We should design cryptosystems that include functionality that support warrants as opposed to being antiencryption and removing encryption.
It's like nobody learned anything from Snowden's revelations. The second those backdoors are available, they're going to be surrendered in secret to various three letter agencies in the name of national security. That's going to happen on day one. On day two they'll be breached by foreign intelligence services.
Everyone is bad designers then. All of them rely on operating system providers not stealing your messages. Some with the people providing the chat application. Since they have to be able to display messages they are able to log them somewhere.
Society needs trust to function.
You can compile your own operating system and control your hardware supply chain - you don't have to rely entirely on trust for those components.
> Since they have to be able to display messages they are able to log them somewhere.
If they're end-to-end encrypted, no, the people providing the chat application can't log anything except noise. That's what we're talking about outlawing here.
Regardless of the above, when I say 'system' I'm referring to a cryptosystem, not the other parts of the software stack.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
It's unrealistic for everyone to audit their operating system and hardware.
>If they're end-to-end encrypted, no, the people providing the chat application can't log anything except noise.
Yes, they can. If you used a comprimised Element app your encrypted Matrix messages can be stolen.
> Regardless of the above, when I say 'system' I'm referring to a cryptosystem, not the other parts of the software stack.
If your cryptosystem is compromised nothing else matters. Your argument seems to be “we shouldn’t worry about secure cryptosystems because these other unrelated things could go wrong,” which I’m not interested in debating with you.
That’s the beautiful thing: we don’t have to care what the government thinks. We are 30y into the encryption wars, and they cannot put the genie back in the bottle. It just is.
Some states have the death penalty.
>When you take away encryption, The Innocent and the Guilty are punished, the innocent disproportionately.
More information allows people to make a more informed decision. Punishing innocent people is a different problem separate from encryption.
Like most reasonable people, I want governments to try to prevent such crimes and to punish people who commit them. I do not, however wish to grant governments unlimited powers with which to pursue those goals. In particular, there are some bright lines which should never be crossed. Those include torture, punishment without a reasonable attempt at a fair trial, and outlawing tools for secure communication.
A back door marked ‘staff only’ doesn’t actually know who is staff and who isn’t.
Which is my you use cryptography instead of just a sign.
In the analogue days "wire tapping" regulated it's self because of the manual nature, and a warrant attempted to ensure enough evidence was required to actually target an individual.
With digital communications the same thing can be done leaving almost no trace against an entire population.
Governments have a LONG way to go to prove that "three letter agencies" won't abuse a system that is setup to provide legal wire taps for digital communications.
Please shoot my idea down.
[0] or 'backdoor' keys [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing (or similar)
My suggestion isn't covert, nor does it bypass encryption.
>2. A means of access to a computer system that allows unauthorized users to circumvent normal authentication procedures. >thefreedictionary
People with warrants are authorized to access the messages.