Comment by tempguy9999 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tempguy9999 | Hacker News Reader

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Because saying "he's dead so this is the end of the matter" is unwise and it's worrying you're even asking this.

. Were other people involved?

. or other organisations such as extremists organisations?

. Did he have people egging him on (even if totally uninvolved otherwise), or was he a complete loner?

. Is there a hidden motive here that's not obvious?

. Further evidence of stable and rational thinking, or mentally unstable?

. Is it possible he was aided by legal loopholes, or some failures in process that need patching?

. Could he have left any nasty surprises behind?

. Does his behaviour indicate something that would allow prediction of similar crimes and perhaps their thwarting?

. Photos/films of something of interest like supporters, discussions of further action, whatever

In this case, once a crime is committed, all info needs to be gathered. I'm saying that as someone who is disturbed at extensions of state powers, but once there's a crime, I'm all for picking up everything and analysing it.

Sure it would be nice to have access to the phone, but it is just one of many pieces of evidence that may be gathered, and mostly it is redundant with other sources. If he used the phone for contacting co-terrorists there are trails in many other locations, unless he really knew how to hide his tracks, in which case it is unlikely that he would have left any trails on his phone either.

You may be right, but I'm not convinced.

> and mostly it is redundant with other sources

The main means of communication other than face-to-face is telephone calls and this newfangled web with its many features. Both are provided by a modern smart phone, which most people seem to live through. Therefore you can expect most to all non-F2F comms to go through the phone (typically; not necessarily).

So I can't accept what you say (yet).

> If he used the phone for contacting co-terrorists there are trails in many other locations

These being? You can move about freely in the states, and he was a domestic terrorist.

> unless he really knew how to hide his tracks

Agreed, but it seems most domestic terrorists are bad planners or stupid AFAICS. People like Ted Kaczynski seem to be the exception, most are idiots who will boast online or ask "how can i maek teh THTP" from google.

I care greatly about privacy but when there is legal cause as people have died, my feelings are the law must have access. It is a balance though, and USAins may draw the line differently from brits like me.

> I care greatly about privacy but when there is legal cause as people have died, my feelings are the law must have access. It is a balance though, and USAins may draw the line differently from brits like me.

I draw the line on the side of privacy. I'm absolutely fine with potential unresolved loose ends in a criminal investigation if it means we actually get to practice real security and gain all the privacy that entails.

Regardless of that, I'm not convinced that the actionable information they could obtain is unique to the phone; there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering. It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors.

> I draw the line on the side of privacy.

It's easy to be abstract - what if it had been your family & family? Or do strangers not count?

> there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering

which you've not given, twice.

> It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors.

It's difficult and I see what you're saying even if I don't yet agree.

The reason you're getting downvoted is it seems like you believe encryption should be illegal unless it has a govt backdoor. Encryption is just math, so it's a hard thing to criminalize and to enforce. Furthermore, if the government has a backdoor to all encrypted data then that means China and Russia and any independent hacker would be also searching for that same backdoor and once they find it everyone's screwed. It's really impractical to think that the government could enforce backdoors into all encryption and it'd be exceptionally dangerous if they required all US companies to comply with backdoored encryption. Not to mention the privacy implications of never being safe from government surveillance.

Nah, I'm pretty sure I'm getting downvoted because people don't want to answer questions like, what if it was people killed who mattered to you, or, exactly what other avenues of evidence gathering?

I get that elsewhere too - ask about the limits of self-arming and bingo, downvotes without answers, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606212

It's the online version of turning away with an angry huff because they don't like where this is going.

OK, back to your point, and thanks for a decent response. The encryption issue is difficult and I made it clear I was ambivalent eg. "I care greatly about privacy...". I fully understand the implications of a legal backdoor, and I don't want it [x]. But if phones are the main comms tool now, and if further killings are pending and can be prevented, at least ask the questions.

So I'm wondering if there is some compromise or something. Some way of putting a backdoor in which a 2nd party has a key to (not the gov't). Or something. Yes I'm aware that gov'ts may unfairly lean on the 2nd party. Is there some way through this? Let's try to be creative.

Perhaps this is a mathematically way of proving, based on some assumptions, that I can't have what I want then we can stop wasting time on it and we can get on with the fight against government strong-arming.

Can we at least have a conversation on it without angry, downvote'y silences? This isn't a constructive. It gets us nowhere.

edit, add clarification [x] that if a compromise can't be found and I had to choose between the government having backdoors or not, I'd fall pretty rapidly on the side of Fuck, No. They will be abused. I probably know this better than you.

The truth is that hypothetically we already probably possess enough intelligence to pick out the whack jobs as a class but not which of them is definitively going to actually going to go off.

However we have consistently shown that we are often incapable of competently using that information even when say the family members of a terrorist call us on the telephone and forewarn us let alone when the worrisome info is buried in a mountain of data.

We don't need less privacy or better technology to gather intel. We actually need a smarter system and better tools to sift the mountain of data we actually already possess.

I'm not the OP but its hard to be particular about alternative means of gathering evidence that is itself hypothetical.

For example if you wanted to know who the person associated with he almost certainly communicated with people in a way that could be obtained by serving a warrant to his ISP.

If you want to know what influenced him looking at his web traffic would be advantageous.

Instead of working backwards from hypothetical lets reason the correct way. What evidence do we have that compelling evidence exists on this particular device.

> What evidence do we have that compelling evidence exists on this particular device.

None.

Now ask: what evidence do we have that compelling evidence DOES NOT exist on this particular device.

None again! We can conclude nothing either way.

Don't you think they need to make a compelling argument that actual evidence exists and is being denied to them before we all install backdoors?

You put up an argument which you haven't acknowledged was vacuous, and from that extrapolated that I somehow must want backdoors even when I clearly said "Fuck, No" to them in an earlier post[1] which you must have read because you replied to it[2]

Honest question, what am I supposed to make of this?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661590

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661645

Anyone who wants to commit a serious crime with the help of others will physically destroy the evidence that leads to those helpers before committing the crime. Getting the phone data after the crime has been committed is not going to help preventing these crimes.

Terrorists have been on the radar of secret agencies and police in countless cases. Unfortunately, if the police interviews a potential terrorist or mass killer for "behavioral irregularities" or whatever you call it, this will only radicalize the person more and prevent nothing. Or, at least, it is not a very effective intervention. If there is no crime, the police cannot do much.

To be clear, the NSA could probably easily eavesdrop into all cell phone activity within the US and collect heuristic indicators, and it's very likely that they could predict most of these mass shootings quite well based on these indicators. The problem is that this would be unconstitutional and based entirely on thought crimes like "conspiring to commit a terrorist attack". The laws for this are in place and used against international terrorism, but they are highly problematic and shouldn't be extended to domestic terrorism.

Social workers and maybe mental health support by people who do not have to report to the police probably work much better against radicalization and decrease the probability of an incident. I might be wrong but my guess is that in the US almost zero efforts are spent by social services to improve the social situation of right wing gun nuts and de-radicalize them. Again, no need for getting what's on their phone.

Normal phone calls are logged by telephone companies, emails can be acquired from most providers, Google and other ad companies will have a pretty detailed history of general web use. In short, your phone does almost nothing without some server recording it.

> I care greatly about privacy but when there is legal cause as people have died, my feelings are the law must have access.

You can't have both, if there is a backdoor, it is always there, and it will be used for lots of stuff.

> You can't have [a backdoor] both [ways]

Agreed. In another post I said the same thing. That's why I'm against backdoors. If the cops want to access someone's account just because, well they can make sweet luuurve to themselves with an pineapple.

If that person has done murdered a handful of people I want the cops to get access, strictly permitted by a legal, independent entity that people can feel they can trust, as far as is possible. I'm trying to get a conversation going as to how that can be done, if even possible. It's not going well!

That is the definition of a backdoor, you can't have a piece of encryption that can only be broken if a court says so. You can have multiple keys, and give one to some entity of government, but there is no guarantee that they won't abuse it or leak it or lose it.

> you can't have a piece of encryption that can only be broken if a court says so

yes dammit, that's why I stated I'm against backdoors. I'm not stupid, prime factoring difficulty (or equivalent) is seemingly a fundamental feature of the universe not subject to the will of man, stop assuming I'm stupid.

> and give one to some entity of government, but there is no guarantee that they won't abuse it or leak it or lose it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! they will abuse it! I said so! Has all sentience been sucked out of this thread? Has every last neuron here been devastated?

I'm fed up with this. Discourse here is like the offspring of The Golem and Sisyphus - witless strength of one and the relentless compulsion of the other becoming a novel synergy of turbo-futility where fuck all gets done but in increasingly impressive quantities.

People complain about society. Hint: we are all society.

DanG, if (ok, when) you're reading this, sorry about this. Flag away. I'm tired.

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