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It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. The issue with Apple caving to UK demands regarding encryption, and now Signal b

It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. The issue with Apple caving to UK demands regarding encryption, and now Signal being in a similar situation, shows that you can't just focus on technology and ignore policy and politics. And you'll find out that a ton of people here on HN will care, but most of the public won't. People should take XKCD 538 really to heart (The 5$ wrench one). It's not the same point, but very similar. https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/

throwaway28409 2y ago
> It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. It very much can. In a battle between human force and physics, physics win every time. If I send an encrypted email to you, you have the choice to not give up the key, even if you'll be in jail. With physical letters, you don't have this option. Technology gives you the ironclad ability to keep a secret, only limited by the fortitude of your character.
- louwrentius 2y ago
  You clearly haven't felt a 5$ wrench on your body. Giving up your secrets under torture isn't a character flaw, it's what will happen to 99.99% of people under torture. I can't help you if you don't believe that this is true. And I hope you understand that 5$ wrench is a euphemism for what would 'really' happen. All this to say that no, technology does not triumph over politics and policy.
  - throwaway28409 2y ago
    Technology very much does. It's the flesh that has a hard time triumphing over force. To counteract this, you can also engineer a system that can resist it through e.g. split secrets on multiple people located in different jurisdictions.
    - louwrentius 2y ago
      If you split a secret over two people, first, we use the 5$ wrench on one of you to identify the other and the rest is easy. If the second person is somewhere else in a different jurisdiction, how are you going to communicate with each other to get the two halves of the secret together to encrypt/decrypt messages? It's an unworkable situation. As I see it, you create a fantasy situation that would not work if you just want to communicate with people in a secure way. No amount of technology or encryption is going to work, especially in the real practical world.
- hedora 2y ago
  You can always burn a physical letter or delete a file. This bill is akin to making it illegal to destroy your own correspondence.
radlad 2y ago
Did Apple cave to UK's demands? I thought instead they removed their product from the market, like Signal. We're talking about companies though, not technology. Something like Bitcoin or BitTorrent can be regulated, but not stopped.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Not fully, but making transacting in Bitcoin outright illegal would probably go a long way to making it completely unattractive to 99% of all potential users. And if Apple and Google were forced to remove all wallets from their app stores, it would largely be game over.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Transacting in Bitcoin is already unattractive to 99%+ of potential users.
    - TheAmazingRace 2y ago
      In addition, simply taking out the on/off ramps, such as Coinbase, would destroy the utility of cryptocurrency as well, since the grand majority of folks dealing in the stuff are only interested in flipping it for more cash money on the other end by finding the next sucker in the chain. Very few people actually care about the principles of Bitcoin and the like. Maybe the core devs and some very early adopters?
      - lxgr 2y ago
        I think a large part of the success of Bitcoin can be explained by the combination: It allows people to say (and even believe!) that they're in it for the ideology, while the real motivation is primarily that of capital gains.
      - radlad 2y ago
        Whether it's useful to the current "grand majority" or not / holds the value it does today is orthogonal to whether the technology can be stopped and whether it still provides value to those who continue to use it. I did worry this example would be too political, hence including the BitTorrent example as well.
lxgr 2y ago
> technology can't beat politics and policy. It often only can't in a world of mandatory centralized app stores. That's not the only possible world.
- louwrentius 2y ago
  We technologists will probably be able to circumvent any Signal-ban. But we don't exist in a vacuum, we are a small part of a larger society. Who's at the other end of your conversation? Most 'regular/normal' people won't and most importantly - don't want to - jump through the technical hoops to keep using Signal. Although the downside of the official app stores is clear, the alternative might result in a swift return to the '90s and '00s where malware and viruses were rampant. Pick your poison.
  - radlad 2y ago
    I think malware and viruses are less common for many reasons, but I suspect increased awareness and security posture (including the architecture of modern OS) has more to do with this than "walled gardens." Malware does make it onto closed app stores, and many users (e.g. on Windows) still don't use app stores. The answer you're looking for is probably to build more decentralized, FOSS software with better UX. Much easier said than done of course.
retrorangular 2y ago
The antidote to XKCD 538 can be steganography. They won't beat you with a $5 wrench if they don't suspect you of doing anything at all. End-to-end encryption can become illegal, but as long as you can run arbitrary code on your machine, you can hide and decode messages with steganography. JavaScript can do the job, so even locked down mobile devices will work if you go to CodePen, JSFiddle, JSBin, etc. Steganography isn't some magic shield to avoid surveillance though. If authorities are already monitoring you for some other reason, then they can burn a zero-day exploit and see anything you do on your device. And if your entire city is covered in cameras with facial recognition, well... you can have your secret messages but I don't know what kind of resistance you're going to be putting up. So to some degree you're right that you can't fully ignore policy and politics. Not sure how to get most of the public to care though. I get most people have more immediate concerns in there lives, and crime is a legitimate issue, but even a cursory knowledge of history will show the hell life can be under authoritarian governments. I think far too many people think "it can't happen here", which seems insane considering how often it has occurred even in liberal democracies (Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Chile, and many more.) In less liberal and less stable democracies, it has happened even more times. I'm not sure why people have some unfounded faith that their government could never become authoritarian and oppressive. I'm not saying take down every CC camera and get rid of intelligence agencies -- they are important tools for fighting crime. But there's a difference between a few traffic cameras and CC cameras in places people would presumably commit a crime, and burning targeted exploits for surveillance of truly notorious criminals, and just mass surveillance through banning end-to-end encryption. With zero-day exploits, the government is inherently limited in the surveillance they can do, so it's a limiting factor on their potential for abuse, as the more they use it, the more likely they are to be discovered and patched. But with no end-to-end encryption, the potential for abuse is limitless.
ubermonkey 2y ago
>The issue with Apple caving to UK demands regarding encryption Apple "caving" would've looked different; in fact, we probably never would have known, given the insidious nature of the underlying statute in the UK. Apple is making noise about the fact that they pulled the product, and the tech press is making it clear WHY even though Apple itself is legally prohibited from giving any additional context. I feel like that was probably the best move available to them given the cards dealt. Fighting in secret courts is unlikely to be fruitful.
- louwrentius 2y ago
  Removing the advanced encryption option for new accounts is really 'caving' to the demands of the government in my view. And in time, they will also remove the e2e encryption on existing accounts using the e2e feature to comply with UK demands. They may have sounded the alarm, which I appreciate, but they still have to 'cave' and do as the UK government tells them or they have to cease operations in the UK.
  - ubermonkey 2y ago
    What I'm really noting here is that Apple had no good options. Capitulating would've meant giving the UK government the back door they wanted. They didn't do that. They complied in a loud and public way, which unmistakably shined a light on the insane request. The only other options for them were withdrawal from the UK market entirely, or a secret court fight they'd probably lose. To me, their actual response reads more like malicious compliance than "caving," which usually implies giving up completely.
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
> It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. There's definitely a strain of thought which perceives almost everything in society as being outcroppings of the progress of technology (however you define that), and especially in the 1990s imagined/expected everything to fall over under the mantle of "information wants to be free" etc. I think you're right that this is an intellectual dead-end. Many of us lived through the 90s hype wave and into now, and have watched things take a complete circle. The Internet didn't transform society into utopia, the real-world dystopia transformed the Internet into a high definition image of itself.

throwaway28409 2y ago

> It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. It very much can. In a battle between human force and physics, physics win every time. If I send an encrypted email to you, you have the choice to not give up the key, even if you'll be in jail. With physical letters, you don't have this option. Technology gives you the ironclad ability to keep a secret, only limited by the fortitude of your character.

louwrentius 2y ago
You clearly haven't felt a 5$ wrench on your body. Giving up your secrets under torture isn't a character flaw, it's what will happen to 99.99% of people under torture. I can't help you if you don't believe that this is true. And I hope you understand that 5$ wrench is a euphemism for what would 'really' happen. All this to say that no, technology does not triumph over politics and policy.
- throwaway28409 2y ago
  Technology very much does. It's the flesh that has a hard time triumphing over force. To counteract this, you can also engineer a system that can resist it through e.g. split secrets on multiple people located in different jurisdictions.
  - louwrentius 2y ago
    If you split a secret over two people, first, we use the 5$ wrench on one of you to identify the other and the rest is easy. If the second person is somewhere else in a different jurisdiction, how are you going to communicate with each other to get the two halves of the secret together to encrypt/decrypt messages? It's an unworkable situation. As I see it, you create a fantasy situation that would not work if you just want to communicate with people in a secure way. No amount of technology or encryption is going to work, especially in the real practical world.
hedora 2y ago
You can always burn a physical letter or delete a file. This bill is akin to making it illegal to destroy your own correspondence.

radlad 2y ago

Did Apple cave to UK's demands? I thought instead they removed their product from the market, like Signal. We're talking about companies though, not technology. Something like Bitcoin or BitTorrent can be regulated, but not stopped.

lxgr 2y ago
Not fully, but making transacting in Bitcoin outright illegal would probably go a long way to making it completely unattractive to 99% of all potential users. And if Apple and Google were forced to remove all wallets from their app stores, it would largely be game over.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Transacting in Bitcoin is already unattractive to 99%+ of potential users.
  - TheAmazingRace 2y ago
    In addition, simply taking out the on/off ramps, such as Coinbase, would destroy the utility of cryptocurrency as well, since the grand majority of folks dealing in the stuff are only interested in flipping it for more cash money on the other end by finding the next sucker in the chain. Very few people actually care about the principles of Bitcoin and the like. Maybe the core devs and some very early adopters?
    - lxgr 2y ago
      I think a large part of the success of Bitcoin can be explained by the combination: It allows people to say (and even believe!) that they're in it for the ideology, while the real motivation is primarily that of capital gains.
    - radlad 2y ago
      Whether it's useful to the current "grand majority" or not / holds the value it does today is orthogonal to whether the technology can be stopped and whether it still provides value to those who continue to use it. I did worry this example would be too political, hence including the BitTorrent example as well.

lxgr 2y ago

> technology can't beat politics and policy. It often only can't in a world of mandatory centralized app stores. That's not the only possible world.

louwrentius 2y ago
We technologists will probably be able to circumvent any Signal-ban. But we don't exist in a vacuum, we are a small part of a larger society. Who's at the other end of your conversation? Most 'regular/normal' people won't and most importantly - don't want to - jump through the technical hoops to keep using Signal. Although the downside of the official app stores is clear, the alternative might result in a swift return to the '90s and '00s where malware and viruses were rampant. Pick your poison.
- radlad 2y ago
  I think malware and viruses are less common for many reasons, but I suspect increased awareness and security posture (including the architecture of modern OS) has more to do with this than "walled gardens." Malware does make it onto closed app stores, and many users (e.g. on Windows) still don't use app stores. The answer you're looking for is probably to build more decentralized, FOSS software with better UX. Much easier said than done of course.

retrorangular 2y ago

The antidote to XKCD 538 can be steganography. They won't beat you with a $5 wrench if they don't suspect you of doing anything at all. End-to-end encryption can become illegal, but as long as you can run arbitrary code on your machine, you can hide and decode messages with steganography. JavaScript can do the job, so even locked down mobile devices will work if you go to CodePen, JSFiddle, JSBin, etc. Steganography isn't some magic shield to avoid surveillance though. If authorities are already monitoring you for some other reason, then they can burn a zero-day exploit and see anything you do on your device. And if your entire city is covered in cameras with facial recognition, well... you can have your secret messages but I don't know what kind of resistance you're going to be putting up. So to some degree you're right that you can't fully ignore policy and politics. Not sure how to get most of the public to care though. I get most people have more immediate concerns in there lives, and crime is a legitimate issue, but even a cursory knowledge of history will show the hell life can be under authoritarian governments. I think far too many people think "it can't happen here", which seems insane considering how often it has occurred even in liberal democracies (Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Chile, and many more.) In less liberal and less stable democracies, it has happened even more times. I'm not sure why people have some unfounded faith that their government could never become authoritarian and oppressive. I'm not saying take down every CC camera and get rid of intelligence agencies -- they are important tools for fighting crime. But there's a difference between a few traffic cameras and CC cameras in places people would presumably commit a crime, and burning targeted exploits for surveillance of truly notorious criminals, and just mass surveillance through banning end-to-end encryption. With zero-day exploits, the government is inherently limited in the surveillance they can do, so it's a limiting factor on their potential for abuse, as the more they use it, the more likely they are to be discovered and patched. But with no end-to-end encryption, the potential for abuse is limitless.

ubermonkey 2y ago

>The issue with Apple caving to UK demands regarding encryption Apple "caving" would've looked different; in fact, we probably never would have known, given the insidious nature of the underlying statute in the UK. Apple is making noise about the fact that they pulled the product, and the tech press is making it clear WHY even though Apple itself is legally prohibited from giving any additional context. I feel like that was probably the best move available to them given the cards dealt. Fighting in secret courts is unlikely to be fruitful.

louwrentius 2y ago
Removing the advanced encryption option for new accounts is really 'caving' to the demands of the government in my view. And in time, they will also remove the e2e encryption on existing accounts using the e2e feature to comply with UK demands. They may have sounded the alarm, which I appreciate, but they still have to 'cave' and do as the UK government tells them or they have to cease operations in the UK.
- ubermonkey 2y ago
  What I'm really noting here is that Apple had no good options. Capitulating would've meant giving the UK government the back door they wanted. They didn't do that. They complied in a loud and public way, which unmistakably shined a light on the insane request. The only other options for them were withdrawal from the UK market entirely, or a secret court fight they'd probably lose. To me, their actual response reads more like malicious compliance than "caving," which usually implies giving up completely.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

> It may be wrong, but it proves that technology can't beat politics and policy. There's definitely a strain of thought which perceives almost everything in society as being outcroppings of the progress of technology (however you define that), and especially in the 1990s imagined/expected everything to fall over under the mantle of "information wants to be free" etc. I think you're right that this is an intellectual dead-end. Many of us lived through the 90s hype wave and into now, and have watched things take a complete circle. The Internet didn't transform society into utopia, the real-world dystopia transformed the Internet into a high definition image of itself.