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In a world where encryption is banned: - will it be illegal to transmit a blast of static? - will it be a crime to transmit words that aren’t good, clear Span

In a world where encryption is banned: - will it be illegal to transmit a blast of static? - will it be a crime to transmit words that aren’t good, clear Spanish? If no, what if it’s a crazy complicated language? - will it be a crime to transmit Spanish with bad grammar? What if I transmit a billion random Spanish words?

stiltzkin 3y ago
> - will it be a crime to transmit Spanish with bad grammar? What if I transmit a billion random Spanish words? I'm open they ban anything related to Latinx. Or at least call it a different language.
quazar 3y ago
You're speaking as if this will help you. If you go to the prosecution/trial phase, you will be found guilty since you probably hadn't the best opsec and forensic analysis of your computer found the encryption/steganography software you used, or you left something in the system logs (e.g. timestamps of accessing files), or you left something in the thumbnail cache, or you did not rename the file before deleting it, or the timestamp analysis of e.g. you browser data and logs will show clear behavioral patterns pointing to you hiding data. If you use VMs, their ram is stored in a plaintext file unless you configure it otherwise, on your ssd it never goes away due to wear protection. Even if you had an encrypted drive you will be forced to give them the key, then they will rederive the master key and analyze parts of the disk free space to find something on you, again on ssd this is a certainty and on for example Bitlocker you can never change the master key, ensuring you going to jail. Even if all of this did not incriminate you, you're in trouble for something in the first place, since you're on trial, right? So probably other people you communicated with lead them to you. And in this case, the judge applies common sense, there is this traffic cell of 6 people and on 5 computers we have clear evidence but on 6th nothing, therefore you're still probably 95+% guilty? Judges aren't stupid. People making comments like yours annoy me since you seem to be calming people down that we could endure total strong encryption ban, while we absolutely could not.
- FredPret 3y ago
  I am, of course, familiar with the wrench decryption method (https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/). I am saying no ban on encryption can be logically consistent since you can’t absolutely prove that something is encrypted. Even if it is a file called encrypted_drive.imencrypted. I’m not a lawyer but this kind of ban should be wide open to legal attack. Especially if the country also has freedom of speech. And if it doesn’t have that, it should. And if all else fails and this insane law passes, the illiterates who pushed it through will cause a national economic and security disaster. Online crime will skyrocket. The KGB/FSB will have a feeding frenzy. Voters will quickly learn to love encryption again.
- Prickle 3y ago
  What are you smoking? The parent comment has nothing to do with anything you just spouted. It's about random transmissions being labeled as "encrypted" when that is not the intention. Encryption is not limited to the more modern systems. They have existed for a long time. These are politicians. We cannot trust them to have any knowledge or nuance.
  - quazar 3y ago
    So what's the point of sending random static over the network and looking for trouble like that then? Complying in a way that you find slightly less humiliating but still complying?
    - Prickle 3y ago
      It's called being an amateur radio or ham radio operator. "Oops, sent a funky signal with the wrong configuration, let's try again." Or "I messed up the modulation so the message is illegible." Or "I just found a funky NASA satellite that is no longer operational. Let me slap it with some messages and see if I get a return." https://www.science.org/content/article/amateur-astronomer-discovers-revived-nasa-satellite https://www.science.org/content/article/amateur-astronomer-d... Or maybe you are an amateur radio astronomer. Built your own radio telescope.
93po 3y ago
This is already tested somewhat in the UK, where you're required by law to provide a password to an encrypted file or volume when asked. If you're in possession of the encrypted volume, the courts assume you know the password, and throw you in jail if you don't. Obviously this can be easily abused by slipping an encrypted USB drive into someone's backpack. The point is that they will look at intention and surrounding context - is there a crime leading to you in some way and could it have been facilitated in part by encrypted messaging? Did you also transit a billion random Spanish words during this time frame? If so, it seems to follow by their current laws and logic that they can assume this was encrypted information and therefore broke the law. And if you refuse to decrypt it for them, that's another broken law.
- tiku 3y ago
  Perhaps we need to make a special decrypt program, one that accepts any password and just produces some log files. They can't prove it is not the data (except by claiming they planted it)..
  - coppsilgold 3y ago
    > They can't prove it is not the data Encryption is the one-to-one mapping of a set of bytes to a set of bytes. Software + key is the mapping function. When doing cryptographic forensics you don't use the user's software, you use your own. So proving that the user's decryption program is fake is trivial and may not even come up as you wouldn't bother running it. And you can't choose keys in a way that would alter the byte mapping in a way that you can control, the true key will map to the true data, and anything else will map to random bytes.
    - frankish 3y ago
      What if I use my own proprietary encryption algorithm? If I don't specify a file extension, then how could they tell what algorithm is used -- it's just a scramble of bytes. In fact, what if encryption one day gets so good we cannot distinguish it from plain English? Kinda like trying to spot LLM generated content.

stiltzkin 3y ago

> - will it be a crime to transmit Spanish with bad grammar? What if I transmit a billion random Spanish words? I'm open they ban anything related to Latinx. Or at least call it a different language.

quazar 3y ago

You're speaking as if this will help you. If you go to the prosecution/trial phase, you will be found guilty since you probably hadn't the best opsec and forensic analysis of your computer found the encryption/steganography software you used, or you left something in the system logs (e.g. timestamps of accessing files), or you left something in the thumbnail cache, or you did not rename the file before deleting it, or the timestamp analysis of e.g. you browser data and logs will show clear behavioral patterns pointing to you hiding data. If you use VMs, their ram is stored in a plaintext file unless you configure it otherwise, on your ssd it never goes away due to wear protection. Even if you had an encrypted drive you will be forced to give them the key, then they will rederive the master key and analyze parts of the disk free space to find something on you, again on ssd this is a certainty and on for example Bitlocker you can never change the master key, ensuring you going to jail. Even if all of this did not incriminate you, you're in trouble for something in the first place, since you're on trial, right? So probably other people you communicated with lead them to you. And in this case, the judge applies common sense, there is this traffic cell of 6 people and on 5 computers we have clear evidence but on 6th nothing, therefore you're still probably 95+% guilty? Judges aren't stupid. People making comments like yours annoy me since you seem to be calming people down that we could endure total strong encryption ban, while we absolutely could not.

FredPret 3y ago
I am, of course, familiar with the wrench decryption method (https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/). I am saying no ban on encryption can be logically consistent since you can’t absolutely prove that something is encrypted. Even if it is a file called encrypted_drive.imencrypted. I’m not a lawyer but this kind of ban should be wide open to legal attack. Especially if the country also has freedom of speech. And if it doesn’t have that, it should. And if all else fails and this insane law passes, the illiterates who pushed it through will cause a national economic and security disaster. Online crime will skyrocket. The KGB/FSB will have a feeding frenzy. Voters will quickly learn to love encryption again.
Prickle 3y ago
What are you smoking? The parent comment has nothing to do with anything you just spouted. It's about random transmissions being labeled as "encrypted" when that is not the intention. Encryption is not limited to the more modern systems. They have existed for a long time. These are politicians. We cannot trust them to have any knowledge or nuance.
- quazar 3y ago
  So what's the point of sending random static over the network and looking for trouble like that then? Complying in a way that you find slightly less humiliating but still complying?
  - Prickle 3y ago
    It's called being an amateur radio or ham radio operator. "Oops, sent a funky signal with the wrong configuration, let's try again." Or "I messed up the modulation so the message is illegible." Or "I just found a funky NASA satellite that is no longer operational. Let me slap it with some messages and see if I get a return." https://www.science.org/content/article/amateur-astronomer-discovers-revived-nasa-satellite https://www.science.org/content/article/amateur-astronomer-d... Or maybe you are an amateur radio astronomer. Built your own radio telescope.

93po 3y ago

This is already tested somewhat in the UK, where you're required by law to provide a password to an encrypted file or volume when asked. If you're in possession of the encrypted volume, the courts assume you know the password, and throw you in jail if you don't. Obviously this can be easily abused by slipping an encrypted USB drive into someone's backpack. The point is that they will look at intention and surrounding context - is there a crime leading to you in some way and could it have been facilitated in part by encrypted messaging? Did you also transit a billion random Spanish words during this time frame? If so, it seems to follow by their current laws and logic that they can assume this was encrypted information and therefore broke the law. And if you refuse to decrypt it for them, that's another broken law.

tiku 3y ago
Perhaps we need to make a special decrypt program, one that accepts any password and just produces some log files. They can't prove it is not the data (except by claiming they planted it)..
- coppsilgold 3y ago
  > They can't prove it is not the data Encryption is the one-to-one mapping of a set of bytes to a set of bytes. Software + key is the mapping function. When doing cryptographic forensics you don't use the user's software, you use your own. So proving that the user's decryption program is fake is trivial and may not even come up as you wouldn't bother running it. And you can't choose keys in a way that would alter the byte mapping in a way that you can control, the true key will map to the true data, and anything else will map to random bytes.
  - frankish 3y ago
    What if I use my own proprietary encryption algorithm? If I don't specify a file extension, then how could they tell what algorithm is used -- it's just a scramble of bytes. In fact, what if encryption one day gets so good we cannot distinguish it from plain English? Kinda like trying to spot LLM generated content.