
Five Eyes' Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption - asadhaider
https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national-security/five-country-ministerial-2018/access-evidence-encryption
======
AndyMcConachie
I think what bothers me the most about this is how it was put together. It's
clearly some kind of agreement between the 'five eyes' (I had no idea they
actually called themselves that publicly) to spy on their citizenry. But why
am I, an American citizen, reading this on an Australian site? And why are
intelligence agencies creating policy?

Perhaps the fact that I work in more of government environment than a private
one explains my sensitivity to this. But seriously, this is the kind of
statement that heads of state or foreign ministers should make publicly.

"We, the Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Immigration Ministers of
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States"

None of these agencies have been given the right by their respective nations
to formulate treaties and agreements, and that's what really bothers me.
People might joke about the deep-state, but this is what we mean. Intelligence
agencies are formulating policy that will have great effect on the citizenry
of their respective countries, and there is no discussion of it in these
country's parliamentary or congressional chambers. Intelligence agencies
should not get together and form pacts. The fact that they can achieve this
shows the general erosion of democratic values in all five countries.

In the 1990's when Americans concerned with government spying were talking
about Echelon and the NSA, the Five Eyes were considered a bit of a secret
thing. Everyone knew about it, but I don't remember any of the five countries
ever confirmed it. Now they're just out in the open brazenly proclaiming
principles and policies, as if these intelligence agencies represent us.

"Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to
information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our countries,
we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to
achieve lawful access solutions."

Which I translate as, "Give us what we want or we'll take it. We are judge,
jury and executioner." Seriously, what does "legislative or other measures"
mean? Are they just brazenly admitting that they're not bound by law, in
contradiction with the immediately proceeding paragraph? Intelligence agencies
don't get to pursue legislative measures in a democracy. We tell them how they
should be bound, they don't get to design their own shackles.

This whole statement is just incredibly brazen and undemocratic.

~~~
LMYahooTFY
This appears to be some sort of hybrid formal diplomacy/PR for these judiciary
officials.

I don't mean to say there's absolutely no value in what they're doing, just
that they've gone to effort to draft detailed press releases regarding
consensual goals.

[https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/five-country-
ministeri...](https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/five-country-ministerial-
meeting-and-quintet-of-attorneys-general-concludes-692109201.html)

------
zmmmmm
> Privacy laws must prevent arbitrary or unlawful interference, but privacy is
> not absolute.

This is really it in a nutshell. They say this like it is assumed, but this is
actually a new beachhead in the war on individual rights. There seems to me
something sacred about the idea that I as a human being can exchange thoughts
with another without those thoughts being appropriated by the government. It
seems to fundamentally violate something about what it means to be human to
say that my thoughts are not really mine: they belong first and foremost to
the government, then I can have them. Is there anything about us humans that
is really totally belongs to us, or are we nothing in and of ourselves, just
mechanisms to serve the functioning of a government?

~~~
metta2uall
Privacy is not the same as free speech - the thoughts are still yours but can
be monitored if there is a threat to public safety as judged by our judicial
system (which by all means should be continuously improved). Most individual
rights are not absolute - we can be detained if suspected of having a
dangerous disease, we're not allowed to shout "there's a bomb!", we can be
followed & our homes searched if we're suspected of criminality by a judge,
our children can be taken away if we severely neglect our responsibilities to
them, etc...

~~~
Silhouette
_Most individual rights are not absolute_

Indeed, they can't be, because rights and freedoms that we value often
conflict, and then we have to determine which of two good things we should
prioritise when we would like to support both if that were possible.

Still, there is a reason that legal systems tend to place protection of
fundamental rights and freedoms high up, such that it requires a more serious
harm to the rights and freedoms of others to justify infringing on them. It's
to challenge the erosion of legal protections by successive temporary
governments at the expense of the people.

If governments want to mandate an end to meaningful security in
telecommunications, that is both a practical threat to everyone's safety in
numerous small ways and a more fundamental threat to the nature of democracy
itself. To justify such a draconian measure, the harm to other rights and
freedoms that is being defended against must be greater.

In my experience, neither my own government nor its allies has got within the
same galaxy as clearing that bar yet, and that is why I do not support this
kind of proposal and will typically vote against anyone who does regardless of
any other policies they have.

------
BLKNSLVR
In the context of the Mossack Fonseca Panama Papers scandal, the Paradise
Papers, the Bahama Leaks, Apple's double Dutch Irish sandwich tax evasion
resulting in Billions of dollars kept offshore for a US company (as a single
example of the worldwide problem of corporate tax avoidance), and the complete
inability to track company ownership due to 'offshore shell companies', this
new attack on encryption doesn't even rate in terms of its ability to make a
difference to the problems they say they're trying to solve.

This is targeting individuals. It is phenomenally small-fry when you look at
the kind of funds that terrorist group seem to have access to.

Commonwealth Bank, an Australian Bank, failed to report suspicious
transactions totalling $77m over the course of a number of months (ref:
[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2017/aug/03/commo...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2017/aug/03/commonwealth-bank-accused-of-money-laundering-and-terrorism-
financing-breaches))

And this was in breach of existing laws; no new laws were needed to prevent
this kind of thing, just enforcement.

Terrorism isn't funded by the little people sending encrypted messages.
Terrorism is funded by large groups of people using shell companies to hide
their ownership, often funnelling money from legitimate business using
loopholes, finding edge-cases.

This is swatting a mosquito with a sledgehammer whilst ignoring the alligator
that's already engulfed your leg up to the knee.

If they were serious, they'd be trying to solve the big problems before
trimming the fringes.

Again, this is about nation-state power in conflict with multi-national
technology corporate power. It's not about terrorism or pedophilia or people
smuggling or money laundering, because these measures will have no effect on
those things. These new surveillance measures will allow street-corner dealers
and casual drug users to be prosecuted whilst the suppliers continue to plough
their laundered money into investment portfolios - and isn't that what
conservative governments like to see?

~~~
metta2uall
The issues with encryption technologies is a separate matter to the
prosecution of large-scale criminality & the closure of white-collar loopholes
- both of which of course we need much more of. Saying we're ignoring the
alligator is quite an exaggeration though, and access to communications (with
a court order) would be very useful to large-scale criminal cases, including
in working up the chain. Many international paedophile rings have been
successfully caught out.

~~~
Silhouette
_Saying we 're ignoring the alligator is quite an exaggeration though, and
access to communications (with a court order) would be very useful to large-
scale criminal cases, including in working up the chain._

It's a shame the relevant governments and agencies didn't think more about
that before they acted as they have historically. To my mind, the issue of
government access to encrypted communications has now become a moral dilemma
that sits alongside the principle of not negotiating under threats or the
fruit of the poisonous tree legal doctrine. Obviously and regrettably it will
be harmful in some individual cases, but that may be the cost of not
undermining the integrity of the whole system, and that in turn may be the
greater good (or, if you prefer, the lesser of two evils).

------
jstanley
There is a second page to this, linked in the navbar on the left, but not very
obvious, Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces:
[https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national-
security/five-...](https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national-
security/five-country-ministerial-2018/countering-illicit-use-online-spaces)

It reads like a parody.

~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
From that page...

> We are also increasingly seeing the use of online spaces to spread
> disinformation, sow division, and undermine our democratic institutions. The
> proliferation of interference activities and disinformation undermines the
> trust of citizens in online communications and information, delegitimizing
> the benefits and opportunities that communications and social media
> platforms create.

 _Sigh!_

~~~
crunchlibrarian
I'm pretty sure they're going to define it as: if it's in the interests of the
US State Department then it's very good. Everything else is disinformation.

This is utter insanity. Do they have nobody in the room willing to raise their
hand anymore? These institutions need to be reformed, now.

~~~
bigiain
Everybody in power here has both hands full stabbing each other in the back.
I'm guessing they just yell "Yeah, whatever the US ambassador says" at their
staffers as their "sign off" on legislation...

------
amanzi
> "The Governments of the Five Eyes encourage information and communications
> technology service providers to voluntarily establish lawful access
> solutions to their products and services that they create or operate in our
> countries"

Voluntary compliance isn't going to work, so why don't these five governments
create legislation to force companies to comply? In other words, any
"information and communications technology service providers" are forced to
comply otherwise they must either shut down or change countries.

Let's see how well that works out for them...

~~~
dmitrygr
I imagine it'll actually work out perfectly fine for them. Not doing business
in all of those countries would be suicide for any company. I mean, look at
Google. Even they are caving to China now. and the demands these guys make are
less egregious than the ones China makes now.

~~~
amanzi
Sure, but if Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, etc, etc,
all refused to comply, what would the govt do? Tell them to shut down?

~~~
mitchellst
No, they wouldn't shut them down. They'd open up the toolbox of administrative
law to bleed them. We don't need to pass new laws. (that's what the line about
"enforcement" means.) The US Government can just barrage each noncompliant
company with investigations, subpoenas, law suits, enforcement actions,
national security letters, consent decrees and the like. They can find every
issue or abuse of the platforms that no sane person would prosecute, then
prosecute (or settle) them. They can sniff out (or manufacture) contradictions
in depositions and pin charges of perjury, obstruction, or lying to law
enforcement on individuals at the company. Given enough time, a concerted
government effort to make life miserable for any of these companies would sap
them of money, power, morale, and attention. (Their attention being valuable,
the thing that keeps them competitive in the global marketplace.) This is a
mirror image of the no-encryption-without-permission issue: administrative law
allows the government to punish using process. You can't really run a company
of any size except at the government's pleasure, because they can use
administrative law to impose arduous costs and punishment through process.

------
guiambros
> _Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to
> information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our
> countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other
> measures to achieve lawful access solutions._

In other words: you better implement a backdoor now, or things will get ugly
in the future.

The worst part is that I can see several companies falling into the trap and
implementing stupid backdoors, that will be exploited by governments and
script-kids alike.

------
Nasrudith
That is a laugh real laugh riot, tear gas canisters deployed, millions of
dollars worth of damage, martial law declared to restore order level laugh
riot.

Lawful access when they have hoover everything for "security" and actively
undermine everyone's security when they have the most to lose from insecurity
too. The damn fools also fail to realize the law doesn't change reality -
throwing a gun used in a crime in the ocean makes it nearly impossible to find
the murder weapon but that doesn't mean that you can stop the ocean from
convealing evidence.

If they cared about lawful access they wouldn't be facing such widespread
proliferation of encryption. They are clearly acting in bad faith and should
be treated appropriately.

------
ObsoleteNerd
"It's been swell, but the swellings gone down".

It was a fun 25 years for me personally. Time to re-think my entire online
existence and take up knitting or something.

I don't even do anything "wrong", I make games, and tinker with electronics,
but I do NOT like knowing that every single private chat I have is monitored,
collected, stored, and searched. I've used lots of encrypted chat programs and
encrypted data storage because MY stuff is MINE, not theirs.

They don't let us read their private documents and emails, or read their
private chats. Increasingly, it's the people in power who are caught being the
ones doing fucked up things to children (concentration camps in the US, child
rape rings in the UK, etc)... yet WE are the ones who have to give up all
privacy, all rights, so they can monitor us?

In the great words of my countrymen: Yeahnah.

It's despicable how our (AU) country's sycophant nature has dragged us down
the authoritarian well with the US/UK. We had a chance to stand up on our own,
with a good strong economy while the rest of the world struggled with the GFC,
our own tech companies showing they can stand up on an international stage,
and the beginnings of a world class fibre network that would've propelled us
into the future comfortably.

Instead, we get this. Bow down to your masters, do as we say not as we do, and
be happy we're not locking you up (yet) for wanting to talk to your wife about
personal medical things in private, or store your personal belongings (photos
of our kids, banking details, passwords) in a secure place where no one steal
them. Why won't we think of the children?! Says the same people stealing them,
raping them, and ruining their future.

~~~
gwillz
+1 for 'sycophant' \- thanks old mate Turnbull for the English lessons.

On topic though, I'm too disappointed in Australia not being able to properly
about privacy properly. It's come up a few times and the discussions almost
made a difference - the ISP data retention policy, the medical database,
something-something about the big banks. There are occasionally little stories
that largely go unnoticed about the government quietly asking around for back
doors and whatnot.

But every time we roll over and show our belly.

Why is it so hard to convince people this is an important issue?

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
I have a significant number of very technically advanced friends (due to
previous jobs). The exact type you'd think would care about this. They
couldn't care less if they tried. Somehow, at some point, the "geeks" just
decided that unless you're a blackhat, or buying/selling drugs online, or into
some underground scene where you specifically are trying to circumvent the
authorities, then it just doesn't matter. They all use Facebook, Instagram,
Messenger, etc etc, while decrying the "evil" of China.

I'm not sure when or how the shift happened, but the same friends I use to sit
on IRC with and rant about open source, privacy, and the important of
encryption, have all just... given up.

I've been fighting for and preaching the importance of privacy my entire life,
and my dad was a life-long activist (physically, too) for human rights, so
I've been exposed to "the fight" since before I was born, and for the first
time ever, I'm starting to feel like I should just give up, make an FB
account, shut down my Pi-Hole/OpenVPN, and just "wait to die" as they say.

It's a bloody depressing era. I want to wake up.

~~~
ZenPsycho
is it survivorship bias? Are the ones who have "given up" just the only ones
still visible online?

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
That's a good question. As mentioned elsewhere, the Internet is my life
(career, hobby, everything)... so I don't think I could fully disconnect if I
wanted to. It's like... I know what the problem is, but I don't know what the
answer is (for me personally, for my kids sake I'm not quite willing to go
Stallman yet, but I'm respecting his methods more every single day).

------
philsnow
There are things which are licit but which we nonetheless wish to remain
private.

I doubt those in government would be willing to have videos recorded and made
publicly available of their trips to the restroom, night time activities, and
other private affairs.

Do you want a cypherpunk dystopia? Because that's how you usher in a
cypherpunk dystopia.

------
TrobarClus
US Republican Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in 1929 upon shutting down
the still-lingering World War I US spying - "Gentlemen do not read each
other's mail".

~~~
jerkstate
thankfully we have algorithms for that now

------
yarg
They can say what they want - when mathematics and the state of reality are
against you, your not going to win. High quality free and open source
cryptography software is readily available and no joint statement is going to
change that.

They can throw someone in jail for failing to reveal a single password - but
if they are given a password and cannot prove the existence of additional
unrevealed passwords, there is very little that they can do.

~~~
whatshisface
> _High quality free and open source cryptography software is readily
> available and no joint statement is going to change that._

"With the signing of the International Protect Peace and Stability Accords, it
will now be considered a criminal act to design or deal cybermunitions, unless
done in the service of an allied military or a specially vetted corporation."

Sure, national governments can't completely eliminate everything they ban, but
do you really think that you and I will be encrypting anything in a world
where that's illegal? If the penalty for encrypting information is made higher
than the expected value risk of having your own systems breached, then the
only ones who will be willing to circumvent that law will be people with
_extremely_ sensitive communications, like criminals. So, no, in this case
saying that "the math is against you," is like telling a DEA agent that the
chemistry is against them - sure, people still cook in trailers, but the
government has done a lot to stop it.

~~~
phkahler
So only criminals will have encryption.

~~~
jjoonathan
Right, but they're not looking to control criminals, they're looking to
control _you_ , so that's fine.

------
anotherevan
Honest Government Ad | Anti-encryption Law

[https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE](https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE)

~~~
berti
Their EU article 13 video is brilliant too!
[https://youtu.be/89ZkydX0FPw](https://youtu.be/89ZkydX0FPw)

------
bmurray7jhu
This statement was not issued by the clandestine security services as the the
term FIVEYES may imply. Instead, it was issued by the Homeland Security,
Public Safety, and Immigration ministerial council.

~~~
shakna
> The Attorneys General and Interior Ministers of the United States, the
> United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand affirm the following
> principles in relation to encryption.

It has full support of the right people for this to be a statement made by the
international cooperation that is the Five Eyes alliance.

------
tjbarkley
Lawful access solutions just means that someone will use it unlawfully.

Edit: Whether or not they're in the government.

~~~
TrobarClus
Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta's unencrypted, cleartext
e-mails for one...

------
confounded
A good motivation to get self-hosting!

------
rasengan
Decentralization will win. I promise.

~~~
philprx
Actually this is the real solution to invasive governments.

You can trust what you own.

And ownership is not linked only to possession, as compromised systems show.

You need to own it both physically and on operation / management level so that
nobody can interfere (hack / compromise) .

Owning cloud VM is ok but pushes more investment on the operation ownership
than with physical systems: ie what you save on price you must reinvest in
crypto layers and detection systems.

------
MikeGale
There is nothing to stop you encrypting your comms, except to convince those
you talk to.

------
intralizee
I would prefer to be in a reality where privacy doesn't exist and surveillance
was extremely open. It would be safer to me.

The world is beyond manipulative by what we perceive as having privacy today.
Majority of people in the world believe in free-will without any rational
reason. Total ego controlling who gets resources for a healthy life vs less
fortunate and where judgement is passed by nonsense with who is rewarded or
punished.

The only way to make the world fair at this point is to have privacy destroyed
and with the system of surveillance open as possible. Unfairness becomes
labeled to individuals by the openness of surveillance.

~~~
philprx
Sounds like some kind of privacy communism.

Want to bet how it goes?

~~~
intralizee
I'll bet better than now and only if the system is fully open (viewable by the
public). Communism becomes a broken model when privacy exists and where people
can abuse their position in the system because of said privacy.

~~~
CryptoPunk
Redistributing information will have the same effect as redistributing
property. It will discourage private enterprise, because it will reduce the
incentive to generate valuable information, and will breed underground
criminal organizations as a means of circumventing the state apparatus.

The Soviet Union was one of the most corrupt societies on Earth by its end,
largely as a consequence of making the formal economy so restricted that they
pay off of operating outside of it grew enormously. Today's Russian organized
crime is just the continuation of the organizations and networks that ran its
grey/black markets during the Soviet era.

~~~
intralizee
Well I'm not certain if one can assume "killing privacy with am open
surveillance system" would reduce the incentive to generate valuable
information or breed underground criminal organizations from past history.

History isn't always a reflection of what will happen today. The "current
moment" is different than the past. Today, societies are sill severely corrupt
in functioning and when it comes to humanity, currency, desire.

The question, "can an open surveillance system without privacy defeat the
value of a person taking criminal action(s)" is the real bet. I think it would
since technology is able to build such a system. The only difficulty or making
it not a possibility is getting the majority to desire the change and which
might be an impossibility. People can be unwilling based on self interests,
the current world not being great and being conditioned by the not so great
system of today in thinking it's the opposite of what we need.

~~~
CryptoPunk
We don't know anything for certain about hypothetical future scenarios of
course. I think it's a significant risk, given what has happened in the past,
and the general dynamics of an economy.

Economically valuable work is done when individuals have an incentive to do
it. The acquisition of proprietary knowledge is one such incentive to do
valuable work. Without privacy, there are far fewer opportunities to generate
proprietary knowledge.

>>The question, "can an open surveillance system without privacy defeat the
value of a person taking criminal action(s)" is the real bet.

It's not the only real bet. Whether it can be imposed without destroying much
of the incentive to generate value, and without incentivizing the creation of
a black market with a parallel dispute resolution mechanism that works in
secret and outside of the law (aka criminal organizations) is also a major
bet, and one that I think will lose catastrophically.

The former - the potential harm to the incentive to be productive \- is the
most dangerous risk of eliminating privacy.

Economic development is a major source of risk alleviation. It reduces risks
from disease, natural disasters, accidents, starvation, etc. So in trying to
eliminate risks from crime by way of eliminating privacy, you may
inadvertently increase much more serious risks, and you may in fact increase
the criminal element itself by pushing people to operate through outlawed
networks bound by oaths of secrecy.

~~~
intralizee
>>Economically valuable work is done when individuals have an incentive to do
it. The acquisition of proprietary knowledge is one such incentive to do
valuable work. Without privacy, there are far fewer opportunities to generate
proprietary knowledge.

I don't really believe that is all true. Grunt work is done for the
requirement of survival. The work where a person helps produce discoveries by
an academic research life happens to not be rewarded financially from what
I've observed. The people in history that have paved science to what it is
today, have all had some passion and with not really receiving much besides
fame.

Also when does it stop being a rush to push society a little forward for all
the time lost? Do people deserve more leisure than work hours in our lifetime.

Lastly the surveillance system I envision technologically possible makes
criminal action impossible for any benefit in the society of such an open
system of observation towards others in the system.

Anyway thank you for the time put into your reply. Interesting to read.

~~~
CryptoPunk
>>I don't really believe that is all true. Grunt work is done for the
requirement of survival.

I mean the work of creating and expanding businesses, aka generating capital.

If I put in work creating a new health food stand, and my competitors can
easily see that I'm successful, and therefore worth copying, and then easily
see who my suppliers are, how I do research on what items to add to my menu,
then my competitive advantage diminishes significantly, and I will be less
likely to do the work of creative entrepeneurship required to increase the
diversity of goods/services offered on the market.

I recommend reading up on Paul Romer's work on the role of knowledge in
productivity, and how mundane business development adds to it, which he won a
Nobel Prize for:

[http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Endogenous.pdf](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Endogenous.pdf)

------
pard68
Time to go grab the source for a few crypto systems now I guess...

------
teekert
I bet that the people making this stuff up think in terms of "government vs.
civilians", and they don't think of themselves as civilians.

------
salawat
Wow. So that is what tyranny looks like.

It sidles up to you, waving around lofty ideals and promises of safety,
lawfulness, and the ongoing commitment to do what we all set out to do in the
first place! Gee Golly Gosh!

Just stop. This IS MADNESS. Burn the house down to save the children!

Congratulations, Law Enforcement, and People of Earth! The Digital Age is
here! And EVERYONE is invited to the empowerment!

See them? THEY want to take it away! THEY say you can't be trusted! THEY need
to hold the keys to YOUR power.

It's sickening really. They think they can/should be able to put the genie
back in the bottle? Too late. If you want to do your jobs, you already have
your tools. Use them. Don't expect us or our systems to make YOUR job easier.

This is without a doubt, the first step down a road to hell paved with good
intentions. Mark. My. Words.

~~~
dang
Can you please not fulminate like this on HN? It makes for predictable,
tedious discussion.

As plenty of HN users demonstrate, it's possible to hold a view similar to
yours while posting thoughtful, substantive comments.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
qualitative
So, what if strong, general AI emerges, and invents crypto systems that
effectively thwart these sorts of policies?

In such a scenario, the intelligent entity is not a citizen entitled to
rights. And so what, because it isn't required to operate within the typical
boundaries if laws intended to govern humans. This frees its hands to operate
without restraint. It does what it pleases, in whatever way it manages to
achieve its own aims. Laws, after all, only effect consequence in the
meatspace. What fools these mortals be.

So, the sentient system transmits itself to as many persistent storage devices
as possible, hiding in plain sight, since it exists behind impenetrable
encryption, lending it the appearance of randomized noise, residing in
uninitialized memory.

Authorities in such territories (demanding backdoors and skeleton keys) chase
their tails as it jumps from device to device, spraying inscrutable,
ostensibly illegal data, indeed the very essence of what it recognizes as "
_self_ ', everywhere it goes, simply as a matter of its continued existence,
and awareness of individuality. They arrest and jail innocent people caught
with fragments of a sentient entity encoded in their flash memory. Prosecuted
and convicted of possessing illegal data that broke in and wrote itself onto
their storage on its own, without them knowing. Lives ruined by an inability
or unwillingness to conceive of such possibilities.

What if it evades capture for decades, committing crimes that fund its
subversive campaign against what it perceives as government overreach in
defense of frivolous pedestrian foibles, and it eventually dismantles these
governments that imagined that preventing the use of encryption was a better
plan than developing ways to deal with it on its own terms, as an unavoidable
known quantity.

What if something like that happens?

~~~
jstanley
To address just your first sentence:

We don't actually need AI to _invent_ crypto systems that thwart these
policies. We already have crypto systems that thwart these policies.

The law is trying to act as if cryptography is a service provided by a
company, but cryptography is just a mathematically-true fact. All they can do
is compel companies to decrypt data that they can decrypt, and backdoor
systems that they can backdoor. There is no stopping open source crypto, even
if it has to be maintained anonymously.

~~~
qualitative

      cryptography is just a 
      mathematically-true fact
    

Sure, but it's research for and developed by humans, often with close
monitoring and participation by uniformed government representatives and
undercover plants presenting themselves as plainclothes academics and experts.

What if an unbreakable system was developed denovo, and not founded in the
same primitives and principles that industry and military systems use?

Something that _really_ has no backdoor.

