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> I don't think blanket statements like this are true, and I don't think they're a healthy way to frame the debate. To take a non-trivial example, requiring car

by ilyt 4y ago

> I don't think blanket statements like this are true, and I don't think they're a healthy way to frame the debate. To take a non-trivial example, requiring cars to bear license plates - something almost everyone accepts, at least in the United States - has a lot of upsides like enforcement of traffic laws. Sure, perhaps traffic cameras aid totalitarian states in tracking the movements of citizens, but I think most people agree that license plates are a good societal tradeoff in terms of privacy. That's terrible comparison. Cars are in public by default, more than that with cameras you don't even need to have license plates to track someone, they just make it easier. There is also very little stuff that would be privacy violating, yeah, sure, someone might note that your plates showed up at your lover's house but... they could just record you exiting the car, same with any illegal stuff. The social contract is also different, you're allowed to drive on public infrastructure funded by everyone, and in return you need to have car that not massive safety hazard and abide by law. Communication has nothing to do with it > This is a long way of saying that, even as a strong privacy advocate, it's worth noting that the tradeoff is real and the terms of debate ought to be over whether the tradeoff is a good one or not. I'm sad to inform you that cat is out of the bag for decade or two now, and if criminals chose to have encrypted communication they don't need Signal for it. The cat will not go back into the bag no matter how much legislation tries. The math doesn't care for politician's feelings. There is no tradeoff here - bad guys can do it already using many other ways, it's just trying to limit it for the normal people > In the case of encryption, this is a difficult question for us to answer because we're essentially asking how many crimes might have been prevented or might have gone unpunished had the perpetrators used encrypted communications. The other side is people dying or getting jailed because their tyrannical government didn't like what they chatted about.

whakim 4y ago
> That's terrible comparison. To be clear, I'm not arguing that encrypted communication is a 1:1 analogue to license plates. I'm arguing that they both reduce privacy to some extent, and therefore it's not right to simply say the tradeoffs are never worth it. (I would also quibble with your application of social contracts, but I don't think the details are actually that relevant given the above.) > I'm sad to inform you that cat is out of the bag for decade or two now I didn't intend for this to be an actual policy debate; I understand that you can't legislate away encryption. I was simply making the point these debates (is encrypted communication a social good?) aren't totally tradeoff-free, and pretending they are won't get us anywhere constructive. > There is no tradeoff here - bad guys can do it already using many other ways, it's just trying to limit it for the normal people. While you can't legislate away encryption itself, it's naive to think that governments have no control over how popular and widespread encryption becomes. "Bad guys can do it" doesn't mean "bad guys will do it" - the mountain of unencrypted communication used as evidence in the criminal justice system proves that. I'm firmly pro-Signal, but my guess is that if the government banned Signal tomorrow, fewer bad guys would use encrypted communication just because Signal is easy to use and most criminals aren't James Bond-style supervillains. (There are, of course, second-order effects that I wouldn't want to start speculating about.)
- IIsi50MHz 4y ago
  > but my guess is that if the government banned Signal tomorrow, fewer bad guys would use encrypted communication just because Signal is easy to use and most criminals aren't James Bond-style supervillains. I was with you until this part, because I can't create a successful parse tree from it.
  - whakim 4y ago
    My point was that some "bad guys" aren't using encrypted communication at any cost; they're using encrypted communication that's easy enough to use. If you made encryption a bit harder to use (say, by taking away Signal), some percentage of existing "bad guys" would no longer use it. (To be clear, I don't think this is a reasonable argument for banning Signal; I just wanted to make the point that laws do affect the prevalence of encrypted communication even among criminals.)

by ilyt 4y ago

whakim 4y ago

> That's terrible comparison. To be clear, I'm not arguing that encrypted communication is a 1:1 analogue to license plates. I'm arguing that they both reduce privacy to some extent, and therefore it's not right to simply say the tradeoffs are never worth it. (I would also quibble with your application of social contracts, but I don't think the details are actually that relevant given the above.) > I'm sad to inform you that cat is out of the bag for decade or two now I didn't intend for this to be an actual policy debate; I understand that you can't legislate away encryption. I was simply making the point these debates (is encrypted communication a social good?) aren't totally tradeoff-free, and pretending they are won't get us anywhere constructive. > There is no tradeoff here - bad guys can do it already using many other ways, it's just trying to limit it for the normal people. While you can't legislate away encryption itself, it's naive to think that governments have no control over how popular and widespread encryption becomes. "Bad guys can do it" doesn't mean "bad guys will do it" - the mountain of unencrypted communication used as evidence in the criminal justice system proves that. I'm firmly pro-Signal, but my guess is that if the government banned Signal tomorrow, fewer bad guys would use encrypted communication just because Signal is easy to use and most criminals aren't James Bond-style supervillains. (There are, of course, second-order effects that I wouldn't want to start speculating about.)

IIsi50MHz 4y ago
> but my guess is that if the government banned Signal tomorrow, fewer bad guys would use encrypted communication just because Signal is easy to use and most criminals aren't James Bond-style supervillains. I was with you until this part, because I can't create a successful parse tree from it.
- whakim 4y ago
  My point was that some "bad guys" aren't using encrypted communication at any cost; they're using encrypted communication that's easy enough to use. If you made encryption a bit harder to use (say, by taking away Signal), some percentage of existing "bad guys" would no longer use it. (To be clear, I don't think this is a reasonable argument for banning Signal; I just wanted to make the point that laws do affect the prevalence of encrypted communication even among criminals.)