
The US has gone F&*%ing mad - TheBiv
https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-u-s-has-gone-f-ing-mad-52e525f76447#.c5wkyjqdp
======
cvwright
It's surprising to me that so many pro-crypto people are so stridently anti-
gun.

The arguments in favor of restricting or banning the two technologies appear
(to me) very similar. There exists a technology that, in the hands of a law-
abiding person, can be used for legitimate purposes, including protecting
oneself from aggression. But in the wrong hands, the same tech can be used for
great harm. The logic in favor of restrictions goes like this: Most law-
abiding people don't actually require this form of protection, so we should
restrict access to prevent a malicious person from causing harm.

Therefore it's not surprising to me that 51% of Americans in a recent poll are
siding with the FBI over Apple. Many of those same Americans are probably in
favor of the assault weapons ban, etc, too.

~~~
jzymbaluk
The difference is that guns are inherently dangerous: their main purpose is to
cause destruction and harm, while encryption is not inherently dangerous. One
person with access to a gun can head down to the mall or a school and wreak
massive havok. Can you say the same about one person with an RSA-2048
algorithm?

I don't think the comparison between guns and encryption is fair at all, if
anything, encryption might be like the balaclava that the shooter uses to
cover their identity.

~~~
hga
I upvoted you, but I caveat that in the 10,000+ times I've shot a gun, far
less than a thousand times have I even intended to "cause destruction and
harm", i.e. kill an animal while hunting game or for pest control. Most of
those rounds I've fired were on my school's JROTC rifle range.

------
oldmanjay
> Which of the following would you attribute responsibility for what happened:

> [Picture of guns] [Picture of iPhone] [Picture of perpetrators (not
> present)]

The actual correct choice is missing.

------
johngalt
The laws originally used to weaken encryption were issued under ITAR
arms/munition restriction rules.

The author doesn't see this as two sides of the same coin? People have the
right to protect their privacy using encryption. They also have the right to
protect their lives using arms. Just because encryption can be used to
"protect terrorists" doesn't mean that is it's only use or even it's
predominant use. You could say the same for firearms. The arguments
surrounding gun control and encryption control are identical.

~~~
dalke
Those laws applied to the exportation of cryptosystem. There were no
prohibitions on domestic use of high-quality crypto.

That's the same coin which currently says that you can have your own military
flame thrower in the US but you can't export flame throwers to other countries
without a license.

So I don't think that coin is really relevant to the topic of being able to
defend yourself or your privacy.

------
nickthemagicman
Is it the over abundance if guns or the lack of accessible mental health care?
Reasons for mass shootings are more complex than 'take the guns away'. That's
black and white thinking.

~~~
hga
It also requires a willingness to lock up dangerous people, with two very
clear cut cases of the Colorado movie theater and Virginia Tech killers. The
former so alarmed his university psychiatrist that she alerted the school
authorities (as I recall, she was also on the responsible committee), but they
dropped the issue when he withdrew a few weeks before the shooting. In the
latter, a state judge order the shooter to get outpatient treatment, but the
state dropped the ball in seeing that that happened _or_ reporting it to the
Feds to put him on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System
(NICS), which would have prevented him from buying his guns.

The flip side is that while mental illness is not surprisingly strongly
correlated with mass shooters, the reverse is not true, the vast majority of
the mentally ill are not a danger to anyone but themselves.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Right there's a bunch of reasons. I hate guns myself but feel like the war
chant of 'take der guns' is a knee jerk reaction based on absolutely no
science.

------
13thLetter
People need to start understanding that the more you swear and shout, the less
convincing your argument is to anyone who doesn't already one hundred percent
agree with you -- in fact, the more it drives away people who are on the
fence. If I see an article with an obscenity in the headline or some clear
attempt to shock some imagined 1950s-style population of clueless milling
establishment types, I pretty much instantly move on.

------
EvanPlaice
Not hard to parse this one out.

Government doesn't like encryption because it limits their ability to
track/monitor people. Tracking is only supposed to apply to foreign actors but
in a nation of immigrants everybody is essentially treated as a threat.
compared to traditional ineffective methods (ie investigation, witness
testimony, etc) of law enforcement tracking provides objective evidence of
wrongdoing and removes human error from the equation.

Unfortunately, in such an overly litigious society where it's nearly
impossible for people to live their day-to-day lives without
knowingly/unknowingly breaking the law, tracking becomes just another
government funded system of subversion.

Industry hates encryption because of crypto currencies. The banking industry
has worked very hard to centralize it's power and eliminate competition.
Fortunately, for them there's no alternative. So there's no way for people to
objectively measure whether or not using one standard, centralized, and
strictly controlled/manipulated currency is a good thing. By default, we
delegate an unbelievable amount of power/control to a very small and
centralized group of individuals on the basis of 'trust us'. Previously, there
was no alternative so people quit asking whether or not that's a _really_ bad
idea.

Crypto currencies aren't a threat to the current system of currency control.
Rather they're an existential threat to the concept of central currency
control as a whole.

When the driving influence of government need is combined with the financial
backing of industry, laws get passed. Whether or not they're detrimental to
the individual rights of the people.

Guns have no such problems. They're guaranteed by the constitution. A ton of
government influence/resources comes directly from special interest groups
that focus on gun rights.

Industry is making a killing from all of the panic caused by the threat of
removing gun ownership rights.

Even _if_ gun ownership magically became illegal overnight it would be
impossible to enforce. They couldn't get the people to give up drinking
alcohol during prohibition despite overwhelming support from the majority
conservative Christians community at the time. What do you expect will happen
when they go up against the 'you can take my guns, when you can pry them from
my cold dead hands' crowd.

Attempting to outlaw guns in the US is the equivalent of the government
declaring war on the people. No matter how you spin the moral imperative,
it'll never happen.

So why do people bother debating it? Because there's an unbelievable amount of
money, power, influence that can be made from stirring up panic over morally
contentious issues.

Politicians get a ton of exercise by grandstanding on their personal
moral/liberty driven platforms. Industry rakes in a ton of money by
capitalizing on the uncertainty caused by the panic. The media has a hey day
over all the controversy and publishes endless streams of analysis, reactions,
counter reactions, speculation, etc. It's a modern day bonanza for everybody
involved.

Except the people suffer because all the chaos creates and perpetuates a
general culture of anger and mistrust between people divided on arbitrary
lines. Cultural beliefs are very difficult to objectively measure because they
last an entire generation. Without a central figurehead to influence the
direction of a culture, individuals very rarely if ever change their position
once it's established.

I can't think of a better strategy to divide, subvert, and conquer an entire
population of people. Divide people's moral identity in enough ways that
suddenly they have nothing in common. All it takes is a few morally ambiguous
issues and the backing of the media. The effects last a generation so a minor
investment pays dividends for many decades.

It's basically a thought virus for entire populations of people. Only those
who are capable of thinking/acting independently of their personal moral
beliefs are immune to it's effects.

