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> You could put your money in crypto where it can never be seized, should crypto be illegal? Well... > You could bury your money in a forest where it can neve

> You could put your money in crypto where it can never be seized, should crypto be illegal? Well... > You could bury your money in a forest where it can never be seized, should shovels be illegal? Or forests or remote places... obviously not. > You can stab somebody with a knife, should knives be illegal? OK, but guns or automatic guns makes this much easily reproducible at scale. And guns are indeed heavily regulated everywhere in the world (well, yeah, there is ONE exception...) > You could fly to a foreign country, should flights be illegal? You need a valid passport, pass several checks and you might be on some list and blocked from taking the plane (obviously there are way to hack that, that's not the point). Or denied access to the other country. > You could discuss a crime in-person not over the internet, should private conversations be illegal? No, but police can still spy you if they have reasonable (or not...) reasons to do so. My point is: while I'm not OK with banning encryption or adding some backdoor to it, we cannot deny that the "at scale" differences are important enough to at least have an adult discussion about how the issue should be tackled. Dismissing it like many people in the tech world do is as naive as willing to ban it.

zug_zug 3y ago
> My point is: while I'm not OK with banning encryption or adding some backdoor to it, we cannot deny that the "at scale" differences are important enough to at least have an adult discussion about how the issue should be tackled. Dismissing it like many people in the tech world do is as naive as willing to ban it. What? Maybe you're like 20+ years younger than me, because I feel like this boogeyman has been presented for 20 years and routinely shut-down as a bad-faith argument for 20 consecutive years. Maybe without that context it could look like it's never been considered, but it has, and it's been rejected. The basic summary is this -- You weigh all the positive side-effects of breaking encryption vs all the negative ones and you do the math. And the math is that most governments already are corrupt and take too much power over their citizens and abuse it, and of all the problems in the world child porn and even terrorism are lower on the list than people slipping in the bathtub and it's all FUD. If there's ANYWHERE we need to trade away privacy to for everybody's wellbeing, it's collecting and exposing information on political corruption, finances, and tax evasion (see US supreme court justices). It's so funny how the people in power forget to mention that auditing of their own behavior could be so valuable... odd...
- darkwater 3y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you, and not trusting governments or government agencies to not go rogue is a very valid reason. What's not a valid reason is comparing this to other real life examples that are _actually strongly regulated_.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  > and of all the problems in the world child porn and even terrorism are lower on the list than people slipping in the bathtub and it's all FUD. You can also bust the terrorists and child pornographers without breaking everyone else's encryption. Get a warrant, break into their homes and install a keylogger and snarf all their passwords and break into all their accounts if you have to. And that's assuming they aren't just stupid and talking about what they're doing on unencrypted channels, which is usually what happens.
singleshot_ 3y ago
Yes, and the adult discussion goes something like this: We live in the golden age of surveillance. If the authorities want to know where you are, what you buy, who you speak to, what you like, and where you've been, they can get that information. The only thing they cannot do is peek into a conversation if you don't want them to know the contents of your thoughts. You suggest that perhaps they should be able to do more. This is because you have never lived under a ruthless autocracy, yet.
- nathanaldensr 3y ago
  The level of trust that some people are willing to put into government and its toadies is insane.

zug_zug 3y ago

> My point is: while I'm not OK with banning encryption or adding some backdoor to it, we cannot deny that the "at scale" differences are important enough to at least have an adult discussion about how the issue should be tackled. Dismissing it like many people in the tech world do is as naive as willing to ban it. What? Maybe you're like 20+ years younger than me, because I feel like this boogeyman has been presented for 20 years and routinely shut-down as a bad-faith argument for 20 consecutive years. Maybe without that context it could look like it's never been considered, but it has, and it's been rejected. The basic summary is this -- You weigh all the positive side-effects of breaking encryption vs all the negative ones and you do the math. And the math is that most governments already are corrupt and take too much power over their citizens and abuse it, and of all the problems in the world child porn and even terrorism are lower on the list than people slipping in the bathtub and it's all FUD. If there's ANYWHERE we need to trade away privacy to for everybody's wellbeing, it's collecting and exposing information on political corruption, finances, and tax evasion (see US supreme court justices). It's so funny how the people in power forget to mention that auditing of their own behavior could be so valuable... odd...

darkwater 3y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you, and not trusting governments or government agencies to not go rogue is a very valid reason. What's not a valid reason is comparing this to other real life examples that are _actually strongly regulated_.
lamontcg 3y ago
> and of all the problems in the world child porn and even terrorism are lower on the list than people slipping in the bathtub and it's all FUD. You can also bust the terrorists and child pornographers without breaking everyone else's encryption. Get a warrant, break into their homes and install a keylogger and snarf all their passwords and break into all their accounts if you have to. And that's assuming they aren't just stupid and talking about what they're doing on unencrypted channels, which is usually what happens.

singleshot_ 3y ago

Yes, and the adult discussion goes something like this: We live in the golden age of surveillance. If the authorities want to know where you are, what you buy, who you speak to, what you like, and where you've been, they can get that information. The only thing they cannot do is peek into a conversation if you don't want them to know the contents of your thoughts. You suggest that perhaps they should be able to do more. This is because you have never lived under a ruthless autocracy, yet.

nathanaldensr 3y ago
The level of trust that some people are willing to put into government and its toadies is insane.