The story title mentions Australia but this is relevant to all the 5eye nations, as they're obviously pre-briefing the media on what the agenda will be and this is the first time that we're getting detail on what they'll be proposing (the UK proposals were vague)
What they seem to be talking around is implementing an app-level CALEA-like capability.
What I think how they think it would work: companies would be made to build lawful targeted intercept capability into their apps, in the same way telephony and other equipment is today. The app developer receives a warrant for an identifier and they're required to split off that traffic and change the keys, or encrypt it twice (the sender/recipient key and an intercept key - one per warrant (this happens with some net and tele warrants now)).
We all know the downsides of this approach, but it isn't technically impossible. What would be impossible is enforcing it, as it is more a regulatory hurdle. It is more possible today because of vertically integrated walled gardens being used for most app distribution - and backed by two of the largest companies in the world who may be susceptible to a compromise (especially as there is the large tax issues hanging over both their heads).
On a scale of how bad things can get - I think warranted targeted surveillance is better than device backdoors which is better than metadata retention which is better than the mass surveillance we have today (leading to cable splitting and DPI, or situations like Lavabit)
I don't see how, even if you're ok with warranted targeted surveillance, how a compromise is made here that doesn't lead to a wack-a-mole game where legitimate users are inconvenienced while the 'bad guys' are pushed onto alternate Android distributions and unofficial apps.
I also don't see how a CALEA-like capability is kept secure and safe - especially with apps (we saw the NSA use CALEA intercept to surveil political targets). Clapper et al always vaguely answer "key escrow" to this question without spelling out how that would work.
With subsequents backdowns in the scope of what these governments are wanting to do (and this latest proposal is again is a minor backdown) we might be reaching the finite conclusive point where comms do go dark and the new reality is that despite all of the tech we have law enforcement mostly relies on human intelligence and they'll have to scale back up for that. 3,500 terror suspects in the UK, 4,000 employees at MI5 - and notably in the recent attacks there were HUMINT warnings.
Stored-program general purpose computers are a fundamentally a threat to any entrenched power that relies on being able to control any potential risk with physical, legal, economic, or social force. The only real way to control software that is no longer scarce is to find a way to hobble the "universal computing machine" so it is no longer universal.
Cory Doctorow's warning[1] about the War On General Purpose Computing received a lot of attention, but I suspect his far more important followup[2] about the looming Civil War over General Purpose Computing was had a much smaller audience. Dan Geer suggested[3] that this "Cold Civil War" has been ongoing for a long time already. With this new push by FVEY nations against crypto, it looks like the war is starting to heat up.
> where comms do go dark
That's just not true. Metadata is everywhere and will likely only get even more informative into the future. As Susan Landau explained[4] in her testimony to Congress, the only people "going dark" are the people trying to "preserve 20th century investigative techniques [while] our enemies are using 21st century technologies against us." Complaining about "going dark" is just misdirection away from a total failure to update investigative techniques to not just keep up with changing technology, but to take advantage of the new opportunities created by our growing sea of {,meta}data.
I rushed through the article but it didn't really say anything of value, other than justifications from the state for treating everyone as criminals (oh how convenient that would be).
You don't really need much for targeted surveillance, right ? One only needs to tap into the distributor and push a specific trojan update.
Even without that Telegram and Signal already have vulnerabilities by tying key-pairs to phone numbers via OTPs. GSM is broken, ergo so are these. If these agencies wanted to do targeted surveillance there is very little in their way IMO.
The argument presented in the article is a specious one in that they use the premise of targeted surveillance for instituting the structures for mass on-demand targeting.
This is a very slippery slope, and as usual the morons that form our 'forth pillar' have let us down badly.
I think that you're spot on. My only surprise would be that it hasn't happened already.
Many of the major telecom-ish apps that were not subject to interception added the capability later via regulation or circumstance. Nextel Direct Connect, Skype and the mysterious purchase by eBay, and FaceTime after the patent suit come to mind.
Thanks for your analysis, seems like a realistic reading of the situation.
I wonder if the threat of the net going dark is really anywhere as bad as the intelligence agencies pretend, considering that there is more information available than ever before outside of those encrypted messaging apps.
> "I personally want to live in a world where reasonable people and companies would say, 'You know what? Under the rule of law, and with the right oversight and a warrant, communications can be listened to when it's needed to protect us.'"
Yes well, I don't. But hey – why not facilitate foreign actors spying on our companies so that we may or may not catch any terrorists?
This is a meme that is coming from the top. Expect to see this phrase a lot more in articles and from talking heads on the topic. They aren't even very subtle about it.
1. The rule of law has not been compromised (snowdon has shown it has already)
2. warrants are issued by a proper judiciary (not the likes of FISA)
3. Oversight that protected citizens privacy rights (let's all laugh at this one since it requires Snowdon to show us that oversight just doesn't exist)
> Attorney-General George Brandis said the government will not pursue the controversial "backdoor" access option by forcing firms to plant flaws in their encryption software that would allow it to be cracked by police or security agencies
Forcing firms not to implement end-to-end encryption is forcing firms to implement flaws in their encryption software.
> The rapid proliferation of encrypted messaging by terrorist networks has prompted...
Giving governments the power to perform mass interception and decryption of communication doesn't seem like a sensible way to fight terrorists, even if they say it's only to be used on suspects. Terrorist attacks aren't increasing because the "bad guys" suddenly got their hands on a copy of OpenSSL.
In the case of the most recent attacks, these people were let into the country voluntarily.
It says specifically that the government will _not_ pursue the backdoor options; seems that they just want to have clearer international protocols around warrants for information. Seems sensible if you ask me.
> In mid-2013, less than 3 per cent of counter-terrorism investigations intercepted communications that were encrypted. Today that figure was more than 40 per cent, Senator Brandis said.
I want to hear more on this, because so far as reporting has gone on terrorist attacks since 2013... The use of encrypted messaging systems seems conspicuously absent.
In fact, it is notorious that they didn't use any such system, just regular SMS, speaking sometimes in Arabic or using very weak coded language. In general, these guys are morons.
However, ISIS overseas is different. They or an allied group have offensive cyber capability and an appreciation of opsec. They are known to have taken advantage of weak opposition opsec for disinformation and tactical advantage (hacking opposition command cellular devices via phishing and social engineering to get tactical planning information). I don't know if they use good encrypted comms, but it seems likely.
Would these skills migrate back to be use by local wanna be terrorists? I doubt it.
So the bigger problem is not deliberate use but accidental. If they were all using imessage by default it is going to be much harder. No easy meta data, no mass scanning of SMS. You're left with physical surveillance, phone calls, rough cell location data and HUMINT. If you can't get their Facebook messenger calls or messages you are stumped.
Of course, this is as intended -- no effective mass surveillance. But how do we enable supervised targeted electronic surveillance without it getting out of control?
If fb/google gave into to a CALEA type enforcement regime there are no limits on how much government surveillance would occur, at a level the Stasi would drool over.
None of any of this ever makes any sense. There will always be communication styles that are inaccessible to authorities. And if we ever get "spooky action at a distance" style communication that does not rely on an interposing medium (regardless of speed), then all this becomes even more moot.
Actually, the most depressing part of this, is that they do understand. Turnbull is a noted user of Signal, Wickr, and other secure messaging services, and has pushed for other cabinet and parliament members to use them also.
They know what they're doing, and sooner or later they'll go for a "more equal than others" approach to encryption.
What do you mean? The article basically boils down to Brandis wanting international intelligence agency protocols for warrants to get access to info like this.
Obviously, either encryption works flawlessly for both legal and criminal purposes, or it works for neither.
What the proposal seems to concentrate is endpoints, where plaintext inevitably exists, and legal protocols for accessing it.
OTOH any sane implementation would only generate plaintext for display purposes, and would clear the RAM as soon as display (or input) is done, so finding the plaintext anywhere may be honestly impossible. At least, without tampering with the software on either end.
For the phones, that can be pulled regardless of the app's security.
If the legal framework is laid out, government can tell Google or Apple (or phone vendor) to push a system-level update. It is trivial for both to push code that can run without any restrictions, have full access to screen, audio, camera and network.
Not sure why they bother, though. Wasn't it said many times almost every baseband module is already a black box with possibility of undetectable access to the main CPU/memory?
For those who are unfamiliar with the Attorney General George Brandis, this is one of the people instrumental in implementing two year mandatory data retention.
This is a famous interview he gave which is shows how little he understands about the concept of metadata, and is mandatory viewing for all who are not familiar with him:
His utter inability to understand the issues that he is legislating is distrubing.
"What people are viewing on the internet is not going to get caught ... What people are viewing on the internet while they surf is not going to get caught. What will get caught is the web address".
The legislation ended up retaining the IP address that you visit, but not the host or URL. I suspect this is the distinction he was trying to make, but nevertheless, it is still disturbing.
Our governments appear to be pursuing mutually contradictory aims. On one hand there are increasingly frequent and powerful cyber attacks which can only be resisted through superior cyber-security and encryption. Then on the other hand we get this rubbish.
Is it even possible to solve both these problems at once in a way which preserves the freedom of the net and doesn't involve some crippling PRC style regulation?
I wonder if Facebook/WhatsApp have already been testing this type of access under this current "feature" that's supposed to make it more "convenient" for users who switch phones:
Most in the crypto community seem to have sided with WhatsApp at the time, but I wonder if they were taken for fools, too, by buying WhatsApp's argument.
If I were to implement a backdoor, then implementing it as a "feature" that "makes sense" is definitely the way I'd go, especially if my app were to get a lot of attention. That way I won't have to hide it (much) or worry about it getting discovered because I could just "explain away" the critiques.
One thing that seems to be left out of most discussions around this, is "proof of sender" would likely be compromised.
For example with PGP/GPG, if some "magical" approach was added so messages could be intercepted and then decrypted and read by intelligence/law-enforcement/(etc), it seems feasible those same people may be able to spoof the sender's signature.
eg create falsely signed, encrypted messages that verify as being from the real sender. Extremely good for blackmail/framing/similar. :(
It would depend upon the capabilities of the "magical" implementation approach of course, but it fits the scenario. PGP/GPG is regarded as pretty strong, but SSL/TLS certs already aren't so seem like they'd be much more prone to this.
The 9/11 attackers discussed their plans through email. Good thing they didn't use encryption, or it would have been a tragedy.
Wikipedia says the United States Capitol/The White House was called "The Faculty of Law". The Pentagon was dubbed "The Faculty of Fine Arts". Atta codenamed the World Trade Center "The Faculty of Town Planning". I remember reading they had also use terms such as "birthday cake" and "candles".
I don't know if ASIO (and the US agencies pushing this agenda) are lazy or if they have some different agenda. Clearly this isn't a make-or-break issue in policing.
"I think we've got to take a common position [among the five eyes] on the extent of the legally imposed obligations on the device-makers and the social media companies to co-operate," Senator Brandis said.
He's got to realise that any such agreement will inevitably end up being the lowest common denominator of what each of the nations think they can reasonably get away with legislating, which in this case probably means that US (with the strongest device-maker and social-network lobby) will drive what is possible.
This is a brilliant comment except for the fact these weapons you presumably own will never, ever be able to overthrow the US government; a few hackers employed by Russia already did that anyway.
Secondly, if what you say is true I assume, given the refusal to follow large parts of the rest of the constitution, you are planning to overthrow them as we speak?
Finally, I’m concerned that your dream of overthrowing a bad/illegal government, while utterly hopeless, is causing tens of thousands of deaths and about 100000 people being shot per yer. But hey, that imaginary overthrowing the government thing is worth it...
While the parent made a partially correct comparison, this whole thread is turning into a giant contest on highlighting where it doesn't work and then trying logic fallacies of all sorts. What's wrong with you, people?
Surely, not every argument. I don't think arguments like "legally owned guns are frequently stolen and used by criminals" works for strong cryptography. However, things like "more ____ control laws would reduce deaths", "high-____ should be banned because they too often ____", "____ are rarely used in self-defense" or "a majority of adults, including ____, support common sense ____ control" can be tried. I just took those from the first search result for "gun control", picking few that I was able to adapt without rephrasing too much.
Heck, I can see even how "more ____ control leads to fewer suicides" can be pulled. In glorious Russia we already have this train of thought running at full-speed, just with "Internet censorship" instead of "strong cryptography".
So while parent comment is obviously biased, it has some valid point. Not sure if its validity means anything useful, though.
____
Note, I explicitly don't evaluate any claims validity here, and must remind that even if "A does X" is true, and even though "A is similar to B in some respects", that doesn't mean that "B does X" is true.
The problem is the fallacy consisting in the idea that that owning a gun puts you in equal terms with the government. That used to be the case maybe circa 1776, but no longer the case in 2017, 241 years later.
The government operates a regular, professionally trained armed forces with modern, military grade equipment. Your weapons can barely counter law enforcement, let alone an army.
Good luck solving a dispute with the government by firing a semi-automatic gun at an Apache Helicopter firing you back with 6000 rounds per minute.
>"freedom-loving internet users will soon know how gun owners feel. every single bogus argument for gun control or "assault weapons" bans can, and will be, used against internet speech freedom and information privacy, now that the western political establishment has taken it upon themselves to strip you of your free speech rights after seeing how trivial it was stripping you of your guns, and how much enthusiasm their populaces had for it."
Wow what a total straw man. Firstly this is an article about Australia not the U.S. But I will get into why Australia is particularly relevant in your poor choice of straw man in a second.
Firstly, "Gun control" is not about wholesale elimination of gun ownerships but rather rather having some policy that permits its' ownership while still accounting for public safety. Your sentiment is typical FUD propaganda employed by lobbying groups like the NRA in the US - "they're coming to take your guns!" By the way the NRA is among the most powerful lobbying groups in the US[1], there is no such encryption/privacy lobby.
The central talking points in "Gun Control" are enforcing some common sense provisions like "back ground checks" to prevent mentally people unstable from owning guns. Or restricting civilian ownership of military-style assault rifles that don't have a compelling civilian use case in either hunting or self defense.
Australia has implemented both of these common sense provisions mentioned above - forbidding semi-automatic assault rifles and mandating back ground checks and waiting periods for gun purchases. And guess what? Australia doesn't the mass shootings that are so common they start to overlap each other's news cycles. There is no epidemic city like Chicago where 762 people in a single year were killed by guns[2] And plenty of Australians own guns. Australia implemented these after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996. And not only does Australia have no shortage of people that own guns but gun ownership is on the rise [3]. You know what isn't on the rise though? Mass shootings of innocent civilians these went from 11 per year to zero after changes in legislation proposed in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre[3].
I am a strong proponent of E2E encryption and the right for people to be able to communicate privately, however I thing Brandis is saying generally positive things. If Australia thinks someone is a criminal, and there is an agreed process to obtain a warrant (hopefully from a judge), I think that's fine. The NSA mass-surveiling Americans is entirely different, as are other similar tactics to spy on presumably innocent people. Warrants are good, especially with people actively making calls.
nikcub|8 years ago
What they seem to be talking around is implementing an app-level CALEA-like capability.
What I think how they think it would work: companies would be made to build lawful targeted intercept capability into their apps, in the same way telephony and other equipment is today. The app developer receives a warrant for an identifier and they're required to split off that traffic and change the keys, or encrypt it twice (the sender/recipient key and an intercept key - one per warrant (this happens with some net and tele warrants now)).
We all know the downsides of this approach, but it isn't technically impossible. What would be impossible is enforcing it, as it is more a regulatory hurdle. It is more possible today because of vertically integrated walled gardens being used for most app distribution - and backed by two of the largest companies in the world who may be susceptible to a compromise (especially as there is the large tax issues hanging over both their heads).
On a scale of how bad things can get - I think warranted targeted surveillance is better than device backdoors which is better than metadata retention which is better than the mass surveillance we have today (leading to cable splitting and DPI, or situations like Lavabit)
I don't see how, even if you're ok with warranted targeted surveillance, how a compromise is made here that doesn't lead to a wack-a-mole game where legitimate users are inconvenienced while the 'bad guys' are pushed onto alternate Android distributions and unofficial apps.
I also don't see how a CALEA-like capability is kept secure and safe - especially with apps (we saw the NSA use CALEA intercept to surveil political targets). Clapper et al always vaguely answer "key escrow" to this question without spelling out how that would work.
With subsequents backdowns in the scope of what these governments are wanting to do (and this latest proposal is again is a minor backdown) we might be reaching the finite conclusive point where comms do go dark and the new reality is that despite all of the tech we have law enforcement mostly relies on human intelligence and they'll have to scale back up for that. 3,500 terror suspects in the UK, 4,000 employees at MI5 - and notably in the recent attacks there were HUMINT warnings.
pdkl95|8 years ago
Stored-program general purpose computers are a fundamentally a threat to any entrenched power that relies on being able to control any potential risk with physical, legal, economic, or social force. The only real way to control software that is no longer scarce is to find a way to hobble the "universal computing machine" so it is no longer universal.
Cory Doctorow's warning[1] about the War On General Purpose Computing received a lot of attention, but I suspect his far more important followup[2] about the looming Civil War over General Purpose Computing was had a much smaller audience. Dan Geer suggested[3] that this "Cold Civil War" has been ongoing for a long time already. With this new push by FVEY nations against crypto, it looks like the war is starting to heat up.
> where comms do go dark
That's just not true. Metadata is everywhere and will likely only get even more informative into the future. As Susan Landau explained[4] in her testimony to Congress, the only people "going dark" are the people trying to "preserve 20th century investigative techniques [while] our enemies are using 21st century technologies against us." Complaining about "going dark" is just misdirection away from a total failure to update investigative techniques to not just keep up with changing technology, but to take advantage of the new opportunities created by our growing sea of {,meta}data.
[1] http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
[2] http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
[3] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1GgnbN9oNw&t=3h35m50s
throwaway82344|8 years ago
You don't really need much for targeted surveillance, right ? One only needs to tap into the distributor and push a specific trojan update.
Even without that Telegram and Signal already have vulnerabilities by tying key-pairs to phone numbers via OTPs. GSM is broken, ergo so are these. If these agencies wanted to do targeted surveillance there is very little in their way IMO.
The argument presented in the article is a specious one in that they use the premise of targeted surveillance for instituting the structures for mass on-demand targeting.
This is a very slippery slope, and as usual the morons that form our 'forth pillar' have let us down badly.
markvdb|8 years ago
Spooky23|8 years ago
Many of the major telecom-ish apps that were not subject to interception added the capability later via regulation or circumstance. Nextel Direct Connect, Skype and the mysterious purchase by eBay, and FaceTime after the patent suit come to mind.
Asdfbla|8 years ago
I wonder if the threat of the net going dark is really anywhere as bad as the intelligence agencies pretend, considering that there is more information available than ever before outside of those encrypted messaging apps.
cJ0th|8 years ago
Yes well, I don't. But hey – why not facilitate foreign actors spying on our companies so that we may or may not catch any terrorists?
retox|8 years ago
This is a meme that is coming from the top. Expect to see this phrase a lot more in articles and from talking heads on the topic. They aren't even very subtle about it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Encryption+%22rule+of+law%22...
jarym|8 years ago
1. The rule of law has not been compromised (snowdon has shown it has already)
2. warrants are issued by a proper judiciary (not the likes of FISA)
3. Oversight that protected citizens privacy rights (let's all laugh at this one since it requires Snowdon to show us that oversight just doesn't exist)
So, agree with you :)
aaronmdjones|8 years ago
Forcing firms not to implement end-to-end encryption is forcing firms to implement flaws in their encryption software.
askvictor|8 years ago
Which is why they're not pursuing it presumably.
slang800|8 years ago
Giving governments the power to perform mass interception and decryption of communication doesn't seem like a sensible way to fight terrorists, even if they say it's only to be used on suspects. Terrorist attacks aren't increasing because the "bad guys" suddenly got their hands on a copy of OpenSSL.
In the case of the most recent attacks, these people were let into the country voluntarily.
harry8|8 years ago
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is a noted user of Signal...
One day these stories will be written by and about people who have a clue. One day...
askvictor|8 years ago
shakna|8 years ago
I want to hear more on this, because so far as reporting has gone on terrorist attacks since 2013... The use of encrypted messaging systems seems conspicuously absent.
angry_octet|8 years ago
However, ISIS overseas is different. They or an allied group have offensive cyber capability and an appreciation of opsec. They are known to have taken advantage of weak opposition opsec for disinformation and tactical advantage (hacking opposition command cellular devices via phishing and social engineering to get tactical planning information). I don't know if they use good encrypted comms, but it seems likely.
Would these skills migrate back to be use by local wanna be terrorists? I doubt it.
So the bigger problem is not deliberate use but accidental. If they were all using imessage by default it is going to be much harder. No easy meta data, no mass scanning of SMS. You're left with physical surveillance, phone calls, rough cell location data and HUMINT. If you can't get their Facebook messenger calls or messages you are stumped.
Of course, this is as intended -- no effective mass surveillance. But how do we enable supervised targeted electronic surveillance without it getting out of control?
If fb/google gave into to a CALEA type enforcement regime there are no limits on how much government surveillance would occur, at a level the Stasi would drool over.
white-flame|8 years ago
andrewstuart|8 years ago
vermilingua|8 years ago
They know what they're doing, and sooner or later they'll go for a "more equal than others" approach to encryption.
askvictor|8 years ago
nine_k|8 years ago
What the proposal seems to concentrate is endpoints, where plaintext inevitably exists, and legal protocols for accessing it.
OTOH any sane implementation would only generate plaintext for display purposes, and would clear the RAM as soon as display (or input) is done, so finding the plaintext anywhere may be honestly impossible. At least, without tampering with the software on either end.
drdaeman|8 years ago
If the legal framework is laid out, government can tell Google or Apple (or phone vendor) to push a system-level update. It is trivial for both to push code that can run without any restrictions, have full access to screen, audio, camera and network.
Not sure why they bother, though. Wasn't it said many times almost every baseband module is already a black box with possibility of undetectable access to the main CPU/memory?
pserwylo|8 years ago
This is a famous interview he gave which is shows how little he understands about the concept of metadata, and is mandatory viewing for all who are not familiar with him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1ryLGs2ws
His utter inability to understand the issues that he is legislating is distrubing.
"What people are viewing on the internet is not going to get caught ... What people are viewing on the internet while they surf is not going to get caught. What will get caught is the web address".
The legislation ended up retaining the IP address that you visit, but not the host or URL. I suspect this is the distinction he was trying to make, but nevertheless, it is still disturbing.
siddboots|8 years ago
ldp01|8 years ago
Is it even possible to solve both these problems at once in a way which preserves the freedom of the net and doesn't involve some crippling PRC style regulation?
mtgx|8 years ago
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/13/whatsapp-...
Most in the crypto community seem to have sided with WhatsApp at the time, but I wonder if they were taken for fools, too, by buying WhatsApp's argument.
If I were to implement a backdoor, then implementing it as a "feature" that "makes sense" is definitely the way I'd go, especially if my app were to get a lot of attention. That way I won't have to hide it (much) or worry about it getting discovered because I could just "explain away" the critiques.
justinclift|8 years ago
For example with PGP/GPG, if some "magical" approach was added so messages could be intercepted and then decrypted and read by intelligence/law-enforcement/(etc), it seems feasible those same people may be able to spoof the sender's signature.
eg create falsely signed, encrypted messages that verify as being from the real sender. Extremely good for blackmail/framing/similar. :(
It would depend upon the capabilities of the "magical" implementation approach of course, but it fits the scenario. PGP/GPG is regarded as pretty strong, but SSL/TLS certs already aren't so seem like they'd be much more prone to this.
gumby|8 years ago
Wikipedia says the United States Capitol/The White House was called "The Faculty of Law". The Pentagon was dubbed "The Faculty of Fine Arts". Atta codenamed the World Trade Center "The Faculty of Town Planning". I remember reading they had also use terms such as "birthday cake" and "candles".
I don't know if ASIO (and the US agencies pushing this agenda) are lazy or if they have some different agenda. Clearly this isn't a make-or-break issue in policing.
mechanik|8 years ago
I happen to know he uses it quite extensively.
caf|8 years ago
He's got to realise that any such agreement will inevitably end up being the lowest common denominator of what each of the nations think they can reasonably get away with legislating, which in this case probably means that US (with the strongest device-maker and social-network lobby) will drive what is possible.
TazeTSchnitzel|8 years ago
Worrying.
cynicalbastard|8 years ago
[deleted]
andy_ppp|8 years ago
Secondly, if what you say is true I assume, given the refusal to follow large parts of the rest of the constitution, you are planning to overthrow them as we speak?
Finally, I’m concerned that your dream of overthrowing a bad/illegal government, while utterly hopeless, is causing tens of thousands of deaths and about 100000 people being shot per yer. But hey, that imaginary overthrowing the government thing is worth it...
drdaeman|8 years ago
Surely, not every argument. I don't think arguments like "legally owned guns are frequently stolen and used by criminals" works for strong cryptography. However, things like "more ____ control laws would reduce deaths", "high-____ should be banned because they too often ____", "____ are rarely used in self-defense" or "a majority of adults, including ____, support common sense ____ control" can be tried. I just took those from the first search result for "gun control", picking few that I was able to adapt without rephrasing too much.
Heck, I can see even how "more ____ control leads to fewer suicides" can be pulled. In glorious Russia we already have this train of thought running at full-speed, just with "Internet censorship" instead of "strong cryptography".
So while parent comment is obviously biased, it has some valid point. Not sure if its validity means anything useful, though.
____
Note, I explicitly don't evaluate any claims validity here, and must remind that even if "A does X" is true, and even though "A is similar to B in some respects", that doesn't mean that "B does X" is true.
Edit: ouch, can't flag myself. :(
babyrainbow|8 years ago
You can see it already happening, almost everywhere with mandatory vaccinations...
shermozle|8 years ago
Sorry, your argument is bullshit.
partycoder|8 years ago
The government operates a regular, professionally trained armed forces with modern, military grade equipment. Your weapons can barely counter law enforcement, let alone an army.
Good luck solving a dispute with the government by firing a semi-automatic gun at an Apache Helicopter firing you back with 6000 rounds per minute.
bogomipz|8 years ago
Wow what a total straw man. Firstly this is an article about Australia not the U.S. But I will get into why Australia is particularly relevant in your poor choice of straw man in a second.
Firstly, "Gun control" is not about wholesale elimination of gun ownerships but rather rather having some policy that permits its' ownership while still accounting for public safety. Your sentiment is typical FUD propaganda employed by lobbying groups like the NRA in the US - "they're coming to take your guns!" By the way the NRA is among the most powerful lobbying groups in the US[1], there is no such encryption/privacy lobby.
The central talking points in "Gun Control" are enforcing some common sense provisions like "back ground checks" to prevent mentally people unstable from owning guns. Or restricting civilian ownership of military-style assault rifles that don't have a compelling civilian use case in either hunting or self defense.
Australia has implemented both of these common sense provisions mentioned above - forbidding semi-automatic assault rifles and mandating back ground checks and waiting periods for gun purchases. And guess what? Australia doesn't the mass shootings that are so common they start to overlap each other's news cycles. There is no epidemic city like Chicago where 762 people in a single year were killed by guns[2] And plenty of Australians own guns. Australia implemented these after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996. And not only does Australia have no shortage of people that own guns but gun ownership is on the rise [3]. You know what isn't on the rise though? Mass shootings of innocent civilians these went from 11 per year to zero after changes in legislation proposed in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre[3].
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/inside-the-power-...
[2] http://time.com/4635049/chicago-murder-rate-homicides/
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/05/guns-...
gleenn|8 years ago
ENGNR|8 years ago