History and data disagrees. When did Redlining end in the US, is it likely that people who suffered it now have less wealth, or passed on less wealth to their children?
What about sentencing for prison? Or discipline in school? Or rejection of job applications? All of which have favorable outcomes for white people.
The point is that white folks benefit from systemic advantages (usually).
Is there some reason why the government wouldn't be able to license the use of unadulterated crypto for purposes it doesn't give a shit about, like you transmitting your credit card number to online retailers, while mandating some form of government access in situations where it does give a shit, such as being able to access the data stored on disk-encrypted cell phones?
Fair question. Sounds like you don't know much about encryption. I'll do my best.
Encryption is software-based and is as available to people connected to the internet as checking out a book from the library. Using encryption is free, and writing software that makes use of encryption is something anyone could teach themselves.
I think what you're getting at is, why can't we have some forms of encryption that have back doors for government, and other forms that have no back doors.
Think about computer viruses. They are designed to infiltrate your system, and any system that is like yours. If a virus targets Windows 7 and infects your computer, then it would be able to infect any Windows 7 machine. The same is true for bugs or vulnerabilities within legitimate software.
Say I run a WordPress site. The computer that serves my website runs WordPress 3.4, for example. Let's say a weakness is found in WordPress 3.4 that allows anyone using the username "jabberwocky" to log into my site and gain administrator privileges. This enables them to edit text and photos on my site. WordPress discovers this weakness and releases an upgrade to 3.5 which fixes the bug and no longer allows users to gain administrator status when logged in as "jabberwocky".
If I don't upgrade my site to 3.5, my system is still vulnerable. Further, everyone knows about the weakness in WordPress 3.4 because the 3.5 release notes explain the reason for the upgrade. My site becomes an instant target for any hackers. If my business were based on this website it could really hurt my reputation, profits etc. if someone were to gain control of my site.
What the government is asking Apple to do is allow them to login as "jabberwocky" whenever they have a warrant. By doing this, Apple enables anyone to login as "jabberwocky" so long as they have the special software which Apple is being asked to write. And, since the government is asking for this access permanently, Apple will never be allowed to modify this security weakness sufficiently so that it does not exist, because by court order it must exist.
The final point I would make is that since encryption is so readily available, any user can download software that makes use of encrypted communications in less than a minute with an internet connection. Compelling Apple to weaken their encryption system does nothing to provide the DOJ with access to data within these other communication programs. Some examples are Signal, wickr and Telegram. Senator Lindsey Graham makes this point at the end of his questioning of Attorney General Loretta Lynch [1]. I hope you'll give it a listen.
>These are new powers that the government started to acquire
Why do people here persistently insist, even after being corrected, that the government's 228 year old authority to conduct warranted search and seizure is some kind of shadowy and scary "new power"?
The government has always had the right to look at your photos, listen to your calls, and read your mail, when you are legitimately suspected of a crime.
Nowadays all those things are on your phone, so the government has the right to search your phone, when you are legitimately suspected of a crime.
Nothing about this is in any way new, and it's grossly dishonest to continue to claim that it is.
>By definition of guaranteeing access to encrypted data, they will be required to maintain such weaknesses. It'd be catastrophic for our tech industry and my future as a software engineer.
Maybe it legitimately is the case that it's impossible for techies to ensure warranted government access without guaranteeing that same access to any and every hacker on Earth.
But the more I read these doomsday scenarios from people who are mystified by the one-sentence, 64-word text of the 4th amendment, the less I'm able to believe them.
I'm within my rights if I write a bunch of jibberish on a piece of paper which represents some secret coding of my personal thoughts, and I refuse to tell you how to decode it. The government can get a warrant allowing them to look at that piece of paper, but as far as I know, they have never had the ability to compel me to explain how to interpret it.
In my opinion, encrypted data should effectively be treated like secret thoughts you may or may not reveal to others or something you've hidden so well nobody will find it. They can analyze the ciphertext, and they can attempt to use surveillance techniques to get you to reveal your secret/key/hidingplace, but compelling you to help them get those things goes too far.
> Why do people here persistently insist, even after being corrected, that the government's 228 year old authority to conduct warranted search and seizure is some kind of shadowy and scary "new power"?
I'm not talking about the 228 year old law. I'm talking about the government's ability to collect information about conversations you had 10 years ago after a suspected crime which occurred, say, last week. This massive collection of data creates an imbalance between safety and potential data breaches and abuses.
> Nothing about this is in any way new, and it's grossly dishonest to continue to claim that it is.
Please read my comments carefully. You misunderstand my meaning
> But the more I read these doomsday scenarios from people who are mystified by the one-sentence, 64-word text of the 4th amendment, the less I'm able to believe them.
You can educate yourself and make up your own mind. You shouldn't believe or disbelieve a certain position based on the attitude of the person from whom you get your information. It's as unfortunate to miss the truth because of a terrible presenter (think of your worst science teacher) as it is to gulp down misinformation because it is presented in simple terms (think Trump). I've written tons of comments on HN about this issue with many citations. Here are detailed responses to Sam Harris [1] and President Obama [2]
To date, I feel the most compelling argument comes from Senator Lindsey Graham's position. He was initially very supportive of the DOJ's position, and publicly called for Apple to comply. Later, after researching the topic and questioning Attorney General Loretta Lynch, he found his view changed [3]
>I'm talking about the government's ability to collect information about conversations you had 10 years ago after a suspected crime which occurred, say, last week.
You know that people used to put a lot of their conversations onto paper, right?
If you kept your ten year old letters, and the government had cause to believe you'd committed a bunch of crimes (maybe you hadn't? you seem like an all right guy, the government probably just goofed, these things happen), it could go and search your ten year old conversations and see if they contained proof of you committing a bunch of crimes.
The fact that we uses electrons and binary math instead of paper and ink doesn't change anything at all.
>Here are detailed responses to Sam Harris [1] and President Obama [2]
I appreciate the effort but these read like the same doomsday scenarios where it's just treated as an inevitable given that providing a method of government access is directly equivalent to providing access to any and every hacker.
>there will be data breaches, people will be upset, they won't buy iPhones, and this industry will disappear from the US overnight
This is the kind of doomsaying I'm talking about. Most people don't buy iPhones for their disk encryption, they buy iPhones because they're shiny and have the apple logoand you can do facebook with them. The PSN breach didn't stop Sony from selling 35 million playstation 4s; an iPhone breach would inconvenience some people, be embarrassing for apple, and then everyone would continue on buying iPhones because the alternative is to not buy an iPhone, which most iPhone owners would consider about as acceptable as cutting off one of their own hands.
You are completely ignoring the singularly unique aspect of digital communications which enables unprecedented new powers, period:
Storage. History. Digital communications like email are stored, and can be stored FOREVER... with just a flip of a switch, a word, an order, a warrant...
One does not have a pile of previous analog telephone calls just waiting to be scooped up and analyzed retro-actively
Anyone can see that if I can run all your data backwards through retro-actively invented filters, I have a power that has no parallel in the analog world:
For example: they didn't stop the Boston Bombers, so they change the algorithms until when they run everything again, it lines up.
This is seriously scary stuff, and it's a double-edged sword. I feel that it goes too far in giving power to these wanna-be-omniscient agents.
I'm not comfortable having ANY human omniscient agents.
I don't give a rat's behind how "noble" or "sacred" their mission statement is... bad people will abuse such powers and they already are doing so...
>The government is demanding new powers: the power to search our communications
This is an embarrassingly bad opinion and it's embarrassing for HN that it's at the top of the thread.
The constitution does not require a rewrite to the fourth amendment every time some nerd comes up with a new widget.
The government has always had the right to conduct warranted searches of communications, whether that was opening mail, wiretapping phones, or just good old-fashioned eavesdropping.
Strong unadulterated crypto threatens to take that existing, longstanding power away from the government. The government is hardly going to give up without a fight.
I made a similar argument with Lavabit. Further analysis showed the situation was quite different from what warrantee search implied:
Physical: You usually received notice and could physically spot insertions of fake evidence or mishandling. Only one target.
Digital: They capabilities they ask for can be used invisibly on as many targets as they like. They allow undetectable insertion of forged evidence as well in many cases.
The FBI showed their true colors in Lavabit case where they acknowledged that getting the key or attaching their box could compromise ALL accounts. The FBI's argument? Do it then lie to customers that it didnt happen and their emails are still private. FBI said no harm to business that way. Judge agreed, too.
This is not isolated case. They abuse the other authorities similarly with coercion of affected parties and deception of US public. So, I fight backdoors or similar capabilities to avoid enabling tyrants.
A read-only, auditable search a 3rd party can restrict to just warranted targets woukd be a totally different discussion. They've usually rejected tgat stuff in favor of overreach and subversion. That's telling.
> The inhabitants of the North American colonies did not have a legal right to express opposition to the British government that ruled them. Nonetheless, throughout the late 1700s, these early Americans did voice their discontent with the Crown. For example, they strongly denounced the British parliament's enactment of a series of taxes to pay off a large national debt that England had incurred in its Seven Years War with France. In newspaper articles, pamphlets and through boycotts, the colonists raised what would become their battle cry: "No taxation without representation!" And in 1773, the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony demonstrated their outrage at the tax on tea in a dramatic act of civil disobedience: the Boston Tea Party.
> The colonies' most celebrated seditious libel prosecution was that of John Peter Zenger in 1735. Zenger, publisher of the 'New York Weekly Journal', had printed a series of scathing criticisms of New York's colonial governor. Although the law was against Zenger, a jury found him not guilty -- in effect, nullifying the law and expressing both the jurors' contempt for British rule and their support for a free and unfettered press. After Zenger's acquittal, the British authorities abandoned seditious libel prosecutions in the colonies, having concluded that such prosecutions were no longer an effective tool of repression.
>You do realize the Freedom of Speech was literally created to enable political dissent that used to involve criminal acts?
key word: used to.
The people, via the vehicle of the government, collectively decided to make those acts legal, thus giving people the freedom to commit legal, non-criminal acts of speech, which were 1. legal, and 2. not illegal.
It is trivially easy for anyone not emotionally invested in failing to understand it, to understand how this is different from giving people the freedom to commit acts that everybody agrees are illegal, should be illegal, and should stay illegal, just because apple has figured out how to engineer a product 100% immune to government scrutiny.
> It is trivially easy for anyone not emotionally invested in failing to understand it, to understand how this is different from giving people the freedom to commit acts that everybody agrees are illegal, should be illegal, and should stay illegal, just because apple has figured out how to engineer a product 100% immune to government scrutiny.
I could have, and did have, devices 100% immune to government scrutiny before the iPhone existed. So, you go ahead and believe that if you want. It isn't true in any real sense beyond popular history that isn't rooted in reality.
Similarly, encryption doesn't give you the ability to commit those acts. I have the ability to commit those acts without encryption. Your logic can be used to ban everything from guns to crowbars to cars.
You can't simply ban tools because you feel people use them criminally. That works literally 0 times because the criminals are simply going to keep using the tools anyway.
> The people, via the vehicle of the government, collectively decided to make those acts legal, thus giving people the freedom to commit legal, non-criminal acts of speech, which were 1. legal, and 2. not illegal.
Yes. That doesn't change the principle was based upon the right to rebel via speech against the Government. That principle hasn't changed since the founding. Removing the ability to communicate privately removes the ability to dissent privately.
You are a very short term thinker and operate under the assumption it'll be used solely in truly important and critical criminal investigations. That is not the case historically with this sort of power. This power also provides you with essentially nothing in return for giving up that ability to act privately.
France had the power to stop the terrorist attacks and has everything the people in power in the US ask for, they failed [despite being warned by a friendly government about some of the attackers].
Substituting a straw man doesn't undercut parent's point.
Right to true encryption is tantamount to right to perfect privacy, including privacy for committing crimes. This has been the current situation if true crypto was properly used for a while but we seem to be moving into a world beyond that - where such crypto is available to anyone who purchases a mobile phone and configures a few options.
I believe (and I would assume you do to) that widespread encryption is the preferable choice over key escrow, but let's not pretend that ready accessible consumer hard encryption doesn't fundamentally alter the balance between government and its citizens (including in some morally questionable ways).
> I believe (and I would assume you do to) that widespread encryption is the preferable choice over key escrow, but let's not pretend that ready accessible consumer hard encryption doesn't fundamentally alter the balance between government and its citizens (including in some morally questionable ways).
It has existed for centuries. Ease of access isn't some magical balance of power altering problem.
People can break encryption through various attacks [Keyloggers, observing people entering their keycodes, etc]. The government should have to go that route too, just like they do to break into literally everything else. They hire a professional.
Encryption isn't some magical shield and is breakable without attacking it directly.
> For more than 260 years, the contents of that page—and the details of this ritual—remained a secret. They were hidden in a coded manuscript, one of thousands produced by secret societies in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the peak of their power, these clandestine organizations, most notably the Freemasons, had hundreds of thousands of adherents, from colonial New York to imperial St. Petersburg. Dismissed today as fodder for conspiracy theorists and History Channel specials, they once served an important purpose: Their lodges were safe houses where freethinkers could explore everything from the laws of physics to the rights of man to the nature of God, all hidden from the oppressive, authoritarian eyes of church and state. But largely because they were so secretive, little is known about most of these organizations. Membership in all but the biggest died out over a century ago, and many of their encrypted texts have remained uncracked, dismissed by historians as impenetrable novelties.
> Ease of access isn't some magical balance of power altering problem. [...] People can break encryption through various attacks [Keyloggers, observing people entering their keycodes, etc].
This is where we disagree. What you've enumerated are attacks of convenience against a cryptographic implementation, not cryptography itself. And this is exactly what ease of access dramatically shifts.
The real twist isn't that Apple is suddenly providing quality encryption. We've had unbreakable encryption since the first one-time pad. IMHO, the FBI et al. didn't care because a statistically relevant number of people didn't use it. The twist is that Apple suddenly packaged that up into a consumer device with a quality implementation and all the hard details handled. And the FBI et al. do care because a very statistically relevant number of people use iPhones.
So yes, ease of access is a balance altering change. Because really, I don't think the government cares if hard encryption exists: it cares if lots of people use it.
You can make a vault that destroys the contents and is perfectly secure except for the implementation. That is basically the iPhone "problem" the FBI are complaining about.
> When forty spectators assembled for an outdoor trial, they reported that the safe seemed to be “on the point of explosion” and the gas issuing out of holes in the bottom of the safe meant it was “lifted some inches off the ground” forcing observes to retire to a “place of safety behind the building.”
Nothing really prevents you from having a safe that after N failed attempts from destroying the contents with explosives.
> Nothing really prevents you from having a safe that after N failed attempts from destroying the contents with explosives.
I would hope that a number of laws prohibit my carrying on my person a small safe filled with explosives and a known-effective trigger. Hypothetically, we could create such a safe.
Practically, however, we could not create one that would be as easily and broadly used as an iPhone. Therefore, the nature of the social question presented by a perfectly secure (for all intents and purposes, or at least a future iteration that is) mass market device is fairly novel.
Because the government correctly perceives unbreakable crypto as an assault on its sovereignty.
Sovereignty is the principle that the government can do whatever it decides to do. Stuff like the 10A doesn't infringe on sovereignty because that's the government itself deciding that it shouldn't do certain things. Like if the goverment decided to, it could kick your door in, find your private diary, and read everything you've written in it. Our government has regulations moderating the use of that power, because it has decided that in most circumstances it shouldn't do that. But if the government has good reason to suspect that you're using your diary to, say, make plans for murdering people? Then the government can go right ahead and break your door down and read your diary and see if you're doing that.
(unbreakable) Crypto is different. Crypto is an infinitely high, infinitely deep wall around your house that the government can never breach, no matter how justified the government decides it is in breaching that wall. Crypto is the government sending combined might of the entire US army, navy, air force, and national guard to breach your wall, and failing. Are you within your wall engaging in acts of political speech? The government cannot stop you. Are you within your wall raping your child slaves? The government cannot stop you. Are you within your wall building a nuclear weapon that you plan to use to blow up everyone outside your wall? The government cannot stop you.
Within the cryptographic envelope, government can't govern. This isn't something the government can tolerate, because governments that can't govern aren't governments, they're just a bunch of people with opinions. So yes, the government will continue to fight these battles, because for the government these battles are an existential concern.
I'm not sure why San Francisco being an enormously popular place that lots of people want to live in is a reason why we need to raze San Francisco and build something else there instead, vs. and not a reason why we shouldn't go to one of the many other shite places that everyone hates, raze that, and build more San Francsico.
Yeah I think the best lesson to take from the parable is to keep the ego and corresponding negative emotions out of it.
There's nothing really wrong with what he told the guy (at least, what he says he told the guy), it's just that by his own words, the way he said it came across like him being a .
When instead if he'd been able to get past his anger/offense at being questioned, he could have done the same thing but positively, like "dude check out all this awesome shit i am literally already doing for you, for free! Doesn't that actually look like you are getting a pretty sweet deal?" And so then instead of this client being like "oh well fuck me for asking I guess" he could have been like "whoa shit this guy is giving me the sick hookup, I better hire him all the time from now on forever!"
