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Child predator gets caught. Authorities see metadata or have other reason to believe he’s been exchanging material with dozens of other predators. Unfortunately

Child predator gets caught. Authorities see metadata or have other reason to believe he’s been exchanging material with dozens of other predators. Unfortunately they cannot see who any of those people are due to strong encryption. Is this a hard to imagine case? Seems completely obvious what the claim is here and that it has a basis in reality, and it’s obvious why someone dealing with this problem up close might be extremely highly motivated to solve it.

pdonis 3y ago
Child predator gets caught. Authorities tell child predator that the best way to minimize the number of years he spends in prison is to tell them what other predators he has been in contact with. Child predator gives them the information. Sure, this is an imagined case, just as yours is. Is it any less plausible? I don't think so. And so we have two plausible imagined cases that give opposite answers to how useful banning encryption would actually be to law enforcement. In other words, imagined cases are of no help whatsoever in actually evaluating this issue. What we, as members of the public (or for that matter concerned parents, for those who are), need in order to evaluate whether we should agree to banning encryption is open and transparent data on how well law enforcement does this job with vs. without encryption. Also data on how many child predators and other nefarious actors actually use encryption, given that it is easily available now. Child predators existed before encryption was available on consumer devices, and indeed before the Internet itself existed, so there should be plenty of historical data to use. Has anyone done such an analysis?
pdonis 3y ago
> it’s obvious why someone dealing with this problem up close might be extremely highly motivated to solve it. It's obvious why law enforcement wants to ban encryption, sure--it means they have an excuse for not doing the actual hard work of gathering human intelligence about child predators and other nefarious actors, and shutting them down the old-fashioned way. Which says nothing at all about whether they actually can do the job better using Big Brother surveillance than they could the old-fashioned way.
amiga386 3y ago
Firstly, do you think a child predator is going to comply with "encryption's illegal you know?" Secondly, if your imagined case only succeeds because of poor predator opsec, your police are shit, and it's not a good argument for wrecking the security of everyone else in the world. Allow me to remind you of how Ross Ulbricht, operator of the drugs website The Silk Road, was taken down. Law enforcers infiltrated the site, got chummy with admins and learned more his operations. They seized servers. They did good investigative work to narrow down who the operator was, and when they found him, they surveilled him, and grabbed him in a way that stopped him shutting his laptop, which would have immediately encrypted the contents. If you hate child predators (and you should), then call for competent police to handle the case and catch them red-handed, don't give me the old "gosh darn it, if only everyone had to go around naked and write postcards, no letters, strip them completely of their privacy. I couldn't solve any cases otherwise!"

pdonis 3y ago

Child predator gets caught. Authorities tell child predator that the best way to minimize the number of years he spends in prison is to tell them what other predators he has been in contact with. Child predator gives them the information. Sure, this is an imagined case, just as yours is. Is it any less plausible? I don't think so. And so we have two plausible imagined cases that give opposite answers to how useful banning encryption would actually be to law enforcement. In other words, imagined cases are of no help whatsoever in actually evaluating this issue. What we, as members of the public (or for that matter concerned parents, for those who are), need in order to evaluate whether we should agree to banning encryption is open and transparent data on how well law enforcement does this job with vs. without encryption. Also data on how many child predators and other nefarious actors actually use encryption, given that it is easily available now. Child predators existed before encryption was available on consumer devices, and indeed before the Internet itself existed, so there should be plenty of historical data to use. Has anyone done such an analysis?

pdonis 3y ago

> it’s obvious why someone dealing with this problem up close might be extremely highly motivated to solve it. It's obvious why law enforcement wants to ban encryption, sure--it means they have an excuse for not doing the actual hard work of gathering human intelligence about child predators and other nefarious actors, and shutting them down the old-fashioned way. Which says nothing at all about whether they actually can do the job better using Big Brother surveillance than they could the old-fashioned way.

amiga386 3y ago

Firstly, do you think a child predator is going to comply with "encryption's illegal you know?" Secondly, if your imagined case only succeeds because of poor predator opsec, your police are shit, and it's not a good argument for wrecking the security of everyone else in the world. Allow me to remind you of how Ross Ulbricht, operator of the drugs website The Silk Road, was taken down. Law enforcers infiltrated the site, got chummy with admins and learned more his operations. They seized servers. They did good investigative work to narrow down who the operator was, and when they found him, they surveilled him, and grabbed him in a way that stopped him shutting his laptop, which would have immediately encrypted the contents. If you hate child predators (and you should), then call for competent police to handle the case and catch them red-handed, don't give me the old "gosh darn it, if only everyone had to go around naked and write postcards, no letters, strip them completely of their privacy. I couldn't solve any cases otherwise!"