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I don't understand why society thinks that certain things can be contained, while certain other things cannot be. The liberals will always be telling you that

I don't understand why society thinks that certain things can be contained, while certain other things cannot be. The liberals will always be telling you that the drug war is a failure, and that drug users will be able to get their hands on drugs anyway, and we should embrace that fact so we can retain some level of control, and so otherwise innocent people don't have to interact with criminals. But guns on the other hand... The conservatives will always be telling you that guns can't be controlled-- that criminals will get their hands on guns anyway and will conceal carry all the time, and that we're better off keeping them legal so we can retain some level of control, and so that innocent people don't have to be at a disadvantage to criminals. But drugs on the other hand... I take this a level further: There's no containing cryptography. The people that are on tor looking at child pornography are protected. The people that are on tor plotting terrorist activities are also protected. The only people not protected are people that don't care or don't know, and they're not the people that are worth spying on in the first place. The NSA internet data collection is perhaps the most frivolous government program in the history of the United States. We've spent god knows how much money building their Utah data center, and it will be useless as soon as the tech community starts encrypting. [1] [1]: letsencrypt.org

RankingMember 12y ago
As long as there's a chance that the NSA could be able to break strong encryption and thus gain a huge leg up on other nations/potential lawbreakers, the governmental sentiment will remain in favor of retaining the NSA in the face of whatever pie-in-the-face leaks come out. Last I heard, they're working on a quantum computer to do exactly that. http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-working-on-quantum-computer-to-break-any-encryption/ http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-working-on-quantum-computer-to-...
lkbm 12y ago
People being inconvenient in pushing for social change are insufficiently protected. The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. If he had, that would have been a major loss to society. And now we have reports of the NSA developing dossiers of minor crimes and non-crimes of inconvenient people's behaviors for future use in discrediting them. Is your suggestion that anyone who is (or may in the future) choose to be politically inconvenient should use strong encryption for everything even slightly unpopular they may do? We can't contain cryptography, but neither can we depend on it being universally and effectively applied.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  >discovered he was having affairs claimed he was having affairs. As you said he was politically inconvenient, why would I trust them?
  - cryptophreak 12y ago
    You shouldn’t trust them, but it’s hardly an extraordinary claim. We can extrapolate from King’s heroic figure, charm, and constant traveling that he would been positively drowning in opportunity, to say nothing of the temptation that comes of being away from home for extended periods. If you care enough to explore the matter—although why you would consider it consequential I don’t know—you might start with Ralph David Abernathy, Sr., a close friend of King’s and a fellow civil rights leader, who confirms King’s alleged “weakness for women”.
  - lkbm 12y ago
    Good point, but my understanding is that it was kind of an open secret in the civil rights community at the time. And I they include a tape containing proof, as I recall.
- ripb 12y ago
  >The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. Have you got any more on this? Would be interested to read.
  - jellicle 12y ago
    This story covers it. FBI, not CIA. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensore...
    - lkbm 12y ago
      Oops, yeah: FBI. Sorry about that. To which one might be tempted to say "Well, sure, but J. Edger Hoover was totally out of control", but that's the thing: we let a totally out-of-control guy abuse a extremely powerful agency and do these things.
esMazer 12y ago
1- tor is broken. 2- they know and use ways to get around encrypting. We got to give them some credit they knew encryption was an issue that at some point they had to dealt with. And they found ways to do just that from the beginning.
- esMazer 12y ago
  they don't even need to break encryption. Patriot Act.
  - orthecreedence 12y ago
    If I encrypt something client-side, the Patriot Act has no influence over it whatsoever. The only person who can decrypt it is me. So, yes, they do need to break encryption. Especially as more and more apps move towards the "smart/encrypted client, dumb server as a storage dump" model.
    - hobs 12y ago
      The parent comment could be interpreted as "They do not need to break encryption as they do not need to prove guilt due to the patriot act, and breaking encryption is a dog and pony show when they can just hide you in Guantanamo or a Romanian black site."
      - ripb 12y ago
        But Romania is so beautiful this time of year, comrade hobs.
    - foobarqux 12y ago
      Except if you don't control the software on your device, like all smartphones.
- justcommenting 12y ago
  >1- tor is broken. For what definition of "broken"?
walterbell 12y ago
Encryption is orthogonal to policy, which is the topic of the article.
- nickysielicki 12y ago
  I think that's untrue. Encryption can't shape policy, but it can make policy nonsensical.
at-fates-hands 12y ago
>>> The NSA internet data collection is perhaps the most frivolous government program in the history of the United States. This. If you listen to the old NSA guys who worked during the heights of the Cold War, who keep tabs on Russians and all the chaos in the Middle East, and had some of these tools at their disposal, they all say the NSA was a great machine for intelligence. It was a great machine for developing assets and tracking bad people. As soon as those weapons and the machine were turned inward on the people they were supposed to protect, they all said it was the worst possible scenario. Also, if you look at some of the higher profile hacker cases, and to some degree the Ross Ulbricht case, how were they all cracked? Not by the NSA and all its tools, they were all done with your standard, "feet on the street" agents developing leads, connecting dots, and capturing human surveillance. It wasn't some Flame or Stuxnet bug that brought down these guys, it was just solid detective work.
- LLWM 12y ago
  Cold warriors said the NSA spying on domestic targets was the worst possible scenario? Not, say, global thermonuclear annihilation?
joshontheweb 12y ago
letsencrypt.org looks like an awesome project! Can't wait to try it out.
IgorPartola 12y ago
Minor point: conservatives and liberals love their guns. What they say publicly doesn't change the fact that the gun manufacturers hold huge political power in the form of the NRA over both parties, and that's not likely to change. If this was not so, we'd have an Australia-style buyout a long time ago. As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and a crazy amount of police brutality simply because access to guns is easy and protected by the NRA. To bring it back to crypto: there is a correlation between easy to obtain $TECH and use of $TECH. Currently, HTTPS is not as easy as HTTP, so its adoption is less. Let's Encrypt will change that. Currently, access to guns is easy, so their adoption and use is high. With the current political climate that will never change.
- worklogin 12y ago
  >As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and a crazy amount of police brutality simply because it's not simple, it's not all because of guns, and until you modify the 2nd amendment, there is no right of the government to remove guns from the public. I could go on about how our homicide rate is not too far out of line with other developed countries, how many many gun deaths are self inflicted, how there are a million things that kill more people each year than guns, but this goes way off the NSA topic. to crypto, that's been the whole discussion today with PGP, isn't it? That the reason it's not adopted is because it isn't easy.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    Agreed. Discussion for a different thread. I have pretty strong views against mass availability of guns as you can tell, but one issue at a time.
  - thesimpsons1022 12y ago
    don't have to modify the second ammendement, just get non-conservative judges to interpret the consitution how it was meant to be.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
room271 12y ago
I agree with the point about cryto, but I'm not sure your general point about society being unable to contain anything is sound. Guns are controlled in many countries quite effectively. Not completely of course, but compare for example gun crime in the UK with the US. There are fewer (if any) examples of drugs being controlled effectively (in non repressive regimes) I'll agree though.

RankingMember 12y ago

As long as there's a chance that the NSA could be able to break strong encryption and thus gain a huge leg up on other nations/potential lawbreakers, the governmental sentiment will remain in favor of retaining the NSA in the face of whatever pie-in-the-face leaks come out. Last I heard, they're working on a quantum computer to do exactly that. http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-working-on-quantum-computer-to-break-any-encryption/ http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-working-on-quantum-computer-to-...

lkbm 12y ago

People being inconvenient in pushing for social change are insufficiently protected. The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. If he had, that would have been a major loss to society. And now we have reports of the NSA developing dossiers of minor crimes and non-crimes of inconvenient people's behaviors for future use in discrediting them. Is your suggestion that anyone who is (or may in the future) choose to be politically inconvenient should use strong encryption for everything even slightly unpopular they may do? We can't contain cryptography, but neither can we depend on it being universally and effectively applied.

tomjen3 12y ago
>discovered he was having affairs claimed he was having affairs. As you said he was politically inconvenient, why would I trust them?
- cryptophreak 12y ago
  You shouldn’t trust them, but it’s hardly an extraordinary claim. We can extrapolate from King’s heroic figure, charm, and constant traveling that he would been positively drowning in opportunity, to say nothing of the temptation that comes of being away from home for extended periods. If you care enough to explore the matter—although why you would consider it consequential I don’t know—you might start with Ralph David Abernathy, Sr., a close friend of King’s and a fellow civil rights leader, who confirms King’s alleged “weakness for women”.
- lkbm 12y ago
  Good point, but my understanding is that it was kind of an open secret in the civil rights community at the time. And I they include a tape containing proof, as I recall.
ripb 12y ago
>The CIA spied on MLK Jr., discovered he was having affairs, and used that to try to blackmail him into committing suicide. Have you got any more on this? Would be interested to read.
- jellicle 12y ago
  This story covers it. FBI, not CIA. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensore...
  - lkbm 12y ago
    Oops, yeah: FBI. Sorry about that. To which one might be tempted to say "Well, sure, but J. Edger Hoover was totally out of control", but that's the thing: we let a totally out-of-control guy abuse a extremely powerful agency and do these things.

esMazer 12y ago

1- tor is broken. 2- they know and use ways to get around encrypting. We got to give them some credit they knew encryption was an issue that at some point they had to dealt with. And they found ways to do just that from the beginning.

esMazer 12y ago
they don't even need to break encryption. Patriot Act.
- orthecreedence 12y ago
  If I encrypt something client-side, the Patriot Act has no influence over it whatsoever. The only person who can decrypt it is me. So, yes, they do need to break encryption. Especially as more and more apps move towards the "smart/encrypted client, dumb server as a storage dump" model.
  - hobs 12y ago
    The parent comment could be interpreted as "They do not need to break encryption as they do not need to prove guilt due to the patriot act, and breaking encryption is a dog and pony show when they can just hide you in Guantanamo or a Romanian black site."
    - ripb 12y ago
      But Romania is so beautiful this time of year, comrade hobs.
  - foobarqux 12y ago
    Except if you don't control the software on your device, like all smartphones.
justcommenting 12y ago
>1- tor is broken. For what definition of "broken"?

walterbell 12y ago

Encryption is orthogonal to policy, which is the topic of the article.

nickysielicki 12y ago
I think that's untrue. Encryption can't shape policy, but it can make policy nonsensical.

at-fates-hands 12y ago

>>> The NSA internet data collection is perhaps the most frivolous government program in the history of the United States. This. If you listen to the old NSA guys who worked during the heights of the Cold War, who keep tabs on Russians and all the chaos in the Middle East, and had some of these tools at their disposal, they all say the NSA was a great machine for intelligence. It was a great machine for developing assets and tracking bad people. As soon as those weapons and the machine were turned inward on the people they were supposed to protect, they all said it was the worst possible scenario. Also, if you look at some of the higher profile hacker cases, and to some degree the Ross Ulbricht case, how were they all cracked? Not by the NSA and all its tools, they were all done with your standard, "feet on the street" agents developing leads, connecting dots, and capturing human surveillance. It wasn't some Flame or Stuxnet bug that brought down these guys, it was just solid detective work.

LLWM 12y ago
Cold warriors said the NSA spying on domestic targets was the worst possible scenario? Not, say, global thermonuclear annihilation?

joshontheweb 12y ago

letsencrypt.org looks like an awesome project! Can't wait to try it out.

IgorPartola 12y ago

Minor point: conservatives and liberals love their guns. What they say publicly doesn't change the fact that the gun manufacturers hold huge political power in the form of the NRA over both parties, and that's not likely to change. If this was not so, we'd have an Australia-style buyout a long time ago. As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and a crazy amount of police brutality simply because access to guns is easy and protected by the NRA. To bring it back to crypto: there is a correlation between easy to obtain $TECH and use of $TECH. Currently, HTTPS is not as easy as HTTP, so its adoption is less. Let's Encrypt will change that. Currently, access to guns is easy, so their adoption and use is high. With the current political climate that will never change.

worklogin 12y ago
>As is, we are stuck with monthly (or is it weekly now?) mass shootings, staggering numbers of handgun murders, and a crazy amount of police brutality simply because it's not simple, it's not all because of guns, and until you modify the 2nd amendment, there is no right of the government to remove guns from the public. I could go on about how our homicide rate is not too far out of line with other developed countries, how many many gun deaths are self inflicted, how there are a million things that kill more people each year than guns, but this goes way off the NSA topic. to crypto, that's been the whole discussion today with PGP, isn't it? That the reason it's not adopted is because it isn't easy.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  Agreed. Discussion for a different thread. I have pretty strong views against mass availability of guns as you can tell, but one issue at a time.
- thesimpsons1022 12y ago
  don't have to modify the second ammendement, just get non-conservative judges to interpret the consitution how it was meant to be.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago

room271 12y ago

I agree with the point about cryto, but I'm not sure your general point about society being unable to contain anything is sound. Guns are controlled in many countries quite effectively. Not completely of course, but compare for example gun crime in the UK with the US. There are fewer (if any) examples of drugs being controlled effectively (in non repressive regimes) I'll agree though.