5 ms·

Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.

by blackhaz 3y ago

croes 3y ago
If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. I'm Spartacus.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. I'm not sure if we're mindful of this but Gov's only ethical purpose is to serve us. Past that, it has lost it's way.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. So far as I know, the only way to do that is to leave whichever country is doing this, which — trust me on this as one who has done so for slightly messier reasons — is a right PITA even when going somewhere else that has a functioning society. I don't think there's any other way to make yourself an "outlaw" in the old-fashioned sense of the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      > So far as I know, the only way to do that is to leave whichever country is doing this, I get that. My point was more about the value of the protection - of being kept safe from things like FBI's handcrafted terror plots. ref: https://www.techdirt.com/tag/own-plot/ https://www.techdirt.com/tag/own-plot/
- johngladtj 3y ago
  Alternatively they just arrest whoever they want to arrest
  - salawat 3y ago
    They already do that anyway, so what changes? The bonus is now everyone knows they do which further erodes the base legitimacy of the institution, increasing the likelyhood of reformative action potentials.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Mind you, Spartacus failed.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption. Besides using encryption, I also have surveillance-evading conversations and activities; I even hide thoughts in my head. At some point we might want to recall that not being snooped on is a natural state.
ben_w 3y ago
And by extension ending every internet-connected good or service, from email to online banking to remote work to shopping on Amazon or viewing TV on Netflix — therefore The Powers that Be are more likely to outlaw specific uses of encryption to show to voters that they're "doing something about $the_problem". If they actually want to catch all crime, the only way to do it is mass physical surveillance, either with laser microphones Van Eck phreaking, or with smart-dust and the like. These technologies aren't limited to just government surveillance, so I've been saying for ages now to anyone who will listen that we need to massively alter our "common sense" attitudes to crime and punishment before organised crime starts using it to automate mass-scale blackmail: a judge or a police officer snorting cocaine would be demonstrating poor judgement just to perform the act, let alone as a result of the drug itself, but society is much worse off if a mafia records them doing it so they can get their people off the hook for bigger crimes. And no, governments can't just use such surveillance to arrest everyone who breaks the laws: my go-to example of this is heroin in the UK, because as far as I can tell nobody defends heroin, yet enough people use it (200k) that fully enforcing the "no possession" law for that substance alone and nothing else would nearly triple the current UK prison population (95k, though I'm assuming that at most only a small percentage of them are currently getting heroin into their prison). I don't know what the best way to approach things like this would be, only that it's not going to be an easy thing that can fit into a comment box — the best I can do is say that my vibe is instant-and-tiny penalties, so a speeding offence might be £0.1/minute/(MPH over the speed limit)/(thousand pounds of monthly disposable income) or something like that.
_Algernon_ 3y ago
That would instantly eliminate all eCommerce. I think politicians still care enough about GDP that they wouldn't do that.
- Grangar 3y ago
  Not just ecommerce, basically anything that relies on confidentiality or data integrity.

Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.

croes 3y ago

If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. I'm Spartacus.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. I'm not sure if we're mindful of this but Gov's only ethical purpose is to serve us. Past that, it has lost it's way.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. So far as I know, the only way to do that is to leave whichever country is doing this, which — trust me on this as one who has done so for slightly messier reasons — is a right PITA even when going somewhere else that has a functioning society. I don't think there's any other way to make yourself an "outlaw" in the old-fashioned sense of the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > So far as I know, the only way to do that is to leave whichever country is doing this, I get that. My point was more about the value of the protection - of being kept safe from things like FBI's handcrafted terror plots. ref: https://www.techdirt.com/tag/own-plot/ https://www.techdirt.com/tag/own-plot/
johngladtj 3y ago
Alternatively they just arrest whoever they want to arrest
- salawat 3y ago
  They already do that anyway, so what changes? The bonus is now everyone knows they do which further erodes the base legitimacy of the institution, increasing the likelyhood of reformative action potentials.
RandomLensman 3y ago
Mind you, Spartacus failed.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption. Besides using encryption, I also have surveillance-evading conversations and activities; I even hide thoughts in my head. At some point we might want to recall that not being snooped on is a natural state.

ben_w 3y ago

And by extension ending every internet-connected good or service, from email to online banking to remote work to shopping on Amazon or viewing TV on Netflix — therefore The Powers that Be are more likely to outlaw specific uses of encryption to show to voters that they're "doing something about $the_problem". If they actually want to catch all crime, the only way to do it is mass physical surveillance, either with laser microphones Van Eck phreaking, or with smart-dust and the like. These technologies aren't limited to just government surveillance, so I've been saying for ages now to anyone who will listen that we need to massively alter our "common sense" attitudes to crime and punishment before organised crime starts using it to automate mass-scale blackmail: a judge or a police officer snorting cocaine would be demonstrating poor judgement just to perform the act, let alone as a result of the drug itself, but society is much worse off if a mafia records them doing it so they can get their people off the hook for bigger crimes. And no, governments can't just use such surveillance to arrest everyone who breaks the laws: my go-to example of this is heroin in the UK, because as far as I can tell nobody defends heroin, yet enough people use it (200k) that fully enforcing the "no possession" law for that substance alone and nothing else would nearly triple the current UK prison population (95k, though I'm assuming that at most only a small percentage of them are currently getting heroin into their prison). I don't know what the best way to approach things like this would be, only that it's not going to be an easy thing that can fit into a comment box — the best I can do is say that my vibe is instant-and-tiny penalties, so a speeding offence might be £0.1/minute/(MPH over the speed limit)/(thousand pounds of monthly disposable income) or something like that.

_Algernon_ 3y ago

That would instantly eliminate all eCommerce. I think politicians still care enough about GDP that they wouldn't do that.

Grangar 3y ago
Not just ecommerce, basically anything that relies on confidentiality or data integrity.