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I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole live

by blintz 6y ago

I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?

BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. Fighting for either seems so futile from here. Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.
- wtn 6y ago
  Some of the programs originally from the USA PATRIOT Act expired in March 2020.
  - ancarda 6y ago
    Do you happen to know which ones?
    - hundchenkatze 6y ago
      I believe it was the far-reaching section 215, which allowed bulk collection of phone records and other data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot_Act,_Title_II#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot...
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Maybe the growing obsolescence of the legacy telephone network is why those provisions lapsed, and now we are seeing the fight for a replacement.
        vxNsr 6y ago
        Nope they lapsed bec trump was upset that they were illegally used against him and he didn’t want anyone else to suffer the same fate.
    - yonaguska 6y ago
      Section 215 is the major one. Allows government to obtain secret warrants for surveillance via a secret court system(FISC, FISA). Lindsey Graham(R) tried to extend this- but Trump has been somewhat vocally against this extension due to his own allegations that the FISA courts were misused to spy on him.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    Trump as savior? People would be shocked.
  - suizi 6y ago
    The House and Senate are fighting to get it reauthorised.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  Trump threatened to veto the Patriot renewal bill, which includes the FISA court, despite bipartisan support. The bill is now withdrawn pending rewrite.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. To be fair, us Europeans have the same issues with our politicians, with the exception of socialists, communists and Greens. Just look for the article13 fiasco. We're all being fucked.
  - ollo 6y ago
    The socialists voted in favour of Article 13.
    - raverbashing 6y ago
      S&D was 50/50 more or less (other left-wing groups had less pro votes) https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8wayjf/infographic_how_the_parties_voted_on_the_eu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8wayjf/infographic_... So, not really.
    - mschuster91 6y ago
      S&D are not socialists, they're social democrats. Big difference.
- glenda 6y ago
  Exactly, we need way more political parties with direct representation. However, power seems to do a great job of consolidating itself so that won't be an easy task.
  - ericd 6y ago
    First past the post voting tends toward a two party system, because there are strong incentives for smaller parties to consolidate to get to a majority.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Since this is a subject I find fascinating, I'll add this link that I first encountered here on HN long ago: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ It's a mathematical model and accompanying explanation that shows that simple plurality (first past the post) voting produces bi-polarization, while other voting methods like approval voting do not. It also shows that the instant-runoff voting method that people are trying to replace FPTP with is non-monotonic, meaning that gaining a few points of support can actually hurt a candidate.
      - smichel17 6y ago
        I don't like that this page links to Arrow's impossibility theorem, because it's kind of misleading. https://rangevoting.org/ArrowThm.html https://rangevoting.org/ArrowThm.html
      - ericd 6y ago
        Neat link, thanks!
- ollo 6y ago
  > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have european people's interest in mind.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    Sure, but I think the U.S. even worse. It's basically right-wing (Democrats) and off the spectrum (Republicans).
  - gabrielfv 6y ago
    > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a human, I don't see any party that actually have regular people's interest in mind.
    - techntoke 6y ago
      Apparently caring about people more than money is a bad thing.
    - pphysch 6y ago
      Define "regular people's interest". American values? Health and security? There are governments that are pro-people (as opposed to pro-money) but they are generally not big global players, or if they are, they are designated Enemies of the West and it is enormously politically incorrect to discuss critically about them.
      - ollo 6y ago
        there is no such thing as "regular people's interest". everyone's interest is a little bit different.
        Forbo 6y ago
        Not even the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
  - 6y ago
- coffeemaniac 6y ago
  You're correct, in the US we have two fundamentally right-wing parties, which allows them to effectively consolidate power by offering a controlled "resistance" party which disagrees on petty issues mostly regarding representation but which agrees on all major issues including those you mentioned, healthcare, military, foreign policy.
- thayne 6y ago
  > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As an American, I don't see any party that has my interests in mind. Elections always seem to be having to choose the lesser of two evils.
  - lukifer 6y ago
    Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in court; 49 to go.
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. Other countries with other systems don't really do much better. The fundamental problem is that the people who want this sort of power are the last ones who should ever be allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.
      - a1369209993 6y ago
        Does "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix things at this point. (I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next election), but I suspect the party line would immediately become "you're a traitor if you approve anyone but the Party's candidate".)
        JoshTriplett 6y ago
        > Does "select a president uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? Not voting, but it is a real election system, known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens. Also, yes, approval voting is a great approach and we should absolutely use it. We'd still get people who vote party-line, and it'd take a while for people to truly internalize that they can safely vote for other candidates they like, but it'd be a massive improvement.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  As an American, I don’t see any country in the world that doesn’t have exactly the same problems. The EU has been considering similar anti-encryption legislation for years. Primarily supported by France, UK and Germany. The main opponents to it in the EU have been NGOs, which mirrors the American experience on this issue. The cynic in me speculates the reason the EU parliament hasn’t pushed the issue further is simply because it’s waiting for it’s influential members states (or the US) to pass the legislation required to gut these services, so that they won’t have the potentially unpopular task of doing so themselves.
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    EU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. American federal government is much more powerful and much less dependent on the states. Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      > EU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. It most certainly does. Security and Justice are very clearly established as areas of “shared responsibilities” in the EU, granting the EU parliament has full authority legislate. > Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs. Sorry to disappoint, but... https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/15/germany_joins_antiencryption_posse/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/15/germany_joins_antienc... The EU has also explored a number of backdoor-by-another-name options, including a very concerning Function Encryption initiative [0], and forcing E2EE service providers to refresh secrets to insert government actors into conversations. [0]: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/780108 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/780108 My primary motivation for posting the parent comment was that any EU resident who thinks their governments are above this sort of thing is absolutely wrong, and if you’re complacent and fail to hold your governments to account, this is exactly the sort of thing that’s going to happen. You can’t just read the feel-good press releases and hope for the best. European politicians are politicians too, and if there’s anything politicians of all stripes have always been good at, it’s accumulating power and lying.
- dyslexit 6y ago
  Torture was heavily repelled by Democrats, and was only "legalized" in that John McCain intentionally put in loop holes into his own bill that allowed the CIA to continue it because Bush threatened to veto the bill otherwise. Those loop holes were later closed under Obama both by legislation and an executive order. This was very much a partisan issue.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
We have bipartisan consensus[1] that tech companies have acted badly and that Section 230 should be repealed or significantly amended. I think EARN IT will probably kill Section 230, not strong encryption, so I think EARN IT is pretty great. Tech companies probably should be coming to the realization by now that it's only a matter of time (probably 4-8 years) before we close the 230 loophole: So if they're given a choice, they should choose to protect strong encryption, and forego Section 230 protection, since it's going away anyhow. [1]Kind of, Democrats think tech companies got Trump elected, Republicans think tech companies are suppressing conservative viewpoints, but either way, they agree on the problem.
- unreal6 6y ago
  Can you clarify what you mean by the "230 Loophole"? Many believe that tech companies should be fully responsible for anything said on their platforms. If this were the case, I believe this would have an extraordinary chilling effect on speech.
  - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
    There are already extraordinary chilling effects on speech -- try criticizing Black Lives Matter on any major social media, for example, and you will likely be censored, doxxed, and even receive death threats. Up until now, major social media (FB, Twitter, Youtube etc.) have been free to suppress conservative voices in the name of opposing racism and white supremacists. The tech platforms have been shielded from lawsuits by 230. Once 230 is suspended or repealed, they will no longer be shielded from lawsuits. As a result, someone gets doxxed, fired from his job, threatened with violence etc., he now has the wherewithal to go after the platform that facilitated the cancel mob.
    - mulmen 6y ago
      Tech companies have the right to suppress speech on their platforms, just like everyone. Section 230 just makes the courts more efficient. There is no loophole. Sorry to keep posting this link but the Section 230 misconception is very dangerous. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
arminiusreturns 6y ago
I can. Our representative government represent corporations and the deep state, in the original Peter Dale Scott sense of the term (as opposed to the more recent abuse of it), and not the people. They have continually made moves like this, in a boiling frog fashion. Until we the people wake up from the two party divide and conquer system, very little will change, excepting very rare circumstances of pressure exerted en masse (SOPA/PIPA is a good example outlier). I've thought about solutions to this problem for a long time, and my conclusion is the things needed are the following (in order to prevent a long term overton window shift as has been happening): 1. Renewed participation in local politics and elections, especially at the state level, but also county, city, etc. 2. Once that is achieved, voting in ranked choice voting initiatives. This will enable the next step. 3. Stop voting for anyone based on party, in particular the main power structure is based on the majority rule in the house and senate... the end goal would be to take away the majority from both parties. This is a huge undertaking, so I'm not saying it would be easy, or even possible, but I think it is what is required. I think those paying attention enough and not enured to the tribalism of the parties understands they cannot be reformed from the inside. They are simply too entrenched, and have too many mechanisms to get rid of those who seek to do so. The point is that we don't need to gain a majority with this new coalition party of independents and third parties, we simply need to take the majority away from the two main parties. To get this done though, [1] must be done, because many of the state laws have been manipulated by the duopoly to prevent third parties and independents. 3.1 To avoid fracturing of the coalition, there should be some very rudimentary and base document that all persons running can agree on. This is also difficult but, since all congresspeople swear an oath to the constitution (5 U.S. Code § 3331), something that reaffirms the principles of the constitution would be the best start. If they violate this, the coalition should work to remove them immediately. (something similar to Gingrich's "Contract with America") 4. Currently, and many don't know this, congresspeople have to sign an affidavit (5 U.S. Code § 3333) confirming their oath. I think we should then work towards enforcement of the laws against violation thereof, the primary one being perjury, or something similar (18 U.S. Code § 1918, 5 U.S. Code § 7311). For example, how many people have straight up lied to congress and had no action taken against them? (Clapper is one of the more egregious ones that comes to mind, but the point is congress is in dereliction of duty in enforcing perjury laws) This would give the people a real opportunity to start passing laws that represent the people (such as term limits), but are still constitutionally sound. The legislative is the branch closest to the people, and this is why it should be the focus. From a cleaned up legislative we can begin to resurrect the separation of power between the branches that has been egregiously eroded, primarily by the executive. The current checks and balances system is crumbling. A huge part of this erosion is the surveillance system, which enables compromise of congresspeople by the executive and the MICC. We must fight for privacy, both encryption and anonymity, as a fundamental part of protecting the checks and balances system.
ypcx 6y ago
It is worse than just crazy. Government is made of people, and people are corruptible. If the encryption backdoor key leaks from the government to a bad actor, it will create a "national security" issue of magnitude never seen before. If this line of reasoning is correct, then proposing an encryption backdoor is akin to committing an act of treason in itself, because it is purposely weakening the technological infrastructure of the businesses and people in the country and thus the country itself. Attempts like these are either doomed to fail, or they will doom the country to fail.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  They don't even have to be corruptible. People are fallible. Someone could just make a mistake. No bad actors needed. (Bad actors exist, and make the problem worse. But the problem exists even without bad actors.)
  - slavik81 6y ago
    The TSA used essentially this system for luggage locks. You could have a lock on your luggage, but the TSA had a master key that could open any luggage lock. The master keys became available on 3D printing sites after the TSA allowed a photo of them to be published in a news article: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/lockpickers-3-d-print-tsa-luggage-keys-leaked-photos/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/lockpickers-3-d-print-tsa-lugg...
    - jeffparsons 6y ago
      This is an apt reminder that the question is not "how likely is it that backdoor keys will be leaked/stolen?", but rather "how soon until the first backdoor keys are leaked/stolen, and how frequently after that?" And to make it much worse, we would now also have to ask "how soon until the required systemic weaknesses themselves are used an attack vector for a mass breach?". Just for a moment, ignore all arguments about citizens' rights to privacy, potential for abuse by the organizations authorized to access the secrets (and their many fallible and corruptible employees), and so on. Of course all that _is_ important, but just for the sake of argument, ignore it. The problem remains that if anything resembling the "EARN IT" bill passes, then attacks against encryption will _scale too effectively_, and the USA will have exposed itself to having the secrets of thousands of politicians and civil servants leaked to an adversary at once. What do you think happens to democracy when that happens? I get that many people are short-sighted, or even simply apathetic to the long-term consequences of a law that might make their job easier today. But it seems that whenever computers are involved, lawmakers become _so_ incredibly short-sighted that it verges on madness. Consider this: a bill requiring a small GPS and remote-controlled bomb to be installed in the engine of every car would allow the police to entirely avoid dangerous high-speed pursuits. If it could be done cheaply enough, should it be done? It's pretty easy to understand the myriad ways this could be abused, so it would never happen. But add computers to the mix, and suddenly any kind of foresight goes out the window.
jmspring 6y ago
There was a huge push for backdoors and weakened crypto during the Clinton years. It's not a right/left thing, it's government control thing.
asdkhadsj 6y ago
I'm most curious on when they'll be knocking on the door of open source projects next. Notably, anyone who uses any crypto. As much as I hate it, I can at least understand the back door argument from a [ignorant] lawmaker perspective. If I pretend and say their intentions are noble, I understand. What concerns me though, beyond the obvious backdoor problems, is the who is next? Because I doubt big corporations will satisfy their greed for power and information. Especially since anyone who has anything to hide or cares about security will move into open source. As a developer with a passion for developing distributed, encrypted software - when are they going to threaten me? Worse yet, the software I write I purposefully do not have control over. So am I going to be held liable for the fact that I literally cannot help them? No matter what they threaten me with, the best I could do is break the application for future users. So what are they going to do to control these distributed systems? Especially ones who truly aim to be distributed, P2P & self hosted by every user? As terrifying as the current anti-encryption behavior is, I'm oddly more concerned about the move after this.
treis 6y ago
>I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right? There's clearly a valid argument from the other side. For example: >Facebook announced in March plans to encrypt Messenger, which last year was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sexual abuse material, according to people familiar with the reports. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-... It's not clear how many of those lead to convictions but even a tiny fraction of a percent represents a significant number of children being rescued. Encrypting Messenger, as an example, will stop 3/4s of abuse reports and make it much safer and easier for paedophiles to exchange images. There's a pretty direct line from that decision to an increase in abuses like: >“inserting an ice cube into the vagina” of a young girl, the documents said, before tying her ankles together, taping her mouth shut and suspending her upside down. As the video continued, the girl was beaten, slapped and burned with a match or candle. >“The predominant sound is the child screaming and crying,” according to a federal agent quoted in the documents.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption will put an end to the abuse itself? I'm actually convinced that all this does is reduce the sharing of such material, e.g. what people are outraged with is usually not only the act in itself but the fact that some sickos get off on this material. but I wouldn't think for a moment that because of some law less kids will be abused. I'm actually fine with some kids biting the dust (yes literally being killed) to prevent the greater evil which is that of normalization of mass-surveillance within society (any more than it is already) which will ultimately destroy more lives. I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice but more power to cops never solves anything (especially in poor volatile countries where cops are in fact part of the problem and happy to look away ...)
  - treis 6y ago
    >as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption will put an end to the abuse itself? No, but there's a huge excluded middle between the level of abuse with easy E2E encryption and no abuse. >prevent the greater evil which is that of normalization of mass-surveillance within society (any more than it is already) which will ultimately destroy more lives. Facebook has been around for 15 years now without E2E encryption. I have not noticed lives being destroyed but perhaps you can share examples? >I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice but more power to cops never solves anything Here's one that comes to mind: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gd9b/facebook-helped-fbi-hack-child-predator-buster-hernandez https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gd9b/facebook-helped-fb... Facebook helped develop a zero day exploit that the FBI used to catch a predator that abused dozens of girls. In this one specific case clearly more power to the cops solved something. I can't cite any numbers, but it seems the majority of convictions I've read have some variation of evidence being found on phones, computers, or from sites like Facebook. It stands to reason that if we saw default E2E encryption across the board it would be a lot harder for the police to get evidence and would lead to a lot fewer convictions.
snarf21 6y ago
Fear-mongering is strong. Look at all the freedoms we lost after 9/11. Pedophiles and terrorists and porn are always the scapegoats. It is also a very electable sound bite. Everyone is against the "bad people". Re-election at any cost is the goal. We have government of the people and by the people but we stopped being for the people long long ago.
- krapp 6y ago
  But pedophiles and terrorists are 'bad people' and 'the people' are overwhelmingly in favor of stopping them. It's only in libertarian/ancap bubbles of places like HN where pedos and terrorists are treated like noble antiheroes in the eternal war against fascism and political correctness. If you're going to talk about government "for the people" you need to remember who "the people" actually are and what the majority of them want.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Of course everyone wants those bad people stopped. But every law that claims to be "to stop the bad people and save the children" end up not actually getting used to that end, but instead to further harm the people. They all have far more collateral damage. I used to investigate computer crime. You know what would have made my job really easy? Unlimited access to all computers worldwide. Luckily I had to learn alternative investigative methods because we value privacy more than we value catching criminals, which is a good thing. I'd rather a criminal go free once in a while than a complete loss of privacy.
    - carapace 6y ago
      > Unlimited access to all computers worldwide. Isn't that more-or-less what the NSA have already? What I mean is, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA already have most criminals' dirty laundry. The only thing keeping the law from rolling 'em up wholesale is the Overton window around parallel construction.
- pphysch 6y ago
  Don't forget the communists, the OG once-and-future scapegoats.
AsyncAwait 6y ago
> I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus Hawkish foreign policy would be another one.
didip 6y ago
It's not crazy. The class war between the super rich and everybody else has been happening forever. It just becomes more blatant now. Not sure what is the solution here, the popular people's choice couldn't even get elected.
seph-reed 6y ago
> we have bipartisan consensus > we "It's a big club and you ain't in it" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0
xwdv 6y ago
I can. I have one administration in particular that I think can be blamed for this massive expansion of the surveillance state in the past 10 years.
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Your government is an Advanced Persistent Threat.
cloudier 6y ago
Do you remember the bipartisan consensus on SOPA/PIPA? "This bill, COICA, was introduced on September 20, 2010, a Monday. And in the press release heralding the introduction of this bill, way at the bottom, it said it was scheduled for a vote on September 23 — just three days later. And while of course there had to be a vote — you can't pass a bill without a vote — the results of that vote were a foregone conclusion. Because if you looked at the introduction of the law, it wasn't just introduced by one, rogue, eccentric member of Congress. It was introduced by the chair of the committee — and co-sponsored by nearly all the other members — Republicans and Democrats. So there would be a vote, but it wouldn't be much of a surprise, because nearly everyone who was voting had signed their name to the bill — before it was even introduced. I can't stress enough how unusual this is. This is emphatically not how Congress works. I'm not talking about how Congress should work, the way you see on Schoolhouse Rock. I mean the way it really works. I think we all know that Congress is a dead zone of deadlock and dysfunction. There are months of debates and horse-trading and hearings and stall tactics. ... Whoever was behind this was good." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jwherrman/how-aaron-swartz-joined-the-fight-against-sopa https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jwherrman/how-aaron-swa... (excerpt from talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqriFtr2k-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqriFtr2k-k -- FWIW the lobbyist behind sopa/pipa was Chris Dodd, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd#Motion_Picture_Association_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd#Motion_Picture_Asso...)
wnevets 6y ago
Its being framed as a way to prevent terrorism and child sex abuse, it's really hard for a politician to come out in against preventing those things.
cntblvntbtr 6y ago
I can’t really believe the shock. Have you noticed routine protest and informed debate occurring throughout the US for oh say 30 years to be generous? Political reality isn’t logical, it’s on the nose. There’s no engagement to prevent this, and decades of flag waving as enforcement funding is cut. That has an impact. The generation that still holds the most seats in government has no idea how any of this works. Giving them the benefit of the doubt it’s ignorance not informed malice their intuition is nevertheless “expand police state.” I’m sure we’ll all take a break from HN and debating flat or skeuomorphic to tell them piss off
sudosysgen 6y ago
There is always bipartisan consensus in whatever gives more actual power to powerful people. It's just that some would rather the power be for billionaires and others for the government.
throw_m239339 6y ago
> I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. Most differences between republicans and democrats are superficial. Republicans don't really believe in small government no more than Democrats really believe in social justice.
Aeolun 6y ago
It’s one of those things that people think is a grand idea, right up until it’s been in force for a few weeks and it turns out that China is reading all the internal US message traffic. Then everyone will be like “Whoa?! Who would have thought something like this could happen!”. I feel like this is a tale as old as time.
phendrenad2 6y ago
And wars, don't forget wars.
raxxorrax 6y ago
Doesn't surprise me at all and it was painted on the wall pretty clearly in my opinion. It is of course a sad state of affairs. I think it shouldn't need to be mentioned but apparently it does.

by blintz 6y ago

I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never repelled by any side. In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter the administration, and is still in effect. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. Fighting for either seems so futile from here. Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to pretend I have a solution.

wtn 6y ago
Some of the programs originally from the USA PATRIOT Act expired in March 2020.
- ancarda 6y ago
  Do you happen to know which ones?
  - hundchenkatze 6y ago
    I believe it was the far-reaching section 215, which allowed bulk collection of phone records and other data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot_Act,_Title_II#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot...
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Maybe the growing obsolescence of the legacy telephone network is why those provisions lapsed, and now we are seeing the fight for a replacement.
      - vxNsr 6y ago
        Nope they lapsed bec trump was upset that they were illegally used against him and he didn’t want anyone else to suffer the same fate.
  - yonaguska 6y ago
    Section 215 is the major one. Allows government to obtain secret warrants for surveillance via a secret court system(FISC, FISA). Lindsey Graham(R) tried to extend this- but Trump has been somewhat vocally against this extension due to his own allegations that the FISA courts were misused to spy on him.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Trump as savior? People would be shocked.
- suizi 6y ago
  The House and Senate are fighting to get it reauthorised.
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
Trump threatened to veto the Patriot renewal bill, which includes the FISA court, despite bipartisan support. The bill is now withdrawn pending rewrite.
mschuster91 6y ago
> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. To be fair, us Europeans have the same issues with our politicians, with the exception of socialists, communists and Greens. Just look for the article13 fiasco. We're all being fucked.
- ollo 6y ago
  The socialists voted in favour of Article 13.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    S&D was 50/50 more or less (other left-wing groups had less pro votes) https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8wayjf/infographic_how_the_parties_voted_on_the_eu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8wayjf/infographic_... So, not really.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    S&D are not socialists, they're social democrats. Big difference.
glenda 6y ago
Exactly, we need way more political parties with direct representation. However, power seems to do a great job of consolidating itself so that won't be an easy task.
- ericd 6y ago
  First past the post voting tends toward a two party system, because there are strong incentives for smaller parties to consolidate to get to a majority.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Since this is a subject I find fascinating, I'll add this link that I first encountered here on HN long ago: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ It's a mathematical model and accompanying explanation that shows that simple plurality (first past the post) voting produces bi-polarization, while other voting methods like approval voting do not. It also shows that the instant-runoff voting method that people are trying to replace FPTP with is non-monotonic, meaning that gaining a few points of support can actually hurt a candidate.
    - smichel17 6y ago
      I don't like that this page links to Arrow's impossibility theorem, because it's kind of misleading. https://rangevoting.org/ArrowThm.html https://rangevoting.org/ArrowThm.html
    - ericd 6y ago
      Neat link, thanks!
ollo 6y ago
> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a european, I don't see any party that actually have european people's interest in mind.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  Sure, but I think the U.S. even worse. It's basically right-wing (Democrats) and off the spectrum (Republicans).
- gabrielfv 6y ago
  > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As a human, I don't see any party that actually have regular people's interest in mind.
  - techntoke 6y ago
    Apparently caring about people more than money is a bad thing.
  - pphysch 6y ago
    Define "regular people's interest". American values? Health and security? There are governments that are pro-people (as opposed to pro-money) but they are generally not big global players, or if they are, they are designated Enemies of the West and it is enormously politically incorrect to discuss critically about them.
    - ollo 6y ago
      there is no such thing as "regular people's interest". everyone's interest is a little bit different.
      - Forbo 6y ago
        Not even the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
- 6y ago
coffeemaniac 6y ago
You're correct, in the US we have two fundamentally right-wing parties, which allows them to effectively consolidate power by offering a controlled "resistance" party which disagrees on petty issues mostly regarding representation but which agrees on all major issues including those you mentioned, healthcare, military, foreign policy.
thayne 6y ago
> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As an American, I don't see any party that has my interests in mind. Elections always seem to be having to choose the lesser of two evils.
- lukifer 6y ago
  Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in court; 49 to go.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. Other countries with other systems don't really do much better. The fundamental problem is that the people who want this sort of power are the last ones who should ever be allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      Does "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix things at this point. (I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next election), but I suspect the party line would immediately become "you're a traitor if you approve anyone but the Party's candidate".)
      - JoshTriplett 6y ago
        > Does "select a president uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? Not voting, but it is a real election system, known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens. Also, yes, approval voting is a great approach and we should absolutely use it. We'd still get people who vote party-line, and it'd take a while for people to truly internalize that they can safely vote for other candidates they like, but it'd be a massive improvement.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
As an American, I don’t see any country in the world that doesn’t have exactly the same problems. The EU has been considering similar anti-encryption legislation for years. Primarily supported by France, UK and Germany. The main opponents to it in the EU have been NGOs, which mirrors the American experience on this issue. The cynic in me speculates the reason the EU parliament hasn’t pushed the issue further is simply because it’s waiting for it’s influential members states (or the US) to pass the legislation required to gut these services, so that they won’t have the potentially unpopular task of doing so themselves.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  EU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. American federal government is much more powerful and much less dependent on the states. Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    > EU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. It most certainly does. Security and Justice are very clearly established as areas of “shared responsibilities” in the EU, granting the EU parliament has full authority legislate. > Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs. Sorry to disappoint, but... https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/15/germany_joins_antiencryption_posse/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/15/germany_joins_antienc... The EU has also explored a number of backdoor-by-another-name options, including a very concerning Function Encryption initiative [0], and forcing E2EE service providers to refresh secrets to insert government actors into conversations. [0]: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/780108 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/780108 My primary motivation for posting the parent comment was that any EU resident who thinks their governments are above this sort of thing is absolutely wrong, and if you’re complacent and fail to hold your governments to account, this is exactly the sort of thing that’s going to happen. You can’t just read the feel-good press releases and hope for the best. European politicians are politicians too, and if there’s anything politicians of all stripes have always been good at, it’s accumulating power and lying.
dyslexit 6y ago
Torture was heavily repelled by Democrats, and was only "legalized" in that John McCain intentionally put in loop holes into his own bill that allowed the CIA to continue it because Bush threatened to veto the bill otherwise. Those loop holes were later closed under Obama both by legislation and an executive order. This was very much a partisan issue.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

We have bipartisan consensus[1] that tech companies have acted badly and that Section 230 should be repealed or significantly amended. I think EARN IT will probably kill Section 230, not strong encryption, so I think EARN IT is pretty great. Tech companies probably should be coming to the realization by now that it's only a matter of time (probably 4-8 years) before we close the 230 loophole: So if they're given a choice, they should choose to protect strong encryption, and forego Section 230 protection, since it's going away anyhow. [1]Kind of, Democrats think tech companies got Trump elected, Republicans think tech companies are suppressing conservative viewpoints, but either way, they agree on the problem.

unreal6 6y ago
Can you clarify what you mean by the "230 Loophole"? Many believe that tech companies should be fully responsible for anything said on their platforms. If this were the case, I believe this would have an extraordinary chilling effect on speech.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  There are already extraordinary chilling effects on speech -- try criticizing Black Lives Matter on any major social media, for example, and you will likely be censored, doxxed, and even receive death threats. Up until now, major social media (FB, Twitter, Youtube etc.) have been free to suppress conservative voices in the name of opposing racism and white supremacists. The tech platforms have been shielded from lawsuits by 230. Once 230 is suspended or repealed, they will no longer be shielded from lawsuits. As a result, someone gets doxxed, fired from his job, threatened with violence etc., he now has the wherewithal to go after the platform that facilitated the cancel mob.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Tech companies have the right to suppress speech on their platforms, just like everyone. Section 230 just makes the courts more efficient. There is no loophole. Sorry to keep posting this link but the Section 230 misconception is very dangerous. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

arminiusreturns 6y ago

I can. Our representative government represent corporations and the deep state, in the original Peter Dale Scott sense of the term (as opposed to the more recent abuse of it), and not the people. They have continually made moves like this, in a boiling frog fashion. Until we the people wake up from the two party divide and conquer system, very little will change, excepting very rare circumstances of pressure exerted en masse (SOPA/PIPA is a good example outlier). I've thought about solutions to this problem for a long time, and my conclusion is the things needed are the following (in order to prevent a long term overton window shift as has been happening): 1. Renewed participation in local politics and elections, especially at the state level, but also county, city, etc. 2. Once that is achieved, voting in ranked choice voting initiatives. This will enable the next step. 3. Stop voting for anyone based on party, in particular the main power structure is based on the majority rule in the house and senate... the end goal would be to take away the majority from both parties. This is a huge undertaking, so I'm not saying it would be easy, or even possible, but I think it is what is required. I think those paying attention enough and not enured to the tribalism of the parties understands they cannot be reformed from the inside. They are simply too entrenched, and have too many mechanisms to get rid of those who seek to do so. The point is that we don't need to gain a majority with this new coalition party of independents and third parties, we simply need to take the majority away from the two main parties. To get this done though, [1] must be done, because many of the state laws have been manipulated by the duopoly to prevent third parties and independents. 3.1 To avoid fracturing of the coalition, there should be some very rudimentary and base document that all persons running can agree on. This is also difficult but, since all congresspeople swear an oath to the constitution (5 U.S. Code § 3331), something that reaffirms the principles of the constitution would be the best start. If they violate this, the coalition should work to remove them immediately. (something similar to Gingrich's "Contract with America") 4. Currently, and many don't know this, congresspeople have to sign an affidavit (5 U.S. Code § 3333) confirming their oath. I think we should then work towards enforcement of the laws against violation thereof, the primary one being perjury, or something similar (18 U.S. Code § 1918, 5 U.S. Code § 7311). For example, how many people have straight up lied to congress and had no action taken against them? (Clapper is one of the more egregious ones that comes to mind, but the point is congress is in dereliction of duty in enforcing perjury laws) This would give the people a real opportunity to start passing laws that represent the people (such as term limits), but are still constitutionally sound. The legislative is the branch closest to the people, and this is why it should be the focus. From a cleaned up legislative we can begin to resurrect the separation of power between the branches that has been egregiously eroded, primarily by the executive. The current checks and balances system is crumbling. A huge part of this erosion is the surveillance system, which enables compromise of congresspeople by the executive and the MICC. We must fight for privacy, both encryption and anonymity, as a fundamental part of protecting the checks and balances system.

ypcx 6y ago

It is worse than just crazy. Government is made of people, and people are corruptible. If the encryption backdoor key leaks from the government to a bad actor, it will create a "national security" issue of magnitude never seen before. If this line of reasoning is correct, then proposing an encryption backdoor is akin to committing an act of treason in itself, because it is purposely weakening the technological infrastructure of the businesses and people in the country and thus the country itself. Attempts like these are either doomed to fail, or they will doom the country to fail.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
They don't even have to be corruptible. People are fallible. Someone could just make a mistake. No bad actors needed. (Bad actors exist, and make the problem worse. But the problem exists even without bad actors.)
- slavik81 6y ago
  The TSA used essentially this system for luggage locks. You could have a lock on your luggage, but the TSA had a master key that could open any luggage lock. The master keys became available on 3D printing sites after the TSA allowed a photo of them to be published in a news article: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/lockpickers-3-d-print-tsa-luggage-keys-leaked-photos/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/lockpickers-3-d-print-tsa-lugg...
  - jeffparsons 6y ago
    This is an apt reminder that the question is not "how likely is it that backdoor keys will be leaked/stolen?", but rather "how soon until the first backdoor keys are leaked/stolen, and how frequently after that?" And to make it much worse, we would now also have to ask "how soon until the required systemic weaknesses themselves are used an attack vector for a mass breach?". Just for a moment, ignore all arguments about citizens' rights to privacy, potential for abuse by the organizations authorized to access the secrets (and their many fallible and corruptible employees), and so on. Of course all that _is_ important, but just for the sake of argument, ignore it. The problem remains that if anything resembling the "EARN IT" bill passes, then attacks against encryption will _scale too effectively_, and the USA will have exposed itself to having the secrets of thousands of politicians and civil servants leaked to an adversary at once. What do you think happens to democracy when that happens? I get that many people are short-sighted, or even simply apathetic to the long-term consequences of a law that might make their job easier today. But it seems that whenever computers are involved, lawmakers become _so_ incredibly short-sighted that it verges on madness. Consider this: a bill requiring a small GPS and remote-controlled bomb to be installed in the engine of every car would allow the police to entirely avoid dangerous high-speed pursuits. If it could be done cheaply enough, should it be done? It's pretty easy to understand the myriad ways this could be abused, so it would never happen. But add computers to the mix, and suddenly any kind of foresight goes out the window.

jmspring 6y ago

There was a huge push for backdoors and weakened crypto during the Clinton years. It's not a right/left thing, it's government control thing.

asdkhadsj 6y ago

I'm most curious on when they'll be knocking on the door of open source projects next. Notably, anyone who uses any crypto. As much as I hate it, I can at least understand the back door argument from a [ignorant] lawmaker perspective. If I pretend and say their intentions are noble, I understand. What concerns me though, beyond the obvious backdoor problems, is the who is next? Because I doubt big corporations will satisfy their greed for power and information. Especially since anyone who has anything to hide or cares about security will move into open source. As a developer with a passion for developing distributed, encrypted software - when are they going to threaten me? Worse yet, the software I write I purposefully do not have control over. So am I going to be held liable for the fact that I literally cannot help them? No matter what they threaten me with, the best I could do is break the application for future users. So what are they going to do to control these distributed systems? Especially ones who truly aim to be distributed, P2P & self hosted by every user? As terrifying as the current anti-encryption behavior is, I'm oddly more concerned about the move after this.

treis 6y ago

>I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right? There's clearly a valid argument from the other side. For example: >Facebook announced in March plans to encrypt Messenger, which last year was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sexual abuse material, according to people familiar with the reports. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-... It's not clear how many of those lead to convictions but even a tiny fraction of a percent represents a significant number of children being rescued. Encrypting Messenger, as an example, will stop 3/4s of abuse reports and make it much safer and easier for paedophiles to exchange images. There's a pretty direct line from that decision to an increase in abuses like: >“inserting an ice cube into the vagina” of a young girl, the documents said, before tying her ankles together, taping her mouth shut and suspending her upside down. As the video continued, the girl was beaten, slapped and burned with a match or candle. >“The predominant sound is the child screaming and crying,” according to a federal agent quoted in the documents.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption will put an end to the abuse itself? I'm actually convinced that all this does is reduce the sharing of such material, e.g. what people are outraged with is usually not only the act in itself but the fact that some sickos get off on this material. but I wouldn't think for a moment that because of some law less kids will be abused. I'm actually fine with some kids biting the dust (yes literally being killed) to prevent the greater evil which is that of normalization of mass-surveillance within society (any more than it is already) which will ultimately destroy more lives. I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice but more power to cops never solves anything (especially in poor volatile countries where cops are in fact part of the problem and happy to look away ...)
- treis 6y ago
  >as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption will put an end to the abuse itself? No, but there's a huge excluded middle between the level of abuse with easy E2E encryption and no abuse. >prevent the greater evil which is that of normalization of mass-surveillance within society (any more than it is already) which will ultimately destroy more lives. Facebook has been around for 15 years now without E2E encryption. I have not noticed lives being destroyed but perhaps you can share examples? >I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice but more power to cops never solves anything Here's one that comes to mind: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gd9b/facebook-helped-fbi-hack-child-predator-buster-hernandez https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gd9b/facebook-helped-fb... Facebook helped develop a zero day exploit that the FBI used to catch a predator that abused dozens of girls. In this one specific case clearly more power to the cops solved something. I can't cite any numbers, but it seems the majority of convictions I've read have some variation of evidence being found on phones, computers, or from sites like Facebook. It stands to reason that if we saw default E2E encryption across the board it would be a lot harder for the police to get evidence and would lead to a lot fewer convictions.

snarf21 6y ago

Fear-mongering is strong. Look at all the freedoms we lost after 9/11. Pedophiles and terrorists and porn are always the scapegoats. It is also a very electable sound bite. Everyone is against the "bad people". Re-election at any cost is the goal. We have government of the people and by the people but we stopped being for the people long long ago.

krapp 6y ago
But pedophiles and terrorists are 'bad people' and 'the people' are overwhelmingly in favor of stopping them. It's only in libertarian/ancap bubbles of places like HN where pedos and terrorists are treated like noble antiheroes in the eternal war against fascism and political correctness. If you're going to talk about government "for the people" you need to remember who "the people" actually are and what the majority of them want.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Of course everyone wants those bad people stopped. But every law that claims to be "to stop the bad people and save the children" end up not actually getting used to that end, but instead to further harm the people. They all have far more collateral damage. I used to investigate computer crime. You know what would have made my job really easy? Unlimited access to all computers worldwide. Luckily I had to learn alternative investigative methods because we value privacy more than we value catching criminals, which is a good thing. I'd rather a criminal go free once in a while than a complete loss of privacy.
  - carapace 6y ago
    > Unlimited access to all computers worldwide. Isn't that more-or-less what the NSA have already? What I mean is, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA already have most criminals' dirty laundry. The only thing keeping the law from rolling 'em up wholesale is the Overton window around parallel construction.
pphysch 6y ago
Don't forget the communists, the OG once-and-future scapegoats.

AsyncAwait 6y ago

> I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus Hawkish foreign policy would be another one.

didip 6y ago

It's not crazy. The class war between the super rich and everybody else has been happening forever. It just becomes more blatant now. Not sure what is the solution here, the popular people's choice couldn't even get elected.

seph-reed 6y ago

> we have bipartisan consensus > we "It's a big club and you ain't in it" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0

xwdv 6y ago

I can. I have one administration in particular that I think can be blamed for this massive expansion of the surveillance state in the past 10 years.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

Your government is an Advanced Persistent Threat.

cloudier 6y ago

Do you remember the bipartisan consensus on SOPA/PIPA? "This bill, COICA, was introduced on September 20, 2010, a Monday. And in the press release heralding the introduction of this bill, way at the bottom, it said it was scheduled for a vote on September 23 — just three days later. And while of course there had to be a vote — you can't pass a bill without a vote — the results of that vote were a foregone conclusion. Because if you looked at the introduction of the law, it wasn't just introduced by one, rogue, eccentric member of Congress. It was introduced by the chair of the committee — and co-sponsored by nearly all the other members — Republicans and Democrats. So there would be a vote, but it wouldn't be much of a surprise, because nearly everyone who was voting had signed their name to the bill — before it was even introduced. I can't stress enough how unusual this is. This is emphatically not how Congress works. I'm not talking about how Congress should work, the way you see on Schoolhouse Rock. I mean the way it really works. I think we all know that Congress is a dead zone of deadlock and dysfunction. There are months of debates and horse-trading and hearings and stall tactics. ... Whoever was behind this was good." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jwherrman/how-aaron-swartz-joined-the-fight-against-sopa https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jwherrman/how-aaron-swa... (excerpt from talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqriFtr2k-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqriFtr2k-k -- FWIW the lobbyist behind sopa/pipa was Chris Dodd, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd#Motion_Picture_Association_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd#Motion_Picture_Asso...)

wnevets 6y ago

Its being framed as a way to prevent terrorism and child sex abuse, it's really hard for a politician to come out in against preventing those things.

cntblvntbtr 6y ago

I can’t really believe the shock. Have you noticed routine protest and informed debate occurring throughout the US for oh say 30 years to be generous? Political reality isn’t logical, it’s on the nose. There’s no engagement to prevent this, and decades of flag waving as enforcement funding is cut. That has an impact. The generation that still holds the most seats in government has no idea how any of this works. Giving them the benefit of the doubt it’s ignorance not informed malice their intuition is nevertheless “expand police state.” I’m sure we’ll all take a break from HN and debating flat or skeuomorphic to tell them piss off

sudosysgen 6y ago

There is always bipartisan consensus in whatever gives more actual power to powerful people. It's just that some would rather the power be for billionaires and others for the government.

throw_m239339 6y ago

> I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. Most differences between republicans and democrats are superficial. Republicans don't really believe in small government no more than Democrats really believe in social justice.

Aeolun 6y ago

It’s one of those things that people think is a grand idea, right up until it’s been in force for a few weeks and it turns out that China is reading all the internal US message traffic. Then everyone will be like “Whoa?! Who would have thought something like this could happen!”. I feel like this is a tale as old as time.

phendrenad2 6y ago

And wars, don't forget wars.

raxxorrax 6y ago

Doesn't surprise me at all and it was painted on the wall pretty clearly in my opinion. It is of course a sad state of affairs. I think it shouldn't need to be mentioned but apparently it does.