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How do you ban cocaine? How do you ban special parts in guns that make them automatic? How do you enforce any law that's not practical to enforce? You just mak
by gnulinux 3y ago
How do you ban cocaine? How do you ban special parts in guns that make them automatic? How do you enforce any law that's not practical to enforce?
You just make it a felony with a penalty of decades of imprisonment. Then, all the businesses stop doing it and you selectively enforce the law in order to make an example out of people. The idea is never to enforce it fully.
If encryption is a felony, your average business will stop using it, which is pretty much the desired effect. They don't care so much about your personal website or data store using encryption. They'll just make it a fringe technique.
- reportgunner 3y agoOk but banning encryption seems akin to banning combustion.
- gnulinux 3y agoGovernment can ban combustion too. So that next time it's revealed in a court of law that you caused combustion, you'll be locked up. It's not about preventing combustion, it's about if they find evidence that you combusted, you getting a criminal sentence.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoIf only more people understood that the police aren’t there to stop crime rather to document it, we would be further along with the enlightenment. It’s all punitive because preventative is fantasy.
- crocowhile 3y agoSo are they banning VPN and SSL too? Those are not fringe techniques.
- Dma54rhs 3y agoIt's like staying so are you banning freight and air travel too to those politicians in order to stop cocaine. When do programmers get it that those analogies don't mean anything in real world.
- mkmk3 3y agoExcept it's not cocaine. It's banning bikes, when everyone uses bikes, no? VPNs and SSL explicitly are the target, in part. It's not a figure of speech, it's factually the thing. If your point is politicians don't get that then... fuck idk, I'm hoping for maliciousness over that level of incompetence.
- Strom 3y agoFreight and air travel don’t involve cocaine as a standard. VPN and SSL do include encryption as standard. It’s not an analogy, it’s pointing out that encryption is more common than some think.
- jchw 3y agoControlling supply chains is a lot easier when you're dealing with physical things and not abstract concepts.