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Please explain to me how giving producers, traffickers and consumers of child pornography would not benefit from easy and hurdle-less end-to-end encryption. I'

Please explain to me how giving producers, traffickers and consumers of child pornography would not benefit from easy and hurdle-less end-to-end encryption. I'm not saying that this is a good reason to stop Facebook from implementing this. But there is no question that it is going to make the lifes of a lot of criminals a whole lot easier. We may imagine criminals, especially the semi-organized ones, to be experts in cryptography or at the very least covert communications. They really aren't. If they can just use their usual facebook accounts, they'd really appreciate that.

Canada 7y ago
Yes, apparently something like 8000 incidents of attempted solicitation of children on Facebook last year. I'm not saying E2E and encryption of data at rest doesn't benefit these scumbags. It does, no doubt, and that's exactly why the tech savvy ones use them. I'm saying that inexpensive computers, digital cameras, and broadband internet also benefit them, but these things are also an enormous benefit to us all. I'm not willing to give these things up because some bad guys use them. It's fair to ask if the trade off is reasonable. Assume those 8000 incidents are all different children and different predators and none of them are iffy/false positives. (not likely) Assume 1 billion people used FB to send a message during that time. (a low estimate) Is it weakening the security of 125,000 people for each one of these bad guys? Why should 999,992,000 people have to go without for the sake of 8000? To those who think that the many should have to suffer for the few, I ask: Where does it stop? For example, Should all digital cameras be required to upload photos to the police before allowing the user to see them? That would certainly help the police, wouldn't it?
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  The problem is that your "1 Billion" have virtually no reduction in their security, because the government doesn't have a warrant for their data, whereas the 8000 incidents may each have severe consequences. And "attempted solicitation" is by far not the only crime that is routinely prosecuted with evidence from Facebook or other types of surveillance. The slippery slope arguments are as stupid here as they are in gun debates. Not making encryption the default for text messaging, thereby leaving a chance of court-ordered disclosure, is not remotely comparable to total surveillance. But I guess that's not the kind of distinctions the audience here is going to appreciate, is it?
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    > The problem is that your "1 Billion" have virtually no reduction in their security Yes they do. Ambitions tend to grow with opportunities. That is especially true for government, you just have to look at China and other regimes. Your personal conquest against crime doesn't justify compromising security.
    - bayesian_horse 7y ago
      The point is that technology is not the point to argue and fight over when it comes to government overreach. A government needs both the technology and the will to overreach. And you are talking like western democracies, are, well, not democratic. That would be the only reason to fight over the technology, and not try to fight over the will (i.e. legislation) to do harm. And it wouldn't work, in that case, either, because "the government" is always the one with the power. If someone else is more powerful, then that's the government.
  - Canada 7y ago
    It's perfectly reasonable to assign weight to the numbers. We should think about their meaning. If I had to choose I'd definitely take having my message history dumped over being raped. That said, having my private messages made public is bad. I would be emotionally distressed. I wouldn't be getting over it in a couple days either. I should also point out that we are more geographically dispersed from our close friends and family these days. For many of us electronic communication is all we have to talk with those we love and those we depend on for our financial well being. The going dark alarmists claim (excuse me for being a bit off, I'm on mobile and don't want to double check) something like 12 million incident reports from Facebook pertaining to some 40 million images. Sounds big. But then again I could counter with a reasonable guess of 10 messages per user on average for a staggering 10 billion private messages at risk. What the FBI doesn't like to admit is that our security track record isn't great. We've had a lot of huge breaches and they aren't going to stop any time soon. We do not have and are not going to have 100 million creeps trading kiddie porn, but we have certainly had data breaches of that scale already. We don't have any great techniques to secure databases like Equifax or OPM, but we can effectively mitigate the threat of mass breach of our private communication. The FBI says it has technical experts who assure us backdoors won't put us at risk. Well just last week we see yet another vulnerability in Signal that allowed an attacker to turn this tool for privacy, designed and built by world class experts, reviewed by world class experts, into a remote listening device. Is having 10 years of private messages made public 1/100th as bad as being raped? 1/1000th? 1/10000th? Multiply by a by 100 million or a billion and we're talking about a lot of hurt. It's uncomfortable to have to compare such things, but we really have to think about these trade offs. I wasn't trying to make the slippery slope argument, though I see how it could be read that way. I'm raising a question of ethics: Is it justified to require all of us to record all of our in person conversations? If not, then how is it ethical to demand we do the same with the modern electronic equivalent? This isn't theoretical. We're already pretty far down the road of replacing our in person contact with the kind mediated by other people's computers. Finally, and this is a bit of a tangent, I also point out that even if our communication was perfectly secured end to end, the minute details of our lives are more recorded and accessible to law enforcement than ever before. We carry cell phones that record our locations, pay with credit cards that record what we buy and where, read "newspapers" that keep lists of what we read, and so on. In that respect authorities have vastly more investigative power than ever before. Law enforcement likes to talk about balance, but it sure doesn't like to talk about that and goes the extra mile to keep it quiet with parallel construction.
oceanplexian 7y ago
Please tell me how giving criminals the right against self incrimination or the right to an attorney makes us safer? If we really cared about the children we should just lock them up without a trial, right?
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Actually, the right to not incriminate yourself does make us safer, in the long run, because it is part of due process. Other than that, you are making a classic straw man. I never argued against due process, nor do I think getting rid of due process would make children any safer.
allset_ 7y ago
> Please explain to me how giving producers, traffickers and consumers of child pornography would not benefit from easy and hurdle-less end-to-end encryption. It already exists. WhatsApp, Signal, OTR, etc. provide robust E2E encryption with a few clicks. Much of it is open source. Making it illegal only prevents law abiding citizens from using it, not criminals.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  The current controversy with facebook does not envision making end-to-end encryption illegal, just less convenient. And you'd be surprised how many criminals don't know the first thing about encrypted messaging...
ernst_klim 7y ago
>Please explain to me how giving producers, traffickers and consumers of child pornography would not benefit from easy and hurdle-less end-to-end encryption. Oh yeah. Forbid encryption, good idea. I have another good idea to you: forbid bombs. If you forbid bombs, terrorists would not be able to use them.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  I never said that encryption should be prohibited. I am arguing that there are no easy answers as to what should be the default. But it's easy to make these kind of simplistic conclusions, isn't it? And yes, prohibition and regulation of explosives does make it a lot harder for terrorists and the like to use it. In fact, many are caught in the act of procuring those. That would actually be an argument in favor of outlawing encryption, because then you could equally detect criminal activity by looking for people encrypting their messages. Which I don't propose, because encryption is more broadly and genuinely useful than explosives or guns are.
raxxorrax 7y ago
They also benefit from food. It may be a more abstract need to have privacy, but that isn't optional for free societies.

Canada 7y ago

Yes, apparently something like 8000 incidents of attempted solicitation of children on Facebook last year. I'm not saying E2E and encryption of data at rest doesn't benefit these scumbags. It does, no doubt, and that's exactly why the tech savvy ones use them. I'm saying that inexpensive computers, digital cameras, and broadband internet also benefit them, but these things are also an enormous benefit to us all. I'm not willing to give these things up because some bad guys use them. It's fair to ask if the trade off is reasonable. Assume those 8000 incidents are all different children and different predators and none of them are iffy/false positives. (not likely) Assume 1 billion people used FB to send a message during that time. (a low estimate) Is it weakening the security of 125,000 people for each one of these bad guys? Why should 999,992,000 people have to go without for the sake of 8000? To those who think that the many should have to suffer for the few, I ask: Where does it stop? For example, Should all digital cameras be required to upload photos to the police before allowing the user to see them? That would certainly help the police, wouldn't it?

bayesian_horse 7y ago
The problem is that your "1 Billion" have virtually no reduction in their security, because the government doesn't have a warrant for their data, whereas the 8000 incidents may each have severe consequences. And "attempted solicitation" is by far not the only crime that is routinely prosecuted with evidence from Facebook or other types of surveillance. The slippery slope arguments are as stupid here as they are in gun debates. Not making encryption the default for text messaging, thereby leaving a chance of court-ordered disclosure, is not remotely comparable to total surveillance. But I guess that's not the kind of distinctions the audience here is going to appreciate, is it?
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  > The problem is that your "1 Billion" have virtually no reduction in their security Yes they do. Ambitions tend to grow with opportunities. That is especially true for government, you just have to look at China and other regimes. Your personal conquest against crime doesn't justify compromising security.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    The point is that technology is not the point to argue and fight over when it comes to government overreach. A government needs both the technology and the will to overreach. And you are talking like western democracies, are, well, not democratic. That would be the only reason to fight over the technology, and not try to fight over the will (i.e. legislation) to do harm. And it wouldn't work, in that case, either, because "the government" is always the one with the power. If someone else is more powerful, then that's the government.
- Canada 7y ago
  It's perfectly reasonable to assign weight to the numbers. We should think about their meaning. If I had to choose I'd definitely take having my message history dumped over being raped. That said, having my private messages made public is bad. I would be emotionally distressed. I wouldn't be getting over it in a couple days either. I should also point out that we are more geographically dispersed from our close friends and family these days. For many of us electronic communication is all we have to talk with those we love and those we depend on for our financial well being. The going dark alarmists claim (excuse me for being a bit off, I'm on mobile and don't want to double check) something like 12 million incident reports from Facebook pertaining to some 40 million images. Sounds big. But then again I could counter with a reasonable guess of 10 messages per user on average for a staggering 10 billion private messages at risk. What the FBI doesn't like to admit is that our security track record isn't great. We've had a lot of huge breaches and they aren't going to stop any time soon. We do not have and are not going to have 100 million creeps trading kiddie porn, but we have certainly had data breaches of that scale already. We don't have any great techniques to secure databases like Equifax or OPM, but we can effectively mitigate the threat of mass breach of our private communication. The FBI says it has technical experts who assure us backdoors won't put us at risk. Well just last week we see yet another vulnerability in Signal that allowed an attacker to turn this tool for privacy, designed and built by world class experts, reviewed by world class experts, into a remote listening device. Is having 10 years of private messages made public 1/100th as bad as being raped? 1/1000th? 1/10000th? Multiply by a by 100 million or a billion and we're talking about a lot of hurt. It's uncomfortable to have to compare such things, but we really have to think about these trade offs. I wasn't trying to make the slippery slope argument, though I see how it could be read that way. I'm raising a question of ethics: Is it justified to require all of us to record all of our in person conversations? If not, then how is it ethical to demand we do the same with the modern electronic equivalent? This isn't theoretical. We're already pretty far down the road of replacing our in person contact with the kind mediated by other people's computers. Finally, and this is a bit of a tangent, I also point out that even if our communication was perfectly secured end to end, the minute details of our lives are more recorded and accessible to law enforcement than ever before. We carry cell phones that record our locations, pay with credit cards that record what we buy and where, read "newspapers" that keep lists of what we read, and so on. In that respect authorities have vastly more investigative power than ever before. Law enforcement likes to talk about balance, but it sure doesn't like to talk about that and goes the extra mile to keep it quiet with parallel construction.

oceanplexian 7y ago

Please tell me how giving criminals the right against self incrimination or the right to an attorney makes us safer? If we really cared about the children we should just lock them up without a trial, right?

bayesian_horse 7y ago
Actually, the right to not incriminate yourself does make us safer, in the long run, because it is part of due process. Other than that, you are making a classic straw man. I never argued against due process, nor do I think getting rid of due process would make children any safer.

allset_ 7y ago

> Please explain to me how giving producers, traffickers and consumers of child pornography would not benefit from easy and hurdle-less end-to-end encryption. It already exists. WhatsApp, Signal, OTR, etc. provide robust E2E encryption with a few clicks. Much of it is open source. Making it illegal only prevents law abiding citizens from using it, not criminals.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
The current controversy with facebook does not envision making end-to-end encryption illegal, just less convenient. And you'd be surprised how many criminals don't know the first thing about encrypted messaging...

ernst_klim 7y ago

>Please explain to me how giving producers, traffickers and consumers of child pornography would not benefit from easy and hurdle-less end-to-end encryption. Oh yeah. Forbid encryption, good idea. I have another good idea to you: forbid bombs. If you forbid bombs, terrorists would not be able to use them.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
I never said that encryption should be prohibited. I am arguing that there are no easy answers as to what should be the default. But it's easy to make these kind of simplistic conclusions, isn't it? And yes, prohibition and regulation of explosives does make it a lot harder for terrorists and the like to use it. In fact, many are caught in the act of procuring those. That would actually be an argument in favor of outlawing encryption, because then you could equally detect criminal activity by looking for people encrypting their messages. Which I don't propose, because encryption is more broadly and genuinely useful than explosives or guns are.

raxxorrax 7y ago

They also benefit from food. It may be a more abstract need to have privacy, but that isn't optional for free societies.