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This is part of why I think politically there is no point trying to co-operate with these people and convince them to maybe not collect so much. The only way t

This is part of why I think politically there is no point trying to co-operate with these people and convince them to maybe not collect so much. The only way to stop them doing this is for folks in the right places to make it technically impossible. In a similar note: The fact that its taken years to roll out TLS ECH and DoH which would make a lot of passive surveillance of the internet much more difficult is only enabling bad faith actors like Europol et al.

p-e-w 3y ago
> The only way to stop them doing this is for folks in the right places to make it technically impossible. Sure. Then they'll pass legislation making it a crime to implement technical measures preventing such data collection, and simply lock up everyone you are talking about. What's the real solution?
- rustymonday 3y ago
  The solution is to do it before it's made illegal.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Politician 1: We will pass this legislation to make Technology X illegal. Politician 2: Look! The RustyMondayCo startup already made Technology X! Politician 1: Drat! Foiled again! Now we can’t possibly outlaw it!
    - ronsor 3y ago
      The solution is more like making sure Technology X is ubiquitous before they can do anything. That makes it significantly harder to outlaw without undesirable political and economic side effects.
      - vaylian 3y ago
        Agree. This is precisely why they have stopped attacking cryptography itself like in the previous crypto wars. Now they aim for bypassing cryptography so that they can still claim that the data is kind of end-to-end encrypted.
- intunderflow 3y ago
  At the transport level: The EU has a lot of power, but the power to force the IETF to withdraw an RFC globally? That would be a reach even for them.
  - vaylian 3y ago
    RFCs are not legally binding. Most politicians have no idea what a RFC is. They don't care about the actual technical details. They will just order a result without being aware of how unrealistic and harmful it is. You might be an educated technical citizen, but when you don't comply then there will be all kinds of legal trouble.
  - besrious 3y ago
    Everyone mocked the Australian PM when he said that the laws of Australia applied in Australia, and not the laws of mathematics, but he was correct. This is peak nerd-delusion to think that the state will somehow be stopped by your cypherpunk schemes. It was already a delusion 20 years ago, and now to make things worse, all those guys that used to hang out in those hacker spaces promoting those attractive but silly ideas work for big corporations and governments.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      The state will be stopped by widespread use of anonymous strong encryption. It's the widespread part that confounds cypherpunks, and why PGP, Signal, Let's Encrypt are important despite the bikeshedding they attract from purists.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      > Everyone mocked the Australian PM when he said that the laws of Australia applied in Australia, and not the laws of mathematics ... Oh come on. That was his flippant response to a smartarse question.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      In a fight between law and maths, maths can't be arrested up, can't be put on trial, can't be detained at the border. It is intangible, and can be anywhere, even inside the unreadable mind of a traveller. The only way for any state to prevent the use of crypto they can't break is to wind back all the things that can perform it, meaning all computers, not just all internet banking and other things that are everywhere now and can't be used safely without it. States are free to do so, because a state can outlaw physical devices, seize them at the border, etc. — but that is what it would take to do this. I doubt they will, but that's the only option. Unfortunately, we also have the problem that political factions both native and foreign regularly try to undermine states; doing so in secret is a necessary but not sufficient part of this, and thus getting past crypto is IMO absolutely necessary[0] to keep any state from being usurped. Fortunately (from the POV of a state) "getting past crypto" can also be Van Eck phreaking, not just weak crypto. Unfortunately for everyone, just as any crypto backdoor is almost certain to be exploited by criminals gangs to get valuable information, so so are the non-crypto surveillance possibilities: not just Van Eck, there's more than one way to use wifi as a wall penetrating radar to violate your privacy; laser microphones can listen on you remotely for pennies; smart dust is just about starting to be a serious possibility rather than a tech demo. My current vibe here is that each new invention creates a power vacuum that takes 15 years to properly fill, and we're currently creating new tech too fast for either states or organised crime to fill the gaps. [0] despite the previous "but not sufficient" because Swiss cheese defence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
- bathtub365 3y ago
  Steal the private communications of politicians and post them in public
  - anaganisk 3y ago
    US supreme Court Justice and an ex Prez's crimes are pretty public did it matter?
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Given how many simultaneous criminal cases Trump is now defending: yes. A better example would be Snowden given nobody was done for lying to congress, but even then he changed things by revealing so much.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- roenxi 3y ago
  The premise is more optimistic than you are suggesting: 1. Mass spying is unpopular. The only reliable support base is a small-ish group of unlikable busybodies. 2. Reducing civil liberties tends to come back to bite the people who implement it. The best part of the Trump backlash is watching the intelligence apparatus come down on the Republicans. Karma in a nutshell, they were one of the major enablers of all that stuff after 9/11. All these ideas like free speech and private communication are ultimately to protect politicians. 3. It is practically difficult to stop. Any country that tries to stop encrypted messengers would have to cripple their own economy by bringing in such limited computers that they can't do anything. And they'd be hopelessly vulnerable to foreign espionage. This is not that hard of a political fight. They tried to ban strong encryption back in the PGP era and look how that went - SSL is everywhere, encrypted protocols are everywhere, we have cryptographically based assets and every company is encrypting everything they can lay their hands on at rest. The ban-encryption camp has a track record of complete failure. And The Children have been Thought Of and are living in the best era ever to be children.
raverbashing 3y ago
But funnily enough I remember people complaining about DoH and how it was bad for privacy, etc... As a start, moving away from UDP is an improvement
ako 3y ago
If you were in government, how would you propose to limit child porn?
- dsign 3y ago
  If I were a government, I would let the police do its job without mass surveillance. Also, not all problems can be solved. Or, if I were a government, I would command all companies and individuals to drop what they are doing and work non-stop on cancer research.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > Also, not all problems can be solved. This is something it took me a long time to integrate. Politicians, especialy politicos with their backs against a wall, face demands to "do something about it" that they can't resist. The result is often a treatment that is worse than the disease. If that's true, the corrollary is that we shouldn't mock politicians when they come up with "solutions" that are ineffectual - provided they're just ineffectual, and not Trojan horses for some more insidious plan. Perhaps the best answer to "something must be done" is to do something - anything - that doesn't cost too much, and doesn't do much harm.
  - ako 3y ago
    And how do you know upfront that the mass surveillance is worse than the alternative, e.g., a country run by organized crime, children and young women being exploited at large scale? Do you think police can be effective without mass surveillance if the other side has all this technology at its disposal? Cancer is high on my list of problems that cannot be solved, we’re getting older, old age comes with decline of your body, spending money on a lost cause is a huge waste.
    - voxic11 3y ago
      Prevent the country from being run by organized crime by spying on the the people running the country, not the public. If you inverse it and instead allow those running the country to spy on the public but not the other way around then when organized crime takes over running the country they have an insanely powerful tool to use to stay in power and accomplish their evil goals.

p-e-w 3y ago

> The only way to stop them doing this is for folks in the right places to make it technically impossible. Sure. Then they'll pass legislation making it a crime to implement technical measures preventing such data collection, and simply lock up everyone you are talking about. What's the real solution?

rustymonday 3y ago
The solution is to do it before it's made illegal.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Politician 1: We will pass this legislation to make Technology X illegal. Politician 2: Look! The RustyMondayCo startup already made Technology X! Politician 1: Drat! Foiled again! Now we can’t possibly outlaw it!
  - ronsor 3y ago
    The solution is more like making sure Technology X is ubiquitous before they can do anything. That makes it significantly harder to outlaw without undesirable political and economic side effects.
    - vaylian 3y ago
      Agree. This is precisely why they have stopped attacking cryptography itself like in the previous crypto wars. Now they aim for bypassing cryptography so that they can still claim that the data is kind of end-to-end encrypted.
intunderflow 3y ago
At the transport level: The EU has a lot of power, but the power to force the IETF to withdraw an RFC globally? That would be a reach even for them.
- vaylian 3y ago
  RFCs are not legally binding. Most politicians have no idea what a RFC is. They don't care about the actual technical details. They will just order a result without being aware of how unrealistic and harmful it is. You might be an educated technical citizen, but when you don't comply then there will be all kinds of legal trouble.
- besrious 3y ago
  Everyone mocked the Australian PM when he said that the laws of Australia applied in Australia, and not the laws of mathematics, but he was correct. This is peak nerd-delusion to think that the state will somehow be stopped by your cypherpunk schemes. It was already a delusion 20 years ago, and now to make things worse, all those guys that used to hang out in those hacker spaces promoting those attractive but silly ideas work for big corporations and governments.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    The state will be stopped by widespread use of anonymous strong encryption. It's the widespread part that confounds cypherpunks, and why PGP, Signal, Let's Encrypt are important despite the bikeshedding they attract from purists.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > Everyone mocked the Australian PM when he said that the laws of Australia applied in Australia, and not the laws of mathematics ... Oh come on. That was his flippant response to a smartarse question.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    In a fight between law and maths, maths can't be arrested up, can't be put on trial, can't be detained at the border. It is intangible, and can be anywhere, even inside the unreadable mind of a traveller. The only way for any state to prevent the use of crypto they can't break is to wind back all the things that can perform it, meaning all computers, not just all internet banking and other things that are everywhere now and can't be used safely without it. States are free to do so, because a state can outlaw physical devices, seize them at the border, etc. — but that is what it would take to do this. I doubt they will, but that's the only option. Unfortunately, we also have the problem that political factions both native and foreign regularly try to undermine states; doing so in secret is a necessary but not sufficient part of this, and thus getting past crypto is IMO absolutely necessary[0] to keep any state from being usurped. Fortunately (from the POV of a state) "getting past crypto" can also be Van Eck phreaking, not just weak crypto. Unfortunately for everyone, just as any crypto backdoor is almost certain to be exploited by criminals gangs to get valuable information, so so are the non-crypto surveillance possibilities: not just Van Eck, there's more than one way to use wifi as a wall penetrating radar to violate your privacy; laser microphones can listen on you remotely for pennies; smart dust is just about starting to be a serious possibility rather than a tech demo. My current vibe here is that each new invention creates a power vacuum that takes 15 years to properly fill, and we're currently creating new tech too fast for either states or organised crime to fill the gaps. [0] despite the previous "but not sufficient" because Swiss cheese defence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
bathtub365 3y ago
Steal the private communications of politicians and post them in public
- anaganisk 3y ago
  US supreme Court Justice and an ex Prez's crimes are pretty public did it matter?
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Given how many simultaneous criminal cases Trump is now defending: yes. A better example would be Snowden given nobody was done for lying to congress, but even then he changed things by revealing so much.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
roenxi 3y ago
The premise is more optimistic than you are suggesting: 1. Mass spying is unpopular. The only reliable support base is a small-ish group of unlikable busybodies. 2. Reducing civil liberties tends to come back to bite the people who implement it. The best part of the Trump backlash is watching the intelligence apparatus come down on the Republicans. Karma in a nutshell, they were one of the major enablers of all that stuff after 9/11. All these ideas like free speech and private communication are ultimately to protect politicians. 3. It is practically difficult to stop. Any country that tries to stop encrypted messengers would have to cripple their own economy by bringing in such limited computers that they can't do anything. And they'd be hopelessly vulnerable to foreign espionage. This is not that hard of a political fight. They tried to ban strong encryption back in the PGP era and look how that went - SSL is everywhere, encrypted protocols are everywhere, we have cryptographically based assets and every company is encrypting everything they can lay their hands on at rest. The ban-encryption camp has a track record of complete failure. And The Children have been Thought Of and are living in the best era ever to be children.

raverbashing 3y ago

But funnily enough I remember people complaining about DoH and how it was bad for privacy, etc... As a start, moving away from UDP is an improvement

ako 3y ago

If you were in government, how would you propose to limit child porn?

dsign 3y ago
If I were a government, I would let the police do its job without mass surveillance. Also, not all problems can be solved. Or, if I were a government, I would command all companies and individuals to drop what they are doing and work non-stop on cancer research.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > Also, not all problems can be solved. This is something it took me a long time to integrate. Politicians, especialy politicos with their backs against a wall, face demands to "do something about it" that they can't resist. The result is often a treatment that is worse than the disease. If that's true, the corrollary is that we shouldn't mock politicians when they come up with "solutions" that are ineffectual - provided they're just ineffectual, and not Trojan horses for some more insidious plan. Perhaps the best answer to "something must be done" is to do something - anything - that doesn't cost too much, and doesn't do much harm.
- ako 3y ago
  And how do you know upfront that the mass surveillance is worse than the alternative, e.g., a country run by organized crime, children and young women being exploited at large scale? Do you think police can be effective without mass surveillance if the other side has all this technology at its disposal? Cancer is high on my list of problems that cannot be solved, we’re getting older, old age comes with decline of your body, spending money on a lost cause is a huge waste.
  - voxic11 3y ago
    Prevent the country from being run by organized crime by spying on the the people running the country, not the public. If you inverse it and instead allow those running the country to spy on the public but not the other way around then when organized crime takes over running the country they have an insanely powerful tool to use to stay in power and accomplish their evil goals.