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What a waste of public money. As the paraphrased saying goes: “If you outlaw Encryption only outlaws will have Encryption.” It doesn’t solve a thing, other t

What a waste of public money. As the paraphrased saying goes: “If you outlaw Encryption only outlaws will have Encryption.” It doesn’t solve a thing, other than make politicians look like they are doing something. Petty thieves, small time drug dealers and other small time criminals may end up without encryption. But it doesn’t solve organised crime, there are the problem and they are intelligent enough to use an encrypted app, even if it “illegal”. Amusingly our politicians all seem to run our government and parliament via WhatsApp and that’s obviously E2EE.

jan_Inkepa 5y ago
Well if only (non-crypto) criminals use crypto and that is defective illegal then only criminals will be punished. That aspect is not a-priori immoral to me. I don't see how you can win over many people by repeating a mantra like this...
- samwillis 5y ago
  > I don't see how you can win over many people by repeating a mantra like this... I don’t expect to, this isn’t about wining over or educating the public at large. You would never be able to on a technical issue like this, especially when horrific illegal activity is involved. The issue is knowledgable and informed politicians and agency spinning this rubbish trying to convince the public they can win this, when they know they can’t. They are lying.
- ahelwer 5y ago
  Those in possession of blobs of data passing tests of statistical randomness must be punished. Send any of that statistically-random data over the web? That’s a punishin’.
charcircuit 5y ago
>“If you outlaw Encryption only outlaws will have Encryption.” You overestimate outlaws. 99% of them will just use major platforms and not bother with encryption. There is a lot of low hanging fruit.
- samwillis 5y ago
  And you think our police will have the resources do do anything for those 99%? They are already doing it all out in the open on public platforms, on street corners. Encryption isn’t a barer for enforcement in those cases. The issue is the worst 1% and they will continue to use encryption anyway.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    >And you think our police will have the resources do do anything for those 99%? I wish they did. As more data aggregators become available to LE I hope it can make more people responsible for their actions. Technology will allow LE to scale to actually handle enforcing the law over large regions using fewer actual humans.
    - collegeburner 5y ago
      No it should be hard to reliably enforce the law. Otherwise we have a police state and it is easy to enforce authiritarian laws.
      - charcircuit 5y ago
        If people want authoritarian laws, then let them have it.

jan_Inkepa 5y ago

Well if only (non-crypto) criminals use crypto and that is defective illegal then only criminals will be punished. That aspect is not a-priori immoral to me. I don't see how you can win over many people by repeating a mantra like this...

samwillis 5y ago
> I don't see how you can win over many people by repeating a mantra like this... I don’t expect to, this isn’t about wining over or educating the public at large. You would never be able to on a technical issue like this, especially when horrific illegal activity is involved. The issue is knowledgable and informed politicians and agency spinning this rubbish trying to convince the public they can win this, when they know they can’t. They are lying.
ahelwer 5y ago
Those in possession of blobs of data passing tests of statistical randomness must be punished. Send any of that statistically-random data over the web? That’s a punishin’.

charcircuit 5y ago

>“If you outlaw Encryption only outlaws will have Encryption.” You overestimate outlaws. 99% of them will just use major platforms and not bother with encryption. There is a lot of low hanging fruit.

samwillis 5y ago
And you think our police will have the resources do do anything for those 99%? They are already doing it all out in the open on public platforms, on street corners. Encryption isn’t a barer for enforcement in those cases. The issue is the worst 1% and they will continue to use encryption anyway.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >And you think our police will have the resources do do anything for those 99%? I wish they did. As more data aggregators become available to LE I hope it can make more people responsible for their actions. Technology will allow LE to scale to actually handle enforcing the law over large regions using fewer actual humans.
  - collegeburner 5y ago
    No it should be hard to reliably enforce the law. Otherwise we have a police state and it is easy to enforce authiritarian laws.
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      If people want authoritarian laws, then let them have it.