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These are the wrong questions to ask. There's no doubt that total surveillance would result in more crimes being solved, and more criminals being successfully p

by zaroth 8y ago

These are the wrong questions to ask. There's no doubt that total surveillance would result in more crimes being solved, and more criminals being successfully prosecuted. It's not a question of whether the technique is effective enough that it should be allowed. The question is can the government be trusted with a backdoor into our personal devices that "only they" can use? Should the people trust their government to only use that access lawfully, and can the people trust their government to protect that access from unlawful outsider access? Since we've seen nothing but incontrovertible evidence, throughout history and to this day, that government cannot be trusted with this level of access to our personal devices (lives), then I can only hope that Apple and companies like it will fight to provide us with secure devices, and that our courts will protect our right to strong encryption to protect our personal data.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> There's no doubt that total surveillance would result in more crimes being solved I guess I'm doubting that. In any case, we're weighing costs and benefits in a limited context: access to a phone's data with a court order in hand. Framing an attempt to understand the benefits as "the wrong questions to ask" is counterproductive.
- paulcole 8y ago
  Can I ask how you're doubting this: > Total surveillance would result in more crimes being solved With perfect and total information how would fewer crimes be solved?
  - Aaargh20318 8y ago
    When you’re trying to find a needle in a haystack adding more hay isn’t the solution.
  - squeaky-clean 8y ago
    Total surveillance doesn't guarantee "perfect and total information".
  - DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
    I expect the rationale is that once governments have total access to phones, criminals will stop using them, and governments will still have the access.
- Fernicia 8y ago
  But he's saying that even if the answer to your concern is satisfying, there are other factors which outweigh that benefit and should be considered.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > there are other factors which outweigh that benefit How can you weigh a cost against a benefit when you have no idea how big the benefit is?
    - scarecrowbob 8y ago
      I can't say in the particular case of surveillance. One generalized answer to your question is: "if the cost is unethical" then paying it really isn't on the table for ethical people. So the cost of doing something unethical is infinite, assuming that you need to remain ethical, and any benefit is necessary smaller than the cost of losing your ethical status. You might not agree that ethics are pragmatically important, but the point here is that it's possible to do a utilitarian calculus even if you don't know fully understand the possible upsides.
AckSyn 8y ago
> can the government be trusted Full stop. No they can't. They should always be put on a short leash and when they're doing things we don't like we're supposed to stop them and/or vote them out.
menacingly 8y ago
Actually, for practical purposes, your question is the wrong one. A lot of people think the more ideologically pure argument is the one to make, but it's usually the one with the least impact and least likely to bring about your desired situation. "Right" and "Wrong" are thrown out the window as soon as law enforcement makes the case that there is simply no time for the constitution. They're saving little tiny babies! but "OK, how many little tiny babies are you actually saving as opposed to blatant overreaches into the lives of private citizens" is the more effective point. The numbers will look bad, they can't help themselves once they get a whiff of some new power. In this case, arguing for the _idea_ of liberty (incorrectly) labels you a pedant more concerned with red tape than being a hero.
- tossandturn 8y ago
  >they can't help themselves once they get a whiff of some new power Semantics, but I don't think it is necessarily the "power", so much as it is a new vector to get the evidence they feel that they need to perform their job with less effort. It is a lazy method that circumvents the laws that stand in their way for good reasons.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > I don't think it is necessarily the "power", so much as it is a new vector to get the evidence they feel that they need to perform their job with less effort I am inclined to agree with you, but I have no evidence. Hence the questions. HN is well aware of the risks. But I've never seen any work done into the potential benefits. If the benefits are slim, then the discussion is moot. If there are cases that can be solved with phone data only, and if those cases are horrible or frequent enough, then there is a valid debate at hand.
  - sjy 8y ago
    No laws are being circumvented if the police have a warrant. The problem (from a law enforcement perspective) is that technology now makes it easy for people to communicate and store data in a way that the police can’t monitor even with a warrant. This wasn’t an issue when the police could obtain warrants to monitor telephone lines and break into safes.
slg 8y ago
I see this line of thinking a lot in tech circles, but you really have to divorce this issue from the digital world. Imagine the exact same argument is about a safe instead of a phone. The government would simply request a warrant and then work on brute forcing their way into the safe. If you have the same objections when using a safe, the answer to the problem has nothing to do with technology because you believer there is a fundamental flaw in the US criminal justice system. You aren't going to be able to consistently defeat the government by repeatedly trying to outpace them technologically. You have to instead change the laws that govern their actions. If you think the rules should be different for a safe and a phone, you need to be able to explain why digital evidence should be treated differently than physical evidence?
- Borealid 8y ago
  The government is allowed to crack open a safe with a warrant. The government is allowed to crack open an iPhone with a warrant. What does either of those things have to do with decrypting things found inside either the safe or the iPhone? If the FBI found coded papers inside a safe, they could try to decrypt those papers, but couldn't compel the owner to assist them. Security flaws are fair game for law enforcement. Secure encryption without exploitable weaknesses will probably defeat them even in the presence of a court order.
- robbiep 8y ago
  Compare and contrast the different levels of effort required to gain access to a safe VS a persons iPhone prior to this data update. Authourities must first gain access to premises with a warrant and then get a safe cracker in. VS: authourities (at an airport or just about anywhere) take the phone off the person, there is a layer of obsfucation as to whether a warrant has been obtained or is needed, and data is collected. If you look at the history of digital data (ie echelon etc) there is a clear trend for vast data hovering of all and any resources. This is not possible with physical data, as it leaves behind a more concrete trail when authorities go after it, and causes them to (generally) be more selective about what they are doing
- Bizarro 8y ago
  I consider the analogy to be does a manufacturer have a legal obligation to not make a safe that can't be broken into by the government?
bb88 8y ago
> The question is can the government be trusted with a backdoor into our personal devices that "only they" can use? I think a better question is what happens when we go to a paperless society? Because it's coming, and search warrants will be useless in such a society. And while some of your rhetoric about the abuses of government spying on citizens is justified (e.g. COINTELPRO, Watergate, etc.), search warrants as a whole do far more good than harm. And I'd hate to see this power for prosecutors disappear just because drug dealers started using iPhones to keep their illegal activities hidden from police.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  I think a better question is what happens when we go to a paperless society? Because it's coming, and search warrants will be useless in such a society. Were this true, crimes would have been practically unsolvable before about the mid 1990s. Back then nobody carried pocket computers/communicators (encrypted or otherwise) and criminals also largely failed to make paper records of their crimes. You can't smuggle guns via SMS. You can't vandalize shop windows over the Internet. You can't kill people with a digital photograph. Most crimes, and especially the violent crimes that scare people the most, require physical actions that leave physical traces. The major exception would seem to be certain white collar crimes: insider trading, trade secret theft, perhaps tax evasion and other financial shenanigans. That's where I can see secure electronic devices making law enforcement significantly harder. But when LEOs speak against encryption in public they usually seem to invoke killers and kidnappers, as if victims' bodies were now regularly hidden inside encrypted iPhones instead of car trunks and shallow graves. Maybe LEOs believe their own rhetoric or maybe they just realize that "think of the victims of inside trading!" isn't the sort of terrifying scenario that will get the public on their side.
  - robocat 8y ago
    > You can't vandalize shop windows over the Internet. You can't massacre people at a concert [snip]. You can't smuggle weapons over a border [snip]. I could commit these crimes over the internet by using others to perform them. So the people you catch are not the prime cause of the crimes. This was not feasible before the internet, and digital monitoring would be the only way to catch me.
Bizarro 8y ago
Or simply, in free societies sometimes the bad guys get away with things. Or maybe they're not the bad guys and the state has deemed them "bad guys". And what's really pathetic is that societies don't have discussions about unintended consequences of laws, and that prosecutors don't have checks-n-balances on their power/authority.
- berti 8y ago
  > Or maybe they're not the bad guys and the state has deemed them "bad guys". Fun conversation topic. A large proportion of people cannot comprehend such a concept.
sev 8y ago
Even if it _were_ possible to only have the “government” have access to our personal devices and information, why would anyone want them to have that access? There are things I want to share only with my family, and ideally, I should have the ability to do that comfortably in this age of IoT. We won’t solve crime by allowing the government to spy on us; at best, it will cause the crime to be diverted or changed in form.

by zaroth 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> There's no doubt that total surveillance would result in more crimes being solved I guess I'm doubting that. In any case, we're weighing costs and benefits in a limited context: access to a phone's data with a court order in hand. Framing an attempt to understand the benefits as "the wrong questions to ask" is counterproductive.

paulcole 8y ago
Can I ask how you're doubting this: > Total surveillance would result in more crimes being solved With perfect and total information how would fewer crimes be solved?
- Aaargh20318 8y ago
  When you’re trying to find a needle in a haystack adding more hay isn’t the solution.
- squeaky-clean 8y ago
  Total surveillance doesn't guarantee "perfect and total information".
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
  I expect the rationale is that once governments have total access to phones, criminals will stop using them, and governments will still have the access.
Fernicia 8y ago
But he's saying that even if the answer to your concern is satisfying, there are other factors which outweigh that benefit and should be considered.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > there are other factors which outweigh that benefit How can you weigh a cost against a benefit when you have no idea how big the benefit is?
  - scarecrowbob 8y ago
    I can't say in the particular case of surveillance. One generalized answer to your question is: "if the cost is unethical" then paying it really isn't on the table for ethical people. So the cost of doing something unethical is infinite, assuming that you need to remain ethical, and any benefit is necessary smaller than the cost of losing your ethical status. You might not agree that ethics are pragmatically important, but the point here is that it's possible to do a utilitarian calculus even if you don't know fully understand the possible upsides.

AckSyn 8y ago

> can the government be trusted Full stop. No they can't. They should always be put on a short leash and when they're doing things we don't like we're supposed to stop them and/or vote them out.

menacingly 8y ago

Actually, for practical purposes, your question is the wrong one. A lot of people think the more ideologically pure argument is the one to make, but it's usually the one with the least impact and least likely to bring about your desired situation. "Right" and "Wrong" are thrown out the window as soon as law enforcement makes the case that there is simply no time for the constitution. They're saving little tiny babies! but "OK, how many little tiny babies are you actually saving as opposed to blatant overreaches into the lives of private citizens" is the more effective point. The numbers will look bad, they can't help themselves once they get a whiff of some new power. In this case, arguing for the _idea_ of liberty (incorrectly) labels you a pedant more concerned with red tape than being a hero.

tossandturn 8y ago
>they can't help themselves once they get a whiff of some new power Semantics, but I don't think it is necessarily the "power", so much as it is a new vector to get the evidence they feel that they need to perform their job with less effort. It is a lazy method that circumvents the laws that stand in their way for good reasons.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > I don't think it is necessarily the "power", so much as it is a new vector to get the evidence they feel that they need to perform their job with less effort I am inclined to agree with you, but I have no evidence. Hence the questions. HN is well aware of the risks. But I've never seen any work done into the potential benefits. If the benefits are slim, then the discussion is moot. If there are cases that can be solved with phone data only, and if those cases are horrible or frequent enough, then there is a valid debate at hand.
- sjy 8y ago
  No laws are being circumvented if the police have a warrant. The problem (from a law enforcement perspective) is that technology now makes it easy for people to communicate and store data in a way that the police can’t monitor even with a warrant. This wasn’t an issue when the police could obtain warrants to monitor telephone lines and break into safes.

slg 8y ago

I see this line of thinking a lot in tech circles, but you really have to divorce this issue from the digital world. Imagine the exact same argument is about a safe instead of a phone. The government would simply request a warrant and then work on brute forcing their way into the safe. If you have the same objections when using a safe, the answer to the problem has nothing to do with technology because you believer there is a fundamental flaw in the US criminal justice system. You aren't going to be able to consistently defeat the government by repeatedly trying to outpace them technologically. You have to instead change the laws that govern their actions. If you think the rules should be different for a safe and a phone, you need to be able to explain why digital evidence should be treated differently than physical evidence?

Borealid 8y ago
The government is allowed to crack open a safe with a warrant. The government is allowed to crack open an iPhone with a warrant. What does either of those things have to do with decrypting things found inside either the safe or the iPhone? If the FBI found coded papers inside a safe, they could try to decrypt those papers, but couldn't compel the owner to assist them. Security flaws are fair game for law enforcement. Secure encryption without exploitable weaknesses will probably defeat them even in the presence of a court order.
robbiep 8y ago
Compare and contrast the different levels of effort required to gain access to a safe VS a persons iPhone prior to this data update. Authourities must first gain access to premises with a warrant and then get a safe cracker in. VS: authourities (at an airport or just about anywhere) take the phone off the person, there is a layer of obsfucation as to whether a warrant has been obtained or is needed, and data is collected. If you look at the history of digital data (ie echelon etc) there is a clear trend for vast data hovering of all and any resources. This is not possible with physical data, as it leaves behind a more concrete trail when authorities go after it, and causes them to (generally) be more selective about what they are doing
Bizarro 8y ago
I consider the analogy to be does a manufacturer have a legal obligation to not make a safe that can't be broken into by the government?

bb88 8y ago

> The question is can the government be trusted with a backdoor into our personal devices that "only they" can use? I think a better question is what happens when we go to a paperless society? Because it's coming, and search warrants will be useless in such a society. And while some of your rhetoric about the abuses of government spying on citizens is justified (e.g. COINTELPRO, Watergate, etc.), search warrants as a whole do far more good than harm. And I'd hate to see this power for prosecutors disappear just because drug dealers started using iPhones to keep their illegal activities hidden from police.

philipkglass 8y ago
I think a better question is what happens when we go to a paperless society? Because it's coming, and search warrants will be useless in such a society. Were this true, crimes would have been practically unsolvable before about the mid 1990s. Back then nobody carried pocket computers/communicators (encrypted or otherwise) and criminals also largely failed to make paper records of their crimes. You can't smuggle guns via SMS. You can't vandalize shop windows over the Internet. You can't kill people with a digital photograph. Most crimes, and especially the violent crimes that scare people the most, require physical actions that leave physical traces. The major exception would seem to be certain white collar crimes: insider trading, trade secret theft, perhaps tax evasion and other financial shenanigans. That's where I can see secure electronic devices making law enforcement significantly harder. But when LEOs speak against encryption in public they usually seem to invoke killers and kidnappers, as if victims' bodies were now regularly hidden inside encrypted iPhones instead of car trunks and shallow graves. Maybe LEOs believe their own rhetoric or maybe they just realize that "think of the victims of inside trading!" isn't the sort of terrifying scenario that will get the public on their side.
- robocat 8y ago
  > You can't vandalize shop windows over the Internet. You can't massacre people at a concert [snip]. You can't smuggle weapons over a border [snip]. I could commit these crimes over the internet by using others to perform them. So the people you catch are not the prime cause of the crimes. This was not feasible before the internet, and digital monitoring would be the only way to catch me.

Bizarro 8y ago

Or simply, in free societies sometimes the bad guys get away with things. Or maybe they're not the bad guys and the state has deemed them "bad guys". And what's really pathetic is that societies don't have discussions about unintended consequences of laws, and that prosecutors don't have checks-n-balances on their power/authority.

berti 8y ago
> Or maybe they're not the bad guys and the state has deemed them "bad guys". Fun conversation topic. A large proportion of people cannot comprehend such a concept.

sev 8y ago

Even if it _were_ possible to only have the “government” have access to our personal devices and information, why would anyone want them to have that access? There are things I want to share only with my family, and ideally, I should have the ability to do that comfortably in this age of IoT. We won’t solve crime by allowing the government to spy on us; at best, it will cause the crime to be diverted or changed in form.