I'm not working in the crypto space but know others who are.
Like any quickly developing industry, crypto is changing quickly. That means you can get in on the cutting edge, and stay with it as it becomes mainstream.
You can also hop on Warpcast, a crypto focused community with a Twitter-like interface.
I recommend diving in with some new project that catches your attention and understand whatever you can. Discord participation is also useful for many projects.
(Apple has cited Bernstein v. US as the reason they didn't have to write an app to unlock some mass shooter's phone for a fishing expedition, so that's why I think they agree with my didn't-go-to-law-school opinion there.)
(BTW, an aside aside. DJB represented himself in that case. Just some random number theory lover / C programmer that increased freedom for everyone in the country in his spare time. Super cool guy.)
From the wikipedia article you linked, the 1999 case that is cited as precedent and is the one that matters was not self-represented.
> Bernstein was represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who hired outside lawyer Cindy Cohn and also obtained pro bono publico assistance from Lee Tien of Berkeley; M. Edward Ross of the San Francisco law firm of Steefel, Levitt & Weiss; James Wheaton and Elizabeth Pritzker of the First Amendment Project in Oakland; and Robert Corn-Revere, Julia Kogan, and Jeremy Miller of the Washington, DC, law firm of Hogan & Hartson
As for the original question, the framework for this kind of legislation is usually “we ban the hosting of CSAM, you either implement something that eliminates it or you risk being fined for breaking the law”. That may not sound different to you but it is an extremely clear distinction in first amendment terms from “the state department may deny you an export license to publish your code”. Bernstein v US was saying that the burdens to publishing were too high and so he was unable to speak. The burdens did include submitting code and ideas to the government. With CSAM scanning, you are not forced to publish your code (speak), just to do something that satisfies the ban on hosting the content. There are thousands of completely constitutional laws that require you to do stuff a certain way that may involve writing code. This would be one of those.
The San Bernardino thing is a bit more like Bernstein — the government wanted Apple to give them a software tool to unlock a phone. A bit like “give us your code and ideas” but still not quite “give us your code and ideas or we silence you”.
The irritating part of encryption is that it's hard to determine what the underlying data is. With one key, it could be a word document that says "paying my taxes is the one joy i have in life" and with another, it could be the most horrifying image you can imagine.
I understand the government's interests in this particular issue, people that abuse children are the biggest pieces of shit that I can imagine, but unfortunately math is a pain in the ass and their laws are not possible to administer.
If you think someone is abusing children, you can always send a cop to their house and have them check. That is well within the rights of the government, and I'd even go so far as to say I support that right.
Not difficult, just limited in power. Any time you find decrypted material on a device, figure out where it was stored, and send that company a penalty notice for failing to report it.
As far as I know, that's not a federal law. I can walk past someone violating every human right and constitutional amendment in broad daylight and it's my right to tell nobody about it ever. Apple has the same right, it seems. Amend the Constitution if you don't like it.
Uh, I wasn't saying it was. I was sketching out how you would implement such a law without difficulty. The "you" is the FBI. This is all a hypothetical, hence my use of the subjunctive throughout.
I don't believe that's a constitutional right at all.
Consider "mandatory reporters". People like schoolteachers are legally required to report certain things like parental abuse or neglect of their students. If the government wanted to write a law that said you are required to report a crime if you witness one, I'm not sure that would be unconstitutional.
I don't think they are legally required to do anything. Them having a license to work in their field is dependent on it, though.
As an aside, if you are legally required to report something you have seen, and do not, then you are violating the law, which means legally requiring you to report yourself is unconstitutional under the 5th amendment, so we enter into paradox territory...
Yeah, I think that if someone lost their medical license for, say, endorsing a particular candidate up for election, that would be an EZ 9-0 supreme court victory for them.
As they said on slashdot 100 years ago, child porn is the root password to the constitution. Configure sshd to only accept keys!
I must be missing something. The government compels people to speak all the time. In courtrooms every day, witnesses are brought to testify in a manner they can only refuse if it criminally implicates them. A witness simply not wanting to answer a question can and will be held in contempt of court and subject to imprisonment.
...though all compelled speech derives from the negative speech right, that right lends itself to two distinct models representing two distinct approaches to compelled speech: compelled speech production and compelled speech restriction.
A. Compelled Speech Production
Intuitively, the right to free speech necessarily implicates the right to choose what not to say. The characteristic element of this negative speech right model is a compelled movement from silence to speech. A prohibition occurs as a function of the government regulation, but it is a prohibition on silence.
...The original compelled speech cases follow the speech production model of the negative speech right. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette,22×22. 319 U.S. 624 (1943). the original compelled speech case, followed this model: school children had no capacity to opt out of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and saluting the flag.23×23. Id. at 626. If they could, they would have remained silent at their desks. Instead, the West Virginia regulation required them to enter public discourse, to engage in speech where they otherwise would not have done so.
...It is the right to be able to say what one wishes to say and nothing else. But since every law implicates autonomy to some degree, the Court has been more lenient unless the infringement on speaker autonomy raises additional concerns under the circumstances. The government does have some capacity to compel production of speech expressing a particular viewpoint given its need to take positions on political issues.
...In other circumstances, though, compelled speech production need not trigger maximal constitutional suspicion if the law does not meaningfully infringe on speaker autonomy.
B. Compelled Speech Restriction
The second model of the negative speech right involves compelled speech that restricts speech. The amount of possible speech supported by any given speech medium is often limited. Forcing someone to speak thereby forces the speaker to occupy a portion of a limited speech medium with expression that she would not otherwise have engaged in. The result is that she no longer has the room to say what she otherwise would have used the limited speech medium to say.
...In Tornillo, the Court applied strict scrutiny and invalidated a Florida right-of-reply statute that required newspapers to publish the response of a public figure about whom the newspapers had previously published criticism.42×42. Tornillo, 418 U.S. at 244, 258. In so doing, the Court relied on the notion that the limited nature of the newspaper medium meant that newspapers could publish only so much speech.43×43. Id. at 258. By compelling some speech, the law stopped the newspapers from fully expressing what they wanted to say.
" If Apple has a legal obligation to ensure that iCloud does not store CSAM/etc"
My understanding is in the USA companies like Apple cannot be legally obligated to ensure that iCloud does not store CSAM. Something about the US Constitution, but I can't remember what. Apple is legally obligated to report CSAM if they come across it themselves though.
> Something about the US Constitution, but I can't remember what.
The first amendment comes into play. The government cannot compel Apple to write software in a certain way, such as "write your encryption so you have keys that access all of users' data". That would be "compelled speech". So if the government provides Apple with a warrant, Apple can only provide encrypted or whatever meta information they have, not decrypted content.
Your apartment complex decides they don’t want to be party to anything illegal. Just in case, they set up a police precinct in the lobby. They set up hidden cameras in the lobby, the hallway leading to your apartment, and the balcony of your apartment. "All public spaces of course" the crowd consents. And if their AI model detects anything suspicious, they send the video to the detective. Because you aren’t doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about, right?
You’ve just described every photo upload service in America, although my understanding was Apple would use a list of hashes of known bad content, not an “AI” as google does.
Everyone scans for CSAM. I am not conjecturing on the ethics of scanning photos here, I am suggesting that moving from server- to client-side scanning had no effect on any of the things you are ranting about. Hence why I do not understand the outrage.
> Working for me means not having software designed to report me to the police for how I use my device.
Let me fix it: “how I use iCloud Photos, a hosted service on Apple’s servers”.
Isn’t this literally done in most office buildings in the US and probably a lot of apartment buildings already? There are CCTV cameras everywhere in the US (and other countries).
