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Comment by hobs | Hacker News Reader

And what happens when that capability is not given to those you trust but instead to your enemies or state actors with vast human rights abuses?

Not mentioned in this article is the cost of those we do not trust having the same keys in the locks, and the power that it would give them, simply saying that this new position is "absolutist" when in fact it is exactly the same as before.

The TSA key and the elevator key were recently leaked and no one can put that genie back in the bottle without replacing all the locks in the city/luggage.

If you design your locks with a fail-safe built in then it will only take someone with specific knowledge of that fail-safe to use it; saying we should just back down and that this is just Silicon Valley misinterpreting existing thought is a complete mischaracterization of the facts and vast new authority the government wants granted.

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The point is that society has already figured out and agreed on these issues. This is not about a dragnet but specific situations where there is a warrant.

I think we've all been so scared by all the dragnet activity the NSA/FBI have been conducting that we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The problem is that the existing societal solutions have a pretty hard bottleneck: It requires a physical person to show up at your door with a warrant to "rifle through your underwear drawer" as the president put it. It's relatively hard for someone else to take advantage of this (though, put on a fake police uniform and bring a fake warrant and you can probably get into most people's houses while risking some really nasty charges).

With encryption, any solution I've seen suggested has the risk of mass use by the government in addition to allowing other people besides the government to use it.

This is an incredibly important point.

It is arguably baked into the nature of policing that such institutions will over-reach their authority and attempt to consolidate it. Usually for all the right motivations, but they have systematic blinders to the unintended consequences and risks. For this reason, there must be effective counterbalances, and demonstrably court and board oversight is insufficient.

Hence it is important that for some actions that police are legally enabled to do, they remain too expensive (in time, manpower, money, whatever) to do habitually or without thought and prioritization.

Pretty much any technological advantage that facilitates parallel construction should probably be resisted for this reason.

Which society are you talking about?

Different societies have figured out the issues differently.

In some societies, you get killed for being gay, for example. Or for having the wrong kind of sex. Or for not following a certain religion. Or for saying the wrong things. So... you want to hand the power to that society to peer into the minds of anyone, and do whatever the majority thinks should be done?

You are advocating for tools to enable a tyranny of the majority. Instead of letting society figure it out for you, how about allowing each person to have their own freedom?

You are advocating for tools to enable a tyranny of the majority. Instead of letting society figure it out for you, how about allowing each person to have their own freedom?

Unfortunately, that's not reality. Each citizen complies with the laws of his/her own country. So do companies.

There is no global law concerning these issues, so companies with a presence in country X are bound to country X's laws. It doesn't mean country Y's law are great and/or should be the common denominator.

> Each citizen complies with the laws of his/her own country

Actually no. Each subject complies with the laws of "their" country up to the limit of enforcement. When enough people disobey, social change occurs.

What the establishment is advocating is to move these limits of enforcement down to the level of individuals' thoughts. This isn't surprising, as their power deludes them into forgetting that laws follow society, and not vice-versa.

Imagine the setting of a century ago. A homosexual travels across a border, at which point their actions from the past several months are magically analyzed. They're then thrown in jail for buggery, while everyone else smiles and nods! Justice was served, with due process, to suppress repugnant anti-social behavior.

This debate has been framed such that believing that privacy should exist implies one is an "absolutist". Well then, I guess I absolutely believe that every individual action need not be subject to public scrutiny.

Part of the issue is that the dragnet activity the NSA/FBI have been conducting -- and their new moves to share this data with local law enforcement in violation of previous promises -- has destroyed anyone's trust in the social contract. People rightfully do not trust that any powers granted to government via any form of key escrow or backdoor system would be used only in conformance with the law.

Obama himself has acted in such a way as to destroy anyone's trust in him. He promised to be on the side of 'transparency,' but as near as I can see he's no better than Bush II in this regard. He has no credibility on this issue at all.

... and it's also important to note that we in Western democracies are developing and deploying tech that is going to be used in far less liberal countries with far less rule of law. Any backdoor/escrow system that we create is also going to be made available to dictators who want to persecute and kill. If it's bad for us, it's going to be deadly to the unlucky souls who live under much less civilized regimes.

My take is twofold: 1) Law enforcement wants their job to be easy. Sorry, it's not. They see criminals in everyone because they're immersed in it day in and day out. People aren't bad; they don't need constant surveillance.

2) Politicians have to have some way of making themselves look "strong" in the eyes of U.S. Citizens. It's just steeped in our blood at this point. "The War on Terrorism" (tm) is a really easy way for them to look strong even though there's NOT a terrorism issue in the U.S.

Translation: Ignore history. Capitulate.

Too many tech-nerds incorrectly extrapolates the future from false premises. If the tech-nerds had any social skills, they would know that society has built-in safeguards to prevent government abuse.

Tech-nerds: the world doesn't operate under "theory". There are social rules that you are ignoring that completely invalidates your fears of government. Did the Snowden revelations lead to thousands of US citizen murdered by government? No? Not even one, in the realm of statistical noise? No? Why do you think that is?

The US was a country that had could have ruled over the world between 1945-1949, and yet, we chose not to do that.

Tech-nerds are going to have to reformulate their horrible anti-government rhetoric to account for these social effects.

Learn how people actually live, not how people theoretically might live.

Why do you think that the lack of murders by the government after the Snowden revelations indicate that the fears are unfounded? I don't think you actually understand what you're trying to debunk.

You seem to be ignoring the tens of millions of people who actually died and countless more who were actually oppressed at the hands of governments in the last century.

Let me know how those safeguards work for you if you're black. Or any other at risk group in any country really. Come on now.

You need to seriously read some history. Read about how Hitler went from nobody to killing millions of jews. It was a process. Same with Stalin. We've been down this road before - it doesn't end well.

> There are social rules that you are ignoring...

That right there is the problem.

Government actors -people in positions of power- are known to ignore rules -social and legal- to further their own agenda. From NSA analysts listening to other people's phone sex for personal titillation, to a sitting President who orders the harassment of disfavored groups, then orders some guys to break, enter, and destroy records to cover it up, there are people in positions of power who will do Bad Things that are very much violations of applicable rules, social or otherwise.

Parrellal reconstruction. IRS harassment of politically undesirable groups. More laws than anyone could read or understand capriciously enforced often based on political tribalism.

Then and FBI lawsuit to force apple to unlock a phone the FBI could trivially unlock.

I mean why wouldn't "tech-nerds" being falling over themselves to submit and comply?

All I hear is Ad-Hominem rhetoric. You aren't actually making a real argument here.

History has shown that to be the prudent course of action.

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