7 ms·

Most contributors here seem to wish for widespread end-to-end encryption, to make wiretaps a thing of the past. I'm a bit surprised at this apparent consensus..

by jkn 13y ago

Most contributors here seem to wish for widespread end-to-end encryption, to make wiretaps a thing of the past. I'm a bit surprised at this apparent consensus... What is the estimated number of people who have been significantly wronged by abusive wiretapping, and how does it compare to the number of criminals arrested and crimes averted by wiretapping? I'm asking this in the context of Western democracies. I understand that the situation is different in authoritarian countries. I have my doubts on the wisdom of this specific plan from the FBI, but security implications seem only a peripheral concern for the majority of people complaining. It rather seems that people don't want to compromise on privacy and I don't get it. Generally speaking, don't we want wiretaps to be possible?

vy8vWJlco 13y ago
I do not consider pre-emptive interception capabilities to be a public or government responsibility. Warranted interception can be helpful, but at this moment, I am concerned more by the cyber war/terrorism rhetoric and its effect on my democracy (Canada, in my case) than I am by any threat of violence (we just passed a bill called S-7 that allows for 3-day holding without charge, and 12 month conditional probation without charge, RE: "terrorism"). We usually follow the US example, so I watch these subjects with interest, and have been amazed at the choice to walk people out of their own homes in Boston, at gunpoint, "for their own protection." I'd rather take my chances and protect myself against terrorism. (A person's home used to be his "castle.") Yes, privacy (and encryption, for example) empowers bad people - but it empowers the good ones too. Two wrongs don't make a right; I prefer to keep my freedom and strength than live in frightened "safety." So: encryption it is, even though it costs. I wish governments and concerned citizens could see how they are creating the very walls that alienate and anger. (FWIW, Canada had a bill called C-30 on the table last year with similar interception obligations and fines, and even though the government could have just passed it, because Canada is currently a political dictatorship, a huge number of Canadian's stood up and figuratively shouted in unison: NO. All it takes is saying I'm not afraid: I'm not afraid of terrorism, I'm not afraid of guns, I'm not afraid of other people's freedoms; no, I won't give away any more of my dignity. In fact, I want it back.)
drucken 13y ago
1. "Wiretapping" is the wrong conceptual model for what is proposed and implemented in modern systems. "Vacuuming" might be a better term. 2. This is a power grab, not merely an attempt to maintain equivalent present powers. As people live increasingly more of their lives on or impacted by virtual systems, the power to monitor and abuse whole societies becomes significantly larger. If you have any doubts about this, imagine it is the North Korean government with the technology. 3. Private communication, the minimum of freedom of expression and closest to thought, of any kind is never a hindrance to prevent crime or its investigation. A crime and everything leading to its implementation (and after) has many consequences in the world. It is these effects that are critical and required for crime prevention and prosecution. If there was a technology to monitor everyone's thoughts at the same time, would you use it as part of the criminal system? 4. The costs are orders of magnitude larger to setup, grow and maintain such monitoring systems indefinitely instead of targeting crime prevention and investigation. That's your taxpayer money being spent. 5. If after all the above, the inevitable result is still for governments to have the potential ability to access all communication anywhere between anyone at any time, then to reclaim individuals' rights, they too have a powerful incentive to seek and create systems that achieve the opposite, including encryption. This will occur regardless of law, and the deeper the loss or perception of loss of private rights, the more widespread it will occur. In short, "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
Zigurd 13y ago
> Generally speaking, don't we want wiretaps to be possible? I'm not sure about that. Wiretaps don't play much of a role in prosecuting violent crimes. White collar crime can be revealed through requiring regulatory disclosure. What's left?
- nlh 13y ago
  I may have been watching too much Homeland, but isn't wiretapping one of the main ways the intelligence community picks up on the "chatter" about large-scale terrorist attacks being planned? Didn't we find Bin Laden's Courier (and ultimately Bin Laden) partially through monitoring his cell phone? Apologies if these are naive assumptions - would love clarification.
- jkn 13y ago
  All kinds of organized crime I expect...
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    Terrorism and organized crime are high-value targets. Wiretapping, in those cases, can literally mean placing a bug and audio or radio bug, or placing a physical tap on a landline. If you plan to spend millions on the prosecution, you can spend a few tens of thousands on bugs.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
betterunix 13y ago
"What is the estimated number of people who have been significantly wronged by abusive wiretapping, and how does it compare to the number of criminals arrested and crimes averted by wiretapping?" When selling or even possessing recreational drugs is a crime, and when search and arrest warrants are routinely served by paramilitary teams, talk of "the number of criminals arrested" is meaningless. America's legal system has become so broad that anyone can be arrested, and the obvious result of that has been that America has the largest prison population of any country in the world by an order of magnitude. Law enforcement is not about catching all criminals, nor is it about preventing all crimes. The power we give to law enforcement must be balanced with the need to preserve a free society. The more power the police are given, the easier it is to enforce oppressive laws, and by extension to create oppressive laws in the first place. We limit the use of police power with complicated procedures and requirements for that very reason. It is also the case that expanded law enforcement powers tend to disproportionately impact certain minorities due to the disproportionate attention given to those communities by the police. As things are now, there are black communities in America where a quarter of the men are in prison or have been imprisoned. It is a near-certainty that if the FBI's proposal becomes law, the new wiretapping power will be disproportionately applied to already-oppressed minorities. "I understand that the situation is different in authoritarian countries." The sad truth is that right now, nobody can truly know that they have never committed a felony. As an example, large numbers of Virginians naively believed that living with their boyfriend/girlfriend was perfectly legal; yet until a few weeks ago, it was a crime: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/virginia-weird-laws-sodomy-cohabitation_n_2609265.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/virginia-weird-laws... It is by the selective application of these surprise laws that the US government is able to achieve an effect similar to that of a authoritarian government. Obscure laws have been used to attack protesters in the past: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/prosecutors-can-charge-greenpeace-under-obscure-law http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/prosecutors-can-charge-g... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576581171443151568.html?mod=e2tw http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190419460457658... Expanded police power means an expanded ability to engage in these sorts of tactics. It is not a stretch to say that if the police can more easily wiretap people, they can more easily identify protesters planning to wear masks or board ships. Perhaps some other obscure law will be invoked next time -- there are so many laws that the Federal government is not even able to count them all.

by jkn 13y ago

vy8vWJlco 13y ago

I do not consider pre-emptive interception capabilities to be a public or government responsibility. Warranted interception can be helpful, but at this moment, I am concerned more by the cyber war/terrorism rhetoric and its effect on my democracy (Canada, in my case) than I am by any threat of violence (we just passed a bill called S-7 that allows for 3-day holding without charge, and 12 month conditional probation without charge, RE: "terrorism"). We usually follow the US example, so I watch these subjects with interest, and have been amazed at the choice to walk people out of their own homes in Boston, at gunpoint, "for their own protection." I'd rather take my chances and protect myself against terrorism. (A person's home used to be his "castle.") Yes, privacy (and encryption, for example) empowers bad people - but it empowers the good ones too. Two wrongs don't make a right; I prefer to keep my freedom and strength than live in frightened "safety." So: encryption it is, even though it costs. I wish governments and concerned citizens could see how they are creating the very walls that alienate and anger. (FWIW, Canada had a bill called C-30 on the table last year with similar interception obligations and fines, and even though the government could have just passed it, because Canada is currently a political dictatorship, a huge number of Canadian's stood up and figuratively shouted in unison: NO. All it takes is saying I'm not afraid: I'm not afraid of terrorism, I'm not afraid of guns, I'm not afraid of other people's freedoms; no, I won't give away any more of my dignity. In fact, I want it back.)

drucken 13y ago

1. "Wiretapping" is the wrong conceptual model for what is proposed and implemented in modern systems. "Vacuuming" might be a better term. 2. This is a power grab, not merely an attempt to maintain equivalent present powers. As people live increasingly more of their lives on or impacted by virtual systems, the power to monitor and abuse whole societies becomes significantly larger. If you have any doubts about this, imagine it is the North Korean government with the technology. 3. Private communication, the minimum of freedom of expression and closest to thought, of any kind is never a hindrance to prevent crime or its investigation. A crime and everything leading to its implementation (and after) has many consequences in the world. It is these effects that are critical and required for crime prevention and prosecution. If there was a technology to monitor everyone's thoughts at the same time, would you use it as part of the criminal system? 4. The costs are orders of magnitude larger to setup, grow and maintain such monitoring systems indefinitely instead of targeting crime prevention and investigation. That's your taxpayer money being spent. 5. If after all the above, the inevitable result is still for governments to have the potential ability to access all communication anywhere between anyone at any time, then to reclaim individuals' rights, they too have a powerful incentive to seek and create systems that achieve the opposite, including encryption. This will occur regardless of law, and the deeper the loss or perception of loss of private rights, the more widespread it will occur. In short, "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

Zigurd 13y ago

> Generally speaking, don't we want wiretaps to be possible? I'm not sure about that. Wiretaps don't play much of a role in prosecuting violent crimes. White collar crime can be revealed through requiring regulatory disclosure. What's left?

nlh 13y ago
I may have been watching too much Homeland, but isn't wiretapping one of the main ways the intelligence community picks up on the "chatter" about large-scale terrorist attacks being planned? Didn't we find Bin Laden's Courier (and ultimately Bin Laden) partially through monitoring his cell phone? Apologies if these are naive assumptions - would love clarification.
jkn 13y ago
All kinds of organized crime I expect...
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Terrorism and organized crime are high-value targets. Wiretapping, in those cases, can literally mean placing a bug and audio or radio bug, or placing a physical tap on a landline. If you plan to spend millions on the prosecution, you can spend a few tens of thousands on bugs.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

betterunix 13y ago

"What is the estimated number of people who have been significantly wronged by abusive wiretapping, and how does it compare to the number of criminals arrested and crimes averted by wiretapping?" When selling or even possessing recreational drugs is a crime, and when search and arrest warrants are routinely served by paramilitary teams, talk of "the number of criminals arrested" is meaningless. America's legal system has become so broad that anyone can be arrested, and the obvious result of that has been that America has the largest prison population of any country in the world by an order of magnitude. Law enforcement is not about catching all criminals, nor is it about preventing all crimes. The power we give to law enforcement must be balanced with the need to preserve a free society. The more power the police are given, the easier it is to enforce oppressive laws, and by extension to create oppressive laws in the first place. We limit the use of police power with complicated procedures and requirements for that very reason. It is also the case that expanded law enforcement powers tend to disproportionately impact certain minorities due to the disproportionate attention given to those communities by the police. As things are now, there are black communities in America where a quarter of the men are in prison or have been imprisoned. It is a near-certainty that if the FBI's proposal becomes law, the new wiretapping power will be disproportionately applied to already-oppressed minorities. "I understand that the situation is different in authoritarian countries." The sad truth is that right now, nobody can truly know that they have never committed a felony. As an example, large numbers of Virginians naively believed that living with their boyfriend/girlfriend was perfectly legal; yet until a few weeks ago, it was a crime: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/virginia-weird-laws-sodomy-cohabitation_n_2609265.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/virginia-weird-laws... It is by the selective application of these surprise laws that the US government is able to achieve an effect similar to that of a authoritarian government. Obscure laws have been used to attack protesters in the past: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/prosecutors-can-charge-greenpeace-under-obscure-law http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/prosecutors-can-charge-g... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576581171443151568.html?mod=e2tw http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190419460457658... Expanded police power means an expanded ability to engage in these sorts of tactics. It is not a stretch to say that if the police can more easily wiretap people, they can more easily identify protesters planning to wear masks or board ships. Perhaps some other obscure law will be invoked next time -- there are so many laws that the Federal government is not even able to count them all.