Encryption is scary. Of course law enforcement is dismayed by the possibility that certain kinds of crimes could leave behind no trace at all. What these people, who want to regulate encryption, don't seem to understand is that this is the downside of living in a free society. In a free society, people can commit crimes, and sometimes they can get away with them. We've made a deliberate choice to structure our society this way rather than optimizing for preventing crimes or punishing criminals. This is the right choice.
At the same time, you have to understand the temptation of structuring your society in a different way, in order to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. That perspective truly has massive appeal. Comments that fail to acknowledge this and boil down to "you can't regulate math" are not good arguments. They're condescending and far too dismissive of a facet of human psychology that is actually admirable (a strong preference for justice). A better argument acknowledges these things but reiterates the liberal arguments that undergird our societies (which have turned out rather well, if you ask me).
> don't seem to understand is that this is the downside of living in a free society
No, what they don’t understand is that the cryptography that protects your bank account is the exact same cryptography that (supposedly) makes law enforcement difficult. There’s no way to separate the two, any more than you can separate the arithmetic that is responsible for updating your bank account from the arithmetic that is responsible for updating the bank account of a Colombian drug lord.
Of course there's a way to separate them. Let banks do what they like and obstruct everyone else in some way. As another poster phrased the argument: "Corporations should have access to strong encryption, just not little people."
Sure except that's like trying to ban alcohol, and we all know how that worked out. It's far too easy to get your hands on, especially for criminals who are sufficiently motivated.
You don't need that parenthesized qualifier, and putting it there seems unfair. If we are to have a fair, honest discussion focusing on the merits we need to recognize when the opposing side makes a valid point, and it is pretty obvious that secure & encrypted communications does make law enforcement materially more difficult.
Once this point is accepted we can focus the discussion on whether the trade off is worth it.
Exceptional access is an architectural issue, and does not need to depend in any way on weakening of encryption. This presumes a logically implemented plan to offer exceptional access. Earlier this year, one commenter on HN pointed out a few trivial schemes to offer exceptional access in a way that doesn't compromise the encryption.
The concerns about exceptional access are about custody and access controls. If you share a secret with a 3rd person (LEO, IC, tech company), the possibility of that secret being leaked has gone up by some non-zero amount. The design of exceptional access mechanisms is therefore not only technological and procedural, but also political, etc.
For the arguments about "you cannot stop math", the concern is about the deployment of strong encryption, without exceptional access -- at scale. Policy dictates implementation of encryption at scale (by major tech companies), not math. Individuals and businesses will still be free to deploy their own encryption that doesn't offer exceptional access. It's unlikely that encryption itself will ever be attempted to be outlawed. If, for instance, you want to xor every bit of your comms with a OTP that you've shared with your overseas partner, it's unlikely that such a thing will ever be outlawed on Western public networks.
Likely, the concerns for LEO and the Intelligence Community are related to "going dark at scale" - meaning that if the big tech companies were to entirely lock out the possibility of exceptional access, the job of the criminal to hide from LEO would become trivial and accessible to all levels of criminals.
> In a free society, people can commit crimes, and sometimes they can get away with them. We've made a deliberate choice to structure our society this way rather than optimizing for preventing crimes or punishing criminals.
If we're talking about the United States, then we're talking about a society of control. When you go to the store, you may pay with a debit card, thus making you trackable. Alternatively, you will be caught on a camera entering, shopping, checking-out, and then leaving the store. Maybe your smartphone was tracking your location, you had your partner email you a shopping list, or you were in a group chat discussing what to buy for your nephews Christmas present and their aunt suggested a book. Maybe your mother got a little too into genealogy and did 23andme or some other service allowing police to look for criminals. If you walk your dog through your neighborhood, how many doorbell cameras are you caught on? How many times have you seen here on HN where people said they felt compelled to check email after work to put forth the image that they fully committed to their company?
Everyone knows this is happening and everyone marches on because we still feel free despite the decentralized panopticon we've fallen into. All of the previous examples shape behavior, yet allow the facade of freedom. There's no more likely occurrence than for encryption to be subsumed to further exert control, but it will be in a way that doesn't seem to hamper freedom.
Encryption is scary. Of course law enforcement is dismayed by the possibility that certain kinds of crimes could leave behind no trace at all. What these people, who want to regulate encryption, don't seem to understand is that this is the downside of living in a free society. In a free society, people can commit crimes, and sometimes they can get away with them. We've made a deliberate choice to structure our society this way rather than optimizing for preventing crimes or punishing criminals. This is the right choice.
At the same time, you have to understand the temptation of structuring your society in a different way, in order to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. That perspective truly has massive appeal. Comments that fail to acknowledge this and boil down to "you can't regulate math" are not good arguments. They're condescending and far too dismissive of a facet of human psychology that is actually admirable (a strong preference for justice). A better argument acknowledges these things but reiterates the liberal arguments that undergird our societies (which have turned out rather well, if you ask me).