5 ms·

IMO both of these options are terrible. I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most arguments, but I do acknowledge there are times when action may ne

by kypro 5y ago

IMO both of these options are terrible. I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most arguments, but I do acknowledge there are times when action may need to be taken in the interest of the public. My objection is that I neither want it to be impossible to take action or for a foreign company to unilaterally decide what action to take. What we need in situations like this is a legal process. If one doesn't exist, it's not for companies to start deciding what information the public should have access to and what is "harmful", but for democratic countries to pass laws with the consent of their local electorates to decide what legal protections and processes need to be put in place. The problem we have today is that there are too many foreign companies deciding what we can and can't say or do. Crypto has the exact opposite problem, but unless our governments step up and regulates these companies in the interests of the public our only option (if you don't agree with the censorship) is to create something uncensorable.

dkokelley 5y ago
I appreciate this response! I agree that a legal process seems to be the best solution (so far) to collectively deciding what is and isn't ok. The legal system has its own faults of course. It's administered by fallible governments and can have individual bad actors. But could a legal system expect to exert control over a decentralized system like a blockchain? Put another way, if there was a "crypto twitter" clone, and someone posted revenge porn or personal information about someone (home address, let's say), wouldn't that post be forever embedded into the blockchain? Would a legal system ever be able to remove it?
- avianlyric 5y ago
  It may not be able to remove it, but it certainly can make viewing, storing or disseminating it illegal and punish those that do. Ultimately a legal system is how a society controls a governments monopoly on violence. A legal system can remove almost anything if it really want too, by virtue of the fact that it can send big men with guns to destroy whatever physical manifestations of the thing exists. Of course there are practical limits to this power. But that’s never stopped a government before.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  In these cases the problem is also that the legal system is slow. For genuine take down requests time matters.
- jefftk 5y ago
  You can do that today: it is possible to embed arbitrary information in a bitcoin transaction. For example, look at the message section https://chain.so/tx/BTC/27daac15b942454b32f913a41633151163d1921b0c7bf6ddbea6020462d805ee https://chain.so/tx/BTC/27daac15b942454b32f913a41633151163d1... I don't know of any situation where someone has used this to dox someone, but nothing prevents it.
Dracophoenix 5y ago
It's not just companies. It's differing jurisdictions. The Middle East would hold that promoting homosexuality is "harmful" (not unlike the US even a few years into the 21st century). China would hold that it is harmful to promote a different political party than the CCP. India finds it harmful for people to kiss in public. There is no legal process that discerns "truly harmful" material from that which is perceived. Harm or lack thereof is limited to individual assessment
slg 5y ago
>I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most arguments, but I do acknowledge there are times when action may need to be taken in the interest of the public. My objection is that I neither want it to be impossible to take action or for a foreign company to unilaterally decide what action to take. >What we need in situations like this is a legal process. If one doesn't exist, it's not for companies to start deciding what information the public should have access to and what is "harmful", but for democratic countries to pass laws with the consent of their local electorates to decide what legal protections and processes need to be put in place. What is interesting is that I wouldn't even have to change a single word here and I can equally apply this reasoning to encryption. It is almost always unpopular on HN to suggest that universal end-to-end encryption might not be a great idea or that encryption backdoors are something that need to be seriously discussed, but those opinions are born out of the same underlying logic. Free speech is good, but no society wants universal free speech since there are legitimately evil people who will use their speech for malicious means. Same is true about encryption. Why are we ok with removing revenge porn from Google results but need to just accept that we are allowing child porn to be shared via easily encrypted channels?
- avianlyric 5y ago
  The difference is that strong encryption is an all or nothing proposition. You either have strong encryption that works in all scenarios, both good and ill, or you have weak encryption that protects nothing. There unfortunately is no middle ground, and plenty of people and governments have tried. Selective censorship by central authorities can be granular, choosing to create a legal process for selective censorship doesn’t suddenly allow any person on the internet to potentially censor any thing they want. Weak encryption however allows anyone, anywhere, with enough effort to break all encryption everywhere, and do so without without detection or needing to expose themselves via a legal system. Also there aren’t “central encryption authorities” that all encryption passes through. Anyone can implement modern crypto wherever, so banning it makes no sense. It’s like trying to ban the concept of Pi.
  - slg 5y ago
    >You either have strong encryption that works in all scenarios, both good and ill, or you have weak encryption that protects nothing. There unfortunately is no middle ground, and plenty of people and governments have tried. This is always stated as a universal truth of the technology, but this mostly seems like a people and organizational problem. We already have encryption algorithms that can encrypt content for decryption by multiple optional keys. Why couldn't we fragment and distribute one set of those keys among multiple legal entities? That would require coordination and agreement to decrypt anything. That wouldn't be a true backdoor anymore than the original key is a backdoor, it would simply be overhead on the existing encrypted content to allow it to be decrypted by multiple keys. >Also there aren’t “central encryption authorities” that all encryption passes through. Anyone can implement modern crypto wherever, so banning it makes no sense. It’s like trying to ban the concept of Pi. This is true, but defaults matter. If the US makes a law regarding encryption, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc are all going to follow it. You still might be able to roll your own encryption, but the people who do that will be a tiny share of overall communication. Laws like this aren't meant to completely stop something. Putting in financial regulations to crack down on money laundering doesn't stop money laundering. The goal is to make it more difficult and prevent the most egregious cases.

by kypro 5y ago

dkokelley 5y ago

I appreciate this response! I agree that a legal process seems to be the best solution (so far) to collectively deciding what is and isn't ok. The legal system has its own faults of course. It's administered by fallible governments and can have individual bad actors. But could a legal system expect to exert control over a decentralized system like a blockchain? Put another way, if there was a "crypto twitter" clone, and someone posted revenge porn or personal information about someone (home address, let's say), wouldn't that post be forever embedded into the blockchain? Would a legal system ever be able to remove it?

avianlyric 5y ago
It may not be able to remove it, but it certainly can make viewing, storing or disseminating it illegal and punish those that do. Ultimately a legal system is how a society controls a governments monopoly on violence. A legal system can remove almost anything if it really want too, by virtue of the fact that it can send big men with guns to destroy whatever physical manifestations of the thing exists. Of course there are practical limits to this power. But that’s never stopped a government before.
yoz-y 5y ago
In these cases the problem is also that the legal system is slow. For genuine take down requests time matters.
jefftk 5y ago
You can do that today: it is possible to embed arbitrary information in a bitcoin transaction. For example, look at the message section https://chain.so/tx/BTC/27daac15b942454b32f913a41633151163d1921b0c7bf6ddbea6020462d805ee https://chain.so/tx/BTC/27daac15b942454b32f913a41633151163d1... I don't know of any situation where someone has used this to dox someone, but nothing prevents it.

Dracophoenix 5y ago

It's not just companies. It's differing jurisdictions. The Middle East would hold that promoting homosexuality is "harmful" (not unlike the US even a few years into the 21st century). China would hold that it is harmful to promote a different political party than the CCP. India finds it harmful for people to kiss in public. There is no legal process that discerns "truly harmful" material from that which is perceived. Harm or lack thereof is limited to individual assessment

slg 5y ago

>I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most arguments, but I do acknowledge there are times when action may need to be taken in the interest of the public. My objection is that I neither want it to be impossible to take action or for a foreign company to unilaterally decide what action to take. >What we need in situations like this is a legal process. If one doesn't exist, it's not for companies to start deciding what information the public should have access to and what is "harmful", but for democratic countries to pass laws with the consent of their local electorates to decide what legal protections and processes need to be put in place. What is interesting is that I wouldn't even have to change a single word here and I can equally apply this reasoning to encryption. It is almost always unpopular on HN to suggest that universal end-to-end encryption might not be a great idea or that encryption backdoors are something that need to be seriously discussed, but those opinions are born out of the same underlying logic. Free speech is good, but no society wants universal free speech since there are legitimately evil people who will use their speech for malicious means. Same is true about encryption. Why are we ok with removing revenge porn from Google results but need to just accept that we are allowing child porn to be shared via easily encrypted channels?

avianlyric 5y ago
The difference is that strong encryption is an all or nothing proposition. You either have strong encryption that works in all scenarios, both good and ill, or you have weak encryption that protects nothing. There unfortunately is no middle ground, and plenty of people and governments have tried. Selective censorship by central authorities can be granular, choosing to create a legal process for selective censorship doesn’t suddenly allow any person on the internet to potentially censor any thing they want. Weak encryption however allows anyone, anywhere, with enough effort to break all encryption everywhere, and do so without without detection or needing to expose themselves via a legal system. Also there aren’t “central encryption authorities” that all encryption passes through. Anyone can implement modern crypto wherever, so banning it makes no sense. It’s like trying to ban the concept of Pi.
- slg 5y ago
  >You either have strong encryption that works in all scenarios, both good and ill, or you have weak encryption that protects nothing. There unfortunately is no middle ground, and plenty of people and governments have tried. This is always stated as a universal truth of the technology, but this mostly seems like a people and organizational problem. We already have encryption algorithms that can encrypt content for decryption by multiple optional keys. Why couldn't we fragment and distribute one set of those keys among multiple legal entities? That would require coordination and agreement to decrypt anything. That wouldn't be a true backdoor anymore than the original key is a backdoor, it would simply be overhead on the existing encrypted content to allow it to be decrypted by multiple keys. >Also there aren’t “central encryption authorities” that all encryption passes through. Anyone can implement modern crypto wherever, so banning it makes no sense. It’s like trying to ban the concept of Pi. This is true, but defaults matter. If the US makes a law regarding encryption, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc are all going to follow it. You still might be able to roll your own encryption, but the people who do that will be a tiny share of overall communication. Laws like this aren't meant to completely stop something. Putting in financial regulations to crack down on money laundering doesn't stop money laundering. The goal is to make it more difficult and prevent the most egregious cases.