4 ms·

Let’s not confuse things here. It is a statement on strong encryption. Not to be confused with a strong statement. It is not a strong statement. It is a very we

by natch 8y ago

Let’s not confuse things here. It is a statement on strong encryption. Not to be confused with a strong statement. It is not a strong statement. It is a very weak statement. It takes a stand only against “centralized” schemes, meaning they couldn’t come to agreement on whether to oppose decentralized schemes, which have most of the same problems. Then instead of recognizing the possibility that a government could have evil laws that it enforced while technically following the processes assured by any key escrow type scheme, they characterize the problem as being one only of governments who do not adhere to the assured processes. The thing is, a government could completely follow a processs and still do so for abusive reasons. The IEEE don’t see that as a problem in their scope of concerns, apparently. The other huge problem with it is as mentioned above that it only focuses on (valid concern) the possible circumvention of one particular implementation (centralized) by people and governments behaving counter to the intent of the system. It completely gives hope to the fools who would work toward decentralized systems.

dcow 8y ago
I think they're trying to focus on arguing the points that are more obviously problematic. I'm not sure if you asked the average person today that they would even be worried about abuse of power by their own government, despite history showing we should, unfortunately. Further the trend in modern left-style rhetoric is to sacrifice civil liberties for civil-security which is why this topic is even being discussed again. If you are already mentally in the camp of sacrificing your liberty for security, no argument purely to the contrary will sway you. Personally I find it more productive to focus on the practical problems and use those to dissuade people instead of trying to convince someone to shift their ideaology. I'm not saying you're wrong that it's a weaker stance, but it may be a more effective argument... At the end of the day the IEEE is a standards organization, not an internet ideaology group (c.f. The EFF).

by natch 8y ago

dcow 8y ago

I think they're trying to focus on arguing the points that are more obviously problematic. I'm not sure if you asked the average person today that they would even be worried about abuse of power by their own government, despite history showing we should, unfortunately. Further the trend in modern left-style rhetoric is to sacrifice civil liberties for civil-security which is why this topic is even being discussed again. If you are already mentally in the camp of sacrificing your liberty for security, no argument purely to the contrary will sway you. Personally I find it more productive to focus on the practical problems and use those to dissuade people instead of trying to convince someone to shift their ideaology. I'm not saying you're wrong that it's a weaker stance, but it may be a more effective argument... At the end of the day the IEEE is a standards organization, not an internet ideaology group (c.f. The EFF).