endless counter-arguments and new proposals by the authoritarian parts of government. We've been playing this game forever -- as far back as the Clipper Chip in early 1990s -- and it never seems to end. Maybe we should take the high road: the time has come that unbreakable crypto is to be considered a basic human right; the same as free speech, freedom of thought, or freedom of religion. In this digital age, a lot of those other rights can't be guaranteed without strong crypto. Whenever any mention of backdooring, weakening, disabling, preventing encrypted communication comes up, our reply should be, "no, you can't do that because crypto is a human right, the same as free speech, and is necessary to protect other fundamental rights".

soup10 9y ago
Nobody besides a few elite security people even knows how legit crypto products really are. It's all a rumor mill for us lay programmers. Crypto is cool and all but human right? Not sure what that has to do with anything. Crypto is a tool for the good guys and the bad guys, it's not some absolutist concept.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- murftown 9y ago
  > but human right? Not sure what that has to do with anything. If the government is pressuring organizations into backdooring their crypto, wouldn't it be relevant whether using effective crypto is considered a human right? Not sure why you think it's so out in left field.
mi100hael 9y ago
I get where you're coming from, but I think that argument needs some work. Currently, none of those rights you mention that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights are guaranteed through absolute means, they are preserved via checks & balances among branches of the government. And even if they were more absolute, there would still be asterisks as things stand today: - You have freedom of speech/thought unless it was the motivation behind a criminal action, in which case you're additionally punished for a hate crime - You have freedom to keep & bear arms except not in some states if your Sheriff doesn't like you - You have the right to privacy unless there is probable cause to believe you're involved in criminal activity, in which case the court can issue a search warrant - etc. etc. Even if you tried to argue that "crypto is a basic right," that wouldn't change anyone's mind who is arguing that there should be an asterisk if you're under criminal investigation.
- specialist 9y ago
  Remarkably, there are moral authorities even greater than the US Constitution's first 10 amendments.
  - virmundi 9y ago
    As a believer in Jesus, I agree. Within the larger atheistic framework of the world, who or what are these authorities of which you speak? There are no moral absolutes in such a world. Heck, look at the Bill of Rights. It's predicated that there is a god that has made it manifest in creation that humans are a) special, and b) have intrinsic rights that Bill of Rights simple enumerates.
  - wcarron 9y ago
    Not saying you're wrong, but could you provide an example?
    - specialist 9y ago
      These are my two favorites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatitudes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatitudes Please share yours, if you like.
- cantrevealname 9y ago
  Would it be fair to paraphrase what you saying like this: The U.S. Bill of Rights are not 100% absolute; therefore, people/courts/whatever are not going to accept a right to unbreakable crypto that's even stronger than those in the Bill of Rights? I don't think that crypto needs to be a stronger right than the Bill of Rights (confining myself to U.S. laws for the purpose of this discussion). What I'm saying is that whenever government proposals come up about restricting or backdooring crypto, we techies (and other thought leaders) should take the strong position that this is a right and then--maybe--have discussions about warrants, etc., afterward. What we've been doing for over 20 years is arguing that crypto is necessary for good security and backdooring is bad for security. That's all true, but it's a technology argument. It would be much better if we start off with the premise that unbreakable crypto is a right, that we're allowed to use it, that we don't need permission.
logicallee 9y ago
>Wouldn't it be better if we adopt the position that unbreakable crypto is a basic human right? Is the right to have the ability to pay to have anyone in the world you don't like murdered, without it getting back to you, a basic human right? If so and people start getting murdered for hire, and law enforcement has no way to stop it, would you be okay with opening in certain cases a previously undisclosed back door, for example as part of tracing payments in the dark net? What if normally cryptography were secure and uses of the backdoor only happened like this: >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Would you be okay with the back door existing if it were used under such a court-ordered scenario? Why did I just quote this text, in your opinion? Why does this text not end with a period after the word violated? Then it would read: >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. Don't you agree that as a "basic human right" this version appears much stronger than the first version I quoted? So, would you prefer if the second, abbreviated version replaced the first version?
- vec 9y ago
  You've still got the word "unreasonable" to contend with. This is, I think, the place where the metaphor shear between technical limits and legal limits actually happens. Legally, we treat reasonableness as the salient divider. To a first approximation, everyone agrees that some searches and seizures are reasonable and some are not, and we've developed a well-defined social technology (warrants, judges, courts, etc.) to distinguish the two cases. But technically the dividing line is possession of the backdoor. Third parties without a backdoor cannot perform a search, no matter how reasonable it may be, and third parties with a backdoor can perform even the most unreasonable search. There is no mechanical way to introduce a hole for reasonable cases but not unreasonable ones, no matter how well we formalize the decision making process. Software does kinda work like a form of law, but one without recourse to human judgment. There's no judge, no jury, no prosecutorial discretion. It appears that, without a bit of hands on experience with technology, legally minded folks have a hard time really internalizing how constraining that fact is on what's actually possible.
EtDybNuvCu 9y ago
What if unbreakable cryptography doesn't exist? This isn't facetious. We do not yet know which of Impagliazzo's Five Worlds [0] we inhabit. Currently, the best guess is that we live in Cryptomania, but we haven't proven it. Since we would have to live in Cryptomania for your proposal to carry any reasonable weight, we should probably postpone any talk of adding to the list of human rights. On the other hand, the ability to multiply numbers, while perhaps not a right, is something that the government should probably not bother trying to criminalize. [0] http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2004/06/impagliazzos-five-worlds.html http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2004/06/impagliazzos...
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  One-time pads are unbreakable, so unbreakable cryptography exists. Impagliazzo's Five Worlds are only about public key cryptography. If public key cryptography didn't exist, we'd still be arguing about private key cryptography.
- naasking 9y ago
  I don't see why that's an issue. People have a basic human right to life even though it's theoretically impossible to ensure that outcome. The OP's argument is about reframing the conversation to avoid pointless debate with people who might have the right desire to help people, but don't understand why their fantasies about how to achieve it aren't reasonable. Reframing the debate makes it easy to focus on proper measures.
- Digital-Citizen 9y ago
  I think you're reacting to the wrong issue -- a minor and perhaps unwise choice of words: substitute "strong" for "unbreakable" and the point remains -- aren't we better off by standing up for what ought to be a human right -- strong encryption -- instead of knuckling under to implementing backdoored encryption that governments have long wanted cryptographers to implement?
- macawfish 9y ago
  What if we live in a quantum superposition of those worlds, until a "proof" is observed that collapses us down into one of them?
specialist 9y ago
Exactly. The privacy & crypto policy fights is a replay of the election integrity fight. We democracy defending noobs (in the USA) walked right into the trap of trying to rebut the vendor's appeal to authority and the torrent of bullshit they spewed. Big Tobacco easily found scientists eager to support their mendacity, for a price. Of course the FBI, NSA, etc. have experts for hire peddling their freedom destroying agenda. In contrast, the German activists successfully argued that private voting and public counting is a basic human right. In addition to being The Correct Answer (morally, ethically, legally, logically, etc), such as affirmative position also has the benefit of being easier to communicate.
- brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  Not sure what the better argument is- just saying that first- but "specialist" mentioned "higher moral authorities" than the bill of rights. Since the US uses these higher authorities to sell patriotism, I get why someone might think it's a good idea to fold cryptography in with that. Yet I can't imagine how that would be done. In any case, it is important how this battle is won - its justification will shape our future battles. If someone can be called anti-American or "not a patriot" if they bring up legit critique (Chomsky) or if they are an atheist or a Muslim---then it's a sign that observing basic human rights is exactly NOT what a government (the US especially) wants to do, no matter HOW they "sell" authoritarianism to the public. So far, in order to be elected president here, it seems one needs to at least pretend to be Christian. We need to move to arguments that are implicit in our engagement with new ideas. It seems that the basic right to cryptography must be philosophically designed into systems as a feature of their existance, unapologetically. For example:blockchain. Let the idea of cryptography be nationless-- a feauture of globalization. In that way, you tie it to something those in power hold dear and it becomes difficult for them to hold one view without admitting the other. That said, we have been experiencing a troubling complete breakdownn of all reason and consistency in these philosophies and govt. policies. example: the increase in arrests of black people in posession of small amounts of marijuana especially in cities where posession has been decriminalized. (The Intercept, yesterday)
LanceH 9y ago
We shouldn't be defining what rights we have and leave the other "rights" to the government. It should be the other way around. The government should not be able to take freedom from the people at large. Peaceful use of something shouldn't be abridged just to further the goals of the government. It is the government which should serve the people, not the other way around.
- spc476 9y ago
  The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) do not define the rights we have as citizens, but are restrictions on the Federal government. Even the 10th says as much: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people." But the Federal government will argue what "unreasonable searches" means (IV) or the citizens will argue what "a well regulated Militia" means (II).
  - LanceH 9y ago
    The post I was responding to wanted it enumerated as a human right. As you say, our rights are reserved to us and we should be enumerating the right of the government. I wish people would see this for what it is. The head of the FBI shouldn't be lobbying for laws. He should be working within the boundaries of the law. He shouldn't be lobbying to take something away from many because a few may abuse it and it would make his job more difficult.
Digital-Citizen 9y ago
> Wouldn't it be better if we adopt the position that unbreakable crypto is a basic human right? Yes, but you're asking a set of people who have not given us much evidence they're capable or willing to implement that human right. It takes a strong will and a stiff spine to stand up to powerful interests and I'm not convinced the people I see reported on in mainstream so-called journalism have that political will. Hiding behind technological inferiority seems to take precedence over standing for our rights on principle. Freedom of speech, which you mentioned, also takes a beating these days in light of completely and accurately conveying messages some people don't agree with in a timely manner. We can't have freedom of speech because that might involve giving up conveniences, they argue.

soup10 9y ago

Nobody besides a few elite security people even knows how legit crypto products really are. It's all a rumor mill for us lay programmers. Crypto is cool and all but human right? Not sure what that has to do with anything. Crypto is a tool for the good guys and the bad guys, it's not some absolutist concept.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
murftown 9y ago
> but human right? Not sure what that has to do with anything. If the government is pressuring organizations into backdooring their crypto, wouldn't it be relevant whether using effective crypto is considered a human right? Not sure why you think it's so out in left field.

mi100hael 9y ago

I get where you're coming from, but I think that argument needs some work. Currently, none of those rights you mention that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights are guaranteed through absolute means, they are preserved via checks & balances among branches of the government. And even if they were more absolute, there would still be asterisks as things stand today: - You have freedom of speech/thought unless it was the motivation behind a criminal action, in which case you're additionally punished for a hate crime - You have freedom to keep & bear arms except not in some states if your Sheriff doesn't like you - You have the right to privacy unless there is probable cause to believe you're involved in criminal activity, in which case the court can issue a search warrant - etc. etc. Even if you tried to argue that "crypto is a basic right," that wouldn't change anyone's mind who is arguing that there should be an asterisk if you're under criminal investigation.

specialist 9y ago
Remarkably, there are moral authorities even greater than the US Constitution's first 10 amendments.
- virmundi 9y ago
  As a believer in Jesus, I agree. Within the larger atheistic framework of the world, who or what are these authorities of which you speak? There are no moral absolutes in such a world. Heck, look at the Bill of Rights. It's predicated that there is a god that has made it manifest in creation that humans are a) special, and b) have intrinsic rights that Bill of Rights simple enumerates.
- wcarron 9y ago
  Not saying you're wrong, but could you provide an example?
  - specialist 9y ago
    These are my two favorites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatitudes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatitudes Please share yours, if you like.
cantrevealname 9y ago
Would it be fair to paraphrase what you saying like this: The U.S. Bill of Rights are not 100% absolute; therefore, people/courts/whatever are not going to accept a right to unbreakable crypto that's even stronger than those in the Bill of Rights? I don't think that crypto needs to be a stronger right than the Bill of Rights (confining myself to U.S. laws for the purpose of this discussion). What I'm saying is that whenever government proposals come up about restricting or backdooring crypto, we techies (and other thought leaders) should take the strong position that this is a right and then--maybe--have discussions about warrants, etc., afterward. What we've been doing for over 20 years is arguing that crypto is necessary for good security and backdooring is bad for security. That's all true, but it's a technology argument. It would be much better if we start off with the premise that unbreakable crypto is a right, that we're allowed to use it, that we don't need permission.

logicallee 9y ago

>Wouldn't it be better if we adopt the position that unbreakable crypto is a basic human right? Is the right to have the ability to pay to have anyone in the world you don't like murdered, without it getting back to you, a basic human right? If so and people start getting murdered for hire, and law enforcement has no way to stop it, would you be okay with opening in certain cases a previously undisclosed back door, for example as part of tracing payments in the dark net? What if normally cryptography were secure and uses of the backdoor only happened like this: >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Would you be okay with the back door existing if it were used under such a court-ordered scenario? Why did I just quote this text, in your opinion? Why does this text not end with a period after the word violated? Then it would read: >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. Don't you agree that as a "basic human right" this version appears much stronger than the first version I quoted? So, would you prefer if the second, abbreviated version replaced the first version?

vec 9y ago
You've still got the word "unreasonable" to contend with. This is, I think, the place where the metaphor shear between technical limits and legal limits actually happens. Legally, we treat reasonableness as the salient divider. To a first approximation, everyone agrees that some searches and seizures are reasonable and some are not, and we've developed a well-defined social technology (warrants, judges, courts, etc.) to distinguish the two cases. But technically the dividing line is possession of the backdoor. Third parties without a backdoor cannot perform a search, no matter how reasonable it may be, and third parties with a backdoor can perform even the most unreasonable search. There is no mechanical way to introduce a hole for reasonable cases but not unreasonable ones, no matter how well we formalize the decision making process. Software does kinda work like a form of law, but one without recourse to human judgment. There's no judge, no jury, no prosecutorial discretion. It appears that, without a bit of hands on experience with technology, legally minded folks have a hard time really internalizing how constraining that fact is on what's actually possible.

EtDybNuvCu 9y ago

What if unbreakable cryptography doesn't exist? This isn't facetious. We do not yet know which of Impagliazzo's Five Worlds [0] we inhabit. Currently, the best guess is that we live in Cryptomania, but we haven't proven it. Since we would have to live in Cryptomania for your proposal to carry any reasonable weight, we should probably postpone any talk of adding to the list of human rights. On the other hand, the ability to multiply numbers, while perhaps not a right, is something that the government should probably not bother trying to criminalize. [0] http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2004/06/impagliazzos-five-worlds.html http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2004/06/impagliazzos...

daveFNbuck 9y ago
One-time pads are unbreakable, so unbreakable cryptography exists. Impagliazzo's Five Worlds are only about public key cryptography. If public key cryptography didn't exist, we'd still be arguing about private key cryptography.
naasking 9y ago
I don't see why that's an issue. People have a basic human right to life even though it's theoretically impossible to ensure that outcome. The OP's argument is about reframing the conversation to avoid pointless debate with people who might have the right desire to help people, but don't understand why their fantasies about how to achieve it aren't reasonable. Reframing the debate makes it easy to focus on proper measures.
Digital-Citizen 9y ago
I think you're reacting to the wrong issue -- a minor and perhaps unwise choice of words: substitute "strong" for "unbreakable" and the point remains -- aren't we better off by standing up for what ought to be a human right -- strong encryption -- instead of knuckling under to implementing backdoored encryption that governments have long wanted cryptographers to implement?
macawfish 9y ago
What if we live in a quantum superposition of those worlds, until a "proof" is observed that collapses us down into one of them?

specialist 9y ago

Exactly. The privacy & crypto policy fights is a replay of the election integrity fight. We democracy defending noobs (in the USA) walked right into the trap of trying to rebut the vendor's appeal to authority and the torrent of bullshit they spewed. Big Tobacco easily found scientists eager to support their mendacity, for a price. Of course the FBI, NSA, etc. have experts for hire peddling their freedom destroying agenda. In contrast, the German activists successfully argued that private voting and public counting is a basic human right. In addition to being The Correct Answer (morally, ethically, legally, logically, etc), such as affirmative position also has the benefit of being easier to communicate.

brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
Not sure what the better argument is- just saying that first- but "specialist" mentioned "higher moral authorities" than the bill of rights. Since the US uses these higher authorities to sell patriotism, I get why someone might think it's a good idea to fold cryptography in with that. Yet I can't imagine how that would be done. In any case, it is important how this battle is won - its justification will shape our future battles. If someone can be called anti-American or "not a patriot" if they bring up legit critique (Chomsky) or if they are an atheist or a Muslim---then it's a sign that observing basic human rights is exactly NOT what a government (the US especially) wants to do, no matter HOW they "sell" authoritarianism to the public. So far, in order to be elected president here, it seems one needs to at least pretend to be Christian. We need to move to arguments that are implicit in our engagement with new ideas. It seems that the basic right to cryptography must be philosophically designed into systems as a feature of their existance, unapologetically. For example:blockchain. Let the idea of cryptography be nationless-- a feauture of globalization. In that way, you tie it to something those in power hold dear and it becomes difficult for them to hold one view without admitting the other. That said, we have been experiencing a troubling complete breakdownn of all reason and consistency in these philosophies and govt. policies. example: the increase in arrests of black people in posession of small amounts of marijuana especially in cities where posession has been decriminalized. (The Intercept, yesterday)

LanceH 9y ago

We shouldn't be defining what rights we have and leave the other "rights" to the government. It should be the other way around. The government should not be able to take freedom from the people at large. Peaceful use of something shouldn't be abridged just to further the goals of the government. It is the government which should serve the people, not the other way around.

spc476 9y ago
The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) do not define the rights we have as citizens, but are restrictions on the Federal government. Even the 10th says as much: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people." But the Federal government will argue what "unreasonable searches" means (IV) or the citizens will argue what "a well regulated Militia" means (II).
- LanceH 9y ago
  The post I was responding to wanted it enumerated as a human right. As you say, our rights are reserved to us and we should be enumerating the right of the government. I wish people would see this for what it is. The head of the FBI shouldn't be lobbying for laws. He should be working within the boundaries of the law. He shouldn't be lobbying to take something away from many because a few may abuse it and it would make his job more difficult.

Digital-Citizen 9y ago

> Wouldn't it be better if we adopt the position that unbreakable crypto is a basic human right? Yes, but you're asking a set of people who have not given us much evidence they're capable or willing to implement that human right. It takes a strong will and a stiff spine to stand up to powerful interests and I'm not convinced the people I see reported on in mainstream so-called journalism have that political will. Hiding behind technological inferiority seems to take precedence over standing for our rights on principle. Freedom of speech, which you mentioned, also takes a beating these days in light of completely and accurately conveying messages some people don't agree with in a timely manner. We can't have freedom of speech because that might involve giving up conveniences, they argue.