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A comment on The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work. Parent comment

Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by jvdh on Friday December 04, 2015 @01:37AM (#10675020)
Morality is subjective at the edges. We all share a common morality, otherwise our society would not function. Most of the common morality is captured by laws.

I completely agree with you that law enforcement officers will see it that way. I posit that that is a matter of limited perspective. They see backdoors as a means to catch criminals, and do not consider the implications for surveillance, democracy and freedom at all.

This paper is not aimed at them, it is aimed at the cryptographers, who could hopefully more easily understand that perspective.

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Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by brbsix on Friday December 04, 2015 @03:54AM (#10675304)
I agree. The opinion of law enforcement is irrelevant in the sense that we should not defer authority on the matter to them. Law enforcement might similarly have thoughts on how to run the judicial branch or alter the Constitution so as to better "catch criminals" (or some other excuse), yet that is no reason to grant them it.

Law enforcement will naturally seek to expand their power by any means available to them, in the same way that various branches of government or political parties will. Hence we have separation of powers.

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