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Contrarian opinion ahead. We live in a very unique period of history - a bubble really - in which governments are not able to intercept certain communications o

by yafbum 3y ago

Contrarian opinion ahead. We live in a very unique period of history - a bubble really - in which governments are not able to intercept certain communications or decrypt certain records, even with the full force of the law behind them. While I recognize and appreciate, on a personal level, the freedom that this provides me, freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into anarchy. I'm afraid it's not going to be hard, over the years, to find enough pedophiles and terrorists to make a compellingly popular case for more regulation of encryption.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
This view doesn't seem to reflect the reality that Gov/LEO have access vastly more (direct and up-to-date) personal information about us than at any time in history. I find I am not in a hurry to hand over what little space is left.
edrxty 3y ago
There's nothing inherently wrong with anarchy, but there are plenty of things inherently wrong with totalitarianism. I really don't care how many pedophiles we catch if we continue to expand the definition of pedophiles to "everyone we don't like". Similarly, I don't care how many terrorists we catch if we motivate everyone to become a "terrorist" in the process.
- yafbum 3y ago
  False dichotomy. Every restriction on freedom does not have to be reduced to totalitarianist encroachment.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    That's what they say every time - "it's just to catch the REALLY bad guys, pinky promise". Then five years later we find out that it's routinely used for other things. And ten years later, when the law needs to be renewed or whatever, the same politicians who originally argued that it was a very narrowly tailored measure claim that it became such an important tool in law enforcement arsenal that sky would literally fall if we don't allow them to keep it.
    - yafbum 3y ago
      Law enforcement gonna exploit outrage. Evidently so will encryption fans. Both are politicians, in the sense that matters of state powers are of interest to both; and thus both wield hyperbole: "down with terrorists" vs "down with Big Brother". Maybe let's not fall to 10-foot tall syndrome in either direction. Two things can be true: law enforcement is overstating terrorism and criminal dangers that it's facing, and encryption advocates are overstating totalitarianist danger. Maybe the problem is that in many Western countries there isn't a huge smoking gun where surveillance powers are "routinely used" for visibly nefarious things. Even things as bad as Snowden exposed (and they were shocking) don't seem to resonate with a lot of folks, maybe because it doesn't seem like the govt was actually able to do anything with all the data that they grabbed anyways. In the US, I haven't really heard of cops blackmailing people over intercepted data, for example. Or jailing of political opponents based on their online habits. I'm not sure if encryption fans are either not looking to be in office, or not popular enough to be elected. But if it's an issue people care about a lot, there should be no problems getting elected on that issue. Don't be on HN taking to me, go talk to some random people and see how they want to vote on that issue or if they even care. But maybe, just maybe, you'll find that there are other things on their mind right now.
      - int_19h 3y ago
        I think most "encryption fans" understand quite well that the current sociopolitical zeitgeist is broadly authoritarian, and legal strong encryption will fall victim to that eventually. As will many other things - e.g. a Chinese-style social credit system with the "right" targets is also likely to get considerable popular support in the long run, and some Western countries have already experimented with similar ideas (e.g. asbo in UK). So as far as I'm concerned, the political angle is mostly about dragging our feet to buy us more time to develop the anti-surveillance tech like encryption as far as possible in the open before it is heavily regulated.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> I'm afraid it's not going to be hard, over the years, to find enough pedophiles and terrorists to make a compellingly popular case for more regulation of encryption. You're going to oppress the world's entire population of human beings with warrantless global surveillance because of a few "pedophiles and terrorists"? What a tiresome argument, seriously. Go ahead and find us thousands of "pedophiles and terrorists". It won't matter how many you find because what you're proposing as the cure is the tyranny of a government panopticon.
- ashwagary 3y ago
  >You're going to oppress the world's entire population of human beings with warrantless global surveillance Its already happening with financial transactions, regular speech is not far behind.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
The situation where governments can’t (bulk) intercept communications describes basically our entire history, with as small weird exception towards the end. Prior to the invention of the postal service, most communications were verbal and privacy was (relatively) easy to ensure. Even up until very recently, communications interception required some extraordinary action like placing a durable wiretap on a line and listening to verbal communications, or else laboriously steaming open mail. It’s only in the last fifteen years that we moved the bulk of our private, non-business communications onto electronic media that have long-term centralized storage and processing power to scan them. Coincidentally that’s almost as long as encrypted messaging has been popular.
- yafbum 3y ago
  For bulk interception, it's true that a certain technical capacity is there that didn't use to be there. But targeted taps and intercepts, though expensive, used to be more straightforward in terms of process. > Prior to the invention of the postal service, most communications were verbal and privacy was (relatively) easy to ensure. ? Messenger service seems about as old as the written word.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    > But targeted taps and intercepts, though expensive, used to be more straightforward in terms of process. Targeted taps and phone calls don't scale. Even police states that wanted to surveil their entire population could only directly monitor a small portion of the population at any time. These barriers no longer exist. > Messenger service seems about as old as the written word. Widespread literacy is a 19th/20th century invention. The telephone and telegraph became popular for non-essential communications only in the 20th century. Asynchronous "store and forward" electronic communications became a primary channel for communications (as in, nearly everyone in your family uses it in place of phone calls and paper letters, or even private conversations) only in the 2000s.
mardifoufs 3y ago
>freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into anarchy No, it doesn't. Which is trivial to prove, considering we have had widely available encryption for two decades now with no anarchy or encryption fueled societal collapse in sight. Actually, countries without backdoor laws are some of the most prosperous and safe places on earth. And even western countries that have decided to chase after the encryption boogeyman (Australia, for example) didn't experience a drop in crime rates.
- yafbum 3y ago
  >>freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into anarchy >No, it doesn't. Which is trivial to prove, considering we have had widely available encryption for two decades now with no anarchy or encryption fueled societal collapse in sight. Hold on. I'm not arguing that encryption causes anarchy. I'm just making a general point about the idea that effective freedom requires a government to intervene to restrict freedoms, in at least _some_ matters. For example most people would agree that prisons are necessary to keep compulsively violent people from harming others. That doesn't mean everyone should be locked up at the government's whim. The question for encryption is, is there _a_ limit to what the government should allow. > Actually, countries without backdoor laws are some of the most prosperous and safe places on earth. Not sure about either the correlation or the causation. I'm not sure what countries you have in mind, but just to share two examples: - China seems to be increasingly safe and prosperous and has backdoors. (And it's totalitarian, but I'm just going by the safety and prosperity characteristics that you mention.) - In the US, Signal was featured prominently as the communication medium of choice for people convicted of a seditious conspiracy case. Only thanks to human infiltration was the government able to obtain these communications. I think it's reasonable to expect the government to have the ability to legally intercept the communications of people planning violent regime overthrow.

by yafbum 3y ago

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

This view doesn't seem to reflect the reality that Gov/LEO have access vastly more (direct and up-to-date) personal information about us than at any time in history. I find I am not in a hurry to hand over what little space is left.

edrxty 3y ago

There's nothing inherently wrong with anarchy, but there are plenty of things inherently wrong with totalitarianism. I really don't care how many pedophiles we catch if we continue to expand the definition of pedophiles to "everyone we don't like". Similarly, I don't care how many terrorists we catch if we motivate everyone to become a "terrorist" in the process.

yafbum 3y ago
False dichotomy. Every restriction on freedom does not have to be reduced to totalitarianist encroachment.
- int_19h 3y ago
  That's what they say every time - "it's just to catch the REALLY bad guys, pinky promise". Then five years later we find out that it's routinely used for other things. And ten years later, when the law needs to be renewed or whatever, the same politicians who originally argued that it was a very narrowly tailored measure claim that it became such an important tool in law enforcement arsenal that sky would literally fall if we don't allow them to keep it.
  - yafbum 3y ago
    Law enforcement gonna exploit outrage. Evidently so will encryption fans. Both are politicians, in the sense that matters of state powers are of interest to both; and thus both wield hyperbole: "down with terrorists" vs "down with Big Brother". Maybe let's not fall to 10-foot tall syndrome in either direction. Two things can be true: law enforcement is overstating terrorism and criminal dangers that it's facing, and encryption advocates are overstating totalitarianist danger. Maybe the problem is that in many Western countries there isn't a huge smoking gun where surveillance powers are "routinely used" for visibly nefarious things. Even things as bad as Snowden exposed (and they were shocking) don't seem to resonate with a lot of folks, maybe because it doesn't seem like the govt was actually able to do anything with all the data that they grabbed anyways. In the US, I haven't really heard of cops blackmailing people over intercepted data, for example. Or jailing of political opponents based on their online habits. I'm not sure if encryption fans are either not looking to be in office, or not popular enough to be elected. But if it's an issue people care about a lot, there should be no problems getting elected on that issue. Don't be on HN taking to me, go talk to some random people and see how they want to vote on that issue or if they even care. But maybe, just maybe, you'll find that there are other things on their mind right now.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      I think most "encryption fans" understand quite well that the current sociopolitical zeitgeist is broadly authoritarian, and legal strong encryption will fall victim to that eventually. As will many other things - e.g. a Chinese-style social credit system with the "right" targets is also likely to get considerable popular support in the long run, and some Western countries have already experimented with similar ideas (e.g. asbo in UK). So as far as I'm concerned, the political angle is mostly about dragging our feet to buy us more time to develop the anti-surveillance tech like encryption as far as possible in the open before it is heavily regulated.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> I'm afraid it's not going to be hard, over the years, to find enough pedophiles and terrorists to make a compellingly popular case for more regulation of encryption. You're going to oppress the world's entire population of human beings with warrantless global surveillance because of a few "pedophiles and terrorists"? What a tiresome argument, seriously. Go ahead and find us thousands of "pedophiles and terrorists". It won't matter how many you find because what you're proposing as the cure is the tyranny of a government panopticon.

ashwagary 3y ago
>You're going to oppress the world's entire population of human beings with warrantless global surveillance Its already happening with financial transactions, regular speech is not far behind.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

The situation where governments can’t (bulk) intercept communications describes basically our entire history, with as small weird exception towards the end. Prior to the invention of the postal service, most communications were verbal and privacy was (relatively) easy to ensure. Even up until very recently, communications interception required some extraordinary action like placing a durable wiretap on a line and listening to verbal communications, or else laboriously steaming open mail. It’s only in the last fifteen years that we moved the bulk of our private, non-business communications onto electronic media that have long-term centralized storage and processing power to scan them. Coincidentally that’s almost as long as encrypted messaging has been popular.

yafbum 3y ago
For bulk interception, it's true that a certain technical capacity is there that didn't use to be there. But targeted taps and intercepts, though expensive, used to be more straightforward in terms of process. > Prior to the invention of the postal service, most communications were verbal and privacy was (relatively) easy to ensure. ? Messenger service seems about as old as the written word.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  > But targeted taps and intercepts, though expensive, used to be more straightforward in terms of process. Targeted taps and phone calls don't scale. Even police states that wanted to surveil their entire population could only directly monitor a small portion of the population at any time. These barriers no longer exist. > Messenger service seems about as old as the written word. Widespread literacy is a 19th/20th century invention. The telephone and telegraph became popular for non-essential communications only in the 20th century. Asynchronous "store and forward" electronic communications became a primary channel for communications (as in, nearly everyone in your family uses it in place of phone calls and paper letters, or even private conversations) only in the 2000s.

mardifoufs 3y ago

>freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into anarchy No, it doesn't. Which is trivial to prove, considering we have had widely available encryption for two decades now with no anarchy or encryption fueled societal collapse in sight. Actually, countries without backdoor laws are some of the most prosperous and safe places on earth. And even western countries that have decided to chase after the encryption boogeyman (Australia, for example) didn't experience a drop in crime rates.

yafbum 3y ago
>>freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into anarchy >No, it doesn't. Which is trivial to prove, considering we have had widely available encryption for two decades now with no anarchy or encryption fueled societal collapse in sight. Hold on. I'm not arguing that encryption causes anarchy. I'm just making a general point about the idea that effective freedom requires a government to intervene to restrict freedoms, in at least _some_ matters. For example most people would agree that prisons are necessary to keep compulsively violent people from harming others. That doesn't mean everyone should be locked up at the government's whim. The question for encryption is, is there _a_ limit to what the government should allow. > Actually, countries without backdoor laws are some of the most prosperous and safe places on earth. Not sure about either the correlation or the causation. I'm not sure what countries you have in mind, but just to share two examples: - China seems to be increasingly safe and prosperous and has backdoors. (And it's totalitarian, but I'm just going by the safety and prosperity characteristics that you mention.) - In the US, Signal was featured prominently as the communication medium of choice for people convicted of a seditious conspiracy case. Only thanks to human infiltration was the government able to obtain these communications. I think it's reasonable to expect the government to have the ability to legally intercept the communications of people planning violent regime overthrow.