Hacker News Reader

Comment by lillecarl | Hacker News Reader

There seems like there's new bills from Australia, UK and the US every day. They'll just keep going until the shit gets passed?

View on HN

Unless we pass an amendment to the constitution guaranteeing the right for private individuals communicate over encrypted channels, which won’t happen.

And we have to win every single time one of these bills come up. They only have to win once.

If we're really at a point where all rights must be constitutional protected the game is already lost. Rights and freedoms are meant to default to the citizen, meaning anything is legal unless it specifically violates a law on the books.

I.e. Laws and rights are meant to be subtractive rather than addative. You can remove my rights by law, short of that I can do whatever I want.

This is exactly what they're doing tho? Removing rights by laws

Sure, they're trying to. We're supposed to have a say in laws that get passed and who is passing them though. I was only pushing back on the idea that we need new amendments to carve out our rights when we shiuld be able to simply block laws we disagree with and replace the people trying to trample on our rights.

With regards to privacy specifically, we could go a long way with the existing rights protecting us from illegal search and seizure. That should really cover any overstepping by the government and police, leaving only the need to limit what private companies can and can't do (though this should be done with laws and not amendments).

I don't think this is the right way to look at it. Without the 1st Amendment, where would be today? Many people on this site are not fans of the 2nd Amendment, but I think they would have to acknowledge that, without it, the situation of the armed citizenry today, while not really comparable to that of colonial times, would be much shabbier than it is -- we would have lost as much of the right to bear arms as the British have, or the Canadians.

One important function of laws is to delimit and codify the exercise of rights and freedoms. Another is to explicitly limit the government. We should probably be amending the Constitution to accomplish this more often, actually.

Amending hasn’t really cut it though, has it? I’m convinced we need a page 1 rewrite.

Assumptions don’t age well (earth is flat and the center of the universe, diseases are caused by the humors, a weapon only marginally increases the harm a human can do, etc etc). All laws (the constitution included) are created upon assumptions and they should go through a controlled burn once in a while or else we get end-of-empire wildfires.

I’m also wondering what good to see in an armed citizenry being “not shabby” - and before you say something to the effect that it “keeps our government in line” try to remember they have stratospheric death robots that think your ar-15 is just adorable.

Which assumptions from the constitution do you think need to be rewritten? They seem to have aged astonishingly well to me, although I think they should be extended in many cases, eg. limiting government ability to mess with encrypted communications. Rewritting them in this day and age would surely limit our rights further.

Article 1 Section 1 is a good place to start. The system of checks and balances and the concept for the structure and format of representative government has proven itself incapable of being effective in the modern era.

We get nothing done, and what we do get done is exclusively to the benefit of those that can afford to finance campaigns. Our legislative branch is an absolute joke (life terms, like, really?) and the whole idea behind the senate is meaningless in a world where we can fly from one end of the country to the other in a day, and have instantaneous communication.

Our systems of voting are similarly backwards, designed in a time when you had to send a dude on a horse to communicate.

Seriously, page 1 rewrite. The whole damn thing.

What would you like to see added or removed from the constitution?

Personally I'd love an amendment declaring our right to privacy, though we really just need to better enforce illegal search and seizure.

> I’m also wondering what good to see in an armed citizenry being “not shabby” - and before you say something to the effect that it “keeps our government in line” try to remember they have stratospheric death robots that think your ar-15 is just adorable.

So are you saying we shouldn't have the right to arm ourselves because we're already so outmatched by our own government?

And to clarify here, the goal of an armed citizenry and armed militias was extremely important when we didn't have a standing military. The original goal was much less about actually making sure citizens come uld overthrow their own government, that's a modern view usually held by those who don't realize how terrible a civil war would actually be.

I'm of the opinion that we should get rid of this farce that we must have a permanent, massive standing army rather than attempting to disarm all our citizens. Our military needs something to do as long as it's there, we're always going to be looking for a fight to prove why they exist.

> ...the goal of an armed citizenry and armed militias was extremely important when we didn't have a standing military. The original goal was much less about actually making sure citizens come uld overthrow their own government, that's a modern view usually held by those who don't realize how terrible a civil war would actually be.

Yes, this is something more 2nd Amendment advocates should learn about. The militia was instituted for the common defence and was characteristic of the "...organic union of society and government..." that Huntington attributes to many of the late medieval institutions which contributed to the decentralised, self-balancing system of public policy which the founders inherited from the English.

https://rentry.co/72dov

In very layman's terms, I've long viewed the original design as the wanting a educated, trained, and armed citizenry that could actually be trusted to act like adults. If needed they could form militias or even organized armies, but the default state is a nation of adults largely just living out their lives with as few government interventions as possible.

We've since destroyed that goal. Our education system is trash, we don't train our citizens how to take care of or defend themselves, and the gun debate has largely devolved into "no one should have guns because we have cops and armies for that" versus "I have a right to bear arms so I can keep this oppressive government in check"

See, I'm a little on the other side of this. I believe in compulsory service. It's not that I think the military is all that (it isn't, source: did it myself), it's just that if we're gonna let people have weapons, it is a Good Idea to train them on how to respect them properly.

It's hard to take these gun nut militias seriously when all their videos have them doing dumbass shit like barrel flagging and handling them loaded when they're just showing them off. Never mind that mass shootings have become like, the new normal. If we are showing we can't be trusted, then we can't be trusted. It's pretty cut and dry.

I don't have any problem with having amendments protecting our rights, though I my opinion they are meant to be moral declarations rather than defining the limit of our rights.

It's similar for limiting government. Our original designin the US was that the government only has the powers expli itly given to it by the people. We can have laws limiting the government, but again those are really just moral stances because the government should default to having no power.

We lost this somewhere along the way, slipping to a point where it's commonplace for the government to claim to have authority we never gave it while we look for laws that grant us our freedoms rather than fight against laws that limit them.

> Without the 1st Amendment, where would be today?

Lots of countries don't have a constitutionally guaranteed right to say harmful things or carry a sidearm, so I'm going to say, just based on other cultural-similarities, it'd probably be a lot like the UK or Canada...

> Many people on this site are not fans of the 2nd Amendment, but I think they would have to acknowledge that, without it, the situation of the armed citizenry today, while not really comparable to that of colonial times, would be much shabbier than it is

erm, no, I don't think I do. It sounds a lot like you're saying you think things are "much shabbier" in the UK or Canada than in the USA, but friend this just isn't true.

Having grown up in the US and recently spent a couple years living in a country where free speech isn't guaranteed, I feel even more strongly about the importance of the 1st amendment.

The idea that one could be convicted and jailed for saying something deemed offensive in public is completely insane. If I think the PM is being an asshat I would like to be able to say that openly without fear of jail time.

I don't have as much experience with the UK, but with regards to Canada I would indeed consider things there to be shabby. A peaceful protest should never be justification for the government to shut down bank accounts of private citizens. Hell even a violent protest shouldn't lead to that kind of intervention, we were shutting down bank accounts during BLM protests which were sometimes anything but peaceful.

The armed citizenry is certainly shabbier in the UK or Canada. Americans retain much more ready access to basic small arms -- in particular, semi-automatic rifles, banned in the UK in the 1980s -- and with some trouble can get machine guns, grenade launchers, rockets, mortars and many other squad and platoon level level weapons. There are at least 600000 machine guns in private hands in the USA today, registered under the terms of the NFA; and there are probably quite a few more, since many people become Class III dealers more or less just to have them.

Now, none of this is half as good as colonial times. In the United States, we didn't see much restriction of the arms market until the 1930s. Americans freely traded all classes and varieties of weaponry -- small arms, cannons, swords, &c -- during the colonial era and for more than a century after. Americans today have much less of the freedom promised by the 2nd Amendment than we used to; but we have retained much more of this particular right of the English than any other English speaking country.

> Unless we pass an amendment to the constitution guaranteeing the right for private individuals communicate over encrypted channels, which won’t happen.

The USA already has this. The first amendment…

I’m not an American, and I’m definitely not an American constitutional law scholar, but from having a read of the text of the amendment it does appear to primarily be referring to public speech? I’m likely misinterpreting this, but nothing about the First Amendment appears to me about communicating in private and ensuring the privacy of that communication.

Speech has been broadly interpreted to include many "outputs" from human action/work/communication. It extends beyond literal speech/talking. For example, decorating a cake is considered speech, and a baker can refuse to decorate a cake for customers they don't like, because the government cannot compel speech.

I've seen arguments that the encryption algorithm itself is speech and should be protected, similar to the cake decoration.

In addition to protections on speech, the Constitution also has protections on privacy (albeit not literal - that protection has been interpreted by courts over the years - the Griswold case being the most recent/important interpretation of that right [google: "Griswold penumbra"], and now Dobbs could see some of that protection walked back).

> I've seen arguments that the encryption algorithm itself is speech and should be protected

Yeah, that's an interesting distinction for sure. I mean, this has gone back to PGP and the encryption wars in the 90s where it was illegal to export an electronic version of PGP from the US under... ITAR, I believe (secure encryption was considered a munition and thus export-restricted?). And it was worked around by publishing the source code in a book, which could be exported just fine. Where it gets a bit more complicated is publication-restriction vs. use-restriction though; I'm sure I could readily find bomb plans on and possess the plans freely, but the moment I follow the directions in those plans I am committing a criminal act (in Canada at least it'd be "possession of a prohibited device").

The Griswold and Dobbs thing is a really unfortunate situation :(.

Up here in Canada, we've got a kind of interesting situation that really favours E2E and I wish I had a citation handy... basically, law enforcement cannot search your cellphone for evidence without a warrant, as expected, and also can't get a wiretap without a warrant. The situation that arose, though, was that one of the major telecommunication companies was keeping short-term SMS logs for ostensibly system debugging and law enforcement realized they could request those logs warrant-free. Because it was voluntary third-party disclosure, no one was "compelled" to disclose these logs and there was no protection in place for either party of the communication.

Yeah, Clinton-era restrictions classified certain encryption products as munitions.

That restriction lost in early appeals, but IIRC, it never made it to SCOTUS, as the tides changes and industry forced the government to relax the restriction somewhat (IIRC, some restrictions still apply, but not to what we'd consider "normal" encryption products).

Edit/Addition - also worth noting the target/subject of speech matters. Political speech is the most protected, with almost absolute protection.

And often missed by the general public - speech is protected only in the senes the government can't restrict it (without a very good reason), but that doesn't mean speech is free of consequences from the public.

> That restriction lost in early appeals, but IIRC, it never made it to SCOTUS, as the tides changes and industry forced the government to relax the restriction somewhat

The government was forced to relax the regulations when the Ninth Circuit found they were an unconstitutional restraint on speech.

https://cr.yp.to/export/1999/0506-order.html

All software has had first amendment protections since that ruling, and the only reason it never made it to the Supreme Court is because that ruling has never been appealed by the government.

Congress can make any laws it likes, and there’s existing unconstitutional restraints on software in the law today (like the DMCA anti-circumvention restrictions), but it has subsequently never attempted to enforce any restraints of writing or distributing software, and couldn’t without the permission of the Supreme Court.

I’m not trying to be rude, but I don’t understand how so many people on HN seem to be unfamiliar with this case. It’s arguably the most important legal decision in the history of writing software.

That's the case I was referring to above. After Bernstein, the government rewrote restrictions, but some still exist (EAR and ECCN regulations).

The 4th amendment already exists and is ignored by the federal government (e.g. the border search exception [1]).

Passing another amendment will accomplish nothing, it will get ignored just like the 4th one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception

Indeed. It's astonishing how many people seem to believe that passing law X would accomplish X.

We have no shortage of laws already. Including many laws that (on paper) protect individual rights. All of those laws are routinely being ignored. They don't mean anything.

The constitution is meaningless. The bill of rights is meaningless. International human rights treaties are meaningless. All that matters is what happens in practice.

If individual rights exist in a country, it's because of how society and the government operate – not because somewhere, there's a piece of paper that says so. A democracy can turn into a dictatorship without a single law having to change.

The judiciary is supposed to have enough power to ensure that laws are actually followed by the executive. Of course, if judges are in bed with the executive this assumption is violated. A strong separation of power is the best insurance against such things.

> an amendment to the constitution guaranteeing the right for private individuals communicate over encrypted channels

I understand here on HN it looks so obvious, but if you stop and think for a moment it is no natural at all.

The only natural way of having a private conversation is directly from mouth to ear. Private remote communication never existed until recent technology made it possible during the last decades.

We are in the same situation as cars, where people have been walking for millions of years but little more than a century ago we got the ability to move freely along longer distances at previously unimaginable speeds.

I'm not against private communication, as I'm not against cars, but it's just normal that new things get regulated in a society. All countries are OK with driving being regulated (get a licence, always show a readable registration plate...), so why are we shocked every time someone proposes to regulate remote conversations?

I also understand the point that encryption is either breakable by nobody or by everyone (thus the thing about only authorities being able to eavesdrop is moot), but please stop assigning to a pinnacle of modern technology the same status as a natural human right.

"normal" changes over time: a hundred years ago it wasn't normal to talk with literally all of your friends and family remotely all the time, nowadays it is.

Countries signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should respect Article 12:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his ... correspondence

Still, nobody was ever shocked that a judge could order letters to be open or telephones to be tapped. And yet, as soon as someone asks whether we should consider something similar for electronic encryption, HN reacts as if this was something never heard of, nor imaginable.

This is about mass surveillance, not about court orders for wiretapping a person who is being investigated for a crime.

Whether for one person or for everybody, eavesdropping requires encryption to be breakable. We must accept that serious discussion on this issue is not yet closed, and we must accept that one possible outcome is that encryption be banned.

Treating a recent advancement in computing technology as the most natural of the things is not good advocacy of an issue.

> eavesdropping requires encryption to be breakable

This is false.

I'm sincerely interested in an example. Thanks in advance!

https://boingboing.net/2016/12/05/uk-cops-beat-phone-encrypt...

https://www.wired.com/story/smartphone-encryption-law-enforc...

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/encrypted-messages-dont-al...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7b4gg/anom-phone-arcaneos-f...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/fbi-afp-underworld-cr...

https://www.wired.com/2015/01/silk-road-trial-undercover-dhs...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/mossad_hacked...

https://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/article/law-enforcement-access-...

> encryption be banned

You want a law that says we can't share prime numbers?

I'm not sure you read any of my comments, apart the one you replied to.

My only point is that discussions concerning the use of encryption must be accepted, because there is nothing inherently evil or unnatural in them. Don't let's get shocked any time someone proposes something that goes against some folks' credo, and let's debate the proposal in a constructive manner.

I maintain that banning the sharing of prime numbers is outside of the powers of a legitimate government, regardless.

> until recent technology made it possible during the last decades.

Julius Ceasar used encryption (poor, but effective at the time). The enigma machine was developed at the end of World War 1. Unless you have a very charitable interpretation of “last decades”, the premise of your argument does not stand up to basic scrutiny.

>Private remote communication never existed until recent technology made it possible during the last decades.

US Mail, land line telephones. I don't believe either can be intercepted without a warrant.

Yes - because the public has a very, very short-term working memory.

The public pressure and ad campaigns _against_ these things have to be constant.

All it takes is 1 domino to fall then it becomes "well, if it is good enough for <other country>, its good enough for us!"

I am not sure that the American public cares much about what has become the norm in other countries so that line doesn't really carry any weight here.

I'd argue that instead, its more that the public is so apathetic about bad-turns of law that they'll just shrug with a sigh and begrudgingly tolerate the new paradigm.

I don't get how the political system can work like this, we keep denying laws that are absolute dogshit. The politicians give them a makeover and try again. They only need a yes once and we need a no every time.

Makes me question democracy really, it seems fundamentally broken when the peoples voice is supressed over and over. Same stuff happens in Sweden, but with other kinds of laws.

Democracy makes a lot more sense if you see it as an emergency escape valve to prevent violent revolution (because you assume anyone willing to violently revolt would be willing to vote).

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others."

A monarchy of genuinely good rulers is a better government than a democracy, but it's hard to ensure a good ruler because whoever gets chosen, there's always a risk they're corrupt. Democracy gives the people more of a chance to prevent bad laws than a monarchy, even if it's a small chance.

Maybe one day we'll something better than Democracy, like an AI-controlled government, but nobody's come up with anything so far.

Why would an I-controlled system be better? How do we guarantee the alignment problem never rears it's head?

This is not an inherent problem with democracy but with representative democracy. These problems go away when the populace have actual power, in a direct democracy.

And why on earth e we liked i want to be ruled by a machine?

Come on dude

Direct democracy has other problems. Perhaps the biggest is it just isn't practical to ask the entire population about every question of policy and law.

Look into Switzerland. They have found a great balance, with three levels of decision making(Gemeinde, Canton and Federal) and where everything is put to vote if a proposal get enough signatures.

A problem I see with direct democracy is that "the common man" doesn't have time to get educated in everything they'd have to vote for.

The swiss model where things can be raised to referendum seems pretty reasonable to me (Swede). I'd love it over here, so we can tell our government (including the party I voted for) to kindly shove it sometimes.

The Swiss model is exactly what I propose. Local decision making, with referendums.

Does it really? you think the average man won't vote for the Everyone Gets A Free House Also Encryption Is Illegal Because Only Criminals Use It bill?

Switzerland has direct democracy and it works great. Your concerns are invalid!

This may be the wrong conclusion to draw. Larger populations present different governance challenges than small ones do, since decisions that affect fewer are easier to make. Switzerland has about the same population as NYC.

Yes, I believe these massive superstates(U.S., China, India, E.U.) need to be dismantled into smaller components - move the power closer to the people.

You can still have interstate trade, regulations etc.

>A monarchy of genuinely good rulers is a better government than a democracy, but it's hard to ensure a good ruler because whoever gets chosen, there's always a risk they're corrupt. Democracy gives the people more of a chance to prevent bad laws than a monarchy, even if it's a small chance.

No, this isn't the problem with monarchies at all (or maybe I'm just disagreeing with your wording). The problem with monarchies is heredity: sure, you can get a great ruler like Marcus Aurelius, but the problem is the great ruler doesn't live forever, and eventually he dies (or is secretly murdered) and this his shitty son takes over. Then the Praetors have to murder him in his bathtub before he completely destroys the empire.

It's impossible to have a benevolent dictator over the long term with something as big as a nation state.

this does not prohibit its discussion as a theoretical ideal model. It's true that benevolent dictatorships outperform democracy as long as they remain benevolent, which is not long.

That's more an argument to keep states small, for optimal internal governance. Interstate conflict drives states to become larger though so it's a balance.

Ok, an oligarchy of genuinely good rulers for each region and specialty...which is exponentially harder to ensure, because it only takes one to cause problems.

The point still stands that we're better off with a democracy.

I've always felt like laws should be reviewed every so often, maybe even re-passed, to be sure they are still relevant, make sense, and to see if they worked as intended.

There are at least some laws that don't make sense anymore or just flat out failed, but have big implications. Like blue laws, adultery laws, inheritance/intestacy laws, mandatory minimum sentences, sodomy laws, drug laws, etc..

But I do see problems in revisiting laws, it's expensive and time consuming. It would be a never ending battle for both sides, and we would get even less done.

It would be an incentive to write laws succinctly and drop redundant ones so there's less to review.

In the current political climate in the US, I'd also be concerned that laws that we obviously need and agree on would be held hostage for negotiation purposes just like the budget. I also wonder if laws would just get bundled together for a single vote and then bullshit/pork gets attached.

Automatic expiration timers for all laws.

A bicameral legislature where one half needs 2/3rds majority to pass laws, but the other half only repeals laws and needs only 50%.

(The latter is not my idea, it comes from Heinlein.)

> It would be a never ending battle for both sides, and we would get even less done.

Heh, are you a Congressperson? Who is this "we"? The whole thread is people pointing out that "we" and the people doing the things are different. Congress has been on a quiet crusade against encryption since before Pretty Good Privacy in the 90s.

I remain confused about what people fundamentally see when they look at Congress. It would be a huge win for them to get nothing done and have nearly no laws, most of what they've passed for the last 30 years has been disastrous and encouraged the US in steadily unwinding financially and as a united political body. If the power isn't in Congress it'll get picked up by state and local governments where much more ordinary people will get a say on how they are governed. And do much less damage when they screw up.

Suppressing the people's voice isn't democracy at all. At best you could partially attribute that to a representative system based on fear of the mob.

Dropping democracy means they win the first time.

That's because liberal democracy is indeed broken. The capitalist class use state power to advance their own material interests. Why wouldn't they pay for laws that give them an immediate advantage or at least divide the working class?

Many of these "dogshit" laws make sense, when viewed with narrow enough lens.

The problem is twofold...

Politicians have limited capacity to research/understand potential side-effects of these laws. So they rely on lobbyists from the interested parties. Or their own staff, who have their own biases.

Additionally, politicians face re-election. So, they have to balance the whims of their electorate with what might be a better long-term view. "Think of the children" syndrome, if you will.

it's why I donate annually to EFF and ACL . I wish I could afford to donate more.

Europe besides the UK too. Don't be fooled by the EU is privacy heaven smoke and mirrors.

Just because the EU is not US doesn't mean they're not doing the same Draconian shit funded by similar or the same people.

They use the same excuses of "needing it to catch heinous crime/think of the children" and "it will only be used for criminals" but we know that's not true. We know that these laws are used against those considered adversarial to gov, including those engaging in journalism, whether they have a degree on it or not (which shouldn't be the bar to not get surveilled and treated like an authortiarian state)

The situation in EU is more nuanced than what HN wants you to believe:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/law-enforcement/news/eu-wat...

> Wiewiórowski said this type of indiscriminate scanning of private communications “will always be illegal under the Charter of Fundamental Rights (and probably under several national constitutional laws as well),”

https://edps.europa.eu/system/files/2022-07/22-07-28_edpb-ed...

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/summary-of-statement-by-the...

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/leaked-eu-council-legal-ana...

See also the repeated ECJ decisions against IP retention.

I don't see how calling it nuanced negates anything I said.

From the top of my head, Spain, Sweden and Ireland (but not limited to them) absolutely support getting access to e2e encrypted information if they can get away with it.

https://www.wired.com/story/europe-break-encryption-leaked-d...

Obviously most countries that face this have to deal with reality and the insecurities they might introduce but it's not moral qualms or privacy advocates that usually stop them.

And just because someone in a eu body said something is illegal doesn't mean we won't get a big propaganda push down the line if they decide to implement it, like what happens in vaccine passports in Europe (which clearly broke all kinds of rules of freedom of travel and human rights).

I don't care what HN "wants me to believe" and I certainly don't generally represent popular HN views. We can argue on the merits of what I say.

You're right, but we see a lot of people saying EU wants to ban encryption with the CSAR proposal, using it to argue that they don't care about privacy.

I wanted to bring nuance in the discussion, by posting sources to EU bodies (EDPS, EDPB, many associations, and probably the ECJ if it came to that) and members (Germany, Estonia, Finland per your own link) that disagrees with the proposal, or are outright denouncing it as illegal.

EU, as HN, is not uniform, and while it is not the privacy heaven some claim it is (I don't -- I think GDPR is not strong enough and not correctly applied; the ePR proposal seems to be nightmarish thanks to my own country), nor “they don't care”.

Why besides the UK? A recent prime minister built her entire career on dumb ideas like banning encryption.

Because UK was already mentioned and I said Europe, which contains the UK (EU does not)

Parent said:

> Australia, UK and the US every day...

The post literally opens with “Europe besides the UK”, and then goes on to mention the EU. There is a lot more scope for confusion in your writing than you appear to think!

I was going to say "Europe" and some other poster would go "UK was mentioned".

There's always space for confusion. I didn't think there wasn't. I just corrected your wrong assumption, it's not a big deal.

It does seem that at some point they will get the right mix of executive and congressional branches to get it done, unfortunately. They really despise not being able to surveil all of us 24/7.

It works for the lobby around lessening and restricting consumer rights when it comes to copyright.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com