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Encryption Is Not a Crime
- jigletgooner 1y ago[flagged]
- ajsnigrutin 1y agoNot a crime, but somehow our dear EU overloads try every year or so to make it a crime in any way possible (eg. chat control). If we want to play in a world with full transparency, let's start with the politicians!
- candiddevmike 1y agoThe same people who want to make encryption a crime (like Trump 45[0]) are using signal to discuss sensitive information without an audit trail. It's absolutely rules for thee. 0 - https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/27/trump-officials-weigh-encryption-crackdown-1385306 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/27/trump-officials-we...
- rdm_blackhole 1y agoSame with Chat Control. LEO and EU Mps would be exempted from being surveilled because their lives and communications need to be private since they are very important but yours, god no! And people wonder why democracy is out of style. With democrats such as these, you don't need tyrants.
- zwnow 1y agoAnd like always they claim its to protect our children... Who could possibly argue against protecting children?
- ajsnigrutin 1y agoWhy do you need encryption? Are you sending pedo photos? Are you a pedo? Looks guys, here's a pedo who wants encryption not to get caught! /s Also 's/pedo/terrorist/', or {russian|chinese|iranian|north korean} spy or any "bad guy of the day".
- fsflover 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
- _Algernon_ 1y agoAnd also apply it equally to ecommerce and homebanking. Lets see how happy the voters are when they have to start walking to their Bank again every week, can't order their latest temu toxic waste product anymore and their GDP drops in half.
- kubb 1y agoThere's an abstract argument template that I've noticed floating around. It goes like this: 1. There's a thing T in the world, and that thing has negative outcomes X, Y, Z, and positive outcomes A, B, C. 2. Some people believe that Y and Z are so bad, that they want to partly compromise C to diminish them. 3. However that will never work! And they'll definitely also take B if we let them mess with C. 4. Besides, C is so important, that we should accept Y and Z to have it. I've heard it many times before. Reading this post feels like watching a rerun of Friends.
- chupasaurus 1y agoMy favorite version of it is "Let's ban air because terrorists breathe".
- kubb 1y agoI love strawmen, but I've seen way too many in my time.
- pyfon 1y agoGuantanamo Bay was a thing though. Remember you are not banning all air. And of course the definition of terrorist is will vary based on what politicians want. US recently sent some "Terrorists" to a gulag for example.
- chupasaurus 1y ago> Remember you are not banning all air. Nope, it's about exactly that. This policy would work only for law-abiding citizens which terrorists are not, that's the point. Added: The current gulag expeditions in US nor Guantanamo have nothing to do with US citizens, which is a big difference from GGP's comment.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- marcosdumay 1y ago
- mohi-kalantari 1y agoIt’s honestly annoying how often experts speak up about this, and still nothing changes. We’re stuck in the same cycle—fear gets in the way, and in the end, it’s our privacy and security that suffer. If anything, this should be a sign to invest in stronger encryption and better law enforcement tactics that don’t mess with the tools keeping us safe online.
- candiddevmike 1y agoImagine how much more successful and productive humanity would be if we weren't constantly being told to fear our neighbors.
- DarkWiiPlayer 1y ago> Ignoring experts doesn't make facts disappear And yet it seems like every last politician without literally a single exception thinks that they it does work that way.
- jdhxhchdyrjh456 1y ago[dead]
- 9rx 1y ago> It's not a crime to lock your home's door for protection, why would it be a crime to lock your digital door? A locked home's door is still trivially opened. You can pick the lock or even apply simple brute force, neither of which all that difficult, and open happily it will. Similarly, I don't suppose anyone would be concerned about you using rot13 encryption. If a home could be sealed to the same degree as strong encryption, absolutely it would be a crime, for better or worse.
- kube-system 1y agoUnder what law? High security vaults are not legally controlled or prohibited in the US.
- 9rx 1y agoWhich high security vault can the government not gain access to under any circumstances? I expect you'll find decent explosives or a bulldozer will get them in just fine.
- like_any_other 1y agoSo will a hardware backdoor planted by your maid, or a telescopic lens pointed at your screen, or laser microphone on your window, get them into your e2e encrypted chats.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 9rx 1y agoHuh? The encrypted data is at rest and the only person who knew the key is dead. Your plan makes no sense.
- like_any_other 1y agoIs encrypted data at rest belonging to dead people such a problem, that it's worth sacrificing everyone's privacy?
- loftsy 1y agoSomething is a crime if society determines that it should be so. Nothing more. Clearly the pressure on government to write these laws is coming from somewhere. You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
- mathieuh 1y agoThe arguments from the other side are of the "think of the children" and "tough on crime" variety. They are purely emotional and if you try to dispute them they just respond with "so you don't care about children?". It's like trying to argue with a religious person on matters of faith, you're just not very likely to convince them. *edited to add "on matters of faith"
- voidUpdate 1y ago"Think of the children" is used so often when talking about LGBT issues, often not thinking at all about the LGBT children
- 9rx 1y ago"Think of the children" really means "Think of my children". Nobody gives a shit about someone else's children.
- ivl 1y agoThe arguments are mostly that they dislike what can be accomplished via math. “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia” isn't exactly an 'argument' so much as an insistence. The article does address the flaws in some of their arguments (encryption inconveniences law enforcement, think of the children) by pointing out that the average person and children are kept save from criminal elements by encryption.
- loftsy 1y agoYou can make gun fairly easily with what can be accomplished with a CNC machine. It is still illegal.
- elric 1y agoIf we had trustworthy governments, or trustworthy police agencies, then maybe mandated backdoors wouldn't be all that bad. But if anything, recent events that clearly demonstrated that governments are not trustworthy, even if one is trustworthy today it couldn't become an evil regime tomorrow, and handing all your power over literally anything to such an organization does not seem wise.
- socalgal2 1y agoIt doesn't seem like trustworthy governments is the issue. You can't have backdoors period because they'll be leaked / discovered and used by bad actors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPBH1eW28mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPBH1eW28mo
- elric 1y agoThat too. But even if the government was perfect and trustworthy and free of leaks, that can still all go out the window as soon as a less trustworthy government is elected.
- TehCorwiz 1y agoI have yet to see a case against someone that hinged on some data that was encrypted. Almost every tale from some cell needing to be cracked has ended in a fart because they got the information anyway using old-fashioned police investigation. We went from Patriot Act to literally disappearing people without due process in only 23 years. Imagine if they could also decrypt your phone and plant evidence in advance.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoHere's one: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/05/23/meet-man-behind-controversial-iphone-cracking-company-cellebrite/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/05/23/meet-man-b...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 1y agoThis is too many words to convince someone who already doesn’t believe this. Put more simply: the modern internet doesn’t work without encryption, it is a fundamental part of the technology. Without it, anyone could log into any of your accounts, take your money, messages, photos, anything.
- 123pie123 1y ago>Put more simply: the modern internet doesn’t work without encryption being pandantic that should read - the modern usage of the internet.. the internet does work ok without encryption, has it has done from a long time ago
- kube-system 1y agoThat’s exactly the pedantry that muddies the water and confuses people on this issue. Colloquially, it is a distinction without a difference. The internet as normal people know it does not work without encryption.
- 123pie123 1y agoI do agree, it depends on the context, eg talking to my family vs this forum This site is not full of "normal people" and it shouldn't confuse people/ muddy the water if being dicussed here
- kube-system 1y agoI agree, but I am saying this here because the OP is written for a nontechnical audience.
- gruez 1y ago>Put more simply: the modern internet doesn’t work without encryption, it is a fundamental part of the technology. Without it, anyone could log into any of your accounts, take your money, messages, photos, anything. I'm pretty pro encryption, but even this is pretty dishonest. Phones (ie. PSTN, not iPhones) aren't "encrypted" by any means, but there's plenty of sensitive information sent over it. Lawyers fax each other important documents, and doctors fax each other medical recorcds. There was (is?) even telephone banking where you could do basic transactions over the phone. Even today, some banks/brokerages require you to phone in to do certain high risk operations (eg. high value transfers or account resets). All of this happens without encryption. While that's less security that I'd like, it's safe to say that "anyone could log into any of your accounts, take your money, messages, photos, anything" isn't true either.
- wulfstan 1y agoPlaying devil's advocate here... What is wrong with: * an expiring certificate * issued by the device manufacturer or application creator * to law enforcement * once a competent court of law has given approval * that would allow a specific user's content to be decrypted prior to expiry There are a million gradations of privacy from "completely open" to "e2e encrypted". Governments (good ones!) are rightly complaining that criminals are using encryption to commit particularly awful crimes. Politicians are (mistakenly) asking for a master key - but what I feel we should as a community support is some fine-grained legal process that would allow limited access to user information if justified by a warrant. Competent jurisdictions allow this for physical search and seizure. It's not unreasonable to ask for the same thing to apply to digital data.
- kube-system 1y agoIf the OEM can issue such a certificate, it probably isn’t necessary, because they can access the data and be subpoenaed directly, no?
- wulfstan 1y agoYes, I am arguing for is requiring OEMs to implement this mechanism. Frankly, if the NSA wanted to have Apple build a custom iOS version for a criminal so they could sniff his network traffic and flash content from the comfort of Maryland I don't believe that would be impossible today.
- kube-system 1y agoIf an OEM could decrypt a users data, a government typically won’t bother to do it themselves. They’ll just use legal mechanisms to require the OEM to do the work for them.
- wulfstan 1y agoAgain, as a thought experiment, what legal protections can we put in place - an encryption ombudsman or independent authority - that would allow an arms length, controlled and expiring mechanism that allows limited access to a user's data? What would we as a society be happy to accept? I don't think the demand is an unreasonable one, but I'm trying to figure out what a reasonable collection of mechanisms looks like.
- i5heu 1y agoI do not like these framings of "not a" because it always sounds so suspicious like "we are not a cult". It puts the idea into the world that it could be a crime and maybe that it is the status quo. Much better IMHO is something like "Encryption is a fundamental right.", "Encryption protects everyone.", "Without encryption there is no democracy." and so on. Maybe "Don’t let them take your right to privacy."
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoI wish Americans still believed in American freedoms Encryption is free association and free speech. Talking to someone about what I like without eavesdroppers Transitioning gender is also free speech, freedom of expression. Presenting how I like and not how some wannabe king wants me to
- hilbert42 1y ago"I wish Americans still believed in American freedoms" Yeah, as someone who's viewed America from the outside for decades tragically it's no longer the country I once knew.
- clarionbell 1y agoThe big issue right now is that they can't seem to agree on what those freedoms even mean.
- giantg2 1y agoI think this is a perception formed by media biases. Pretty much any right or freedom evaluated on an individual basis will show that rights and freedoms have expanded (at least up to a few months ago). Many of the negative things being done today have been done in one form or another for a generation or two. I'm not saying that they're right or shouldn't change, just that the perspective of eroding freedoms or right is generally not true outside of business regulations.
- 1y ago
- Fokamul 1y agoI'm not surprised, UK became literal African/Middle-East hell hole. They've kicked out all working immigrants and replaced them with ultra-religious freaks. And of course, UK being a country, where every form of self-defense is the most serious crime, when attacked you must call police, then lay on the ground and die, is cherry on top.
- gambiting 1y ago>>I'm not surprised, for years UK become literal African/Middle-East hell hole. I wonder where in the UK you live, because up here in the North that definitely doesn't seem right - it's rare to see anyone non-white on the street.
- stronglikedan 1y agoIt's pretty universally known that where you live could now be considered a microcosm relative to the rest of the country. Although, I wouldn't necessarily have used "hell hole" to describe the rest.
- cjs_ac 1y agoEnd-to-encryption is a good thing, and so is this website providing information about how to use it. But this particular article represents a particular pathology surrounding freedom. Freedom is supposed to be about doing what you want. It's not about making florid speeches about how free you supposedly are. If you want to use end-to-end encryption, just use it, and maybe offer advice to others on how to use it. There are some politicians who have decided that only bad people use encryption. Going up to one of these politicians and trying to explain that you use encryption but you're actually a good person won't convince them that encryption's okay, it'll just convince them that you're a bad person. Politics is one of those things that attracts people who just want to find the shortest route to a decision about who are the good people and who are the bad people, and keeping secrets isn't something that those sorts of people like other people doing. Unless you have evidence that the government is rounding up people just for using encryption, all this sort of advocacy does is to draw attention to you having something to hide, and therefore probably being some sort of wrong'un. If the government is rounding up people for using encryption, that's a specific threat you need to respond to, and starting a public campaign is not the right response.
- jagger27 1y agoEncryption is a threat to power structure. Of course if you're in power, and you're under threat, you criminalize threat. As long as we preserve the knowledge of one-time pads, they will not take this power from us.
- SirMaster 1y agoThis kind of reminds me about the same sort of assertion that BitTorrent is not illegal.
- EGreg 1y agoJust a bit more color on where this war on encryption is currently being fought: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-encryption/214/13 https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-en...
- jaxn 1y agoI believe encryption is the most important 2nd Amendment issue of our time, but I never see it framed that way.
- 15155 1y agoBecause SF-dwelling tech bros demand free speech but can perform the necessary mental gymnastics to overlook the right to manufacture and possess technology that has existed for over a century. See also: the ACLU.
- jmclnx 1y agoSeems to be geared towards Apple, but informative nevertheless. To me, the only sure end-end encryption is gnupg, where you personally create the keys and distribute.
- bitbasher 1y agoThe problem is the average person doesn't care very much or understand it. If you ask anyone if privacy matters they will of course say yes. If you ask them why they use software with telemetry or websites with Google Analytics they will simply shrug. If you ask them if it's alright for the NSA to collect and analyze data from everyone they will say yes and they have nothing to hide. People don't know what privacy is. They don't know what they are fighting for or where the fight is taking place. If you take that and then add encryption to the mix... and you have politicians and agency plants talking about "saving the children from online pedos" by banning these "encryption apps and technology"....
- flessner 1y ago"Secrecy of correspondence" is a longstanding legal principle in many countries (e.g. in Germany since the unification in 1871, in the US there was a supreme court ruling in 1877) The only way to guarantee secrecy is through encryption, preferably e2e.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago>People don't know what privacy is. You nailed the problem. Privacy is the tension between freedom and overwatch. Perfect privacy would yield zero justice, while zero privacy yields big brother/1984 overwatch. A healthy balance must exist for society to thrive.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoAs a software engineer who specialized in cryptography in the 1990s and didn't work for the NSA (working for RSADSI, Bell Canada and Certicom) I feel I have an informed vantage point from which to offer notes. a) This seems like a decent introduction to the subject of cryptographic regulation in the last 30 years. It's far from exhaustive, however. I do appreciate the collected references from diverse points in the last several decades. b) I would have mentioned "Sink Clipper" and the ACLU "dotRights" campaigns. Neither are especially easy to find in the increasingly enshittified google cache, but Le Monde Diplomatique has this article, complete with a link to Sink Clipper poster (I think from the mind of Kurt Stammberger) that no collection of CypherPunk oriented ephemera from the era can be without: https://mondediplo.com/openpage/selling-your-secrets https://mondediplo.com/openpage/selling-your-secrets The ACLU dotRights.org site seems to have receded into history, but some of it's content is still available at the archive. For example: https://web.archive.org/web/20100126102126/http://dotrights.org/news https://web.archive.org/web/20100126102126/http://dotrights.... c) Herb Lin presented a very nice paper back in the day comparing PROPOSED encryption regulation with ACTUAL encryption regulation. I think the thesis was through the 90s, proposed regulation was increasingly draconian (clipper, etc.) but actual regulation was liberalizing (effective deregulation of open-source tools.) I found Herb's page at Stanford and heartily recommend it if for no other reason than it's sheer volume of written material: https://herblin.stanford.edu/recent-publications/recent-publications/articles-and-book-chapters https://herblin.stanford.edu/recent-publications/recent-publ... d) I was a little surprised the wired article linked to at the beginning of the piece didn't have that issue's front cover, which was sort of a cultural touchstone at the time. But you can see it here: https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/the-best-defense-against-rubber-hose-cryptanalysis/ https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/the-best-defense-against-... - and this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1cgpktp/31_years_ago_today_the_forefathers_of_bitcoin_on/#lightbox https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1cgpktp/31_years_a... (dang, look at those non-receding hairlines!) e) Making the web "secure" or "private" is like putting lipstick on a pig. Modern web technology is designed to de-anonymize and collect identifying information to enable targeted ad delivery. Thought I generally respect Moxie Marlinspike and have no great beef with Signal, there has been a concerted effort to exploit its device sharing protocol and your carrier and national governments can easily extract traffic analysis info from people using it. Were I to add one sentence to this guide, it would be "While these tools are better than nothing, they are far from perfect." f) The guide seems to conflate encryption with privacy. Encryption technology can enable privacy, but you're not going to get privacy from encryption technology unless you pair it with well reasoned policy (for organizations) and operational guidelines (for both organizations and individuals.) The extreme example is to say "nothing stops a participant in an encrypted communication from sharing the un-encrypted plaintext after it's recovered." People earnestly trying to maintain message security probably know not to do that, but when talking about exchanging keys and figuring out which keys or organizations you should trust, it's easy for even the well-informed to make privacy-eroding decisions. So... I think this article is a good jumping off point, covering material I would call "required, but not sufficient." I would just view it as the beginning of a deep-dive instead of the end.
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoAlso... we're throwing around words like "crime" and "terror" and talking about shadowy quasi-governmental organizations encroaching on civil rights to privacy. I offer this commentary from the Eurythmics' score to Michael Radford's 1984 film "1984" to serve as background music for our discussions. https://youtu.be/IcTP7YWPayU https://youtu.be/IcTP7YWPayU