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There's a balance that must be struck between the efficiency of law enforcement and the freedom of citizens. Personally, I lean heavily towards the latter, and

There's a balance that must be struck between the efficiency of law enforcement and the freedom of citizens. Personally, I lean heavily towards the latter, and I think this is the reason: My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. I'm sure this is true of many Americans; perhaps more true now than ever in history. So why is it that there is so much support for tough-on-crime policies that decrease popular freedom in obvious ways? Why does it seem like the less people are affected by crime, the more they abhor it and feel the need to root it out to the last, no matter the cost? There are diminishing returns here. The price we pay to track down the last criminal on Earth will be _everything_.

nickthemagicman 7y ago
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Ben Franklin No one likes to say this but your average citizen is either not smart enough or doesn't care enough to understand statistics... so sensationalism wins.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Ben Franklin would have done well on Twitter, but this is in essence a snappy Revolution War slogan, nothing more. It makes a false binary distinction and real world decisions are more complicated.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >Ben Franklin would have done well on Twitter, but this is in essence a snappy Revolution War slogan, nothing more. It actually isn't, it's a snippet of a greater dialogue with often taken out of context in order to to infer precisely the opposite meaning of what was intended[0,1]. Ben Franklin understood the nuance and complexity of the real world better than many of the libertarians and ancaps who quote him.. [0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be... [1]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
    - skybrian 7y ago
      Thanks for the correction! But he also wasn't above just making stuff up to increase business. Maybe the funniest one was predicting and then faking a competing printer's death, and then claiming that someone was pretending to be him. Apparently this increased circulation for both publishers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Leeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Leeds https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62668/6-ben-franklins-greatest-hoaxes-and-pranks https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62668/6-ben-franklins-gr...
    - nickthemagicman 7y ago
      Those articles do a poor job of discrediting the ideas of the actual quote. They say that the origin is not what people think? Many of the founding fathers had slaves. Doesn't make the constitution any less valid. Mel Gibson is a terrible person but Braveheart is an amazing movie. The origin of something does not discredit its ideas.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    "real world decisions are more complicated" This argument is dismissive without actually addressing the argument. It's literally a logical fallacy called 'appeal to the stone'. Where's the nuance?
    - krapp 7y ago
      The nuance is that Ben Franklin was warning against the temporary safety of personal liberty versus the freedom provided by a more robust Federal security apparatus (specifically against native Americans.) He wasn't warning that trust in government is an act of cowardice or fool's errand, rather that government is often necessary as a force multiplier to safeguard individual liberties against an opposing force multiplier.
      - nickthemagicman 7y ago
        The fact that you used Native Americans in your example is not the best support for your argument that it's not a fools errand to trust the government. The difference between who you're being made 'safe' from and who is being repressed is merely a labeling issue, and its the same forces that do the repression that keep the safety. You could be the one being protected one one day, then the next day, you're the 'Native American' and the one others need safety from, because a label changed. Freedom fighter or a terrorist? Speaking up for what you believe or spouting anti-government propaganda? That concept is what the quote is conveying. It's a very powerful and important quote that applies to numerous situations. That's why it's a fricking timeless quote. Insane this isn't agreed upon by everyone.
    - skybrian 7y ago
      To expand it a little bit: What does "deserve" mean in this slogan? Are people who made a strategic mistake undeserving of fair treatment? This sounds a lot like the con artist's rationale that his victims had it coming because they were stupid. Also, which liberties are considered essential? What kind of safety are we talking about? If a mugger threatens you maybe you should cooperate? Should people on the losing side of a war always fight to the end? If you think the police are corrupt and you won't get a fair trial, should you allow yourself to be arrested? I don't believe there is a simple slogan that tells you what to do in all situations.
olliej 7y ago
But encryption doesn’t have “mostly safe”. It has safe and not safe. There isn’t a meaningful in between.
- rlucas 7y ago
  Unclear why this was heavily downvoted. Modern encryption is, eventually, either effectively unbreakable, or effectively worthless. Or is there widespread knowledge of exploits that can recover, say, 25% of a plaintext reliably, but no more?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Klathmon 7y ago
    I'd argue that there are levels of security and encryption, mostly around what data is secret. If I make an encrypted phone call to you, there are a few "levels" of information. There's the exact information exchanged on the call, the amount of information exchanged but not it's value, the identities of those in the call, the date and time and duration of the call, perhaps the hardware used to make the call, etc... Encryption isn't an all or nothing thing, it often involves tradeoffs and giving up some security for convenience or the other way around. And in some areas there are laws about what must be kept secret and what must be visible to the government (like in anti-money laundering laws).
- rcoveson 7y ago
  I hope I'm not misinterpreted as claiming that a balance must be struck between strong encryption and backdoored encryption. I was talking about a higher level balance, of which encryption is only one issue. We agree that the strength of encryption itself leans heavily towards the extremes; a "balance" on that particular issue is usually just misleading rhetoric.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Isn't encryption really 'most likely safe' and 'unsafe'. It has been a while since I've spent much time reading into the details, but the encryption we depend upon generally isn't proven safe, just failed to have been proven unsafe by many experts after many years.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
>>>My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. I'm sure this is true of many Americans; perhaps more true now than ever in history. Personally I agree with you. Crime is a risk we need to take, just like driving a car or crossing the road. My guess is that even in North Korea despite their Stasi on steroids system. So... But Barr would say that is about to change, meaning you'll be affected more by crime, unless cops can access encrypted communications.
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Perhaps a facet of infrequent exposure is that it makes the same event more impactful and therefore more effectively sensationalized? I don't particularly fear a car accident, even though it's far and away the most likely thing to cause me physical injury. Several of my family and friends have been in car accidents, most are just fine. My chance of being awakened and assaulted by a burglar are unfathomably more remote, I've only ever come across it in movies. As a result, I have a strong emotional reaction to the 0.001% chance of a breaking and entering and a weaker reaction to the 10% chance of a car accident. But I don't naturally want to spend a proportional amount on a safer car, I'm more inclined buy motion-activated floodlights. If we lived in a lawless Wild West, I think we'd be more inured to the possibility of crime. Now that it's mostly a foreign experience it's easier to respond with fear instead of reason.
corey_moncure 7y ago
>My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. This statement is shocking to me. I guess that you intend to say people are rarely the direct individual victim of petty street crime e.g. robbing, assault, etc? At this moment there is a thread on the front page pertaining to the widespread problem of fraudulent listings on Amazon. This kind of fraud is affecting people near-universally. It affects my decision making process every time I shop. Corporate criminals who cheat pollutant emissions regulations affect my life with literally every breath I take.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  The irony is that the crimes that you mention are not those that are in the sights of the politicians looking to ban or backdoor encryption.
corporate_shi11 7y ago
Oftentimes systemic crime manifests more as an erosion of trust in institutions and the healthy functioning of a society than as something which impacts individuals in a direct way on a regular basis. For instance, consider Mexican organized crime (cartels). Cartels wield a huge amount of illicit influence and generally make everyone's lives much worse, but most people aren't being kidnapped or confronted by cartels on a daily basis. Their lives are certainly affected by them, but in mostly indirect ways. Cancerous organized crime and its enablement by coerced and voluntary corruption within Government and business represents an existential threat to developed societies. Many of us take for granted our nation's peace and prosperity, in spite of the creeping threat of organized crime and corruption being ever present. Law enforcement not being able to access encrypted data severely limits our ability to prosecute and convict criminals who use these secure communications to conduct their business, and brings the creeping threat of social decay ever closer.
- rcoveson 7y ago
  > Law enforcement not being able to access encrypted data severely limits our ability to prosecute and convict criminals who use these secure communications to conduct their business, and brings the creeping threat of social decay ever closer. The impact of organized crime pales in comparison to that of authoritarian regimes. The "creeping threat of social decay" argument gives me chills; it's exactly the slogan I imagine at the head of the movement that finally ends democracy.
  - corporate_shi11 7y ago
    And yet, just last year over 100 Mexican politicians were murdered by cartels. The Mexican army itself has lost battles to the cartels as their influence steadily grows. Many municipalities in Mexico defer to the cartels in which true power and influence resides. So while you speculate on some made up authoritarian movement subverting democracy in America, I look on in horror as democracy in Mexico is being subverted in real time by organized crime and the creeping social decay and corruption that comes with it. 100 politicians assassinated in a single year! This is happening right across our border and if not for our robust law enforcement both at the border and throughout the country, it would be much worse here too. That is what I fear, and it is why I don't want criminals to be able to hide behind encryption. Everything good in our society comes from law and order. Without it, there is only chaos and destruction.
jeffdavis 7y ago
"Why does it seem like the less people are affected by crime, the more they abhor it and feel the need to root it out to the last, no matter the cost?" Frequent problems are invisible. Rare problems are news.
agumonkey 7y ago
You could argue that the whole gun carrying ethos in the USA is flawed for the same reasons. There was a time when it made sense, and now it's driven by other forces (nation scale emotions?)
- rcoveson 7y ago
  What causes you to say that guns make less sense today than they did when the second amendment was written? Their effectiveness in guerrilla warfare continues to be proven, and their negative impact as an instrument of homicide has trended steeply downward over the years.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  There will never be a time where it won't make sense. Governments can and do become tyrannical and the population should always have the right and the means to wage war against it instead of suffering helplessly under its boot.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    But right now people don't have guns to defend against the state but against their neighbours.
    - bigwavedave 7y ago
      Those two aren't even close to being mutually exclusive.
graycat 7y ago
> So why is it that there is so much support for tough-on-crime policies that decrease popular freedom in obvious ways? A standard answer: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” ~ H.L. Mencken from https://www.peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part-1/#climate https://www.peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part-1/#c...
njharman 7y ago
Why? Because evolution has made us fear for our children. Rational self-interest is not evolutionary useful after reproducing. Expendind all your resourses ensuring your offspring grow and spread is. Irrational overprotection such as feel good tough on crime is popular. Were as, more abstract measures which would actual ell but aren't directly relatable to threatening your child are not.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
Because it has nothing to do with reducing crime or improving the quality of life for the population. They want access to encrypted communications because it gives them power. Child exploitation, terrorists and drug cartels are merely the political tools they're using to justify their overreach. Their real targets are whistle blowers, dissidents, journalists, people who can do real damage to the foundations of their power.
GordonS 7y ago
I think a large segment of mass media fuels the problem. Tabloid-style news is written to shock and anger readers, because that, unfortunately, is what sells. Politicians realised the "benefits" of this long ago, stoking the fires of rage, whipping people up into a frenzy, all to "keep them safe". And so a large slice of the population really believes there are terrorists and criminals lurking around every corner - that things have never been more dangerous; and so they allow politicians to strip their freedoms and gain sweeping powers, because its all to "keep them safe".
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  It's this. People are bad at statistics so it's easy to influence them with sensationalism.
tsukurimashou 7y ago
Wrong thinking in my opinion. "I understand they need to spy on people but not too much" They don't NEED to spy on people and we have yet to see numbers and actual proof they use the data they collect to actually find terrorists / pedophile / whatever the new trend will be to remove freedom and privacy from the population.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Ben Franklin No one likes to say this but your average citizen is either not smart enough or doesn't care enough to understand statistics... so sensationalism wins.

skybrian 7y ago
Ben Franklin would have done well on Twitter, but this is in essence a snappy Revolution War slogan, nothing more. It makes a false binary distinction and real world decisions are more complicated.
- krapp 7y ago
  >Ben Franklin would have done well on Twitter, but this is in essence a snappy Revolution War slogan, nothing more. It actually isn't, it's a snippet of a greater dialogue with often taken out of context in order to to infer precisely the opposite meaning of what was intended[0,1]. Ben Franklin understood the nuance and complexity of the real world better than many of the libertarians and ancaps who quote him.. [0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be... [1]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Thanks for the correction! But he also wasn't above just making stuff up to increase business. Maybe the funniest one was predicting and then faking a competing printer's death, and then claiming that someone was pretending to be him. Apparently this increased circulation for both publishers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Leeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Leeds https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62668/6-ben-franklins-greatest-hoaxes-and-pranks https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62668/6-ben-franklins-gr...
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    Those articles do a poor job of discrediting the ideas of the actual quote. They say that the origin is not what people think? Many of the founding fathers had slaves. Doesn't make the constitution any less valid. Mel Gibson is a terrible person but Braveheart is an amazing movie. The origin of something does not discredit its ideas.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  "real world decisions are more complicated" This argument is dismissive without actually addressing the argument. It's literally a logical fallacy called 'appeal to the stone'. Where's the nuance?
  - krapp 7y ago
    The nuance is that Ben Franklin was warning against the temporary safety of personal liberty versus the freedom provided by a more robust Federal security apparatus (specifically against native Americans.) He wasn't warning that trust in government is an act of cowardice or fool's errand, rather that government is often necessary as a force multiplier to safeguard individual liberties against an opposing force multiplier.
    - nickthemagicman 7y ago
      The fact that you used Native Americans in your example is not the best support for your argument that it's not a fools errand to trust the government. The difference between who you're being made 'safe' from and who is being repressed is merely a labeling issue, and its the same forces that do the repression that keep the safety. You could be the one being protected one one day, then the next day, you're the 'Native American' and the one others need safety from, because a label changed. Freedom fighter or a terrorist? Speaking up for what you believe or spouting anti-government propaganda? That concept is what the quote is conveying. It's a very powerful and important quote that applies to numerous situations. That's why it's a fricking timeless quote. Insane this isn't agreed upon by everyone.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    To expand it a little bit: What does "deserve" mean in this slogan? Are people who made a strategic mistake undeserving of fair treatment? This sounds a lot like the con artist's rationale that his victims had it coming because they were stupid. Also, which liberties are considered essential? What kind of safety are we talking about? If a mugger threatens you maybe you should cooperate? Should people on the losing side of a war always fight to the end? If you think the police are corrupt and you won't get a fair trial, should you allow yourself to be arrested? I don't believe there is a simple slogan that tells you what to do in all situations.

olliej 7y ago

But encryption doesn’t have “mostly safe”. It has safe and not safe. There isn’t a meaningful in between.

rlucas 7y ago
Unclear why this was heavily downvoted. Modern encryption is, eventually, either effectively unbreakable, or effectively worthless. Or is there widespread knowledge of exploits that can recover, say, 25% of a plaintext reliably, but no more?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Klathmon 7y ago
  I'd argue that there are levels of security and encryption, mostly around what data is secret. If I make an encrypted phone call to you, there are a few "levels" of information. There's the exact information exchanged on the call, the amount of information exchanged but not it's value, the identities of those in the call, the date and time and duration of the call, perhaps the hardware used to make the call, etc... Encryption isn't an all or nothing thing, it often involves tradeoffs and giving up some security for convenience or the other way around. And in some areas there are laws about what must be kept secret and what must be visible to the government (like in anti-money laundering laws).
rcoveson 7y ago
I hope I'm not misinterpreted as claiming that a balance must be struck between strong encryption and backdoored encryption. I was talking about a higher level balance, of which encryption is only one issue. We agree that the strength of encryption itself leans heavily towards the extremes; a "balance" on that particular issue is usually just misleading rhetoric.
SkyBelow 7y ago
Isn't encryption really 'most likely safe' and 'unsafe'. It has been a while since I've spent much time reading into the details, but the encryption we depend upon generally isn't proven safe, just failed to have been proven unsafe by many experts after many years.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

>>>My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. I'm sure this is true of many Americans; perhaps more true now than ever in history. Personally I agree with you. Crime is a risk we need to take, just like driving a car or crossing the road. My guess is that even in North Korea despite their Stasi on steroids system. So... But Barr would say that is about to change, meaning you'll be affected more by crime, unless cops can access encrypted communications.

LeifCarrotson 7y ago

Perhaps a facet of infrequent exposure is that it makes the same event more impactful and therefore more effectively sensationalized? I don't particularly fear a car accident, even though it's far and away the most likely thing to cause me physical injury. Several of my family and friends have been in car accidents, most are just fine. My chance of being awakened and assaulted by a burglar are unfathomably more remote, I've only ever come across it in movies. As a result, I have a strong emotional reaction to the 0.001% chance of a breaking and entering and a weaker reaction to the 10% chance of a car accident. But I don't naturally want to spend a proportional amount on a safer car, I'm more inclined buy motion-activated floodlights. If we lived in a lawless Wild West, I think we'd be more inured to the possibility of crime. Now that it's mostly a foreign experience it's easier to respond with fear instead of reason.

corey_moncure 7y ago

>My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. This statement is shocking to me. I guess that you intend to say people are rarely the direct individual victim of petty street crime e.g. robbing, assault, etc? At this moment there is a thread on the front page pertaining to the widespread problem of fraudulent listings on Amazon. This kind of fraud is affecting people near-universally. It affects my decision making process every time I shop. Corporate criminals who cheat pollutant emissions regulations affect my life with literally every breath I take.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago
The irony is that the crimes that you mention are not those that are in the sights of the politicians looking to ban or backdoor encryption.

corporate_shi11 7y ago

Oftentimes systemic crime manifests more as an erosion of trust in institutions and the healthy functioning of a society than as something which impacts individuals in a direct way on a regular basis. For instance, consider Mexican organized crime (cartels). Cartels wield a huge amount of illicit influence and generally make everyone's lives much worse, but most people aren't being kidnapped or confronted by cartels on a daily basis. Their lives are certainly affected by them, but in mostly indirect ways. Cancerous organized crime and its enablement by coerced and voluntary corruption within Government and business represents an existential threat to developed societies. Many of us take for granted our nation's peace and prosperity, in spite of the creeping threat of organized crime and corruption being ever present. Law enforcement not being able to access encrypted data severely limits our ability to prosecute and convict criminals who use these secure communications to conduct their business, and brings the creeping threat of social decay ever closer.

rcoveson 7y ago
> Law enforcement not being able to access encrypted data severely limits our ability to prosecute and convict criminals who use these secure communications to conduct their business, and brings the creeping threat of social decay ever closer. The impact of organized crime pales in comparison to that of authoritarian regimes. The "creeping threat of social decay" argument gives me chills; it's exactly the slogan I imagine at the head of the movement that finally ends democracy.
- corporate_shi11 7y ago
  And yet, just last year over 100 Mexican politicians were murdered by cartels. The Mexican army itself has lost battles to the cartels as their influence steadily grows. Many municipalities in Mexico defer to the cartels in which true power and influence resides. So while you speculate on some made up authoritarian movement subverting democracy in America, I look on in horror as democracy in Mexico is being subverted in real time by organized crime and the creeping social decay and corruption that comes with it. 100 politicians assassinated in a single year! This is happening right across our border and if not for our robust law enforcement both at the border and throughout the country, it would be much worse here too. That is what I fear, and it is why I don't want criminals to be able to hide behind encryption. Everything good in our society comes from law and order. Without it, there is only chaos and destruction.

jeffdavis 7y ago

"Why does it seem like the less people are affected by crime, the more they abhor it and feel the need to root it out to the last, no matter the cost?" Frequent problems are invisible. Rare problems are news.

agumonkey 7y ago

You could argue that the whole gun carrying ethos in the USA is flawed for the same reasons. There was a time when it made sense, and now it's driven by other forces (nation scale emotions?)

rcoveson 7y ago
What causes you to say that guns make less sense today than they did when the second amendment was written? Their effectiveness in guerrilla warfare continues to be proven, and their negative impact as an instrument of homicide has trended steeply downward over the years.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
There will never be a time where it won't make sense. Governments can and do become tyrannical and the population should always have the right and the means to wage war against it instead of suffering helplessly under its boot.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  But right now people don't have guns to defend against the state but against their neighbours.
  - bigwavedave 7y ago
    Those two aren't even close to being mutually exclusive.

graycat 7y ago

> So why is it that there is so much support for tough-on-crime policies that decrease popular freedom in obvious ways? A standard answer: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” ~ H.L. Mencken from https://www.peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part-1/#climate https://www.peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part-1/#c...

njharman 7y ago

Why? Because evolution has made us fear for our children. Rational self-interest is not evolutionary useful after reproducing. Expendind all your resourses ensuring your offspring grow and spread is. Irrational overprotection such as feel good tough on crime is popular. Were as, more abstract measures which would actual ell but aren't directly relatable to threatening your child are not.

matheusmoreira 7y ago

Because it has nothing to do with reducing crime or improving the quality of life for the population. They want access to encrypted communications because it gives them power. Child exploitation, terrorists and drug cartels are merely the political tools they're using to justify their overreach. Their real targets are whistle blowers, dissidents, journalists, people who can do real damage to the foundations of their power.

GordonS 7y ago

I think a large segment of mass media fuels the problem. Tabloid-style news is written to shock and anger readers, because that, unfortunately, is what sells. Politicians realised the "benefits" of this long ago, stoking the fires of rage, whipping people up into a frenzy, all to "keep them safe". And so a large slice of the population really believes there are terrorists and criminals lurking around every corner - that things have never been more dangerous; and so they allow politicians to strip their freedoms and gain sweeping powers, because its all to "keep them safe".

nickthemagicman 7y ago
It's this. People are bad at statistics so it's easy to influence them with sensationalism.

tsukurimashou 7y ago

Wrong thinking in my opinion. "I understand they need to spy on people but not too much" They don't NEED to spy on people and we have yet to see numbers and actual proof they use the data they collect to actually find terrorists / pedophile / whatever the new trend will be to remove freedom and privacy from the population.