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Do these guys seriously not realize that "the terrorists" will use end-to-end encryption whether it's legal or not? This literally makes no sense to me unless "
by kmicklas 11y ago
Do these guys seriously not realize that "the terrorists" will use end-to-end encryption whether it's legal or not? This literally makes no sense to me unless "the terrorists" is code for "the local weed dealer".
- Kalium 11y agoAs I understand it, real life terrorists are rarely competent enough to make this a major worry.
- jfolkins 11y agoAnother nation state (russia, china, etc) would be all too happy to sell crypto if there was market demand.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThere is no need to sell anything. Even if suddenly the entire world banned crypto at the same time, they'll be plenty of mirrored OS projects floating around the torrent networks.
- shitlord 11y agoThere's always a need for special purpose cryptosystems. Something that simplifies key management (e.g., for banks) will always be valuable, and it probably won't be sitting around on some random dude's hard drive.
- chopin 11y agoHere in Germany, we have banking trojans wehich are able to thwart two factor authentication by SMS. This requires considerable skill in synchronizing between the hacked computer and the hacked smart phone. I am pretty sure these guys can come up with decent encryption implementations if these are not available as open source any more. And the latter is pretty unlikely. In the 90's all but the US people had strong encryption after all. Open source projects working on crypto where just moving off-shore. A ban of end-to-end encryption will need to be enforceable. What will LEO do, if I come up with it? Bust my house? That's unthinkable in Europe. Enforceability also means that all communcations must go unencrypted. This merely would kill all online commercial activity.
- new_hackers 11y agoIt would make it much easier to avoid DRM, and to cheat in online games for sure. I'm guessing online gambling would be out the window. Also, I don't know if I would want to do any banking online.
- Joyfield 11y agoWell that can "easily" be solved by giving you a private key to use for your banking and e-com usage. Then "they" can decrypt it with ease and you stay "safe".
- noir_lord 11y agoUntil the lowest bid contractor who built the key storage system gets hacked or an admin walks out with an external hard drive. Then you have the massive cost of re-issuing all the keys.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThat would be Hollywood terrorists, or media channel terrorists. Real terrorists are organized and will use whatever they need to further their goals. It's also known that terrorist groups are recruiting lots of engineers. Moreover, organized crime groups, which in real life are much more serious problem, are quite adept with advanced technology. They set up their own radio communications networks and use aerial and submersible drones.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Moreover, organized crime, which in real life is much more serious problem Well, sure, in that terrorist organizations are, by definition, a subset of organized crime, so that the problem they pose must be strictly less than that of organized crime more generally.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoTechnically yes, but in practice people (and media) usually consider them as a separate group from organizations like mafias and drug cartels. I think treating terrorism as something "special" and therefore "more evil" is very harmful.
- pdkl95 11y ago> Real terrorists... ...get elected as politicians or use their cash for more productive uses such as regulatory capture. > Moreover, organized crime... ...simply used their captured politicians to make their activities legal. Why use cloak-and-dagger tricks when it is cheaper and easier buy the organizations that get in your way?
- TeMPOraL 11y agoMayby I should have written "real-life amateur terrorists / organized crime". Crime professionals don't use drones for smuggling, they use them for enforcement.
- StavrosK 11y agoThere are no terrorists, there are just enemies who aren't as well equipped as you.
- Igglyboo 11y agoOnce you make it illegal to do/have/use ___, Only criminals will do/have/use ___. (guns, encryption, drugs, etc.)
- Roodgorf 11y agoI'll take tautologies for 400.
- jdp23 11y agoIf we outlaw tautologies, then only the outlaws will have tautologies!
- smitherfield 11y agoOnly a Sith deals in absolutes. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgpytjlW5wU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgpytjlW5wU
- shkkmo 11y agoSo... you're saying you're a Sith?
- smitherfield 11y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgpytjlW5wU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgpytjlW5wU
- nathan_long 11y agoWhoops, you just made an absolute statement. Whoops, so did I.
- remarkEon 11y agoLike Omar Little?
- worklogin 11y ago
- blfr 11y agoYes but it's unlikely that they'd be able to develop it. They rely on consumer products just like everyone else.
- tadfisher 11y agoWould this bill also remove all implementations of, say, RSA from the Internet?
- hackcasual 11y agoI'm going to make a wild ass guess, and say they haven't thought that far ahead.
- oberstein 11y agoThe Arab world traditionally has had great mathematicians. I'm sure there is a bright young student in university right now who could write a good enough PGP implementation for the right price.
- murbard2 11y agoNitpick, but most have them happen to have been Persians, colonized by the Arabs.
- skeuomorf 11y agoCitation? Cause there has been plenty of Arab mathematicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medieval_Arab_mathematicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medieval_Arab_mathema...
- murbard2 11y agoOh for sure, but a majority of Persians during the Islamic Golden Age. I have no horse in that race, just a random fact I noticed while reading about each. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medieval_Persian_mathematicians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medieval_Persian_mathe...
- superuser2 11y agoThey probably do. Having only "the terrorists" using encryption would make them much easier to spot. Encrypted traffic from your IP could become probable cause for a search warrant.
- jules 11y agoYou can easily hide encrypted data in other data.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI wonder if they could see through that given the inherent randomness of encrypted data. In such a world, "random is resistance". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE6RtzwVdHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE6RtzwVdHI
- tormeh 11y agoHow easy is it to tell encrypted and compressed material apart? There would be little structure in both, I think.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoYou're right, I forgot about that. Since you brought it up, I wonder if encryption and compression aren't both instances of a common mathematical phenomena. They seem very similar to each other.
- naveen99 11y agoNo. You can have a general purpose encryption algorithm , but not a general compression algorithm. Encryption generally requires increasing data size. Compression requires decreasing data size and is not possible in the general case.
- sandmansandine 11y agoAs I understand it they don't exactly need a search warrant currently. http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/20/leaked-nsa-doc-says-it-can-collect-and-keep-your-encrypted-data-as-long-as-it-takes-to-crack-it/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/20/leaked-...
- felipeerias 11y agoOf course they do: that's why simply running Tor qualifies you for extra attention from their side. Remember that they decide who to murder using metadata. A world where only "evil people" used encription would be ideal: they would know who to bomb right away!
- josu 11y agoRemember that it's pretty much impossible to decipher a message, but it's trivial to tell if a message is encrypted or not. Once you outlaw encryption all encrypted communications will be illegal and the people that use them terrorists. This is how it begins.
- kryps 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
- staunch 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
- zyxley 11y agoI imagine it wouldn't be too hard to take encrypted text and transform it into something indistinguishable from the already unintelligible spam emails that pass through global networks en masse every day.
- spacemanmatt 11y agoSome say this has already happened.
- click170 11y agoDo you have any supporting evidence? I believe it may be incorrect because in my (limited) understanding, good encryption is indistinguishable from random sequences of characters. How can you tell a string of random characters is simply random, or is an encrypted message, unless said encryption includes some kind of header or marker information? I may simply be wrong but I'm curious about the answer too.
- cortesoft 11y agoThey will start making random strings illegal