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> why can't we strive for a similar system on the virtual world as well because any crime in the virtual world can be uncovered by good police work. nobody has

> why can't we strive for a similar system on the virtual world as well because any crime in the virtual world can be uncovered by good police work. nobody has perfect operational security, including the government. so the solution to law enforcement is hard work by the law enforcers. consider: prior to electronic communication, all private discussions were perfectly encrypted, because if you weren't there, you didn't hear what was happening. And society continued to function. You simply can't trust the government to respect boundaries that they created but have the ability to breach, especially when it can be done completely surreptitiously. We need to learn the lessons of Snowden, and fight tooth and nail to prevent anything less that complete, unfettered access to private communications by human beings. Anything that falls short of that will eventually be complete, unfettered surveillance, because there is no metastable equilibrium point in the middle.

bonaldi 6y ago
consider: prior to the internet, /all/ telephone conversations could be monitored by the government. And society continued to function. The controls on surveillance are not technical, they are political. The technology was the same, yet the Stasi listened to every call they could; other governments did not. Fix the politics, because it /will/ win in the end. Learn the lessons of Germany and China.
- prepend 6y ago
  We can work on fixing politics AND fix technology. We don’t have to choose between them. What stopped the Stasi until politics was technology. And I think the encryption used helped to bring about the political change. If the Stasi had what Zoom is offering then perhaps the wall wouldn’t have fallen for 10,20,30 more years.
- ludocode 6y ago
  No, they could not monitor all conversations. They could only listen to as many calls as they had agents to listen to them. It was not possible for them to listen to everyone at once, nor could they use this as means of discovery. They had to suspect someone in the first place in order to decide to expend the human resources to listen to their calls. This is fundamentally different from modern technology where they can have a computer listen to every single call, pick out whatever keywords they're looking for, and flag it for later review. Technology now makes it possible for them to truly listen to everyone at once. This is why end-to-end encryption is necessary for everyone. Politics is not going to solve this problem. A lot of what America's police and intelligence agencies do is already illegal. They don't care. They're going to do anything they can with the technology.
  - bonaldi 6y ago
    If you can't fix the politics it's _not going to matter_. The politics will just make the technology illegal. That's what's happening in China. It's a weirdly blinkered concept to say "America's agencies already do illegal things and their politics is broken but what will save us is American corporations deploying technology". (The "we need universal E2E to protect our freedoms even if there are downsides" is not, in logical form, a million miles different from 'we need guns everywhere to protect us from the government and damn the negative consequences of having guns everywhere', frankly)
    - shawnz 6y ago
      What if we fix the politics and forget about the technology, then the politics later become broken again? We won't be able to take back those private unencrypted conversations that could be used to retroactively incriminate us. I actually believe that technologies such as strong encryption are creating important checks and balances that make our democracy stronger. They are not subverting it like you are implying.
    - jaywalk 6y ago
      >The "we need universal E2E to protect our freedoms even if there are downsides" is not, in logical form, a million miles different from 'we need guns everywhere to protect us from the government and damn the negative consequences of having guns everywhere', frankly I agree, and I agree with both of those. Giving up freedom/privacy for safety is almost always a losing bet.
      - bonaldi 6y ago
        The actual trade-off is giving up safety to gain the illusion of freedom. With guns, the state will always outgun you. So the gun-riddled society sees children in its schools murdered staggeringly often, while its (supposedly free) citizens are tear-gassed with impunity by a state for nothing more than a photo opportunity. That was not a winning bet for that society. It's similar with E2E. It can't protect you from the government, because the protection is illusory – it protects just you so long as the state wants it to. When it no longer wants it to, it makes it illegal. Administrations are already heading in this direction. Meanwhile E2E enables a number of proven harms, from lynchings to child abuse. Is that a worthwhile trade-off just for the protections it gives from corporate or illegal privacy invasion? Would it lose all of those benefits if legitimate law enforcement were allowed access? There is at least a debate to be had, there.
- 4bpp 6y ago
  Consider: prior to the telephone, to monitor a conversation government had to actually send people to where the conversation happened, and that meant that they could barely monitor any conversations - and yet society continued to function. The government still can send people to watch people use their phones or computers. On the other hand, it seems hard to dispute that all our most efficient examples of totalitarian states are post-telephone.
danans 6y ago
> You simply can't trust the government to respect boundaries that they created but have the ability to breach, especially when it can be done completely surreptitiously. No, but in a functioning democracy we can vote them out. Democratic governments by definition have an large concentration of power, otherwise they can't fulfill their functions. But this is bound by laws, time, and the ballot box. Surreptitious (warrantless) government surveillance should absolutely be illegal. Searches with a legal warrant (through an accountable, non-abusive, warrant granting judicial system) are absolutely necessary to gather evidence for prosecution of crimes to take place. Without trustworthy investigation and prosecution of crimes, the social contract will fail, and this has already started happening in many areas, as we are seeing in a way right now However, this goes both ways - the populace should get far more transparency into the functioning of the criminal legal system - especially in to the training and conduct of physical law enforcement (police officers).

bonaldi 6y ago

consider: prior to the internet, /all/ telephone conversations could be monitored by the government. And society continued to function. The controls on surveillance are not technical, they are political. The technology was the same, yet the Stasi listened to every call they could; other governments did not. Fix the politics, because it /will/ win in the end. Learn the lessons of Germany and China.

prepend 6y ago
We can work on fixing politics AND fix technology. We don’t have to choose between them. What stopped the Stasi until politics was technology. And I think the encryption used helped to bring about the political change. If the Stasi had what Zoom is offering then perhaps the wall wouldn’t have fallen for 10,20,30 more years.
ludocode 6y ago
No, they could not monitor all conversations. They could only listen to as many calls as they had agents to listen to them. It was not possible for them to listen to everyone at once, nor could they use this as means of discovery. They had to suspect someone in the first place in order to decide to expend the human resources to listen to their calls. This is fundamentally different from modern technology where they can have a computer listen to every single call, pick out whatever keywords they're looking for, and flag it for later review. Technology now makes it possible for them to truly listen to everyone at once. This is why end-to-end encryption is necessary for everyone. Politics is not going to solve this problem. A lot of what America's police and intelligence agencies do is already illegal. They don't care. They're going to do anything they can with the technology.
- bonaldi 6y ago
  If you can't fix the politics it's _not going to matter_. The politics will just make the technology illegal. That's what's happening in China. It's a weirdly blinkered concept to say "America's agencies already do illegal things and their politics is broken but what will save us is American corporations deploying technology". (The "we need universal E2E to protect our freedoms even if there are downsides" is not, in logical form, a million miles different from 'we need guns everywhere to protect us from the government and damn the negative consequences of having guns everywhere', frankly)
  - shawnz 6y ago
    What if we fix the politics and forget about the technology, then the politics later become broken again? We won't be able to take back those private unencrypted conversations that could be used to retroactively incriminate us. I actually believe that technologies such as strong encryption are creating important checks and balances that make our democracy stronger. They are not subverting it like you are implying.
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    >The "we need universal E2E to protect our freedoms even if there are downsides" is not, in logical form, a million miles different from 'we need guns everywhere to protect us from the government and damn the negative consequences of having guns everywhere', frankly I agree, and I agree with both of those. Giving up freedom/privacy for safety is almost always a losing bet.
    - bonaldi 6y ago
      The actual trade-off is giving up safety to gain the illusion of freedom. With guns, the state will always outgun you. So the gun-riddled society sees children in its schools murdered staggeringly often, while its (supposedly free) citizens are tear-gassed with impunity by a state for nothing more than a photo opportunity. That was not a winning bet for that society. It's similar with E2E. It can't protect you from the government, because the protection is illusory – it protects just you so long as the state wants it to. When it no longer wants it to, it makes it illegal. Administrations are already heading in this direction. Meanwhile E2E enables a number of proven harms, from lynchings to child abuse. Is that a worthwhile trade-off just for the protections it gives from corporate or illegal privacy invasion? Would it lose all of those benefits if legitimate law enforcement were allowed access? There is at least a debate to be had, there.
4bpp 6y ago
Consider: prior to the telephone, to monitor a conversation government had to actually send people to where the conversation happened, and that meant that they could barely monitor any conversations - and yet society continued to function. The government still can send people to watch people use their phones or computers. On the other hand, it seems hard to dispute that all our most efficient examples of totalitarian states are post-telephone.

danans 6y ago

> You simply can't trust the government to respect boundaries that they created but have the ability to breach, especially when it can be done completely surreptitiously. No, but in a functioning democracy we can vote them out. Democratic governments by definition have an large concentration of power, otherwise they can't fulfill their functions. But this is bound by laws, time, and the ballot box. Surreptitious (warrantless) government surveillance should absolutely be illegal. Searches with a legal warrant (through an accountable, non-abusive, warrant granting judicial system) are absolutely necessary to gather evidence for prosecution of crimes to take place. Without trustworthy investigation and prosecution of crimes, the social contract will fail, and this has already started happening in many areas, as we are seeing in a way right now However, this goes both ways - the populace should get far more transparency into the functioning of the criminal legal system - especially in to the training and conduct of physical law enforcement (police officers).