>You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.".
Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
For what its worth the anti-encryption/anti-privacy laws have caught terrorists in the UK. My company provides data storage for their dragnet and handles various requests and Ive seen first hand 4 different instances where the UK gov watching everyones internet activity led to terrorists being caught.
Let's not ignore the full history here. That is a bad faith argument. It was a crime to use expensive encryption 30 years ago, but a lot of decisions were made to allow it. Today, every single one of those old caveats about child porn, drugs, money laundering, terrorism, (both domestic and international) and criminal acts in general all have stories where weaker encryption would have saved hundreds and hundreds of lives. We have to recognize this or we're just arguing past each other.
>> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
> The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.".
> Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
Oh come on. Why do you think a "purely emotional arguments" are illegitimate? Are you some galaxy brain, coldly observing humanity from some ivory tower constructed of pure software?
Nearly all positions people take are, at their core, "emotional." And the disagreements that result in "arguments" are often really about differing values and priorities. You might value your "freedom" more than anything and are willing to tolerate a lot of bad stuff to preserve strong encryption, some other guy might be so bothered by child sexual abuse that he wants to give it no encrypted corner to hide in. You're both being emotional.
> Clearly the pressure on government to write these laws is coming from somewhere
Software surveillance vendors.
> Chat control: EU Ombudsman criticises revolving door between Europol and chat control tech lobbyist Thorn
> Breyer welcomes the outcome: “When a former Europol employee sells their internal knowledge and contacts for the purpose of lobbying personally known EU Commission staff, this is exactly what must be prevented. Since the revelation of ‘Chatcontrol-Gate,’ we know that the EU’s chat control proposal is ultimately a product of lobbying by an international surveillance-industrial complex. To ensure this never happens again, the surveillance lobbying swamp must be drained.”
The problem is LEOs (and associated industry) claiming that enforcement is impossible without the ability to obtain cleartext.
This is a lie: obtaining cleartext just makes enforcement vastly easier and more scalable. If crims have encrypted mobile phones, you can still point a microphone at them.
Honestly, I had always assumed LEO wanted access to decrypted message content so they could sell it to advertisers. I mean sure, you could catch a criminal or two, but with all that non-criminal data, just imagine how much off-the-books revenue you could accrue by selling it to the AdWords guys.
The other side being, for instance, the surveillance lobby that pushes for chat control laws in the EU? The "arguments the other side makes" are pretty clear at this point, and nothing to do with the "think about the kids" really, not sure engaging with them is the point.
> Something is a crime if society determines that it should be so. Nothing more.
According to The New Oxford Companion to Law, the term crime does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition.
Society also determined it was ok to use a firehose on black people, so I think the best we can say is that the term Crime has nothing to do with Morality, and people who conflate the two need to be looked at with suspicion.
> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
I don't. I think most arguments about crime require one-side to act in bad-faith. After all: The author doesn't actually mean that Encryption isn't illegal in some jurisdictions, they mean that it shouldn't be. You know this. I know this. And yet you really think someone needs your tautological definition of crime? I don't believe you.
The arguments are mostly that they dislike what can be accomplished via math. “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia” isn't exactly an 'argument' so much as an insistence.
The article does address the flaws in some of their arguments (encryption inconveniences law enforcement, think of the children) by pointing out that the average person and children are kept save from criminal elements by encryption.
The arguments from the other side are of the "think of the children" and "tough on crime" variety. They are purely emotional and if you try to dispute them they just respond with "so you don't care about children?". It's like trying to argue with a religious person on matters of faith, you're just not very likely to convince them.
ziddoap|10 months ago
The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.".
Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
HDThoreaun|10 months ago
1970-01-01|10 months ago
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/encryption-techno...
palmotea|10 months ago
> The arguments are "Protect the children.", "Catch terrorists.", "Catch criminals.".
> Those arguments have been engaged with for decades. They are purely emotional arguments. Anyone who still pushes those arguments forth is most likely doing so with ulterior motives and cannot be reasonably "engaged" with.
Oh come on. Why do you think a "purely emotional arguments" are illegitimate? Are you some galaxy brain, coldly observing humanity from some ivory tower constructed of pure software?
Nearly all positions people take are, at their core, "emotional." And the disagreements that result in "arguments" are often really about differing values and priorities. You might value your "freedom" more than anything and are willing to tolerate a lot of bad stuff to preserve strong encryption, some other guy might be so bothered by child sexual abuse that he wants to give it no encrypted corner to hide in. You're both being emotional.
nickslaughter02|10 months ago
Software surveillance vendors.
> Chat control: EU Ombudsman criticises revolving door between Europol and chat control tech lobbyist Thorn
> Breyer welcomes the outcome: “When a former Europol employee sells their internal knowledge and contacts for the purpose of lobbying personally known EU Commission staff, this is exactly what must be prevented. Since the revelation of ‘Chatcontrol-Gate,’ we know that the EU’s chat control proposal is ultimately a product of lobbying by an international surveillance-industrial complex. To ensure this never happens again, the surveillance lobbying swamp must be drained.”
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-c...
markhahn|10 months ago
This is a lie: obtaining cleartext just makes enforcement vastly easier and more scalable. If crims have encrypted mobile phones, you can still point a microphone at them.
Scalability is the big issue.
OhMeadhbh|10 months ago
freehorse|10 months ago
geocar|10 months ago
According to The New Oxford Companion to Law, the term crime does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition.
Society also determined it was ok to use a firehose on black people, so I think the best we can say is that the term Crime has nothing to do with Morality, and people who conflate the two need to be looked at with suspicion.
> You should engage with the arguments the other side makes.
I don't. I think most arguments about crime require one-side to act in bad-faith. After all: The author doesn't actually mean that Encryption isn't illegal in some jurisdictions, they mean that it shouldn't be. You know this. I know this. And yet you really think someone needs your tautological definition of crime? I don't believe you.
gosub100|10 months ago
ivl|10 months ago
The article does address the flaws in some of their arguments (encryption inconveniences law enforcement, think of the children) by pointing out that the average person and children are kept save from criminal elements by encryption.
loftsy|10 months ago
mathieuh|10 months ago
*edited to add "on matters of faith"
voidUpdate|10 months ago