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Comment by Simon_says | Hacker News Reader

> Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries?

Yes. Absolutely. That's the only logical endgame.

I've said this before, but you can't outlaw the maths. There's nothing stopping anyone from rolling their own encryption, using well documented algorithms. You'd need to literally outlaw Wikipedia. Hell, even one-time-pads could still be used by truly motivated bad actors that wanted to communicate securely.

They can make it so if they spot you using it (for other than communication with approved banks and retailers and such, maybe), that's instantly something they can charge you with. Then go after a few people who're spotted using it on the Internet by traffic sniffing, meaning the only folks left using it are cranks and actual bad guys.

A total tangent, but the words chosen in this comment and how it relates to the logic behind the US War on Drugs are eery - down to "sniffing" out paraphernalia, "trafficking" illegal goods, end users are "cranks" and bad guys...

I can encode hidden meaningd in poetry. If you outlaw poetry, our US experiment is over.

That some may get around it isn’t the point. Most won’t risk charges to share recipes with aunt Edna or family photos with Grandpa. Some will keep using it and stay under the radar but any time someone’s caught using it, even if it wasn’t part of a crime, it’ll be added to the list of charges against them. It’ll be dead for common use, and risky and annoying to use for those who keep to it.

This is why I am hesitant to use Tor, efforts to monitor it are probably several folds stronger than normal clearnet.

Knowledge of encryption isn't what would be illegal, _using_ it to communicate would be illegal.

You also can't outlaw physics or chemistry. Let me know how non-approved rocketry enterprise goes.

Pretty well? People make small rockets as a hobby all the time. The barrier to entry to cryptography is many times lower too.

>Pretty well? People make small rockets as a hobby all the time.

That's pretty far detached from real rocketry.

A similar metaphor for computing would be the allowed use of a LeapFrog system, rather than a computer.

'My cryptography hobby is going pretty well, I just practiced a Caesar cipher on my LeapFrog.'

(neither a LeapFrog or a model rocket being a practical equivalent to their big relative.)

But if you want to communicate with somebody else in an encrypted way, then you can likely do so with effort that doesn't even approach a hobby. Setting up a system requires more effort, but these singular cases are hard enough to detect and crack that the law enforcement agencies would never be able to do it. You might not even need encryption, because you could communicate in ways that are just obfuscated enough that nobody's going to check. Eg write with blocks on the ground in Minecraft or something.

If the goal is to catch malicious people that are trying to hide their communications, then outlawing encryption won't work. But it will give the government a good excuse to spy on people.

"I've said this before, but you can't outlaw the maths."

I don't think this is the right analogy - instead, I think a better statement would be "you can't outlaw random numbers".

A random number and the ciphertext output of a secure encryption algorithm should be indistinguishable.

I don't think I am being naive to think that even in our wildest dystopian nightmares there is no real path from (current jurisprudence in five-eyes jurisdictions) to (random numbers being illegal).

Not possible in the US unless the Supreme Court stops giving a crap about the first amendment. Incredibly unlikely no matter how unpopular free speech might become.

Oh, as well as the Clipper debacle, in the 90s I seem to recall there was a big push towards forced key escrow, on both sides of the pond.

The US government gave up the Clipper chip laws before even trying to take it to the Supreme Court as it was such an obvious loser.

If congress and the president decide they want to increase the SC to 99 justices and add and additional 90 of their choosing then that's when the US Constitution officially dies but it can be done according to the law.

What’s the difference between 9 of their choosing and 99 of their choosing?

It's easier to have public scrutiny on 9 justices than 99. There isn't enough time for the media or for people's memories to constantly remember to be angry at a few dozen people.

It's just a hyperbole for packing the court. Allowing one president to appoint >50% of the justices so that the court always rules in their favor instead of waiting for seats to be vacated and re-filled.

You have to kill some of them to put the others in place. If you add 90 slots you can just fill the new 90 slots with your guys. That’s the theory of his statement.

The attack on the legitimacy of the courts will fail this time around, just as it always has. The justices rule mostly with integrity and they’re mostly respected and protected.

In the name of Children everything is possible

What indication is there of this?

There is no other endgame in which this is pointful.

You're assuming the people making these rules actually understand encryption, which is doubtful at best.

In many cases, (In my country for sure, and I bet this is common elsewhere) members of the legislative branch are approached by people from the intelligence community, who hand them the drafts for stuff they 'need'.

And you can bet those people do understand encryption.

They might understand encryprion, but that does not mean they are trustworthy nor truthful...

Related to that, Bernstein vs. USG is a nice story.

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