Hacker News Reader

Comment by cvwright | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

I can attest that absolutely none of the pro-Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) people I follow are siding with the FBI.

The issue of gun control is completely absent from the US debate. Guns are discussed in terms of a false dichotomy between laissez-faire or outright banning.

Contrary to the impression given in the US media, there are a lot of privately owned guns in Europe. Even in the UK, there are over 700,000 licensed gun owners. Germans can own almost anything that an American can, including handguns and so-called "assault rifles".

European countries require licenses for firearms. You have to pass tests, prove yourself to be of good character and demonstrate a legitimate purpose for gun ownership. Your guns need to be registered and stored in a safe place. Your license can be revoked if you do something reckless or criminal with a firearm.

The difference between crypto and a gun is that you can't actually kill someone with cryptography. A more reasonable comparison is with cars; that comparison shows the oddity of attitudes in the US. Few Americans would argue that you shouldn't need a driving license or that cars shouldn't be registered and insured. Few Americans see vehicle inspection as an affront to civil liberties.

When a firearm is used for harm, it is the direct instrument of harm. Nobody was ever mowed down by the execution of a crypto routine.

Also, if you're a "good guy" and carry a gun, it is in hopes that you don't use it. By contrast you actually use crypto as a matter of day-to-day safeguarding of communication and documents. Each time you https: somewhere, you're "firing the crypto gun".

Crypto is no more a weapon than oxygen. The demented mind of a killer burns carbohydrates in the presence of oxygen, just like your brain. Oxygen also burns down buildings. We can't ban oxygen.

Crypto is an essence, like oxygen; we need it to have confidence in privacy and authenticity so that we can proceed in day to day business.

We don't have to fire a gun at some target in order to proceed in day to day life; when that is the case, it's called war.

What if you relax your formulation from "shoot a gun" to "carry a gun"? My day to day life is very much influenced by many people carring guns in a way that deters criminals without their having to fire a shot, and this was true long before my state allowed civilian concealed carry and I started carrying in it.

In one of its most famous formulations, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

The right to encrypt really should be the modern equivalent of the RKBA. The parallels in regards to defending against tyrannical government are stark.

Interesting point.

The societal damage caused by guns is 3-orders of magnitude greater than the damage caused by crypto. This says nothing about the benefits, which I'd argue are much greater still.

A couple of hundred years ago the second amendment was a critical and important component of America, because it allowed the people to protect themselves against the government. That threat of direct violence is now much less, but in it's place the government now threatens our freedom by threatening our privacy. And this is a very real threat. And damage that this would do is far far greater in an information society. Huxly's 1984 wasn't a book about physical combat fought with guns it was a war fought with information.

Huxly's 1984 wasn't a book about physical combat fought with guns it was a war fought with information.

Huxley was Brave New World, Orwell was 1984.

I realized the mixup but it was too late to edit.

The US until 1992 classified cryptography as a munition, so they are not completely dissimilar. But many things are munitions as well.

Your argument is that cypto and guns should be viewed as equivalent because they are 'technology that, in the hands of a law-abiding person, can be used for legitimate purposes, including protecting oneself from aggression'.

That's a very broad category, isn't it? It would include anything which was ever used as an improvised weapon against aggressors. For example, the Provisional IRA "were widely perceived within the nationalist community as being defenders of Irish nationalist and Roman Catholic people against aggression." (Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_A... ).

The IRA used ANFO bombs extensively across two decades. ANFO of course also has many legitimate purposes

Under your definition, ANFO possession and use should be as unrestricted as gun or crypto possession and use, yes?

If not, why not?

If so, what other currently restricted items fall in this category?

> Your argument is that cypto and guns should be viewed as equivalent

Whoa there, I never said they were equivalent. I said that they have some similarities.

> ANFO possession and use should be as unrestricted as gun or crypto possession and use, yes?

I'm not saying that. And moreover, I have zero desire to re-enact the same old gun rights vs gun control Internet flame war yet again. Please don't try to slot me into either side of those standard arguments.

What I am saying is that (1) there are similarities between the two technologies and their potential for misuse, (2) it's not surprising that many people want to ban or restrict both of them, and (3) it is surprising (to me, at least) that there are so many people who feel so strongly that one should be banned and the other unlimited.

Maybe a better way to say it would be this: If you support limits on the kinds of firearms and explosives that people are allowed to own, why don't you also think there should be limits on the kinds of cryptography that people are allowed to own? The closest analogue seems to be weak "export grade" crypto from the 90's -- RC4 with 40-bit keys, etc. Or maybe key escrow.

And I am saying that your (1) is so broad and encompassing as to be a useless basis for argument.

As I said, ANFO also fits into category (1), which is why (2) it's not surprising that many people want restrictions on ANFO. Are you (3) equally surprised when people who want strong public strong crypto also want people to have explosives training and even a license to work with ANFO?

Do you think ANFO fits into the category? Why or why not?

Sorry, I had to go look up what ANFO is.

> Do you think ANFO fits into the category? Why or why not?

It's a very interesting question. This is a great example, thanks for bringing it up. I guess I'm OK with restrictions on ANFO in the same way I'm OK with our (US) current restrictions on Browning .50 machine guns. At the same time, I doubt I'd get too worked up if someone proposed to relax either of those.

I have heard some people talk about trying to restrict access to cow poop -- the fertilizer component of a homemade ANFO bomb like the one used by domestic terrorists in Oklahoma City. To me, that feels like going way too far.

It's a complicated issue. What do you think?

> It's a very interesting question.

Thank you. The multiple downvoters I got appear to believe otherwise.

> I guess I'm OK with restrictions on ANFO in the same way I'm OK with our (US) current restrictions on Browning .50 machine guns.

That is where I think the comparison between crypto and guns breaks down. You're okay with restrictions on more powerful weapons - are you okay with restrictions on civilian use of more powerful crypto?

No, I don't think you are. I am not. The use cases and threat models are very different. For example, I think we are under frequent though usually irregular attack by people who want to acquire "secrets", which includes credit card and blackmail information but also more prosaic marketing information and the more Orwellian large-scale government data mining.

I think it's more appropriate to compare crypto to another type of munition - personal armor. (The United States Munitions List has the category Personal Protective Equipment. This includes "Body armor providing a protection level equal to or greater than NIJ Type IV".)

Yes, some people want to make access to armor more difficult, because it it used sometimes when committing a crime ("in the wrong hands, the same tech can be used for great harm").

But unlike the physical world, on the internet we face attacks every day. If there were random shootings in everyone's normal life then there wouldn't be the call to get rid of personal armor. Moreover, we face increasingly powerful attacks on crypto, and need to have mechanisms which can keep secrets against decades of future improvements.

> cow poop -- the fertilizer component of a homemade ANFO bomb

Whoever you heard that from was mistaken. The fertilizer component was ammonium nitrate fertilizer, not cow poop.

> It's a complicated issue. What do you think?

My primary interest is in highlighting how the argument you made doesn't really support your thesis.

As for my own beliefs on the topic, and bearing in mind that you wrote "I have zero desire to re-enact the same old gun rights vs gun control Internet flame war yet again.", I think the distinctively American views[1] for gun ownership are rooted in the US history of Native American genocide and Black slavery, and are an expression of a form of white male power and machismo. I see no reason to discuss it further as this pigeonhole is well known.

[1] By 'distinctively American' I mean to exclude the arguments one might hear in, say, Sweden for having a gun; eg, hunting and the fun hobby of target shooting.

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.

>The difference is that guns are inherently dangerous: their main purpose is to cause destruction and harm

The difference being how you framed that to begin with: Many people have and continue to use guns to provide food and protection.

If we ban guns because a small group of people misuse them, I want:

1) Automobiles banned: http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Kill-Vehicles-as-Weapons/dp/088...

2) Knives banned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara_massacre & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre & http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-attac...

2.1) Sharp objects in general banned: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breakingnews/offbeat/man-k...

The argument is always "guns make it easier to kill others". This is almost always touted by people who've never shot a gun or have never aimed a gun. Worse, they target the wrong kind of guns [0]. Namely, rifles and shotguns and "scary looking guns" that are used less often than knives are used for murder.

The only compelling argument one can make is that "given the choice between a blunt object, a knife, or a gun, most murderers pick guns". There is little to no evidence that removing guns removes murderers. The reasoning that they would simply pick a different weapon seems to be tossed aside and ignored.

I don't and never will own a gun. Before anyone tries to justify my "owning a gun" as their argument for why I'm biased by supporting gun rights.

[0] https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/...

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.

People keep accidentally injuring or killing one another with only one of these technologies. Also, AFAIK, there have been zero suicides via crypto.

Which one? Distracted driving accidents are a leading cause of non-natural deaths, and cryptography is a neccisary technology for cellular networks. Could be argued that crypto shares responsibility for those auto fatalities.

If you check the Caltrain schedule on your phone to pick a train to jump in front of, is that suicide by crypto?

The government needs to ban cars AND phones and then force everyone to wear helmets and a full body padded suit while riding our bike. For our own protection.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com