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Yes, I completely agree that weakening encryption is an incredibly slippery slope. I don't know what the right answer is. I just know that a lot of people would

Yes, I completely agree that weakening encryption is an incredibly slippery slope. I don't know what the right answer is. I just know that a lot of people would not be happy with a government that did not do everything in their power to prevent horrible acts from happening. There are bad people in this world that would not think twice about murdering thousands of innocent men, women, and children. To have the government immediately report any vulnerabilities that they find instead of using those findings to do good for their citizens will be a hard pill for most of the population to swallow. It will absolutely have negative consequences when they don't report those vulnerabilities immediately though. For a government to do perfectly well for its population, it would need to stay on the cutting edge of technology and ensure its population has the best security while at the same time staying able to exploit the security of their adversaries. But that would be incredibly hard to do. On the completely secure systems end of the spectrum, bad people will take advantage of that complete security. You wouldn't have to worry about having your identity stolen, but I don't know how we would prevent bad actors like organized criminals or terrorists from taking advantage of those completely anonymous and secure tools. I'm also not too sure what living in an authoritarian regime with complete security would look like. Maybe dissidents would still have tools to fight the regime or maybe the regime would be better at controlling the population and squashing dissent.

citrin_ru 6y ago
> people would not be happy with a government that did not do everything in their power to prevent horrible acts from happening I personally don't want government to do everything. Security is a trade-off and I wish more people understood this.
- bostonsre 6y ago
  Yea, i think the tradeoff between liberty and privacy with security and safety is a tough decision to make and is why this hasn't been fixed with a law. Can one have both liberty/privacy and security/safety? A father living in a war zone would gladly give up privacy for not having to worry about whether or not he will outlive his children. I think a father living in a stasi-like regime may also be willing to make a similar tradeoff so that their children had the potential for a happy life. There are monsters on the fringes of the internet that do stuff like child exploitation and sex trafficking. There are also monsters across the world that want to hurt our society. Whether or not it was our fault in the first place is debatable but there are people who's job it is to prevent them from harming us. I can see the point of those that are tasked with finding those monsters. They are not ludite simpletons, they experience the horrors that some people can commit and want to prevent those horrors. I don't want to live in an orwellian state and I'm not sure the right answer is to create tools and policies that would allow for something like that to grow. But at the same time is it ok to just sacrifice a tiny portion of our society and allow some horror to be more easily committed to that tiny minority? I don't know how we find the least bad compromise or what something like that might even look like.

citrin_ru 6y ago

> people would not be happy with a government that did not do everything in their power to prevent horrible acts from happening I personally don't want government to do everything. Security is a trade-off and I wish more people understood this.

bostonsre 6y ago
Yea, i think the tradeoff between liberty and privacy with security and safety is a tough decision to make and is why this hasn't been fixed with a law. Can one have both liberty/privacy and security/safety? A father living in a war zone would gladly give up privacy for not having to worry about whether or not he will outlive his children. I think a father living in a stasi-like regime may also be willing to make a similar tradeoff so that their children had the potential for a happy life. There are monsters on the fringes of the internet that do stuff like child exploitation and sex trafficking. There are also monsters across the world that want to hurt our society. Whether or not it was our fault in the first place is debatable but there are people who's job it is to prevent them from harming us. I can see the point of those that are tasked with finding those monsters. They are not ludite simpletons, they experience the horrors that some people can commit and want to prevent those horrors. I don't want to live in an orwellian state and I'm not sure the right answer is to create tools and policies that would allow for something like that to grow. But at the same time is it ok to just sacrifice a tiny portion of our society and allow some horror to be more easily committed to that tiny minority? I don't know how we find the least bad compromise or what something like that might even look like.