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Comment by ericlewis | Hacker News Reader

dead people is... the worst... arguing that we should give up freedom is bad... what, do we do here?

It's not even about freedom. The NSA and FBI would love to get legislation in place that weakens encryption, but the fact of the matter is you can't weaken encryption without breaking it.

Your options are basically to either force everyone to use short keys that can be brute forced by the NSA (and anyone with cash to throw at AWS) or to set up a trusted-third party to store everyone's private keys and then either enforce long key lives or come up with a mechanism to transport the keys to the third party as old ones expire.

Weakening encryption would lead to massive issues for both corporate and personal security. What's worse is there wouldn't be anything stopping anyone from rolling their own crypto without the NSA's permission (it's literally just math), so it'd be business as usual for terrorists and black-hats.

To be honest, the solution here is different. Just allow for signed firmware that uses the TPM without a time-lock.

Similar things could be done for many forms of encryption at rest secured by a TPM based on a PIN or fingerprints. (Though I am not sure about fingerprints).

This can essentially be done without key escrow. Though you could see this as key escrow where the signing key for code that accesses the TPM as the master key.

One could argue that it's harder to make an institution that has the power to access secured devices behave than it is to change society to have fewer mass murderers.

To quote the onion: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

Yeah. Let’s take away a specifically enumerated constitutional right to better protect, maybe, one that appears only in the “penumbras” of the document.

I honestly don't know what your position is because the right against unreasonable searches and seizures and right to arms are both specifically enumerated in the fourth and second amendments, respectively.

This guy's a T14 lawyer, maybe we're both missing something.

O majestic scholarship how elusive you are! I thought I knew you and yet you are my world!

I believe he’s talking about “the right to privacy”

Mass surveillance is unreasonable search. Court-ordered passphrase disclosures are compelled speech and forced self-incrimination. Equipment is seized from innocent people willy-nilly.

The "right to privacy" refers to a bundle of other rights the state is already spitting all over in direct and obvious violation of the Constitution, and our judiciary is wasting the blood of our great nation's many dead martyrs.

That said, I believe privacy is such a lost cause at this point rayiner might still be arguing effectively for our remaining rights by throwing it to the dogs while they're sniffing for our guns.

RBG and the privileges and immunities clause will win sooner or later with that attitude

Requiring manufacturers to include back doors to be used only pursuant to a valid warrant would not be a “search.” (There might be a commerce clause issue, though.) Many types of surveillance typically does not involve a search (because it relies on data that either can be gleaned from public activity or through cooperating third parties).

I would consider that a first amendment violation on the basis of code being speech and a backdoor being compelled speech.

Code can have elements of speech, but it’s primarily functional, and that functionality can be regulated. A building can be art, but that doesn’t mean building codes can’t be used to e.g. require parking accommodations.

It didn't used to regularly happen, despite the high availability of guns.

Correct.

Gun murder rate per gun ownership rate is still vanishingly low in Vermont and most of the Rocky Mountain states, despite high rates of legal gun ownership

Rights are more important than lives. The United States has spent the lives hundreds of thousands of soldiers in defense of those rights. We should no more surrender those rights to fear and alarmism than we would surrender them to a foreign invader.

I agree.

But we aren't just surrendering our rights to fear and alarmism.

We are surrendering our rights to authoritarians (and they are bi-partisan, by the way).

You'll get no argument from me. Both parties would happily burn the Constitution if they had a chance to scorch the other one with the flames.

Beautifully said; a salute to these heroes.

I don’t think there’s much of a dilemma here. There’s little reason to think that requiring backdoors in encrypted devices would reduce killings.

what is on his phone that can't be found online or through his browsing history tracked by google et. al.? you have all his contacts as well through various nsa pen registers and whatnot.

seems like more or less a move to create a "think of the kids or innocents" moment to keep things from "going dark".

Freedom is more important.

Is your definition of freedom not being able to access the phone of a dead gunman?

What do you think the FBI is going to push for, to solve this problem of theirs?

Yes, in part.

My definition of freedom is that no initiated force is allowed.

That includes no forcing tech companies to put backdoors in their phones.

I'm OK with retaliatory force used in self defense, and I consider having a government and having taxation to fund it to fall under that umbrella. So I'm not an anarchist. Rather, I'm a certain breed of classical liberal.

If there were clear and transparent -- like public -- procedures -- by which the FBI could get into an iPhone, it might be alright. Say that if they broke into the iPhone it was indelibly marked -- it flipped a flag in the hardware and there was no way to disguise it, and the OS would broadcast it over the web and over BlueTooth and WiFi, making it easy to provide tools that caught the message and published it. Then people lose their privacy, but only if the government is willing to defend in a credible way the necessity of it.

If I were a large entity trying to secretly access a device I think I would keep it in a Faraday cage.

How about a dated signed explanation that had to passed around and signed by a bunch of public institutions. Heck, to keep other countries from complaining, some could be an international.

No, it's not alright. I'm sick of giving up freedoms every time some violent psycho/group of psychos decided to commit more violence.

Other than all the other psychos who kill a lot more people but are considered legitimate in their doings... We need more access to their information, drug companies making opiates that kill tens of thousands, various other corporations, various world leaders... etc. If we can tolerate them, then we can tolerate your run of the mill psycho doing things now and then and usually immediately being stopped from doing anything else.

I'd actually like to see that argument used more often. The ones they tolerate kill in larger numbers.

Please try to use a different example. I have CRPS, the most painful disease known to man, and have not been prescribed any analgesics two years in because of fear around opioids. You might think you’re excluding my ilk when examples like this are used but you’re not in practice...Just trading tragedy you know for tragedy I hope you never learn about. Almost exactly like the freedom from unreasonable searches. Ty

Let's all remember this post when it comes to vote for one of those Democrats who wants to take our guns away.

No thanks. I live in america and the fifth amendment means I am never under obligation to incriminate myself.

But a simple counter-amendment could fix that, just like with the 2nd Amendment.

In a way I am glad to see the thorough rejection of my comment.

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