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Assume a general ban on private encryption. This is de facto equivalent to a ban on transmitting random numbers also, since the two are indistinguishable to the

Assume a general ban on private encryption. This is de facto equivalent to a ban on transmitting random numbers also, since the two are indistinguishable to the government. Messages can be obfuscated steganographically of course so any kind of noisy data could potentially be an illegal message. Such a ban would amount to a mandate that all speech be thoroughly comprehensible to the government and without error. The implications to liberty of such a policy are shocking. It is designed to be useless enough so as not to actually solve the problems that supposedly demand it, yet broad enough to be enforced against anybody selectively. A perpetual lever of fear. Barr's proposals applying to social media are merely a restricted case of this scenario. Just like every other policy that purports to prevent crime/pedophilia/mass shootings/terror by criminalizing possession or use of tools, it is pure security theater which only binds people who are cooperative enough in the first place not to evade it. We must cultivate a common cultural recognition that these are tactics of control and not of protection.

mattrp 7y ago
Agreed but what's happening is that governments are waking to the idea that not only will communications over the wire be encrypted from platforms (such as signal, dare I say whatsa--- no I can't, but you get the point), data at rest will similarly be out of reach from platforms with technologies like zero knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption. There will come a day, baring any tampering/legal obstacles where most companies simply won't be able to see the underlying data unless the user grants permission for the use. Even then users may not even need to grant permission to the entire object but elements of the object to facilitate an answer -- i.e. instead of granting access to an entire social security number, the system could simply ask via algorithm , do you have a valid social security number and is it yours and the answer comes back yes/no. To be quite honest, I don't see why governments couldn't join such a system but I guess if given a preference, they'd prefer to coerce the platforms rather than ask the users each and every time...just because that's the easy way doesn't mean it's the right way.

mattrp 7y ago

Agreed but what's happening is that governments are waking to the idea that not only will communications over the wire be encrypted from platforms (such as signal, dare I say whatsa--- no I can't, but you get the point), data at rest will similarly be out of reach from platforms with technologies like zero knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption. There will come a day, baring any tampering/legal obstacles where most companies simply won't be able to see the underlying data unless the user grants permission for the use. Even then users may not even need to grant permission to the entire object but elements of the object to facilitate an answer -- i.e. instead of granting access to an entire social security number, the system could simply ask via algorithm , do you have a valid social security number and is it yours and the answer comes back yes/no. To be quite honest, I don't see why governments couldn't join such a system but I guess if given a preference, they'd prefer to coerce the platforms rather than ask the users each and every time...just because that's the easy way doesn't mean it's the right way.