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I'm in the libertarian lion's den . . . and I only read the abstract. What I see from a historical standpoint, pre-cloud, mobile phone/computer, personal encry

I'm in the libertarian lion's den . . . and I only read the abstract. What I see from a historical standpoint, pre-cloud, mobile phone/computer, personal encryption etc is that anything stored be it something on paper, something in your house, safety deposit box, whatever was available to law enforcement with controls via the courts or other mechanism. It was available when there was a legal matter. Is there disagreement that legal matters should allow for full disclosure whether criminal or civil? Is the problem that law enforcement and other state institutions through legislative channels and courts getting just too much access without legal justification? Notional idea: could you have a key vault? Only with court order the keys are released and your devices get opened up? Even if not implementable would that work for most people? I do get the government mass surveillance aspect and think that needs way more scrutiny and people should be vicious in their defense of themselves and society. But it also smells like we lost that battle as private companies are doing pretty well at surveilling individuals and communities.

amarshall 5y ago
I would say your historical reference is flawed. One could just as well have written an encrypted text on a sheet of paper that would be non-trivial to decrypt (e.g. Z-340). The difference, I think, is that it used to be far more effort to create the encrypted text than it is today.
mcoliver 5y ago
The difference is that our computing devices have become an extension of our very being. Our thoughts, actions, and interactions are recorded at a granular level never before possible in history, we often don't know what is actually being recorded, and that data can be stored cheaply, transfered instantly, replicated, and searched for mere pennies. To expand on your comment, I can go in my file cabinet and flip through papers I have chosen to keep with data that I chose to write down, and then drop it in the trash can. It's physical and tangible and it doesn't have a record of who I called, where I went for breakfast, or what I ordered. Our founding fathers were very clear on their intent with regards to how they viewed governments imposing on the private lives of citizens.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Let's rewind to look at your historical perspective properly this time. In theory yes a court could get access to your papers but for the average person because person to person interaction produces no permanent record and what limited record is created by correspondence isn't nearly as permanent because it requires one to take the time to file it and manage a very finite space nothing anything like your present digital life would ever come to exist to be requested. As important is the cost of such a request. Compare the risk and expense of actually spying on a large population, to the cost of tapping their phones and paying someone to listen to a million boring conversations to the cost of bugging everyone's communications at once with a box installed for that purpose. If you consider how feasible it would be to obtain that much privacy invading mostly useless intelligence it wouldn't historically have been hard it would have been impossible. They could have flown to Mars easier than doing that much physical surveillance unless every third citizen was spying on the other 2. Historically I suspect such requests to logically be rare outside of settling business matters where receipts and contracts would be common or wills/trusts. If you want to justify some sort of key escrow system you shall not find justification in returning to some hypothetical state of nature that never was. Neither mass use of unbreakable encryption nor mass surveillance enabled by court order, nor your suggestion bear any resemblance to historical reality. Furthermore if we can't trust the government not to break its own laws what would keep them from simply ordering your keys confiscated and ordering whomever holds them not to tell you?
krageon 5y ago
> Is there disagreement that legal matters should allow for full disclosure whether criminal or civil? Yes, I don't agree with this. > Is the problem [...] too much access without legal justification? That is also a problem, which isn't new (it existed in the time you described in the opening of your post as well). > Only with court order the keys are released and your devices get opened up? This doesn't work (and we know it doesn't, there's so many times it failed already because of systemic issues with the idea), so as a hypothetical it only serves to distract from the fundamental truth that it cannot be a solution. > I do get the government mass surveillance aspect [...] But [...] we lost that battle With that mindset, you have indeed lost :)

amarshall 5y ago

I would say your historical reference is flawed. One could just as well have written an encrypted text on a sheet of paper that would be non-trivial to decrypt (e.g. Z-340). The difference, I think, is that it used to be far more effort to create the encrypted text than it is today.

mcoliver 5y ago

The difference is that our computing devices have become an extension of our very being. Our thoughts, actions, and interactions are recorded at a granular level never before possible in history, we often don't know what is actually being recorded, and that data can be stored cheaply, transfered instantly, replicated, and searched for mere pennies. To expand on your comment, I can go in my file cabinet and flip through papers I have chosen to keep with data that I chose to write down, and then drop it in the trash can. It's physical and tangible and it doesn't have a record of who I called, where I went for breakfast, or what I ordered. Our founding fathers were very clear on their intent with regards to how they viewed governments imposing on the private lives of citizens.

michaelmrose 5y ago

Let's rewind to look at your historical perspective properly this time. In theory yes a court could get access to your papers but for the average person because person to person interaction produces no permanent record and what limited record is created by correspondence isn't nearly as permanent because it requires one to take the time to file it and manage a very finite space nothing anything like your present digital life would ever come to exist to be requested. As important is the cost of such a request. Compare the risk and expense of actually spying on a large population, to the cost of tapping their phones and paying someone to listen to a million boring conversations to the cost of bugging everyone's communications at once with a box installed for that purpose. If you consider how feasible it would be to obtain that much privacy invading mostly useless intelligence it wouldn't historically have been hard it would have been impossible. They could have flown to Mars easier than doing that much physical surveillance unless every third citizen was spying on the other 2. Historically I suspect such requests to logically be rare outside of settling business matters where receipts and contracts would be common or wills/trusts. If you want to justify some sort of key escrow system you shall not find justification in returning to some hypothetical state of nature that never was. Neither mass use of unbreakable encryption nor mass surveillance enabled by court order, nor your suggestion bear any resemblance to historical reality. Furthermore if we can't trust the government not to break its own laws what would keep them from simply ordering your keys confiscated and ordering whomever holds them not to tell you?

krageon 5y ago

> Is there disagreement that legal matters should allow for full disclosure whether criminal or civil? Yes, I don't agree with this. > Is the problem [...] too much access without legal justification? That is also a problem, which isn't new (it existed in the time you described in the opening of your post as well). > Only with court order the keys are released and your devices get opened up? This doesn't work (and we know it doesn't, there's so many times it failed already because of systemic issues with the idea), so as a hypothetical it only serves to distract from the fundamental truth that it cannot be a solution. > I do get the government mass surveillance aspect [...] But [...] we lost that battle With that mindset, you have indeed lost :)