Discussion: Here's Why The Government And Tech Can't Agree On Encryption

Discussion for article #243216

The people I’ve known in government follow the law and the constitution; a person is a target because they’ve convinced a judge there is reason to believe they are criminals or terrorists. These people have a moral compass.

The people in the “encryption everywhere” commuity that I know, have no moral qualms about helping anyone who wants to evade law enforcement or intelligence. They don’t ask if the person who wants to encrypt their email is a child pornographer, and they don’t ask if the person who wants to use Tor intends to set up an on-line illicit drug trading business; they think anything they do to make governing more difficult is good; they have no moral compass.

One answer may be that if you encrypt your data, and you behave in a way that gets the attention of law enforcement, we assume you are hiding your guilt until you provide law enforcement with the key. If all you are hiding is love letters or your porn viewing habits, provide the key and prove it. Otherwise we will take the allegations of law enforcement as true, and convict you on that basis. We do not permit people to refuse a subpoena for access to their home or business, we cannot allow them to refuse a subpoena for access to their data.

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So you’re saying we should make policy based on your assessment of whichever people you happen to know. Can’t say I’m sold, I’m afraid.

In the news today are a pair of stories about two groups in government who I’m not interested in entrusting my secure information with. One is the Chicago police, who suppressed for a year a video of an officer killing a helpless man with multiple shots, after which they mischaracterized the encounter to protect themselves. Also we have the story of the bombing in Afghanistan of a Doctors Without Frontiers hospital, where the official story is pretty damning, but we can’t trust it because the Pentagon refused to allow an independent investigation.

Police and military have long records of not being trustworthy in many instances. Yet those are precisely the ones who we’d be handing the keys to our private data to. No thanks.

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You could mandate that large corporations use standardized encryption packages, which would have built-in backdoors for government, and they would have to do it. But this wouldn’t stop everyday folk, or the odd terrorist, from using open-source encryption without the backdoors. So even leaving aside the laughable notion that major corporations would acquiesce to having weaker encryption than Joe Blow, this would still not do much to help security officials.

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I couldn’t disagree more. While I agree that your “answer” is possible to implement from a technological standpoint, your premise that you should be guilty until proven innocent strikes me as completely unamerican. Not only does it violate the “innocent until proven guilty” maxim, and probably the 4th amendment, it also strikes me as a really really bad idea.

It’s times like these that I think it’s important to put things in perspective. How many preventable violent crimes have happened as a result of cryptography? Compared to say drunk driving or gun violence? Why would we ever ever trade our liberty for such a marginal gain?

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Backdoors are HUGELY problematic. Ignoring all the problems with regards to the fact that criminals could just use encryption that doesn’t have backdoors, who is going to keep these keys safe?

If there were a key that could decrypt anyone’s data, how could you possibly keep that safe and only in the hands of “good guys”? Can you imagine how incredibly valuable that key would be? And how incredibly simple it would be to steal it without a trace? Basically you are creating a tiny piece of information, essentially a string of text, that would be worth billions of dollars.

That gives a whole lots of power to a select few. Seems like a very bad idea.

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The assumption is that folks have a reason for ‘ninth level’ security. As long as those checks (and Paypal transactions) clear, they have no real reason to believe something nefarious (?) is going on.

With that said…the folks behind HMA caught serious heat from their customers after it was found that they do bend when 5-0 comes a knocking.

“But Uncle Sam isn’t totally comfortable with that, because it’s also
complicating the work of tracking criminals and potential national-security threats.”

And right of the bat you fell into the government frame. Encryption on your phone does not complicate the tracking of criminals in the least. And ‘potential national-security threat’ is a collection of weasel words. Anything can be a potential national-security threat when you say it is so and we can’t tell you why, because national-security.

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Yup, except even worse, since unlike luggage, all computer information is connected and therefore easily available.

This would be like what would happen if someone got the TSA master keys, and simultaneously had access to every piece of luggage currently protected by TSA locks. And if TSA locks were the only locks allowed to protect your homes, offices, safe deposit boxes, and all your private documents and health records.

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I think it’s ridiculous to believe that tracking criminals would not be easier if all our information is transmitted in plain text. There’s a reason why ISIS guides recommend using iMessage to communicate.

The real question is whether the reduction in criminal tracking capabilities is worth the other benefits of encryption. And from my perspective it’s an unequivocal yes.

Maybe you should plaster your address, phone number, and photos of your possessions all over the Internet, and install a few publicly accessible webcams in your house. Or do you have something to hide? If you don’t want to do that, that’s a proof you’re a criminal!

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Except for all the ones that don’t, that have been tried and had their actions found unconstitutional. You know, people like Richard Nixon.

The basis of that argument flies directly in the face of why we created a Constitution in the first place. The Founding Fathers did not, for very correct reasons, subscribe to your line of thinking that everybody in the government is just peachy keen. So in essence, you are are arguing that you have a problem with our Constitution.

The right to privacy is one of the paramount rights, its found in the First Amendment, Third Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and Fifth Amendment.

And the entire premise you present here flies directly into the face of the actual argument the people you are hoisting up on a pedestal are saying. They don’t want to convince a judge and get a warrant, they want to be able to freely vacuum up data on each and every single American citizen. With the taxes paid by those very citizens.

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Guilty until proven innocent, eh? Hey, why not torture them if they don’t co-operate? After all they brought the torture on themselves by their own choices, right?

You do know that information about crimes is not the same as the crime itself. Police have been upholding the laws for many centuries without wiretaps. There’s other ways to get convictions…