4 ms·

Ending encryption is like ending math. It's not possible and just moves the developers more into the underground. It could likely cause regulatory arbitrage sit

Ending encryption is like ending math. It's not possible and just moves the developers more into the underground. It could likely cause regulatory arbitrage situations too (e.g. developers create apps for other countries but determined people in the U.K. find a way to access them).

gjsman-1000 4y ago
I don’t like this argument because it makes the subject in question overly abstract in a way that would not apply in other situations. Examples: “How dare you make me become a licensed engineer just to be paid to do math?” “How dare you arrest me for this child porn? It’s just a sequence of 1s and 0s, therefore, you are criminalizing a number!”
- vincnetas 4y ago
  Interesting times ahead. I would assume that child porn is illegal because it's production harms children. When we can synthesise it without child involvement, what are the reasons for banning it? It becomes on the same level as gore movies, kink adult porn or any fictional perversion book. It's up to consumer to choose to consume it or not. And at the end everything mentioned before can be turned to 1 and 0. So should we be more concerned more about how these 1 and 0 are produced (no one harmed, everything legal) rather than what is distributed using these 1 and 0.
  - Nebasuke 4y ago
    You would assume wrong in the case of the UK. "Extreme pornography" is already illegal, even when staged, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Justice_and_Immigration_Act_2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Jus....
    - vincnetas 4y ago
      It's curious how it's ok to depict a human being sadistically cut to pieces while he is in terrible agony as long as there is no sexual arousal involved.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    FWIW, my reaction to the side-of-a-bus adverts for Saw franchise films in the UK was visceral disgust that there exist enough people who would buy tickets on the basis of those adverts to justify the existence of the adverts, let alone the films themselves — if I thought banning them would actually make any difference, I would call for exactly that! I don't know of human psychology really works like the toy model in my head (probably not, typical mind fallacy), but that's a separate thing to my own affect.
    - vincnetas 4y ago
      Yeah, i would not watch willingly any of that content if even i were paid to do so. I pitty content moderators who have to filter through such content.
    - brokenmachine 3y ago
      I would like daytime TV to be banned because of the harm it causes.
  - greybox 4y ago
    Possession of "synthesised" CSAM (or extream pornography such as rape) is already illegal in the UK. There have been prosecutions too. I believe the reasoning was that studies revealed that viewing synthesised content, lead to a higher chance of possessing real CSAM content, or of committing sex crimes themselves.
    - brokenmachine 3y ago
      Interesting that those laws were supposedly guided by "studies", when I can think of many other laws that were clearly not.
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    Any thoughtful continuation of this subject requires us to get into the weeds: even doing just that is enough to attract heavy criticism. When it comes to porn, the general consensus is that it must be based on consent. But even that is ambiguous: whose consent are we talking about? The actors, or the characters they portray? It's very straightforward to require consent of each person filming. No matter what the story is, actors have human rights that must be actively preserved. But what about the content itself? Porn that portrays fictional sexual assault is generally accepted as morally good. How? Audience. A person may have a fantasy where they are the victim of assault. Are they doing anything wrong? No. It isn't wrong to be a victim, or to imagine it. From that perspective, the foundation of consent is met. An adult watching fictional assault porn can bring their own consent into the experience, reframing the content into a useful and healthy context. But what if that person is not an adult? The general consensus is that a child cannot give consent. I think a better framing would be to say that an adult cannot ask for, accept, or use a child's consent. This rule is the foundation for making it criminal to sell porn to minors. Many would argue that any fictional portrayal of a child being sexually assaulted cannot have a moral perspective or utility. A child might be able to fantasize as the victim of their own assault, but no adult can sell a fictional portrayal of that fantasy to them. --- So all that's left are the weeds: should a person watch fictional assault porn while imagining themselves as the perpetrator? Should fictional child sexual assault media be used as a pacifier for pedophiles? These are hard ugly questions, and the emotional response from most people is an unequivocal, "no". Can we trust our emotions to lead to justice, or do they simply distract us with victory?
- rgoulter 4y ago
  Historically, Luty's 9mm: """In response to more restrictive gun control laws, he set out to prove that all such laws were ultimately futile by showing that one could manufacture a functional firearm from hardware store goods, without using any purpose-made firearms parts.""" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA & in recreational use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YE9J7qcj0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YE9J7qcj0c
- xyzzy4747 4y ago
  The difference is the vast majority of people are against CSAM, but not too many people are against encryption. So the government doesn’t have a leg to stand on plus the penalties would be much less. It would be much more feasible to act against encryption laws.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  Mathematics is not "any arbitrary sequence of numbers". Mathematics is the study of fundamental patterns that are present between them. Mathematics is the abstraction itself. Banning encryption is like government banning video compression because it could be used for criminal activity. It's not the data itself being banned, it's the abstract math it is made from.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Ending encryption isn't really feasible. But ending the use of (true) end-to-end privacy in mass-market communication apps is entirely possible, if many governments unite to do something truly stupid. And that is what the US, the UK, Europe and (implicitly) China have all united to do at this time, and all using similar strategies.
jeroenhd 4y ago
It's quite easy, really. It's not hard to find phones communicating with WhatsApp's servers, and the moment WhatsApp indicates it can't decrypt a message for a UK user, fines and arrests can be made. You can simplify it further with Signal and WhatsApp: any UK phone number that can't be decrypted by the golden state decryption key is a problem. You can get around these restrictions by sending independently encrypted messages over chat apps and through VPNs or Tor using foreign phone numbers, but at the end of the day, a messaging service is only as useful as its network effect. If WhatsApp refuses to forward your encrypted messages because your mom or friend or boss doesn't always keep their circumvention VPN on, you don't have much of a choice. Calling these bans "ending math" is like calling speeding tickets attempts to ban physics. People will still use these apps and people will still speed, but the majority of the population won't because when you're caught you're paying a hefty fine (or worse).
- usrbinbash 4y ago
  > It's quite easy, really. Another thing that is quite easy: A service provider can simply stop offering his service in the UK if such laws are passed. I wonder what the electoral outlook is, of a government that essentially prevents it's citizens from accessing WhatsApp...probably on par with someone proposing to ban sugar or declaring cats to be illegal.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

I don’t like this argument because it makes the subject in question overly abstract in a way that would not apply in other situations. Examples: “How dare you make me become a licensed engineer just to be paid to do math?” “How dare you arrest me for this child porn? It’s just a sequence of 1s and 0s, therefore, you are criminalizing a number!”

vincnetas 4y ago
Interesting times ahead. I would assume that child porn is illegal because it's production harms children. When we can synthesise it without child involvement, what are the reasons for banning it? It becomes on the same level as gore movies, kink adult porn or any fictional perversion book. It's up to consumer to choose to consume it or not. And at the end everything mentioned before can be turned to 1 and 0. So should we be more concerned more about how these 1 and 0 are produced (no one harmed, everything legal) rather than what is distributed using these 1 and 0.
- Nebasuke 4y ago
  You would assume wrong in the case of the UK. "Extreme pornography" is already illegal, even when staged, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Justice_and_Immigration_Act_2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Jus....
  - vincnetas 4y ago
    It's curious how it's ok to depict a human being sadistically cut to pieces while he is in terrible agony as long as there is no sexual arousal involved.
- ben_w 4y ago
  FWIW, my reaction to the side-of-a-bus adverts for Saw franchise films in the UK was visceral disgust that there exist enough people who would buy tickets on the basis of those adverts to justify the existence of the adverts, let alone the films themselves — if I thought banning them would actually make any difference, I would call for exactly that! I don't know of human psychology really works like the toy model in my head (probably not, typical mind fallacy), but that's a separate thing to my own affect.
  - vincnetas 4y ago
    Yeah, i would not watch willingly any of that content if even i were paid to do so. I pitty content moderators who have to filter through such content.
  - brokenmachine 3y ago
    I would like daytime TV to be banned because of the harm it causes.
- greybox 4y ago
  Possession of "synthesised" CSAM (or extream pornography such as rape) is already illegal in the UK. There have been prosecutions too. I believe the reasoning was that studies revealed that viewing synthesised content, lead to a higher chance of possessing real CSAM content, or of committing sex crimes themselves.
  - brokenmachine 3y ago
    Interesting that those laws were supposedly guided by "studies", when I can think of many other laws that were clearly not.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  Any thoughtful continuation of this subject requires us to get into the weeds: even doing just that is enough to attract heavy criticism. When it comes to porn, the general consensus is that it must be based on consent. But even that is ambiguous: whose consent are we talking about? The actors, or the characters they portray? It's very straightforward to require consent of each person filming. No matter what the story is, actors have human rights that must be actively preserved. But what about the content itself? Porn that portrays fictional sexual assault is generally accepted as morally good. How? Audience. A person may have a fantasy where they are the victim of assault. Are they doing anything wrong? No. It isn't wrong to be a victim, or to imagine it. From that perspective, the foundation of consent is met. An adult watching fictional assault porn can bring their own consent into the experience, reframing the content into a useful and healthy context. But what if that person is not an adult? The general consensus is that a child cannot give consent. I think a better framing would be to say that an adult cannot ask for, accept, or use a child's consent. This rule is the foundation for making it criminal to sell porn to minors. Many would argue that any fictional portrayal of a child being sexually assaulted cannot have a moral perspective or utility. A child might be able to fantasize as the victim of their own assault, but no adult can sell a fictional portrayal of that fantasy to them. --- So all that's left are the weeds: should a person watch fictional assault porn while imagining themselves as the perpetrator? Should fictional child sexual assault media be used as a pacifier for pedophiles? These are hard ugly questions, and the emotional response from most people is an unequivocal, "no". Can we trust our emotions to lead to justice, or do they simply distract us with victory?
rgoulter 4y ago
Historically, Luty's 9mm: """In response to more restrictive gun control laws, he set out to prove that all such laws were ultimately futile by showing that one could manufacture a functional firearm from hardware store goods, without using any purpose-made firearms parts.""" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA & in recreational use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YE9J7qcj0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YE9J7qcj0c
xyzzy4747 4y ago
The difference is the vast majority of people are against CSAM, but not too many people are against encryption. So the government doesn’t have a leg to stand on plus the penalties would be much less. It would be much more feasible to act against encryption laws.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
Mathematics is not "any arbitrary sequence of numbers". Mathematics is the study of fundamental patterns that are present between them. Mathematics is the abstraction itself. Banning encryption is like government banning video compression because it could be used for criminal activity. It's not the data itself being banned, it's the abstract math it is made from.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

Ending encryption isn't really feasible. But ending the use of (true) end-to-end privacy in mass-market communication apps is entirely possible, if many governments unite to do something truly stupid. And that is what the US, the UK, Europe and (implicitly) China have all united to do at this time, and all using similar strategies.

jeroenhd 4y ago

It's quite easy, really. It's not hard to find phones communicating with WhatsApp's servers, and the moment WhatsApp indicates it can't decrypt a message for a UK user, fines and arrests can be made. You can simplify it further with Signal and WhatsApp: any UK phone number that can't be decrypted by the golden state decryption key is a problem. You can get around these restrictions by sending independently encrypted messages over chat apps and through VPNs or Tor using foreign phone numbers, but at the end of the day, a messaging service is only as useful as its network effect. If WhatsApp refuses to forward your encrypted messages because your mom or friend or boss doesn't always keep their circumvention VPN on, you don't have much of a choice. Calling these bans "ending math" is like calling speeding tickets attempts to ban physics. People will still use these apps and people will still speed, but the majority of the population won't because when you're caught you're paying a hefty fine (or worse).

usrbinbash 4y ago
> It's quite easy, really. Another thing that is quite easy: A service provider can simply stop offering his service in the UK if such laws are passed. I wonder what the electoral outlook is, of a government that essentially prevents it's citizens from accessing WhatsApp...probably on par with someone proposing to ban sugar or declaring cats to be illegal.