Sounds like this dude works for Her Majesty's Secret Service, not the USA. He should be fired for this.
Make no mistake about it, the idea of national sovereignty worldwide is under attack, including the United States of America's, but no one really wants to admit or even entertain ideas of whom it might be, lest the truth be too upending.
What have ended up is a modern day star chamber.
"Finding its support from the king’s prerogative (sovereign power and privileges) and not bound by the common law, Star Chamber’s procedures gave it considerable advantages over the ordinary courts. It was less bound by rigid form; it did not depend upon juries either for indictment or for verdict; it could act upon the petition of an individual complainant or upon information received; it could put an accused person on oath to answer the petitioner’s bill and reply to detailed questions. On the other hand, its methods lacked the safeguards that common-law procedures provided for the liberty of the subject.” –Encyclopedia Britannica
But personally, I still think window of abuse for back doors is too large to be rationally allowed.
Can you even show that taking my privacy away makes me markedly safer, because unless you can establish that first I'm not even listening.
That's not a world I want to live in thanks.
A bit of malfeasance: nobody gets any rights.
In my home country, we have one of the more strict gun owning laws in the world. That does not prevent the criminals from getting guns at all - pretty much every random fucker can get his hand on a pistol, and organized gangs have gear that is often comparable with that of the army. But, on the other hand, it is pretty difficult for the average law abiding citizen to arm themselves for self protection.
The funny thing is, this strict control got really started in the late 60's and 70's, when student riots made for a moment seem like a coupe / civil war against the regime were at least thinkable. So, what are the real winners when the government outlaws technologies than short the gap between state power vs individual powers? It is not the criminal elements in society. They already are breaking the law and profiting from it. They will work around whatever restrictions get imposed and illegally import the gear they need from wherever it is available. It is you and me who get the shaft!
Whether that justifies preventing people from arming themselves for self-defense is arguable, of course.
Ah, so there we have it.
> it's to keep guns from the average not-really-law-abiding citizen
So guilty until proven innocent.
> Whether that justifies preventing people from arming themselves for self-defense is arguable, of course
I guess it's a great thing we have the Second Amendment and associated judicial proceedings.
Heller v. DC further enshrined the individual right to keep and bear arms. Specifically, semi-automatic handguns.
Stare decisis.
Nonsense. A general restriction is not the same as declaring everyone guilty. Am I being declared guilty until proven innocent by not being allowed to own military weaponry? Nuclear weapons? Biological agents?
This doesn't mean the restrictions are OK in this case; as I wrote, it's arguable*
I guess it's a great thing we have the Second Amendment and associated judicial proceedings.
Whatever makes you happy. Not being from the US, my interest is purely academic. Our constitution has no such provision, and the population is under no urge to add it.
Are you saying that because there are idiots who drink and drive, all cars should be banned. But if there end up being criminals with cars that get away from the police on bikes... then it is somehow alright because it was never a goal to stop them in the first place?
I guess I feel even more strongly against letting a dumb law enforcement agency dictate what infosec is ok to have on my systems, thank you very much!
[Edit] Ok, I can see my argument was kind of dumb, comparing regulation with outright banning.
What I am saying is this: in a world where weapons of mass destruction becomes more available, privacy/anonymity is mostly a non issue. I will say it outfront: I am skeptical of the evil genius in a basement, holding a day job while secretly moonlighting on his personal armageddon. Players willing and able to conduct this type of terrorist attacks will probably not rely on the same IT stack regular joes do.
Assuming they have the financial resources and personnel to pose a credible threat will know to not use their iphones. They will know to use vintage hardware, to download and compile their own Linux/OpenBSD from scratch, to get their crypto libraries from "rouge" countries outside of the sphere of influence of the US, etc. Those that do not, they will be busted early.
Those that pose the real threat then are the ones that you cannot stop by making technology harder to get. As long as there is demand, there will be supply. And they will have gear that is in the same ballpark as the forces that are supposed to stop them. Probably not as good as the best there is, because you can never outspend the guy with the printing press, but good enough to hold their own.
And then there is the cost. Not only the conspiracy theory cost that the government is going to turn fascist, but the very real cost of giving real criminals an edge over the public. They already are breaking the law, they wont care about using banned technology. If they can afford it, and if they can either profit from it or avoid being caught using it, they will get it in the black market.
I agree with your analysis if applied to contemporary dangers. But I've been not-so-subtly hinting towards biotech for a reason - as it progresses and the "tools of the trade" become both cheap and possible to DIY, the "required financial resources and personnel" drop sharply. People brewing up dangerous viruses ten years from now in universities or hackerspaces, whether on purpose or by accident, don't seem like a big stretch of imagination. And I honestly wonder, how are we, as a society, planning to safeguard ourselves against that threats. We can barely handle the diseases that occur naturally. People don't realize how dangerous this stuff is, because - again, except from natural diseases - we've never had to deal with a self-replicating technology before.
I'm not saying we'll need to drop privacy and anonymity entirely, but I suspect that they will be affected by any good solution. I'd probably sleep safer if I knew that there's no easy way to anonymously obtain necessary ingredients. You'll never stop a very determined attacker, but they're not the problem - random nutjobs with an axe to grind are.
That is already the case for a lot of things, when it comes to chemistry anyway. Your random person couldn't get their hands on the things required to make various dangerous chemicals. Criminals, they can, sometimes, but with great effort and expense so it's usually aimed at chemicals that will make them money (drugs, typically) -- and the really advanced stuff is done by "legit" (kind of) labs, not a home chemist.
Of course, that's only as good as the stores following the protocols, and with the internet that can change somewhat, but even then it requires buying chemicals outside of the country and getting it through customs (which isn't perfect, but puts up enough of a barrier that regular people or average criminals don't risk it).
Your advocacy of such a practice under such dubious rationale indicates - to me at least - that you don't really understand American principles.
Not really. Please re-read the comment I replied to. The point is, progress of technology brings new dangers and appropriate means of protection need to be created.
My point stands.
A.k.a. "assume everyone is a criminal".
> But my point actually is, some amount of watching will always be necessary
Sure, if there's reasonable suspicion that the person being watched is a criminal, and there's a real warrant (not some rubber-stamp from FISA) authorizing said watching. Watching everyone because "well we don't know if this person's a criminal or not" is not only ineffective (as proven by the dearth of terrorist attacks actually prevented due to NSA surveillance) but unethical and - per the United States Constitution - illegal.
Of course, none of this would be an issue if law-abiding citizens were encouraged and given the resources to protect themselves against crime, be it physical (by practicing self-defense, armed or otherwise) or virtual (by encouraging the use of free/open software, and strong encryption).
An encrypted hard drive is a totally unprecedented thing in that regard.
Then governments with enumerated powers would need some unprecedented powers to get into that unprecedented thing, right?
Only the federal government is limited to its enumerated powers. So at best your argument is that mandating backdoors requires state rather than federal action. State governments can do whatever they want unless it conflicts with a Constitutional right, and there is no right to have a place to stash evidence the government can't get to with adequate process.
Enumerated powers of government. Unenumerated rights of the people.
[1] "Rights" are exceptions, not the rule. The rule is the will of democratically elected legislatures. Rights are exceptions to democracy and should be construed to swallow the rule.
Governments have no inherent power to "inspect." You seem to think governments should have superior powers to individuals. While there is a philosophical argument for this, that doesn't mean it's always going to be true.
If code is speech, so is strong encryption.
State governments are not ones of enumerated powers and they are not limited. They are successors to the British Parliament and inherited the powers of that institution including the general police power. Against that backdrop, "rights" are those specific restrictions on the exercise of that power that states have bound themselves to by the federal Constitution and their own constitutions. There is no room in that framework for an expansive conception of rights that all exist so long as you're "not infringing on others' rights."
A great concrete example is blue laws, which were widespread at the time of the founding and regulated everything from alcohol sales to food consumption. Some of those have been challenged, hundreds of years later and mostly unsuccessfully, on establishment clause grounds, but there is little doubt the states, as a general principle, have the right to regulate public morals.
You must have a pretty rigorous definition of "public morals." I'd like to hear one that isn't a novelty, that accommodates gay marriage.
http://www.cnet.com/news/judge-americans-can-be-forced-to-de...
[1] http://www.denverpost.com/ci_20080656
[2] http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/01/decryp... (p.9)