
We can solve the terrorist encryption problem with this one simple solution - YesThatTom2
http://everythingsysadmin.com/2015/12/five-reallys.html
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Spivak
> None of their dire predictions came true. "Indeed, in 1992, the FBI's
> Advanced Telephony Unit warned that within three years Title III wiretaps
> would be useless: no more than 40% would be intelligible and in the worst
> case all might be rendered useless. The world did not "go dark." On the
> contrary, law enforcement has much better and more effective surveillance
> capabilities now than it did then."

This seems like a silly argument as the goal of publicly available strong end-
to-end encryption is to make exactly this prediction come true. Strong privacy
advocates are rarely concerned with their friends or even some corporations
having their data, it's precisely the vague yet menacing government agencies
monitoring everyone's online activities that are the targets of these
'encryption for everyone' projects.

I absolutely agree with the author in general but there's no sense pretending
that protection against mass surveillance and state level actors isn't the end
goal.

It seems like the tech community is stuck on encryption because they belive
their government is evil, corrupt, and if they can just win this one fight
then they will be able to shield themselves from the rights violations they
can't hope to change. It's noble but incredibly defeatist. State level actors
will always have smarter people and unlimited resources to break whatever
walls you try to put up. This won't end until surveillance is made impossible
via legislation (or I suppose revolution if that's your thing).

~~~
mindslight
Surveillance won't be prevented through legislation. If the will existed to do
that, then that same will would simply reform _how_ that surveillance got
used.

Power always desires more control for its own sake, and this still applies
even when that power is divided via democracy.

Essentially government itself is inreformable with regards to this subject -
not this government, not that government, but the entire class of mandatory
centralized controllers [0]. It will always seek more control and legibility -
the only way for boundaries to get set is for things to be physically
_impossible_. It seems like the existence of encryption could be a law of
nature, so it makes sense to build on that and fortify the boundary rather
have legislating mathematics look almost reasonable.

[0] This is not a complete indictment of concept. Government can still create
good things and be a force for good. But many aspects of reality are not
straightforward for it to control. Long ago we decided it was a Bad Thing when
a government starts implementing the invasive controls necessary to reach over
these boundaries. When a government goes down that path, we call it
_totalitarianism_.

