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Comment by dendory | Hacker News Reader

Bye cloud, we hardly knew ye.

Hello encryption, we've needed ye all along.

It's extraordinarily trivial for the Feds to then outlaw the use of encryption (in any given convenient manner) if it were to ever become a problem. Or, eg simply require that all encrypted data be unencrypted upon request by any law enforcement (or else 20 years in prison).

Encryption solves absolutely nothing unless you're physically outside of the US.

The only way to deal with what's happening is to peacefully dismantle the monster in DC through voting (good luck of course). You can't have a government the size of the US, without it becoming totalitarian and destroying civil liberties - there's nothing else for something that big to do.

Client-side encryption solves everything until they make it illegal, which is a very big and very clear step that they have not made. And if you're not encrypting it yourself, you shouldn't consider it encrypted, period.

Some of us have observed that the cloud was a stupid idea from the beginning. All the cloud should be is an encrypted data service for locally run and stored programs, without anyone but you having access to the data in unencrypted form.

You are probably one of the last bastions of common sense. Everyone is eager to sell out their data.

And why would lawmakers be intimidated by encryption? They could just force you to decrypt whenever one of those agencies asks for it and punish you with lengthy jail terms if you refuse.

If everyone used encryption, and they started doing this, we could at least get rid of the facade of "we are not attempting to pool power in a way that will lead to a police state." It would be a bald-faced power-play.

Exactly. It means the pretense evaporates, and that the sheep wake up.

I mean, if some government agent rifles through their stuff in the cloud, the sheep don't care. But if they knock on the sheep's door and do it, then the sheep is going to get angry, if he's innocent.

At least if they had to force you to decrypt, you would know that they had access to your data and they couldn't read it secretly. Also, forcing you to decrypt something would presumably require an order from a judge, which would presumably require the police to show probable cause.

I don't see why all those presumptions shouldn't be true for accessing unencrypted email. But maybe you're right that more traditional ways of storing files would lead to more traditional interpretations of the law.

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