4 ms·

This, unfortunately, is a losing war. With no mechanism in place for the "winning" side to stop the "losing" side from trying again, often with the same argume

This, unfortunately, is a losing war. With no mechanism in place for the "winning" side to stop the "losing" side from trying again, often with the same arguments but different ears, eventually the "loser" will turn into the "winner." More to the point, even if the larger picture remains the same, the losing side will continue to attempt to chip away piece by piece any such protections. Don't believe me? Look at our park system. We've come out and said time and again that the trees in our parks are important. That is, until we sell 30 acres here to pay for this. Then 30 acres there to sell to pay for that. Eventually some of the parks are half the size they used to be. God help the redwood trees.

dpatru 16y ago
Which side is the winning side and which is the losing side?
- fluidcruft 16y ago
  Cryptographers won this argument in 1996 with the Clipper chip. They are the first "winners". The agencies that want the backdoors were the "losers", but the premise is that the agencies will just keep trying until they succeed. It's asymmetric because the agencies' eventual win cannot be undone, but the cryptographer's win will be.
  - jbarham 16y ago
    > It's asymmetric because the agencies' eventual win cannot be undone, but the cryptographer's win will be. How can the agencies prevent crypto without backdoors being implemented on top of their crypto with backdoors?
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    It's asymmetric also because those advocating backdoors have, essentially, unlimited budget to attain their goals (or at least the resources are so lopsided as to be impossible to compare).
  - mfukar 16y ago
    I apologize in advance since I don't know the current state of things on this in the US, but is it different than the EU? As far as I know, lawful interception systems are widely in use here (EU) even today (in ISPs, banks, major mobile telephony providers, etc).
CWuestefeld 16y ago
Yes, this is true of many things in our society. One likes to think of the politics as a pendulum, swinging back and forth. Sometimes things are in the hands of one party, sometimes another. But when one side of the discussion is at "0", that biases the swings. It can't go into "negative" legislation, so the site championing the "0" can never win, and in the long term, the changes keep creeping away from the 0.
jrockway 16y ago
I think regardless of the laws that the government passes, people will still be able to use secure crypto. Look at the war on drugs -- anyone that wants drugs can easily get them, they just cost more than they would otherwise, and the taxpayers have to pay billions of dollars a year to provide free room and board for anyone that keeps too many drugs in one place. If you are committing treason, or something, the price of going to prison for using PGP is much less than the death sentence you'd get if you sent the messages in the clear. I also don't see laws against crypto (and steganography) really being effective. A law is one thing, convicting people for violating them is another. Think about what a tough time the government has in bringing cases against criminals. It's 50/50 as to whether or not they can convince a jury to convict when they have a security videotape of the accused gunning someone down. "And here we see the defendant discharging his handgun into Ms. Smith." Do you really think they're going to be able to get convictions for people alleged to be hiding encrypted data in normal streams? "It's clear from the noise pattern in this image that there is a hidden bitstream in the low-order bits. This means that anyone exchanging this image is probably forwarding on encrypted terrorist communications. We can't actually prove this beyond a reasonable doubt... it is possible that they used a buggy version of Photoshop when they were resizing it for their lolcat blog. But probably terrorism!!" I am not losing much sleep over this.
- makmanalp 16y ago
  If you posses drugs, you're following illegal conduct, and you can be fined or imprisoned. Similarly, if we end up with a government OK'd list of crypto schemes, those of us who use strong crypto legitimately will be criminals. Also, in the UK, you can get charged for not handing over encryption keys.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    If you posses drugs, you're following illegal conduct, and you can be fined or imprisoned. Similarly, if we end up with a government OK'd list of crypto schemes, those of us who use strong crypto legitimately will be criminals. Well, yeah. But you have a right to be tried by a jury of your peers... who probably won't understand crypto. (The "drugs are bad... except coffee and cigarettes and high fructose corn syrup" propaganda caught on pretty well, so you are probably stuck there. But there is no "strong cryptography is bad" rhetoric out there, and it will be hard to argue for -- the opposite is "the government is trying to steal your credit card number".) Anyway, the whole point of the Constitution was to allow people to do things that the government didn't want them to do. Using strong cryptography is the modern way to for one to "be secure in their persons, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". Finally, it seems that this round of laws is directed at service providers that store encrypted messages; the government wants you to be able to read everything passing through your network. Of course, you do not control the P2P network that your movies and phone calls pass through, so this law has limited effect. Even then, if end users provide their own encryption, that's out of the scope of this law. The government cannot read every packet that passes over the Internet.

dpatru 16y ago

Which side is the winning side and which is the losing side?

fluidcruft 16y ago
Cryptographers won this argument in 1996 with the Clipper chip. They are the first "winners". The agencies that want the backdoors were the "losers", but the premise is that the agencies will just keep trying until they succeed. It's asymmetric because the agencies' eventual win cannot be undone, but the cryptographer's win will be.
- jbarham 16y ago
  > It's asymmetric because the agencies' eventual win cannot be undone, but the cryptographer's win will be. How can the agencies prevent crypto without backdoors being implemented on top of their crypto with backdoors?
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  It's asymmetric also because those advocating backdoors have, essentially, unlimited budget to attain their goals (or at least the resources are so lopsided as to be impossible to compare).
- mfukar 16y ago
  I apologize in advance since I don't know the current state of things on this in the US, but is it different than the EU? As far as I know, lawful interception systems are widely in use here (EU) even today (in ISPs, banks, major mobile telephony providers, etc).

CWuestefeld 16y ago

Yes, this is true of many things in our society. One likes to think of the politics as a pendulum, swinging back and forth. Sometimes things are in the hands of one party, sometimes another. But when one side of the discussion is at "0", that biases the swings. It can't go into "negative" legislation, so the site championing the "0" can never win, and in the long term, the changes keep creeping away from the 0.

jrockway 16y ago

I think regardless of the laws that the government passes, people will still be able to use secure crypto. Look at the war on drugs -- anyone that wants drugs can easily get them, they just cost more than they would otherwise, and the taxpayers have to pay billions of dollars a year to provide free room and board for anyone that keeps too many drugs in one place. If you are committing treason, or something, the price of going to prison for using PGP is much less than the death sentence you'd get if you sent the messages in the clear. I also don't see laws against crypto (and steganography) really being effective. A law is one thing, convicting people for violating them is another. Think about what a tough time the government has in bringing cases against criminals. It's 50/50 as to whether or not they can convince a jury to convict when they have a security videotape of the accused gunning someone down. "And here we see the defendant discharging his handgun into Ms. Smith." Do you really think they're going to be able to get convictions for people alleged to be hiding encrypted data in normal streams? "It's clear from the noise pattern in this image that there is a hidden bitstream in the low-order bits. This means that anyone exchanging this image is probably forwarding on encrypted terrorist communications. We can't actually prove this beyond a reasonable doubt... it is possible that they used a buggy version of Photoshop when they were resizing it for their lolcat blog. But probably terrorism!!" I am not losing much sleep over this.

makmanalp 16y ago
If you posses drugs, you're following illegal conduct, and you can be fined or imprisoned. Similarly, if we end up with a government OK'd list of crypto schemes, those of us who use strong crypto legitimately will be criminals. Also, in the UK, you can get charged for not handing over encryption keys.
- jrockway 16y ago
  If you posses drugs, you're following illegal conduct, and you can be fined or imprisoned. Similarly, if we end up with a government OK'd list of crypto schemes, those of us who use strong crypto legitimately will be criminals. Well, yeah. But you have a right to be tried by a jury of your peers... who probably won't understand crypto. (The "drugs are bad... except coffee and cigarettes and high fructose corn syrup" propaganda caught on pretty well, so you are probably stuck there. But there is no "strong cryptography is bad" rhetoric out there, and it will be hard to argue for -- the opposite is "the government is trying to steal your credit card number".) Anyway, the whole point of the Constitution was to allow people to do things that the government didn't want them to do. Using strong cryptography is the modern way to for one to "be secure in their persons, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". Finally, it seems that this round of laws is directed at service providers that store encrypted messages; the government wants you to be able to read everything passing through your network. Of course, you do not control the P2P network that your movies and phone calls pass through, so this law has limited effect. Even then, if end users provide their own encryption, that's out of the scope of this law. The government cannot read every packet that passes over the Internet.