Homeland Security: Crypto makes it harder for Feds to find “terrorist activity” | Hacker News Reader

Homeland Security: Crypto makes it harder for Feds to find “terrorist activity”

dhs.gov

11 pointsdeclan11 comments

Here's a few that they forgot to add to the list:

* The fact that all citizens aren't required to log all activity of any sort with the government so that government officials and scan the log files for patterns makes it harder for Feds to find "terrorist activity."

* The fact that some things require warrants makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* The lack of an all-knowing, all-seeing eye makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* Considering people as human beings rather than just numbers on a screen makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* The fact that all locks aren't required to register a master key / combination with the government so that any government official can bypass any lock at any time for any reason makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

While we're at it:

* Government officials that break the laws and get little or no punishment reduces public confidence in the rule of law. This leads to citizens viewing the government as an antagonist which makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* The government spending copious amounts of money on the War on Drugs rather than repurposing said money to finding terrorists makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

If everyone was in a cage there would be no terrorist activity.

>In the name of homeland security, we can build more walls, erect more screening devices, interrogate more people, and make everybody suspicious of each other, but we should not do this at the cost of who we are as a nation of people who cherish privacy and freedom to travel, celebrate our diversity, and who are not afraid.

I feel the ending speaks more against it than for it. It's mentioned because it is a fact. It is a fact that strong encryption helps those who wish to communicate in secret for dubious purposes.

It's not a very pretty fact. Because it means if the average citizen does not wish to be spied on or wishes to have a secure line of communication - so must "the bad guys".

Unfortunately this isn't an easy problem to solve.

Sure it is. The NSA can stop mass monitoring of U.S. civilians. The reason for the sudden growth in encryption is purely because of their blatant monitoring of U.S. citizens as terrorist's.

Your solution doesn't address the problem. The problem is not a rise in encryption but the government not being able to read encrypted communications.

Unless you are suggesting that all encrypted communication should be assumed to be terrorist communication - and the only reason this assumption is now considered unsafe is because a rising popularity of using encryption due to NSA surveillance? If that is your point, I hope you see the flaw in it.

The problem is not a rise in encryption but the government not being able to read encrypted communications.

How is this the problem? As far as anyone knows publicly, breaking encrypted communications has resulted in zero terrorism arrests. Given that US citizens are supposed to not be under general suspicion all the time, how is encrypted communication a big deal? How is breaking that encryption the problem?

I think you're ignoring the context of my statements.

Let's assume two things off the bat:

   a) The government is only surveilling people under reasonable suspicion. [1]

   b) Encryption is not a confirmation of illicit activities.

The problem:

   1) Government has reason to suspect Person A

   2) Government cannot see their communications due to encryption

   3) Government cannot investigate any further due to encryption

In the past they could monitor communications of a suspect and determine whether or not the suspicions were true. This has prevented a number of crimes - both drug related, mafia/gang/cartel related, and terrorist related. With encryption methods becoming commonplace - the government can no longer do what they have been doing and these once preventable crimes are becoming less preventable. Encryption is now too powerful and secure.

This is not a problem in and of itself. It's a good thing for citizens too! The problem is that crimes that were once preventable through surveillance are becoming impossible to survey.

The solution is to not weaken encryption - but find other methods of confirming suspicions on a suspect who is under reasonable suspicions of illicit activity. [2]

[1] We know this to be false, but go along with me here

[2] Which is what is being asked for: "We need your help to find the solution."

I reject your assumption (a) categorically. By now, we've seen enough leaked material to believe that the NSA and FBI surveill everyone they can. The NSA and FBI apparently believe that everyone is under suspicion. I reject that belief and your assumption.

See the footnote cited as [1] in assumption `A`. This does not make the argument itself false. It makes the implementation and practice flawed.

Due to improper practice, people no longer trust the government to draw its own line in the sand and declare "We shall not cross this line!"

Rightfully so! But that still does not take away the reality of the situation:

Improved encryption methods means secure communications of which cannot be intercepted or prevented by a government body with the goals of protecting its citizens. This poses a danger to the citizens.

Now the citizens can accept that danger and keep their own communications secure from a government they no longer trust to stay within the drawn lines - or they find an alternative solution. Or they accept the fact that their desire for personal privacy is worth more than their security and make that sacrifice.

I'll save you the time of finding the quote.

"He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security."

Going along with assumption A is obstinate and we live in a world where the U.S. Not only assumes B is false, but add assumption C "anyone who isn't an employee/officer of a U.S. Intelligence department / service, is a potential terrorist, and even then we should be careful in case of moles and home grown radicals"

Pretending we're discussing something reasonable here is incredible foolish and worst of all, the United States continues to drag the rest of the world into their paranoid power trip. To paraphrase a famous poem, "First they came for anything that wasn't a corn farm..." And shits been skidding downhill ever since.

I don't see the problem here, there are other ways to hunt terrorists then parsing everyone's emails and phone calls.

Regardless of what terrorist do, most still have to act outside of the internet, and those who do terrorist activities solely on the internet are already using encryption. Also, the government still has access to tap phone calls and get copies of people's emails through the warrant process, the only thing the private sector is doing is making it harder for people to break the law, isnt this a good thing?

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