> When pressed on what kind of metadata she wanted, she replied: “I’m having those conversations in private.”
Well I would like to know who she's having those conversations with, when she's having them, and how long they last. I think it's important that she share this information with us. So that we can catch criminals.
Unfortunately you cant. They have already exempted themselves from any type of monitoring. Only the proletariat can be spied on or forced to account for themselves.
Exactly this. I often hear such things from politicians who sound like they don't understand the topic, and it's usual at a point of "weakness" for civil liberties such as after terorism events. I assume it's just a form of lobbying, but I wonder if it's from other clueless people (police chiefs/unions who just want the job to be easier) or elite security services who make a conscious decision to trade public good for their own interests (ignoring the claim that they do good themselves...).
It is important that the medium she is using to make these conversation build meta-data around these conversations. And then uses AI and machine learning to detect potentially harmful content and inform the authorities.
My viewpoint when talking about security is please sign this form and your bank can send your bank statements on the back of a postcard in full view of everyone.
For your convenience we will include your PIN number and card number in full on all correspondence.
There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe".
Although that it is often the intention of legislation to prevent behaviour which may lead to unsafe situations. For example, making it illegal to drink and drive. You can arrest someone for breaking the law, but never can you arrest someone right up to the point of breaking the law. For example, You cannot arrest someone for being drunk and having their car keys in their pocket, or even being asleep in the car while drunk.
This is the problem with the government demanding to read all communications... the idea that they have the right in order to prevent you committing a crime. Its not only impossible to prevent someone committing a crime (anyone can snap and do truly horrible things without prior communique), its insane to think that you can arrest someone for pre-crime.
The role of the government is to pass laws. The role of the police and the justice system is to enforce these laws. It is not their job to spy on all their citizens for events which historically kill fractions of a percent compared to something as trivial as car accidents.
I happened to catch a Radio 4 documentary [0] on Sunday about the government's "Prevent" strategy, which aims to find evidence of extremism in places such as schools and "nip terrorism in the bud". It featured several worrying stories (including a school calling the police because a boy was talking about a toy gun he'd been given as a present [1]).
The most worrying part was when they interviewed a senior police officer and he actually said words to the effect of:
"We are operating in a pre-criminal space."
And went on to attempt to justify retaining people's data when they have intervened in this way.
So they are now actually talking openly about pre-crime, and using people's children against them.
> There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe".
What misconception? This is the basis of the social contract between society and its government, to safeguard the natural rights of society, the foremost of which (Life, among Life, Liberty, Property/Pursuit of happiness) is the safety and security of members of society. Read up on Locke and Rousseau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
> The role of the government is to pass laws
This is a tautology. Legislation is but a means in which some forms of government (excepting, for instance, dictatorships) act to secure the natural rights of society. Legislation is not a goal in and of itself for government.
> This is the problem with the government... the idea that [the government should try] to prevent you [from] committing a crime
See natural right #2 - the right to liberty, which in context means the right to act as you please until you actually cross the line by committing a crime. The right to liberty is not mutually exclusive to the right to life; legitimate governments act to secure both in tandem.
>For example, You cannot arrest someone for being drunk and having their car keys in their pocket, or even being asleep in the car while drunk.
An aside, but this is not true.
"According to Alabama state law, Hand was deemed to be in “constructive possession” of the vehicle, and although he wasn’t driving and the vehicle was parked, the keys being in the car was the determinant that triggered the arrest.""
Unfortunately, there's a misconception underlying this one that there are 'good people' and 'bad people', and the role of Government is to protect the former from the latter. This of course flies in the face of the reality that crime is committed by otherwise ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances.
Under this rhetoric - widely subscribed to by the right wing and tabloid press, it seems a logical step that the role of Government should be to impede 'bad people' as much as possible - "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is an obvious corollary from this position too.
In the UK* it is an offence to be "drunk in charge of a vehicle" so you absolutely can be arrested and charged for being asleep whilst drunk in a vehicle. You'll be having to defend yourself in court as to whether it was likely that would could have driven it drunk.
In the same way reading communications can be perfectly legal and is often helpful in establishing conspiracy cases. Accepting that Governments can legally intercept communications with some form of due process shouldn't be viewed as going after "pre-crime". It has always been the case before now that legal interception powers also enable illegal Government (or indeed non-state) snooping, that should be dealt with by robust interventions by an independent judiciary.
* Road Traffic Law is one of the relatively few criminal areas that is UK wide
> or example, You cannot arrest someone for being drunk and having their car keys in their pocket, or even being asleep in the car while drunk.
Yes you can. In the UK (since we're discussing the UK, that's important), the offense is being in charge of a motor vehicle whilst incapacitated by drink or drugs. Incapacitated is defined as being over the limit defined in law (80mg in England/Wales and 50mg in Scotland - don't cross the border after a drink!).
Mere possession of the keys or being inside the vehicle [alone] or sitting in the driving seat is treated exactly the same as driving drunk. Some pubs will offer a 'hold your keys' service where you put the keys behind the bar and come back the next day to collect the keys and car when you're below the limit for driving.
actually, funnily enough in the UK you can be arrested for being "drunk in charge of a motor vehicle" even if you aren't in the driver's seat. That can apparently include sleeping one off in the back seat of your car.
> This is the problem with the government demanding to read all communications... the idea that they have the right in order to prevent you committing a crime. Its not only impossible to prevent someone committing a crime (anyone can snap and do truly horrible things without prior communique), its insane to think that you can arrest someone for pre-crime.
This is exactly what Bruce Schneier saw with his "data mining for terrorists" essay more than a decade ago. Trying to prevent terrorist attacks is impossible if you rely on data mining alone, because of all the false positives it can create, making it useless in actually preventing real attacks.
In the UK being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle is a crime. 'In charge of' includes for example being near the vehicle with the keys in your possession and certainly includes being asleep in the vehicle. If charged with this crime you are required to prove (to a balance of probabilities standard i.e. about 50:50) that you were not going to try to drive it until you were sober. NB I don't necessarily agree with the legal situation in the UK I'm merely stating the reality.
I feel like the people who understand encryption and privacy advocates (myself included) are not engaging enough (or maybe effectively enough) with the public in communicating the concerns around trying to 'backdoor' encryption or giving up more of our privacy.
While I think these political statements are often ridiculous, they actually have widespread public support, if my cohort of friends and family are anything to go by.
Do we have people who are better communicators? I don't think even Cory Doctorow's posts/talks are aimed at the non-technical audience.
I've read so many arguments advocating strong encryption, all of which I agree with, and many of them are simplified as best we techies can - check out some of Troy Hunt's posts. But even avoiding the tech aspect completely, there is one thing the government simply refuses to accept.
Banning strong encryption will not stop people using it.
It will stop the 'good' and generally innocent populace using it and severely infringe on their right to privacy, but the 'bad' people will just fork an open-source messaging system that uses E2E encryption and start using that.
As commented in the article, strong encryption cannot be 'de-invented' now it's out in the open. Each and every one of these government statements is a drastically oversimplified knee-jerk reaction to the problem. Bet they think they can get tech companies to implement RFC 3514 to stop hackers.
I'm not sure it is that, or if there is a way to communicate with some of the governments implementing these laws.
Take Australia, recently. The government came out in favour of weakening encryption, after consultation with security and privacy experts, as well as some economics experts and the like.
The thing was though, the usual man who advised them, and has in past similar investigations before creating laws to do with technology, advised them that it was a terrible idea.
He was then dismissed, and a series of other experts were called in, until the government were able to get an expert who saw things their way.
If the decision has already been made, how is anybody supposed to influence it?
I like to take the backdoor argument to its logical conclusion - if we're not going to allow terrorists to hide by encryption, why should we allow them to hide by speaking in private? It's about time construction companies and car manufacturers stopped giving terrorists a place to hide - make always-on microphones mandatory in all homes and cars. Don't worry - they'll need a warrant to access the recordings!
Thing is, the best vessel for that might be pop culture - Cory Doctorows books convey the issues of surveilance state to the general public way better than any kind of preaching does.
The issue, I think, is that mostly the issues are focusing on fringe activities which aren't approved by most of society (sexting, "hiding things") instead of taking lessons from history of our socialist countries and other widespread abuses of governmental power. We already had surveilance society and it sucked even for people who didn't do anything wrong - we need to repeat those lessons more. Especially since it seems that history in schools seems to be failing at that.
I found the John Oliver episode about Snowden to be very good at conveying the ideas of privacy.
Just mention that the govt can decrypt your dick pics and sexting if these laws pass.
i think the problem is it's a highly technical, mathematical and social problem that isn't easily explained. well, the technical part is even comparatively simple. but the negative implications are usually harder to communicate. the "slippery slope" argument only gets one so far and non-criminals usually can't imagine how it would negatively affect them. "only metadata" doesn't sound too bad!
the opponents of full encryption though have it quite easy by name-dropping the FUD buzzwords - i.e. security and terrorism. and anyway, it's only metadata!
Oh god, I despair of this country. After a decade of conservative I have never been so disillusioned. I feel like I am stuck in a rut or like, I don't belong here. It is a horrible feeling. Deep down I know that the government is stuck in 1740 and by the time that millennials walk the halls of power, their parents will have signed away all their rights.
The very last thing I love is my country, that is for sure.
ah more security cluelessness from the UK Government.
The frustrating piece is that they're ignoring their own internal experts on this. The people running the National Cyber Security Centre are very bright and have stated that they think backdoors are a bad idea
"Ian Levy, the technical director of the National Cyber Security, told the New Statesman's Will Dunn earlier this year: "Nobody in this organisation or our parent organisation will ever ask for a 'back door' in a large-scale encryption system, because it's dumb." "
As was circulated recently on HN, this basically stems from the government thinking computers are appliances.
"Hey! Your device creates and sends packages, could it just not create and send packages of this type? We'll even help with the quality control if you can't do it yourself! All we need is a backdoor!"
How is this not the same as messing with people's mail?
"Hey, you know this pen, paper and stamp thing? Can you just make the pen not write these kinds of letters, that terrorists usually writes? Ok, but can't we have a human (in lieu of AI) read through people's mail to make sure these types of letters aren't sent around with the intent to provoke violence? If you can't do it, we'll gladly send some agents to help you with quality control!"
No really. I've written about this before, but I sincerely refuse to believe that the government are doing this out of ignorance anymore.
There's been too many people telling them how it actually is, but they persist.
That leads me to conclude that either they're severely mentally dysfunctional, or there's another reason for doing this. PR maybe? Votes? Something more sinister?
Ah, great lie of metadata. What those in power don't want us to know is that metadata is just a weasel word for incomplete data. It tells a story about you and those with whom you associate or intersect. What's worse is that incomplete data cannot tell the whole story by design. All incomplete data lies as all summaries, to some extent, do. Some would like us to believe that this incomplete data is somehow less harmful. It is not. Incomplete data can only accuse, it can never convict nor can it exculpate - it can only implicate and paint false pictures on massive scale. To filter the false positives and turn incomplete data into data, I seriously doubt that less work than traditional police work is required to process the output. It is only a benefit to those who wish to retroactively target known and presently target unknown individuals, matching a particular signature, and assassinate them unjustly. As such, at its worst, a danger to every one of us and, at its best, a lethal distraction to those who would otherwise protect us. When they say they only gather incomplete data they lie. They gather all of it - would you believe someone who tells you "just the tip and only for a second"? I wouldn't.
> "However, there is a problem in terms of the growth of end-to-end encryption. "It’s a problem for the security services and for police who are not, under the normal way, under properly warranted paths, able to access that information.”
What surprises me about this argument, is that their stance is that terrorists are accidentally starting to use encryption. So, by consequence, that in the past terrorists simply did not bother with encryption?
In that case, I wonder whether the terrorists have been triggered by the simplicity of current day cryptography, or simply by the knowledge that the governments are always listening in on everything everyone is saying.
It seems to me that someone started an arms-race, be it government or terrorists, and both are willing to cause massive amounts of collateral damage in order to keep one-upping the other.
> Ms Rudd is meeting with representatives from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and others at a counter-terrorism forum in San Francisco.
Well, these will simply be the companies whose tools we won't be using anymore. The World does certainly not depend on any US companies or the UK government's approval to securely use encryption.
It's like Rudd and Abbott are competing in which will come up with more ridiculous notion. And you'd think they would choose someone competent for bloody home secretary and shadow home secretary respectively.
There's something deeply dysfunctional in the UK Home Office. People who've been through that mill seem to come out with a really weird myopic perspective on the world, May included.
In UK, Murdoch's "News of the World" hacks into the phones of hundreds of people and politicians continue the debate about privacy as if it doesn't matter.
In US, Russia hacks into Hillary's email server and politicians on Capitol Hill start using Whispering Systems' Signal and begin to understand why strong encryption is necessary.
Don't worry too much, someday Vladimir Putin will show to the UK government why strong encryption is a good idea.
IIRC the Bataclan terrorists didn't use any crypto at all.
Using crypto makes you stand out, and doesn't really complicate traffic analysis.
Corollary: not using crypto makes it easier to look like hay in a huge hay pile, even if you're a needle.
Ad-hoc-but-disciplined plaintext comsec for small committed teams is not that difficult to establish and master, and can work very well for them.
But for the rest of us, plaintext comsec just doesn't work. And defending privacy relative to state actors, foreign and domestic, is a legitimate activity within the bounds of due process (e.g., your affairs can get searched with a legal warrant, and so on).
It's important to understand that when the State wins the crypto wars, not only does it ensure for itself access to people's data pursuant under Due Process, but also without Due Process at all. It's like making all houses and walls out of glass just so people can't hide from the police: it's insane.
And worse than that: the State winning the crypto wars does not make it easier to prevent attacks. If anything it can make mounting attacks easier for terrorists, depending on the particulars of the crypto war outcome.
The civil liberties in the UK are a big joke. It's like they are in a race with China on who will have the biggest censorship and on the control of their citizen's internet activities.
Western identity has become so enmeshed with liberalism, progressiveness and democracy that few are willing to step out of that safety zone to question the reality on the ground while those in power continue to rehash tinpot ideas and hysteria about safety.
A similar statement from a third world official would be met with an unequivocal flood of ridicule and accusations of backwardness.
Too many value the comfort of easy judgements. This will be met with apologism, muddying the waters and sophistry.
[+] [-] jstanley|8 years ago|reply
Well I would like to know who she's having those conversations with, when she's having them, and how long they last. I think it's important that she share this information with us. So that we can catch criminals.
[+] [-] wonderwonder|8 years ago|reply
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...
[+] [-] sambe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dTal|8 years ago|reply
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2961
[+] [-] csomar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kitd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monkeyprojects|8 years ago|reply
For your convenience we will include your PIN number and card number in full on all correspondence.
[+] [-] lou1306|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlebrech|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmarreck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomfitz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] branchless|8 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/31/pipe-bomber-...
[+] [-] DropbearRob|8 years ago|reply
Although that it is often the intention of legislation to prevent behaviour which may lead to unsafe situations. For example, making it illegal to drink and drive. You can arrest someone for breaking the law, but never can you arrest someone right up to the point of breaking the law. For example, You cannot arrest someone for being drunk and having their car keys in their pocket, or even being asleep in the car while drunk.
This is the problem with the government demanding to read all communications... the idea that they have the right in order to prevent you committing a crime. Its not only impossible to prevent someone committing a crime (anyone can snap and do truly horrible things without prior communique), its insane to think that you can arrest someone for pre-crime.
The role of the government is to pass laws. The role of the police and the justice system is to enforce these laws. It is not their job to spy on all their citizens for events which historically kill fractions of a percent compared to something as trivial as car accidents.
[+] [-] J-dawg|8 years ago|reply
The most worrying part was when they interviewed a senior police officer and he actually said words to the effect of:
"We are operating in a pre-criminal space."
And went on to attempt to justify retaining people's data when they have intervened in this way.
So they are now actually talking openly about pre-crime, and using people's children against them.
[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08yp16m
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/27/bedfordshire...
[+] [-] solatic|8 years ago|reply
What misconception? This is the basis of the social contract between society and its government, to safeguard the natural rights of society, the foremost of which (Life, among Life, Liberty, Property/Pursuit of happiness) is the safety and security of members of society. Read up on Locke and Rousseau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
> The role of the government is to pass laws
This is a tautology. Legislation is but a means in which some forms of government (excepting, for instance, dictatorships) act to secure the natural rights of society. Legislation is not a goal in and of itself for government.
> This is the problem with the government... the idea that [the government should try] to prevent you [from] committing a crime
See natural right #2 - the right to liberty, which in context means the right to act as you please until you actually cross the line by committing a crime. The right to liberty is not mutually exclusive to the right to life; legitimate governments act to secure both in tandem.
[+] [-] cr1895|8 years ago|reply
An aside, but this is not true.
"According to Alabama state law, Hand was deemed to be in “constructive possession” of the vehicle, and although he wasn’t driving and the vehicle was parked, the keys being in the car was the determinant that triggered the arrest.""
https://www.tidesports.com/dashawn-hand-sleeping-car-not-dri...
[+] [-] fredley|8 years ago|reply
Under this rhetoric - widely subscribed to by the right wing and tabloid press, it seems a logical step that the role of Government should be to impede 'bad people' as much as possible - "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is an obvious corollary from this position too.
[+] [-] cmdkeen|8 years ago|reply
In the same way reading communications can be perfectly legal and is often helpful in establishing conspiracy cases. Accepting that Governments can legally intercept communications with some form of due process shouldn't be viewed as going after "pre-crime". It has always been the case before now that legal interception powers also enable illegal Government (or indeed non-state) snooping, that should be dealt with by robust interventions by an independent judiciary.
* Road Traffic Law is one of the relatively few criminal areas that is UK wide
[+] [-] salad77|8 years ago|reply
Yes you can. In the UK (since we're discussing the UK, that's important), the offense is being in charge of a motor vehicle whilst incapacitated by drink or drugs. Incapacitated is defined as being over the limit defined in law (80mg in England/Wales and 50mg in Scotland - don't cross the border after a drink!).
Mere possession of the keys or being inside the vehicle [alone] or sitting in the driving seat is treated exactly the same as driving drunk. Some pubs will offer a 'hold your keys' service where you put the keys behind the bar and come back the next day to collect the keys and car when you're below the limit for driving.
[+] [-] beaconstudios|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
This is exactly what Bruce Schneier saw with his "data mining for terrorists" essay more than a decade ago. Trying to prevent terrorist attacks is impossible if you rely on data mining alone, because of all the false positives it can create, making it useless in actually preventing real attacks.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_f...
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|8 years ago|reply
Attempted murder is criminalized, but that's a weak counterpoint.
Criminal conspiracy, however, is exactly the crime you're claiming can't exist.
[+] [-] Zhenya|8 years ago|reply
>>or even being asleep in the car while drunk.
If the keys are in the ignition, you are DUI.[0]
Even sleeping in the car is also considered a DUI in some states[1]. Beware!
[0] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/co-supreme-court/1006683.html
[1] http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2015/07/how-to-sleep-it-off...
[+] [-] gjjrfcbugxbhf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inlined|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dm319|8 years ago|reply
While I think these political statements are often ridiculous, they actually have widespread public support, if my cohort of friends and family are anything to go by.
Do we have people who are better communicators? I don't think even Cory Doctorow's posts/talks are aimed at the non-technical audience.
[+] [-] gargravarr|8 years ago|reply
Banning strong encryption will not stop people using it.
It will stop the 'good' and generally innocent populace using it and severely infringe on their right to privacy, but the 'bad' people will just fork an open-source messaging system that uses E2E encryption and start using that.
As commented in the article, strong encryption cannot be 'de-invented' now it's out in the open. Each and every one of these government statements is a drastically oversimplified knee-jerk reaction to the problem. Bet they think they can get tech companies to implement RFC 3514 to stop hackers.
[+] [-] shakna|8 years ago|reply
I'm not sure it is that, or if there is a way to communicate with some of the governments implementing these laws.
Take Australia, recently. The government came out in favour of weakening encryption, after consultation with security and privacy experts, as well as some economics experts and the like.
The thing was though, the usual man who advised them, and has in past similar investigations before creating laws to do with technology, advised them that it was a terrible idea.
He was then dismissed, and a series of other experts were called in, until the government were able to get an expert who saw things their way.
If the decision has already been made, how is anybody supposed to influence it?
[+] [-] DarkKomunalec|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|8 years ago|reply
The issue, I think, is that mostly the issues are focusing on fringe activities which aren't approved by most of society (sexting, "hiding things") instead of taking lessons from history of our socialist countries and other widespread abuses of governmental power. We already had surveilance society and it sucked even for people who didn't do anything wrong - we need to repeat those lessons more. Especially since it seems that history in schools seems to be failing at that.
[+] [-] chii|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stefs|8 years ago|reply
the opponents of full encryption though have it quite easy by name-dropping the FUD buzzwords - i.e. security and terrorism. and anyway, it's only metadata!
[+] [-] Fifer82|8 years ago|reply
The very last thing I love is my country, that is for sure.
[+] [-] raesene6|8 years ago|reply
The frustrating piece is that they're ignoring their own internal experts on this. The people running the National Cyber Security Centre are very bright and have stated that they think backdoors are a bad idea
from http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/05/problems-end...
"Ian Levy, the technical director of the National Cyber Security, told the New Statesman's Will Dunn earlier this year: "Nobody in this organisation or our parent organisation will ever ask for a 'back door' in a large-scale encryption system, because it's dumb." "
[+] [-] pimmen|8 years ago|reply
"Hey! Your device creates and sends packages, could it just not create and send packages of this type? We'll even help with the quality control if you can't do it yourself! All we need is a backdoor!"
How is this not the same as messing with people's mail?
"Hey, you know this pen, paper and stamp thing? Can you just make the pen not write these kinds of letters, that terrorists usually writes? Ok, but can't we have a human (in lieu of AI) read through people's mail to make sure these types of letters aren't sent around with the intent to provoke violence? If you can't do it, we'll gladly send some agents to help you with quality control!"
[+] [-] libeclipse|8 years ago|reply
No really. I've written about this before, but I sincerely refuse to believe that the government are doing this out of ignorance anymore.
There's been too many people telling them how it actually is, but they persist.
That leads me to conclude that either they're severely mentally dysfunctional, or there's another reason for doing this. PR maybe? Votes? Something more sinister?
[+] [-] justinjlynn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 317070|8 years ago|reply
What surprises me about this argument, is that their stance is that terrorists are accidentally starting to use encryption. So, by consequence, that in the past terrorists simply did not bother with encryption?
In that case, I wonder whether the terrorists have been triggered by the simplicity of current day cryptography, or simply by the knowledge that the governments are always listening in on everything everyone is saying.
It seems to me that someone started an arms-race, be it government or terrorists, and both are willing to cause massive amounts of collateral damage in order to keep one-upping the other.
[+] [-] benevol|8 years ago|reply
Well, these will simply be the companies whose tools we won't be using anymore. The World does certainly not depend on any US companies or the UK government's approval to securely use encryption.
[+] [-] Aoyagi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrkel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junkculture|8 years ago|reply
The Australian PM thinks the laws of mathematics can be bent to those of Australia.
Now this genius.
Fact is, communications are ubiquitous now, and even if every byte was unencrypted, they won't be able to catch every crook.
[+] [-] diego_moita|8 years ago|reply
In US, Russia hacks into Hillary's email server and politicians on Capitol Hill start using Whispering Systems' Signal and begin to understand why strong encryption is necessary.
Don't worry too much, someday Vladimir Putin will show to the UK government why strong encryption is a good idea.
[+] [-] cryptonector|8 years ago|reply
Using crypto makes you stand out, and doesn't really complicate traffic analysis.
Corollary: not using crypto makes it easier to look like hay in a huge hay pile, even if you're a needle.
Ad-hoc-but-disciplined plaintext comsec for small committed teams is not that difficult to establish and master, and can work very well for them.
But for the rest of us, plaintext comsec just doesn't work. And defending privacy relative to state actors, foreign and domestic, is a legitimate activity within the bounds of due process (e.g., your affairs can get searched with a legal warrant, and so on).
It's important to understand that when the State wins the crypto wars, not only does it ensure for itself access to people's data pursuant under Due Process, but also without Due Process at all. It's like making all houses and walls out of glass just so people can't hide from the police: it's insane.
And worse than that: the State winning the crypto wars does not make it easier to prevent attacks. If anything it can make mounting attacks easier for terrorists, depending on the particulars of the crypto war outcome.
[+] [-] snakeanus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmlnr|8 years ago|reply
Yeah, sure. Because people who actually have something to hide will follow all the rules.
I wonder what they are trying to redirect the media coverage from with ideas like this.
[+] [-] skiman10|8 years ago|reply
> "You can reach Dave securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +1 (628) 400-7370"
Felt like a small little needle pointed at the UK's government.
[+] [-] throw2016|8 years ago|reply
A similar statement from a third world official would be met with an unequivocal flood of ridicule and accusations of backwardness.
Too many value the comfort of easy judgements. This will be met with apologism, muddying the waters and sophistry.
[+] [-] raverbashing|8 years ago|reply
So I see how "worried" they are about that