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Encryption allows data to be locked away from the government including law enforcement and prosecutors in a way that was nearly impossible for the average citiz

by slg 7y ago

Encryption allows data to be locked away from the government including law enforcement and prosecutors in a way that was nearly impossible for the average citizen a few decades ago. Warrants can't break encryption like they could doors or locks. As much of life moves to the digital world and becomes encrypted, that can be a drastic change in how the justice system works. Pro-encryption people need to keep this in mind when talking to anti-encryption folks. Criminals being able to hide evidence is a serious concern for the average person.

strbean 7y ago
> in a way that was nearly impossible for the average citizen a few decades ago Ehh, maybe if you are talking about speed and scale. The average citizen could always learn how to use a one-time pad.
- slg 7y ago
  Speed, scale, and by default with no initial sharing of keys are super important distinctions.
unlinked_dll 7y ago
Why can't the government serve warrants to give up their private keys? I don't really see the State's argument against encryption except in the case that they want to break encrypted information without due process.
- lostcolony 7y ago
  Well, 5th amendment protections, and inability to determine whether a person even remembers the key, means that serving a warrant doesn't always work either. But then, neither did breaking down the door and ransacking the obvious physical target pre-internet days always work. And everyone understood a suspect had no obligation to tell the feds where he hid the goods.
feanaro 7y ago
I always have trouble imagining examples of this kind of evidence that criminals were previously utterly unable to hide but can now do it easily using encryption. It seems any kind of evidence could had just been shredded and burned in times past or hidden in an obscure, physical safe that no one knows about. If anything, the digital age had made the location of evidence more obvious and even produced entirely new kinds of evidence (traffic and connection logs, emails, etc). It seems to me that law enforcement is simply pining for the fjords of a very short time span in human history when ample digital information co-existed with the lack of widely available cryptographic systems.
JoshTriplett 7y ago
> Criminals being able to hide evidence is a serious concern for the average person. Suspects. Alleged criminals. Until convicted, they're not criminals. The government does not have an unlimited right to collect all information; they have a limited, judicially controlled right to try to collect information. One key detail: strong encryption does not prevent investigations from targeted collection of information, such as through physical surveillance, bugs, etc. There are many tools available to law enforcement, those tools are just less convenient. Framing it that way helps: in order to make investigations more convenient, the DOJ wants to prevent anyone from using secure communications.
- slg 7y ago
  >Suspects. Alleged criminals. Until convicted, they're not criminals. And even after they are convicted, they and their associates are still protected by encryption. Encryption protects everyone equally. That is viewed as a positive by pro-encryption people and a negative by anti-encryption people. >The government does not have an unlimited right to collect all information; they have a limited, judicially controlled right to try to collect information. This the point of warrants. The problem of massive warrantless collection of data by the government is a bigger and separate issue. I personally think encryption is a valuable tool to address the symptom of that problem, but it does nothing to actually fix problem of a corrupt and/or authoritarian government. One of my personal annoyances with the tech community is that we have a tendency to try to work around any governmental problems as if that solves the issue while making no attempt at fixing the root cause.
  - JoshTriplett 7y ago
    > One of my personal annoyances with the tech community is that we have a tendency to try to work around any governmental problems as if that solves the issue while making no attempt at fixing the root cause. Agreed. We need to produce technical solutions, and effect policy solutions, and get a lot better at PR and rhetoric.
  - viklove 7y ago
    The only way your argument makes any sense is if you can somehow show that conviction rates have gone down since encryption became widespread. I think you'll have a hard time doing that because people will usually find some other way to hide information, like just destroying evidence. Are you gonna go after shredders next? They're hiding criminal's secrets too!
henryfjordan 7y ago
Warrants might not be able to break encryption, but refusing to provide the passcode can land you in jail indefinitely for contempt. You could serve decades potentially. The fear from law enforcement is absurd. They've never had the ability to read every single letter that was sent, but now that we've moved online they want to read every email? They claim they are losing access but the truth was they never had access in the first place. The only difference is before maybe they could secretly read your letters before delivering them but now they need to get your password. That only worked at a small scale though, and I'm sure the NSA can crack passwords at those same small scales (e.g. some of the high-profile iphone cracking we've seen).
snowwrestler 7y ago
> Encryption allows data to be locked away from the government including law enforcement and prosecutors in a way that was nearly impossible for the average citizen a few decades ago. I know some people do think this, but the opposite is actually true, because of the popular shift from voice to computerized text and images for almost all communications. A few decades ago, criminals spoke on the phone to coordinate actions. If the police were aware of this in advance, they could tap the phone line and listen in to that conversation. However if they found out about it after the fact, there was no record of the conversation for law enforcement to go get. The sands of time hide information extremely well. Today, we use mobile devices, and prefer text and image-based communications--email, SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. Unlike voice conversations of the past, these default to creating a permanent record of the conversation, which police can go get after the fact. Encryption is an attempt to re-establish the privacy and security of these conversations that existed back when they would have been a voice call over analog telephony. The idea of "going dark"--promoted by law enforcement to fight encryption--is wrong. What has actually happened is that INCREDIBLE BRIGHTNESS of information has developed over the past few decades as all our computerized communications now default to living forever. Encryption is a tool for trying re-establish the level of "light" (information availability) that our culture and laws came to expect over hundreds of years.

by slg 7y ago

strbean 7y ago

> in a way that was nearly impossible for the average citizen a few decades ago Ehh, maybe if you are talking about speed and scale. The average citizen could always learn how to use a one-time pad.

slg 7y ago
Speed, scale, and by default with no initial sharing of keys are super important distinctions.

unlinked_dll 7y ago

Why can't the government serve warrants to give up their private keys? I don't really see the State's argument against encryption except in the case that they want to break encrypted information without due process.

lostcolony 7y ago
Well, 5th amendment protections, and inability to determine whether a person even remembers the key, means that serving a warrant doesn't always work either. But then, neither did breaking down the door and ransacking the obvious physical target pre-internet days always work. And everyone understood a suspect had no obligation to tell the feds where he hid the goods.

feanaro 7y ago

I always have trouble imagining examples of this kind of evidence that criminals were previously utterly unable to hide but can now do it easily using encryption. It seems any kind of evidence could had just been shredded and burned in times past or hidden in an obscure, physical safe that no one knows about. If anything, the digital age had made the location of evidence more obvious and even produced entirely new kinds of evidence (traffic and connection logs, emails, etc). It seems to me that law enforcement is simply pining for the fjords of a very short time span in human history when ample digital information co-existed with the lack of widely available cryptographic systems.

JoshTriplett 7y ago

> Criminals being able to hide evidence is a serious concern for the average person. Suspects. Alleged criminals. Until convicted, they're not criminals. The government does not have an unlimited right to collect all information; they have a limited, judicially controlled right to try to collect information. One key detail: strong encryption does not prevent investigations from targeted collection of information, such as through physical surveillance, bugs, etc. There are many tools available to law enforcement, those tools are just less convenient. Framing it that way helps: in order to make investigations more convenient, the DOJ wants to prevent anyone from using secure communications.

slg 7y ago
>Suspects. Alleged criminals. Until convicted, they're not criminals. And even after they are convicted, they and their associates are still protected by encryption. Encryption protects everyone equally. That is viewed as a positive by pro-encryption people and a negative by anti-encryption people. >The government does not have an unlimited right to collect all information; they have a limited, judicially controlled right to try to collect information. This the point of warrants. The problem of massive warrantless collection of data by the government is a bigger and separate issue. I personally think encryption is a valuable tool to address the symptom of that problem, but it does nothing to actually fix problem of a corrupt and/or authoritarian government. One of my personal annoyances with the tech community is that we have a tendency to try to work around any governmental problems as if that solves the issue while making no attempt at fixing the root cause.
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  > One of my personal annoyances with the tech community is that we have a tendency to try to work around any governmental problems as if that solves the issue while making no attempt at fixing the root cause. Agreed. We need to produce technical solutions, and effect policy solutions, and get a lot better at PR and rhetoric.
- viklove 7y ago
  The only way your argument makes any sense is if you can somehow show that conviction rates have gone down since encryption became widespread. I think you'll have a hard time doing that because people will usually find some other way to hide information, like just destroying evidence. Are you gonna go after shredders next? They're hiding criminal's secrets too!

henryfjordan 7y ago

Warrants might not be able to break encryption, but refusing to provide the passcode can land you in jail indefinitely for contempt. You could serve decades potentially. The fear from law enforcement is absurd. They've never had the ability to read every single letter that was sent, but now that we've moved online they want to read every email? They claim they are losing access but the truth was they never had access in the first place. The only difference is before maybe they could secretly read your letters before delivering them but now they need to get your password. That only worked at a small scale though, and I'm sure the NSA can crack passwords at those same small scales (e.g. some of the high-profile iphone cracking we've seen).

snowwrestler 7y ago

> Encryption allows data to be locked away from the government including law enforcement and prosecutors in a way that was nearly impossible for the average citizen a few decades ago. I know some people do think this, but the opposite is actually true, because of the popular shift from voice to computerized text and images for almost all communications. A few decades ago, criminals spoke on the phone to coordinate actions. If the police were aware of this in advance, they could tap the phone line and listen in to that conversation. However if they found out about it after the fact, there was no record of the conversation for law enforcement to go get. The sands of time hide information extremely well. Today, we use mobile devices, and prefer text and image-based communications--email, SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. Unlike voice conversations of the past, these default to creating a permanent record of the conversation, which police can go get after the fact. Encryption is an attempt to re-establish the privacy and security of these conversations that existed back when they would have been a voice call over analog telephony. The idea of "going dark"--promoted by law enforcement to fight encryption--is wrong. What has actually happened is that INCREDIBLE BRIGHTNESS of information has developed over the past few decades as all our computerized communications now default to living forever. Encryption is a tool for trying re-establish the level of "light" (information availability) that our culture and laws came to expect over hundreds of years.