Comment by wfo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wfo | Hacker News Reader

Nice discussion, but the central call to action -- challenging technically ignorant authoritarian extremists in the legislature like McConnell and Feinstein to do something horrible, trusting that they truly won't do it at the end of the day because uhhh their "desire to do the right thing?" -- this is naive tech ideology at work. Realistically, the golden key law is totally feasible, politically viable, and should scare all of us. It would not be used to ban all encryption (which is impossible) but rather to target undesirables selectively and to ensure that either every person's every communication is recorded forever by the government so that they can be prosecuted for their speech later at will, or that they are put on a list of criminals for using banned encryption, so that they can be prosecuted later at will.

No tech person should ever breathe a word of support for this, especially not to play a psychotic game of chicken with people who would permanently disable their brakes in an instant if it would fire up their base for a news cycle.

We've been round and round this before with the "Clipper chip" and their "Law Enforcement Access Field".

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/magazine/battle-of-the-cli... (1994)

http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/usa/clipper.htm

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/10/eight-epic-failures-re... (2010)

Yeah, I'd say the post is shockingly blind to empirical evidence.

Even if this was law, it would be trivial to bypass. This type of law isn't just tyrannical, it's impossible to enforce. So, you're 100% absolutely right in saying it would be selectively enforced.

Every tech founder needs to standup to these attempts of control.

Make the hypothetical law: "Use of encryption without a golden key is an automatic assumption of guilt."

All it takes is a complicit supreme court.

And a change of constitution.

Specifically, unreadable speech is still protected by 2nd Ammendment.

Just make your cipher output speech (gibberish words, form of steganography) and you're set.

As a reminder, this is how Zimmerman's PGP was exported. Printed in a book.

Maybe you mean the first amendment?

http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/yu-encrypt.html

You wouldn't need to change the constitution if the arbiter of what's constitutional (i.e. the Supreme Court) were complicit.

I think that would lead to "crypto-encryption", where the fact of encryption is hidden.

Encrypted data looks a lot like random noise, which might be a good basis for hiding it in regular traffic.

The term you're looking for is "steganography". Pretty fun to read about the existing work, including deniable filesystems.

It is. It's so feasible and even probable given combo of government aggression plus citizen apathy that I did a design exploration of high-assurance, lawful intercept just in case we were forced to add it. I'd rather be ready with something good than whatever purposely-0day-ridden crap they come up with. Also, partly inspired by the judge in Lavabit trial that offered to consider an alternative if Levison could produce it on the spot. He asked for money and time whereas a pre-certified solution that meets a warrant's requirements might have gotten accepted.

I just revised that proposal from 2014 for better clarity:

https://pastebin.com/EcrJd4CY

Furthermore, it strikes me as very likely that Hanlon's Razor applies to these 'ignorant authoritarian extremists': they are actually ignorant.

Don't play chicken with idiots.

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