> Typical HN. How about someone answering the argument that will really be made by governments instead of the pointless one the NSA, etc have already answered. You can downvote me but you don't get a downvote in governments around the world when they outlaw real encryption.

I was ready to up-vote your argument because I agree with the first two paragraphs but the snark turned me off from supporting you. Leave it out next time and I you'll make a more convincing argument.

The up-vote wasn't about giving you karma, it's about making your comment more visible. If you didn't care about visibility than you wouldn't be posting in the first place.

Good point. In the future, I'll try to remember that I'm wasting my time. Too late to delete most of them.

Encryption is important and is crucial to the security mechanisms that underly the whole internet. I don't think anybody is seriously advocating making encryption illegal. (Which makes your argument pointless.)

What does seem being argued for is to mandate adding a 'backdoor' for the government.

The counter argument to that is that adding a 'backdoor' makes the encryption pretty much worthless.

The weighing of risks of this and the importance for privacy versus the anti-terrorism fighting benefits is the only debate (not) happening.

"Which makes your argument pointless"

Of course it doesn't, and that's not what I meant. I didn't mean wholesale outlaw, as in no one would be allowed to use it. Governments can mandate consumer communication technology, for example, like they are trying to do with Apple now.

http://betanews.com/2015/11/17/tim-cook-apple-wont-weaken-en...

I work for a Bank and we use encrypted external email all the time. We have to for regulatory reasons. I'm sure it's the same for defence contractors, and it's a prudent precaution for governments and many other businesses and in many parts of the world.

The ideal scenario for the NSA-types is "unbreakable" crypto with a built-in NSA-only escrow/backdoor and possibly a secondary backdoor for five eyes allies (with domestic traffic free of 5-eyes backdoor.)

Suspension of disbelief on security of escrow mechanism is a necessary pre-condition.

Fortunately that unicorn has been shot in the nineties already. Several times. Still, it won't completely die.

banks... defence contractors... governments... If you guys didn't have something horrible to hide you wouldn't need this encryption.

I'm happy that my bank uses encryption. I bet most people with bank accounts would agree.

If only the government(s) could be trusted to not pass along confidential business information from foreign companies (or even perhaps local) to help the companies in their own country.

> You can downvote me but you don't get a downvote in governments around the world when they outlaw real encryption.

I'm pretty sure you can downvote them by voting for representatives that do not support such laws. At least if you're in some kind of democracy.

There should be a name for this fallacy. This is easy to say for any issue in isolation, but what is a voter to do when they only have two or three choices? When there are dozens of issues at any given time the chances of having a candidate that aligns with you on all of them is nil.

Unfortunately that process isn't as easy as clicking the little triangle, and hence only 4 out of 10 eligible "moderators" participate[1]...

[1]: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

You can vote for either a) the representative on the one side who supports such laws or b) the representative on the other side who supports such laws or c) throw your vote away and let the majority of people who don't understand/care about this issue decide between (a) and (b).

Voting is not a solution to a problem like this and is generally very ineffective in the US.

Not in a gerrymandered district. It won't do you any good, even if you presuppose the existence of a pro-encryption candidate, which is a bad supposition.

I have not seen them use that argument. If they used that it would be better than what they normally do; which is imply they don't understand what's going on. But even this argument is subject to the same problems; it implies they don't really know why we'd want/need encryption because it assumes that a government could create a back door only they could use.

I don't think that would be the case. If a couple of western Governments "ban encryption" it would probably just mean that they weaken the crypto (e.g. backdoor). The traffic of weakened crypto still looks the same as the traffic of strong crypto - I don't think it would make strong crypto any more noticeable.

Also remember that crypto would still be legal in the rest of the world (China is not going to backdoor their crypto for the NSA's benefit) so you would still have heaps of encrypted traffic moving across the internet. I doubt that such a measure would do anything but make mass surveillance of western populations easier.

Assuming the numbers wouldn't go up from people encrypting out of spite

Over the last year or more I've started encrypting everything I can out of spite, just in the hope of creating noise.