9 ms·

you don't need to "outlaw math", you only need to increase the friction to the point where commercial providers can't provide encrypted services and 99.x% of pe

you don't need to "outlaw math", you only need to increase the friction to the point where commercial providers can't provide encrypted services and 99.x% of people will comply. Not sure why people always bring this up like some gotcha.

ChrisKnott 5y ago
It's kind of like thinking "you can't outlaw physics" is a genius retort to speed limits.
- jhkiehna 5y ago
  yet 99% of people break that speed limit regularly. We all know speed limit laws are less about public safety, and more about generating revenue for the state, at least in the US anyway. and 99.x% of people aren't engaging in sharing child porn anyway, it's the 0.1% of motivated criminals that will share encrypted files anyway, no matter what the law is. They will find ways around the law, they always do. This is a thinly veiled excuse to take basic human rights away from people.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    > We all know speed limit laws are less about public safety, and more about generating revenue for the state, at least in the US anyway. That's absolutely not true. Sure, some stretches are just to generate revenue, but that you're not allowed to go 200km/h through a city is not for revenue generation. It's also not given by common sense - the fact that you need to set the limit 20 lower than what's save should be plenty of evidence.
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    I'm curious where you get your information about speeding, because it kind of seems made up. Speeding is tied to one third of traffic fatalities the last 20 years (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding), so of course speed limits are put in place in an attempt to increase safety on the road. There are plenty of arguments to be made about the best way to enforce speed limits, or ways to discourage aggressive driving (such as speeding), but there is little doubt that speeding is dangerous.
    - oceanplexian 5y ago
      "Speed related" is another one of those examples where the government lies with statistics to sell some safety FUD while failing to address the root cause of the problem. Countries such as Germany have much lower traffic fatalities than the USA but they can operate vehicles at much higher speeds. Speed isn't the problem... uneducated drivers, poor vehicle maintenance, poor road quality, etc are the problem. But all those things would upset the masses who think they are entitled to operate a vehicle for 50 years after 2 months of training and a 15 minute test, so (in the USA) we get the lowest common denominator and roadways that are engineered to handle vehicles at 80+MPH are stuck with 55MPH speed limits.
      - carlmr 5y ago
        >Speed isn't the problem... uneducated drivers, poor vehicle maintenance, poor road quality, etc are the problem. Speed isn't the problem, neither are any of the others you mentioned. They all add to the problem of traffic fatalities though. They did a study in Germany and were able to halve traffic fatalities by adding a speed limit of 130kph on one Autobahn section, measured over 3 years.[1] Sure you can improve road conditions and driver education, but a multi-pronged approach including speed limits is sensible. [1] https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-mit-130-km-h-sinken-die-unfallzahlen-drastisch-a-1249595.html https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-mit-130-km-h-...
- andai 5y ago
  It's more like, "If you outlaw guns, the only people with guns will be outlaws." And regarding internet privacy and secure communications, that's exactly what they want: for privacy to be associated (in the mind of the average citizen) with organized crime, terrorism and pedophilia.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Except of course that this is entirely unlike speed limits. In a nutshell, and in case it didn't register with you when it should have: attempts to curb cryptography have been made in the past. The phrase 'you can't outlaw math' is a simple observation: strong cryptography will be available to everybody that wants it regardless of its legal status. So a government that would love to read your mail would do better to realize that they will only be able to read the uninteresting mail and for the rest of it they'll be staring at white noise. Meanwhile the baddies, alerted to the fact that the government is able to read your mail will either resort to other methods of communications or will use channels that they assume to be overt to signal covertly using other methods. There are plenty of examples for this. So, in conclusion, no matter how much you want to outlaw strong cryptography, those that want it will have it, better plan accordingly or all you will do is waste more time reading data that you will find stupendously boring.
  - foo_barrio 5y ago
    Then the data you can't read becomes reason enough to pursue as criminal regardless of its content no?
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Absolutely. I'm going to have to confess to having a fetish for white noise, I have many 100's of terabytes of it, can't get enough of the stuff.
      - jbuhbjlnjbn 5y ago
        'This communication is not readable. It looks encrypted.' 'Oh that, that's just white noise.' 'You are under arrest for illegal encription with the intent to <insert horrible criminal activity here>.'
        jacquesm 5y ago
        I'm definitely at risk for that.
jacquesm 5y ago
The whole chain of e-commerce rests on the foundations of strong encryption, backdooring that would open the door to digital crime at a level that is off the scale compared to where it is today. The illusion that a government mandated backdoor will remain accessible just to the government is not going to last much longer than the first experiment in this direction. We've already seen plenty of examples of that irl.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > The illusion that a government mandated backdoor will remain accessible just to the government is not going to last much longer than the first experiment in this direction. We've already seen plenty of examples of that irl. Unfortunately, our beloved decisionmakers are gerontocratic, completely incompetent and bought out by corporate interests that also don't want encryption (e.g. copyright industry).
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Copyright industry totally does want encryption, it’s kinda foundational for any DRM stronger than a pinky swear.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      The ones who really want strong encryption: the lawmakers themselves, because their communications are of course exempt.
- xg15 5y ago
  > The illusion that a government mandated backdoor will remain accessible just to the government is not going to last much longer than the first experiment in this direction. I'm sympathetic to that argument, but it seems to be employed very selectively by the tech industry. We already rely on many backdoors of exactly that kind in form of mandatory auto updates. Not only is this seen as perfectly fine, it's widely regarded as a security best practice. Why can Apple or Google or Microsoft manage to keep their signature keys secure for decades while any keys managed by a government agency would leak with mathematical certainty?
IceDane 5y ago
I don't see how the rest of his point doesn't stand, though. How are they going to implement this? How are they going to "increase friction"? This is an impossible task. There is no way they will be able to enforce this. It would literally require them to stick their dirty fingers into every piece of software built in the EU. They can attack large corporations like ISPs and such and force them to do certain things, sure, but there is no way they can "ban" any kind of encryption with any real success, because, as the OC said, it's basically trying to outlaw mathematics. Forcing ISPs to perform deep packet inspection or whatever won't change the axioms of mathematics or fundamentally alter computer science so that they can suddenly break encrypted data coming from their clients.
- emerongi 5y ago
  It depends on whether the actual goal is to catch criminals or to monitor the average Joe. This law won't do anything against criminals ("you can't outlaw math"), but will work very effectively against the average Joe (all major software companies will be forced to comply). Of course, the argument is that this is to combat criminals and we all know that it doesn't work that way, but it doesn't matter at the end of the day if the true goal is to just monitor people.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Exactly. It's security theater.
helge9210 5y ago
> 99.x% of people will comply You are not interested in just "people". You are interested in very specific subgroup of those (1-x)% that already operate outside the law.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  you think governments aren't interested in analyzing the private communication of the population? There's a long list of intelligence programs listed on Wikipedia that suggest otherwise. Governments are obviously interested in both with interests going way beyond crime. And another fact is that these bans can even give you access to the people outside of the law. Practical example, Australia's sting operation of pushing their own 'secure' app on the blackmarket to lure criminals in. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/08/fbi-app-arrests-australia-crime/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/08/fbi-app-arre...)
wonderwonder 5y ago
agreed, would not even be surprised if this is being pushed by the larger established email / communication companies as a way to crush smaller competition. In much the same way Facebook is pushing for regulations that only Facebook can afford to implement.

ChrisKnott 5y ago

It's kind of like thinking "you can't outlaw physics" is a genius retort to speed limits.

jhkiehna 5y ago
yet 99% of people break that speed limit regularly. We all know speed limit laws are less about public safety, and more about generating revenue for the state, at least in the US anyway. and 99.x% of people aren't engaging in sharing child porn anyway, it's the 0.1% of motivated criminals that will share encrypted files anyway, no matter what the law is. They will find ways around the law, they always do. This is a thinly veiled excuse to take basic human rights away from people.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > We all know speed limit laws are less about public safety, and more about generating revenue for the state, at least in the US anyway. That's absolutely not true. Sure, some stretches are just to generate revenue, but that you're not allowed to go 200km/h through a city is not for revenue generation. It's also not given by common sense - the fact that you need to set the limit 20 lower than what's save should be plenty of evidence.
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  I'm curious where you get your information about speeding, because it kind of seems made up. Speeding is tied to one third of traffic fatalities the last 20 years (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding), so of course speed limits are put in place in an attempt to increase safety on the road. There are plenty of arguments to be made about the best way to enforce speed limits, or ways to discourage aggressive driving (such as speeding), but there is little doubt that speeding is dangerous.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    "Speed related" is another one of those examples where the government lies with statistics to sell some safety FUD while failing to address the root cause of the problem. Countries such as Germany have much lower traffic fatalities than the USA but they can operate vehicles at much higher speeds. Speed isn't the problem... uneducated drivers, poor vehicle maintenance, poor road quality, etc are the problem. But all those things would upset the masses who think they are entitled to operate a vehicle for 50 years after 2 months of training and a 15 minute test, so (in the USA) we get the lowest common denominator and roadways that are engineered to handle vehicles at 80+MPH are stuck with 55MPH speed limits.
    - carlmr 5y ago
      >Speed isn't the problem... uneducated drivers, poor vehicle maintenance, poor road quality, etc are the problem. Speed isn't the problem, neither are any of the others you mentioned. They all add to the problem of traffic fatalities though. They did a study in Germany and were able to halve traffic fatalities by adding a speed limit of 130kph on one Autobahn section, measured over 3 years.[1] Sure you can improve road conditions and driver education, but a multi-pronged approach including speed limits is sensible. [1] https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-mit-130-km-h-sinken-die-unfallzahlen-drastisch-a-1249595.html https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-mit-130-km-h-...
andai 5y ago
It's more like, "If you outlaw guns, the only people with guns will be outlaws." And regarding internet privacy and secure communications, that's exactly what they want: for privacy to be associated (in the mind of the average citizen) with organized crime, terrorism and pedophilia.
jacquesm 5y ago
Except of course that this is entirely unlike speed limits. In a nutshell, and in case it didn't register with you when it should have: attempts to curb cryptography have been made in the past. The phrase 'you can't outlaw math' is a simple observation: strong cryptography will be available to everybody that wants it regardless of its legal status. So a government that would love to read your mail would do better to realize that they will only be able to read the uninteresting mail and for the rest of it they'll be staring at white noise. Meanwhile the baddies, alerted to the fact that the government is able to read your mail will either resort to other methods of communications or will use channels that they assume to be overt to signal covertly using other methods. There are plenty of examples for this. So, in conclusion, no matter how much you want to outlaw strong cryptography, those that want it will have it, better plan accordingly or all you will do is waste more time reading data that you will find stupendously boring.
- foo_barrio 5y ago
  Then the data you can't read becomes reason enough to pursue as criminal regardless of its content no?
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Absolutely. I'm going to have to confess to having a fetish for white noise, I have many 100's of terabytes of it, can't get enough of the stuff.
    - jbuhbjlnjbn 5y ago
      'This communication is not readable. It looks encrypted.' 'Oh that, that's just white noise.' 'You are under arrest for illegal encription with the intent to <insert horrible criminal activity here>.'
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        I'm definitely at risk for that.

jacquesm 5y ago

The whole chain of e-commerce rests on the foundations of strong encryption, backdooring that would open the door to digital crime at a level that is off the scale compared to where it is today. The illusion that a government mandated backdoor will remain accessible just to the government is not going to last much longer than the first experiment in this direction. We've already seen plenty of examples of that irl.

mschuster91 5y ago
> The illusion that a government mandated backdoor will remain accessible just to the government is not going to last much longer than the first experiment in this direction. We've already seen plenty of examples of that irl. Unfortunately, our beloved decisionmakers are gerontocratic, completely incompetent and bought out by corporate interests that also don't want encryption (e.g. copyright industry).
- ben_w 5y ago
  Copyright industry totally does want encryption, it’s kinda foundational for any DRM stronger than a pinky swear.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    The ones who really want strong encryption: the lawmakers themselves, because their communications are of course exempt.
xg15 5y ago
> The illusion that a government mandated backdoor will remain accessible just to the government is not going to last much longer than the first experiment in this direction. I'm sympathetic to that argument, but it seems to be employed very selectively by the tech industry. We already rely on many backdoors of exactly that kind in form of mandatory auto updates. Not only is this seen as perfectly fine, it's widely regarded as a security best practice. Why can Apple or Google or Microsoft manage to keep their signature keys secure for decades while any keys managed by a government agency would leak with mathematical certainty?

IceDane 5y ago

I don't see how the rest of his point doesn't stand, though. How are they going to implement this? How are they going to "increase friction"? This is an impossible task. There is no way they will be able to enforce this. It would literally require them to stick their dirty fingers into every piece of software built in the EU. They can attack large corporations like ISPs and such and force them to do certain things, sure, but there is no way they can "ban" any kind of encryption with any real success, because, as the OC said, it's basically trying to outlaw mathematics. Forcing ISPs to perform deep packet inspection or whatever won't change the axioms of mathematics or fundamentally alter computer science so that they can suddenly break encrypted data coming from their clients.

emerongi 5y ago
It depends on whether the actual goal is to catch criminals or to monitor the average Joe. This law won't do anything against criminals ("you can't outlaw math"), but will work very effectively against the average Joe (all major software companies will be forced to comply). Of course, the argument is that this is to combat criminals and we all know that it doesn't work that way, but it doesn't matter at the end of the day if the true goal is to just monitor people.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Exactly. It's security theater.

helge9210 5y ago

> 99.x% of people will comply You are not interested in just "people". You are interested in very specific subgroup of those (1-x)% that already operate outside the law.

Barrin92 5y ago
you think governments aren't interested in analyzing the private communication of the population? There's a long list of intelligence programs listed on Wikipedia that suggest otherwise. Governments are obviously interested in both with interests going way beyond crime. And another fact is that these bans can even give you access to the people outside of the law. Practical example, Australia's sting operation of pushing their own 'secure' app on the blackmarket to lure criminals in. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/08/fbi-app-arrests-australia-crime/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/08/fbi-app-arre...)

wonderwonder 5y ago

agreed, would not even be surprised if this is being pushed by the larger established email / communication companies as a way to crush smaller competition. In much the same way Facebook is pushing for regulations that only Facebook can afford to implement.