3 ms·

Why not both? Encryption may not get at the root of the problem, but at least it helps. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

EGreg 6y ago
To the extent encryption is a band-aid to help mitigate the real problems, it MIGHT be good. But unlike a bandaid, it might exacerbate the problem, since it allows criminals who would otherwise be foiled early to organize a horrendous act and then invariably someone (mob or government) blames the “type” of person (Muslim, Black, Mexican, whatever) and starts profiling innocent people with false positives, exacerbating a totally avoidable sectarian problem. The biggest problem is when encryption is focused on to this extent and defended religiously. Groups of people start to believe in the ideological position that encryption is essential for human rights, and this sucks the political capital out of the room for developers and statespeople to work together to develop real solutions. We see this in other areas — such as when we focus on helping manage health problems of already obese people in the USA when we should be focusing on the massive industries that put sugar, HFCS, aspartame and other things in food, genetically engineer corn to have sugar, factory farms that pump their animals with antibiotics and create superbugs etc. Or how we focus on end users recycling plastic and banning plastic bags while putting zero pressure on the corporations producing the goods to switch to biodegradeable plastic. They are left free to externalize the cost to the environment because we don’t hold them accountable — precisely because we focus too much on fixing the problem further downstream. The root solutions would include a UBI funded by pigovian taxes. Same with other “downstream fixes” such as getting more minorities represented in a particular field when they’re applying at 30 years old instead of fixing the systems that they are shaped by growing up... What is common to all these disparate areas is that the root problem isnt fixed, because we keep diverting attention from it with misguided “downstream” mitigations. We create a groupthink and virtue signaling environment where lots of influential and conscientious people who could have been focused on the root problem instead spend all their money and energy on the premise that if only we did MORE downstream mitigation, it would somehow make things better. It delays the real solutions, perhaps for decades.

EGreg 6y ago

To the extent encryption is a band-aid to help mitigate the real problems, it MIGHT be good. But unlike a bandaid, it might exacerbate the problem, since it allows criminals who would otherwise be foiled early to organize a horrendous act and then invariably someone (mob or government) blames the “type” of person (Muslim, Black, Mexican, whatever) and starts profiling innocent people with false positives, exacerbating a totally avoidable sectarian problem. The biggest problem is when encryption is focused on to this extent and defended religiously. Groups of people start to believe in the ideological position that encryption is essential for human rights, and this sucks the political capital out of the room for developers and statespeople to work together to develop real solutions. We see this in other areas — such as when we focus on helping manage health problems of already obese people in the USA when we should be focusing on the massive industries that put sugar, HFCS, aspartame and other things in food, genetically engineer corn to have sugar, factory farms that pump their animals with antibiotics and create superbugs etc. Or how we focus on end users recycling plastic and banning plastic bags while putting zero pressure on the corporations producing the goods to switch to biodegradeable plastic. They are left free to externalize the cost to the environment because we don’t hold them accountable — precisely because we focus too much on fixing the problem further downstream. The root solutions would include a UBI funded by pigovian taxes. Same with other “downstream fixes” such as getting more minorities represented in a particular field when they’re applying at 30 years old instead of fixing the systems that they are shaped by growing up... What is common to all these disparate areas is that the root problem isnt fixed, because we keep diverting attention from it with misguided “downstream” mitigations. We create a groupthink and virtue signaling environment where lots of influential and conscientious people who could have been focused on the root problem instead spend all their money and energy on the premise that if only we did MORE downstream mitigation, it would somehow make things better. It delays the real solutions, perhaps for decades.