Eh, I mean, it's complicated - isn't it? If anyone inside US borders is off limits, wouldn't it be a great place for terrorists to set up shop? Completely no surveillance in US borders, win win!
I agree completely that our rights shouldn't be trampled on by governing agencies. Yet, I don't know how they're going to work in the old fashioned way. Perhaps it's not required, but I can't blame them for seeking that option, even if well meaning.
(By old fashioned, I mean back in the days of easily monitoring everyones phones and calling it good enough. Things are becoming increasingly difficult to monitor for a even a well meaning government)
edit: Not sure why I'm being downvotes, so let me elaborate. We all know it's stupidly common for the government to monitor it's civilians. Those days are being altered heavily due to cryptography. In some ways it still be easier to track people, in other ways it will be harder.
Is this news to any of you? I don't get the push back lol.
> If anyone inside US borders is off limits, wouldn't it be a great place for terrorists to set up shop? Completely no surveillance in US borders, win win!
The idea isn’t that you can’t surveil within the US. The idea is routine traffic snooping is off limits. A warrant and a fair bit of effort should be required. The less effort required to wiretap, the closer we get to a surveillance state. Which is why trying to nurf IOT encryption is deeply wrong. It weakens freedom within the country, and makes a country week to outside attacks. Lose-lose.
However, crypto doesn't abide by warrants. So many people read into my comment thinking that I'm supporting a surveillance state. I am not. I simply am talking about how it is, indeed, complicated.
Crypto doesn't care about warrants. The problem is complicated.
The fact that you can even talk about warrants in a crypto conversation sort of irks me to be honest. Warrants are meaningless in crypto conversations. Not just meaningless, but incompatible.
Don't argue points I'm not trying to make please. I'd delete my original comment if I could -_-
Crypto doesn't respect warrants, but if the government can't break your crypto, they can still install a physical keylogger - provided they go get a warrant.
Warrants aren't relevant if we're talking about crypto, but warrants are relevant if we're talking about surveillance.
There were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so.
It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before.
> There were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so.
Oh, I thought it was far easier to tap a phone than to break modern cryptography. Why was it not?
> It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before.
I would argue that this is changing though, hence the entire point of this Post. In the 90s no one encrypted anything, even https was laughable. More and more things are being encrypted.
That's what this post is effectively about, no? The government is trying to stay ahead of the ball on cryptography and hoping to keep their ability to monitor everyone.
> We all know it's stupidly common for the government to monitor it's civilians.
Here's your problem. The fact that many people do something does not make it right -- it's a logical fallacy / conflation and it seems our brains are very vulnerable to it. Is it really so hard to believe that many people are wrong? Why does quantity equal quality?
I mean, it was very common to have slaves as well. Did that make it okay for the slaves?
> Here's your problem. The fact that many people do something does not make it right
I didn't once say it was right. In fact, I alluded to me being against it.
However, that doesn't change the fact that if you are tasked with protecting a state, it's the effective (but morally wrong) choice to monitor them.
My comment was simply that, like it or not, if you truly had 100% vision over the population you'd be able to protect them. In the same way a dictator could be far more effective than a democracy. Again, since ya'll will love to jump on me over this, I'm not supporting this.
I'm saying it's simply complicated. If the NSA is a good actor (I already said I don't believe them to be), then they are being asked to "protect" the country while flying blind. At least, that's what some people want.
.. again, I'm not defending them. I am in full support of all things crypto, and do not want any rights on any civilian to be trampled on.
Ya'll are touchy.
edit:
> Is it really so hard to believe that many people are wrong? Why does quantity equal quality?
I don't know, perhaps you should ask someone who said that? Ie, not me, because I didn't say that. Again.
Sorry for misunderstanding. And nope, not touchy in this case. More like -- I get it where are they coming from but apparently people don't share the sentiment so find another way; we pay taxes for them to figure out stuff and make it happen, not to play eternal game of cat and mouse with their own citizens.
Yea, I agree. I guess it's just that I can sympathize with their position (again, for the sake of argument assuming they are good actors..).
I was also way too vague. A better thing to talk around would have been warrants, and how our legal system is designed to ensure government can invade your privacy assuming reasonable requirements.. yet crypto changes that game entirely.
I definitely don't want the government invading my privacy, and I want true secure crypto in all things. I just can sympathize with how much this is going to change things.. some for better, and some for worst.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "easily monitoring everyones phones"? Physically tapping the phones is easy, but doing anything meaningful with that amount of audio is anything but.
I suppose I should have said "anyones" vs "everyones", but that's an implementation issue isn't it? The problem I was talking about was proper encryption being impossible to monitor. Meaning that a well meaning actor (which I don't believe exists, but ignoring that) finds their job more difficult.
I agree completely that our rights shouldn't be trampled on by governing agencies. Yet, I don't know how they're going to work in the old fashioned way. Perhaps it's not required, but I can't blame them for seeking that option, even if well meaning.
(By old fashioned, I mean back in the days of easily monitoring everyones phones and calling it good enough. Things are becoming increasingly difficult to monitor for a even a well meaning government)
edit: Not sure why I'm being downvotes, so let me elaborate. We all know it's stupidly common for the government to monitor it's civilians. Those days are being altered heavily due to cryptography. In some ways it still be easier to track people, in other ways it will be harder.
Is this news to any of you? I don't get the push back lol.