Something is a crime if society determines that it should be so. Nothing more.
Clearly the pressure on government to write these laws is coming from somewhere. You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
Clearly the pressure on government to write these laws is coming from somewhere. You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.".
Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
How many terrorists were not caught by these systems? How many would have actually done these actions instead of just talking about it? How many could have been caught with just standard police work?
Without knowing these variables then there is no way to say if these systems are particularly good at catching terrorists.
> Without knowing these variables then there is no way to say if these systems are particularly good at catching terrorists.
I dont think we can ever figure this out since no one is willing to run an rct when it comes to counter terrorism
This is undoubtedly so; but much turns on the trust in government. In this U.S., the president, himself a documented profligate liar, just invited an equally untrustworthy unelected person into the halls of government to vacuum up whatever data he pleased. Maybe trust in the UK government is higher.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/index.htm
Collecting data is often not the problem. The problem is how to evaluate it and use it to direct the use of finite law enforcement or counterintelligence resources.
But to your point, let's not forget congressional republicans rushing a SKIF on capitol hill with their mobile devices out in clear violation of policy (and common sense.) I am relieved by the fact that Trump and Musk do not seem to understand what they can use sensitive information for (other than perhaps to sell or give away to foreign governments and businesses.)
I think my point is good intelligence comes from stitching together numerous data points and often traffic analysis is as good (or better) than content analysis. And maybe that the overwhelming majority of elected officials have no conception of how intelligence is collected and evaluated.
Moreover, it's only a matter of time until the criminal fraternity all catch up and are on the same wavelength. That's when all but the dumbest know exactly what not to do or say on the net.
The Internet is still comparatively young and like everyone else those who've evil intent are still learning exactly how it works. I'd bet money that it won't be long before a 'bestseller tome' of definitive what-not-to-dos cirulates amongst this mob.
The question is at what level will law enforcement's catch have to fall before it has to turn to other methods.
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/encryption-techno...
Can you do the same thing, but in the other direction? How many people would have been harmed if weaker/no encryption was the standard?
How many whistleblowers would have been killed without a secure way to blow the whistle? How many journalists and journalist sources would have been killed? Etc. These people aren't using the USPS for good reason.
Point being, you are only doing one side of your calculation and presenting it as a full argument. But it's just a bad argument unless you calculate both sides.
>Whistleblowers can still encrypt documents on a flash drive, and drop it into a mailbox. There is nothing stopping them from doing so.
The only thing I want to highlight for your consideration is that the USA is not the entire world. The USPS, even if it were perfect, does not exist in the overwhelming majority of the world. People talk to people across borders.
(Also, with some of the proposed laws, encrypting the USB would be illegal)
> The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.".
> Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
Oh come on. Why do you think a "purely emotional arguments" are illegitimate? Are you some galaxy brain, coldly observing humanity from some ivory tower constructed of pure software?
Nearly all positions people take are, at their core, "emotional." And the disagreements that result in "arguments" are often really about differing values and priorities. You might value your "freedom" more than anything and are willing to tolerate a lot of bad stuff to preserve strong encryption, some other guy might be so bothered by child sexual abuse that he wants to give it no encrypted corner to hide in. You're both being emotional.
At least that is how I see the word used.
Rationality and emotionality are not mutually exclusive, and I would say there are very, very few arguments that are devoid of emotion.
The the GP was using "emotional" to dismiss the kind of arguments you're saying are reasoned.
I'm dismissing arguments that are designed to appeal to (and manipulate) the emotions of the person listening. Such as the three examples I gave, which are, in almost every case, used to win an argument without having to consider any possible nuance of the situation.
Often, it's a completely thought-stopping appeal, because everything is simply countered with "so you don't care about children". Or, in your case, subtlety alluding to me being tolerant of CSAM (which was wildly inappropriate, albeit a great example of why I generally just don't talk to people who use those types of arguments).
Apparently that makes me galaxy-brained or whatever, though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
My point is that's pretty much all arguments, except maybe some very obtuse ones no one really cares about.
> Or, in your case, subtlety alluding to me being tolerant of CSAM (which was wildly inappropriate, albeit a great example of why I generally just don't talk to people who use those types of arguments).
That's not what I was doing. I was giving an example to show it's a trade-off driven by priorities and values. But if you want to be super-logical about it, supporting strong privacy-preserving uses of encryption necessarily implies a certain level of tolerance for CSAM, unless you support other draconian measures that are incompatible with privacy. Privacy can be used for good and bad.
There is a distinct difference between a person having emotions while arguing, and using an appeal to emotion as a rhetorical tactic. I do not agree that "pretty much all arguments" contain an appeal to emotion (again, as a purposeful fallacious rhetorical tactic), even though all arguments obviously will have people feeling some sort of emotion.
Even looking through this entire thread, most of the disagreements here do not contain appeals to emotions.
I'm sure that any book on logic and rhetoric from the last few centuries would explain it better than I can. The wiki page has some good explanations and examples as well.
I just think arguments based on appeals to emotion are very often fallacious. But sure, I guess that means I'm a... whatever you just said.
Software surveillance vendors.
> Chat control: EU Ombudsman criticises revolving door between Europol and chat control tech lobbyist Thorn
> Breyer welcomes the outcome: “When a former Europol employee sells their internal knowledge and contacts for the purpose of lobbying personally known EU Commission staff, this is exactly what must be prevented. Since the revelation of ‘Chatcontrol-Gate,’ we know that the EU’s chat control proposal is ultimately a product of lobbying by an international surveillance-industrial complex. To ensure this never happens again, the surveillance lobbying swamp must be drained.”
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-c...
This is a lie: obtaining cleartext just makes enforcement vastly easier and more scalable. If crims have encrypted mobile phones, you can still point a microphone at them.
Scalability is the big issue.
According to The New Oxford Companion to Law, the term crime does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition.
Society also determined it was ok to use a firehose on black people, so I think the best we can say is that the term Crime has nothing to do with Morality, and people who conflate the two need to be looked at with suspicion.
> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
I don't. I think most arguments about crime require one-side to act in bad-faith. After all: The author doesn't actually mean that Encryption isn't illegal in some jurisdictions, they mean that it shouldn't be. You know this. I know this. And yet you really think someone needs your tautological definition of crime? I don't believe you.
The article does address the flaws in some of their arguments (encryption inconveniences law enforcement, think of the children) by pointing out that the average person and children are kept save from criminal elements by encryption.
Not in the vast majority of the United States.
*edited to add "on matters of faith"