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I keep hearing these arguments and after hundreds of hours of pub talks, the absolute best idea me and my friends have come up with (it's still a bad idea) is g

I keep hearing these arguments and after hundreds of hours of pub talks, the absolute best idea me and my friends have come up with (it's still a bad idea) is government issued crypto certificates. The idea goes that about the same time someone is issued a social security number they are also issued a cryptographic key pair. The cool thing is that your key pair can establish identity and in case your private key is compromised a new one could be issued easily. The government would have to maintain copies of everyone's private keys. The only way this would actually work in practice is if a number of new rights were established and a number of existing rights were updated. I don't want to enumerate what we came up with in discussions, but they are numerous. The only real benefit to all of this is that encryption would have a backdoor which is established before any encrypted communication actually takes place so the protocols could be made as secure as possible. This also means that the government would have to establish a monopoly on something that we can do with a single openssl command.

csomar 9y ago
Two things: 1. That's a disaster waiting to happen. Lots of actors are targeting governments, not just hackers and criminals (other governments and people from inside the gov itself). 2. That doesn't stop terrorists from using secure encryption. What you are proposing gives government unlimited access to innocent citizens data while it does nothing about access to malicious parties. Sorry but this proposal makes no sense! At least the backdoor is a wolf in disguise for government intervention in citizens everyday life.
- ilovetux 9y ago
  I agree that its a disaster waiting to happen, so theres no need to apologize, I mention that it's a bad idea in the first paragraph. To be honest, I don't really know why I even posted it besides the fact that it's something me and my friends have been discussing on and off for about a year now because it keeps coming up in the news. The "bad guy" problem is an inherent problem and while me and my friends have come up with a few novel work-arounds none of them solves the problem completely. Another issue is that multi-layer encryption could disrupt the government's ability to execute a warrant. If this BAD IDEA were implemented then multi-layer encryption would need to be made illegal and that starts us down a very dangerous path. The only thing I think is a good idea is using a crypto key pair as a replacement for ssn but only if it's not really used for encryption.
  - csomar 9y ago
    The only solution is to make crypto accessible. If it is, there is nothing the gov can do about it. You can’t simply put half your population in prison.
    - ilovetux 9y ago
      It's true that you can't put half of your population in prison but you can bring prison to the population just look at North Korea and a few other authoritarian nations around the world. We need a way to let law enforcement do their job but also balance that with citizens rights. Backdooring encryption is not the answer, but perhaps there can be some other answer. The alternative is mass surveilance like we have today. Something along the lines of a wiretap (this would technically be a state-sponsored MITM attack) for electronic communication which would only be possible with a warrant, but then we would probably end up with a secret court (a la FISA) issuing these warrants. The only point I would like to make is that we need to be open to discussing possible solutions otherwise we might not like what the whistleblowers tell us.

csomar 9y ago

Two things: 1. That's a disaster waiting to happen. Lots of actors are targeting governments, not just hackers and criminals (other governments and people from inside the gov itself). 2. That doesn't stop terrorists from using secure encryption. What you are proposing gives government unlimited access to innocent citizens data while it does nothing about access to malicious parties. Sorry but this proposal makes no sense! At least the backdoor is a wolf in disguise for government intervention in citizens everyday life.

ilovetux 9y ago
I agree that its a disaster waiting to happen, so theres no need to apologize, I mention that it's a bad idea in the first paragraph. To be honest, I don't really know why I even posted it besides the fact that it's something me and my friends have been discussing on and off for about a year now because it keeps coming up in the news. The "bad guy" problem is an inherent problem and while me and my friends have come up with a few novel work-arounds none of them solves the problem completely. Another issue is that multi-layer encryption could disrupt the government's ability to execute a warrant. If this BAD IDEA were implemented then multi-layer encryption would need to be made illegal and that starts us down a very dangerous path. The only thing I think is a good idea is using a crypto key pair as a replacement for ssn but only if it's not really used for encryption.
- csomar 9y ago
  The only solution is to make crypto accessible. If it is, there is nothing the gov can do about it. You can’t simply put half your population in prison.
  - ilovetux 9y ago
    It's true that you can't put half of your population in prison but you can bring prison to the population just look at North Korea and a few other authoritarian nations around the world. We need a way to let law enforcement do their job but also balance that with citizens rights. Backdooring encryption is not the answer, but perhaps there can be some other answer. The alternative is mass surveilance like we have today. Something along the lines of a wiretap (this would technically be a state-sponsored MITM attack) for electronic communication which would only be possible with a warrant, but then we would probably end up with a secret court (a la FISA) issuing these warrants. The only point I would like to make is that we need to be open to discussing possible solutions otherwise we might not like what the whistleblowers tell us.