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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

>Putting away meth dealers supercedes strict adherence to the constitution, by far, IMO, even if the police have to break the law to put the bad guys away. (Parallel reconstruction etc)

Ethically, I disagree with your argument. See: unlawful asset theft by police departments, which the supreme Court recently confirmed is illegal.

But from a legal standpoint your argument doesn't hold water. The Constitution is THE binding legal document of the USA, from which literally every aspect of the US government, and thus justice system, derives authority. There is nothing but strict adherence to the Constitution, trying to work outside it might work for a bit but will end up with someone standing before the supreme Court to answer for it.

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I freely admitted that breaking the law is an appropriate means to an end in some cases. Again imo. Unchecked civil forfeiture was not part of my argument.

I disagree that common people should have perfectly secure comm technology.

I disagree with Snowden actions and politics.

Common people? So, only the aristocrats get secure comms? Also, how would you enforce that? Secure encryption tech is literally just math, math that's already been invented, math that exists on EVERY personal laptop, server, and smartphone made in the last 10 years, math that is downloadable from thousands of websites, is in textbooks, can be derived from things I learned in college, comes packaged with millions of applications, etc...

Intelligence officers not aristocrats although I do believe the current reality does reflect the characterization you have presented . There’s definitely a complex system of people with money power intelligence at war

The math problem is why it’s imperative to indoctrinate our best and brightest to fight for the greater good, and in regard to the power vacuum surrounding that unavoidable math reality

I also support our government going after people making secure communication devices intended to circumvent government controls, too much at stake

Sure you cannot stop evil person with textbook and initiative but you can do the best you can

related: Lack of Forfeiture mechanism is one instance of a deficiency with mainstream cryptocurrencies

I've worked with a few Intel officers, military and non, and I find it hard not to label their actions and attitudes as 'aristocratic'.

Your "best and brightest" paragraph makes no sense to me, but strongly reminds me of the BS spewing out of the mouth of James Comey while he tried to convince the members of Congress that you can have a crypto system that is both secure against hackers, but has a backdoor for government surveillance, which is a mathematical impossibility. Pretty sure he said "best and brightest" as well, as if silicon valley can magic away mathematical reality.

I also think that for nearly the entire history of mankind, barring the last few decades, governments have been unable to observe a vast majority of communication of their populace. Not sure what you mean by "too much at stake"... I've never heard of a major, nonmilitary attack that could have been prevented if only we'd had a backdoor into the communications; however I have heard of many, many crimes occuring because we THOUGHT we had secure crypto.

It’s conceivable to make a skeleton key system that doesn’t change the surface area of attack that much. Such a system can respect the right to privacy, while allowing for a way to police child predators.

Too bad you met some snooty NSA employees. You could report them if you think they aren’t trustworthy to do sigint.

> mathematical impossibility

I didn’t make that claim. Obviously there’s a small trade off that is practically irrelevant, you can optimize so that the trade off doesn’t make it practically much less secure, make up for it elsewhere

Replying to onlydeadhorses post with overtones of ad hominem:

Stop assuming what I do or don’t know or can do, have done etc. Have you identified me?

The issue of making crypto “less secure” isn’t anywhere near the deal that some academics are making it out to be.

I’m just a user, not going to implement crypto. Someone else can solve such problems. Make crypto that has a secure skeleton key system that respects privacy without reducing security. “Make up for it” by making it twice as slow maybe, just an idea

You’re plainly biased against my position and ventured towards an attack. Let’s not, please.

The stuff I was reading made it clear that current skeleton key systems don’t suffer from greatly reduced security by any stretch. but still have a chain of custody system / spof issues. I’m sure something much more clever that respects privacy and solves those issues is possible

Since I’m the one out of your league, can you and your colleagues work on it

Good old-fashioned troll. You got me for a few replies.

No need for that. Not sure why you hopped on me, but it wasn’t necessary.

Putting down people you perceive as beneath you intellectually isn’t good manners, and is usually counterproductive.

No you didn't, but the person you replied to did, and you managed to overlook it then and now. Please go and design your algorithm where you "make up for it elsewhere". I don't know why you are posting about this if you don't know anything about the matter.

This comment now has a reply button. Another comment about “good old fashioned troll” was made close by, but there isn’t a reply button:

No, you’re right. I’m not an expert and maybe I’m wrong. Just seems possible to build a better mouse trap here. I couldn’t build it, you’re right. Wish I had such skills. But I’ve looked into the topic and bit and noodled with crypto as a user and in principle it should be possible to build a skeleton key crypto system that isn’t much less secure. Just seems that way to me. Non expert guess.

I’m sure such tech could be evolved to solve the spof key issue (wouldn’t want your skeleton key leaking) for instance

http://globalpolicy.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IEEE...

My response was in consideration of the points here.

Snowden, one of his goals, besides defecting to Russia, was to “start the conversation”. The rumor is that have been involved with shadow brokers btw

If your boss came to you and said, by law, we need to build crypto with an evolved key escrow system that overcomes the security problems noted by IEEE and others, could you do it? Would you do it? Easy to say “no way, it can’t be done” with or without some type of bias towards a desire for perfectly strong encryption, but again I suspect that it is possible to build such a thing, if it doesn’t exist already.

Do you think such a thing is possible?

Also may I ask your view on Ed Snowden’s actions?

Who gets to break the law? Based on what ethical framework? Who decides whether those actions were indeed justified?

Going forward, cops breaking the law will be an anachronism. Record keeping of human society will only perpetuate and render privacy obsolete.

You could grow the notion of comparmentalized information in such a society to create a kind of decentralized system of checks and balances. Eg you see footage with faces hidden and review the morals, vote etc

Could even crowd source such a thing. Surely, related AI efforts are in progress, for better or worse, e.g. FBIC (Facebook intelligence community) info gathering mechanisms

The law itself could eventually evolve to be more dynamic, decentralized

Are you in law in enforcement by any chance?

Please don't get personal in comments here.

Also, could you please stop creating accounts for every comment or two you post? This is in the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There are legit uses for throwaways, just not routinely.

Lots more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Sorry for that. I will be moving to a more permanent handle soon.

Appreciated!

Nah I’m an old college dropout

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