none of these regimes are "by the people, of the people, for the people"
so, I'm not really comfortable aping the examples you list...
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/ssl.asp
Those were the two most relevant links from Googling "ecommerce encryption". Regardless, without the ability encrypt personal and payment data for ecommerce transactions, it would've never succeeded.
Do tools have value? If you make something with tools, it's not the tools themselves which made it.
Insurance doesn't product value, but it protects. It has monetary value, demonstrated by the fact that people make premium payments to maintain it. Many never collect a dime over the life of an insurance term.
All kinds of infrastructure is an indirect example.
Do you know what SSL means and how it works?
I mean ultimately it would be a "dick move" anyway but it would drive the point home so quickly.
And even when that DID happen, it's not like the fact that their bank account is drained and their identity stolen is immediately determined to be a cause of X transaction on Y date over Z website.
In other words, it is hard to connect plain HTTP to identity theft even for the more-savvy let alone the common government worker.
I'm sincerely asking here, I don't know.
Encryption is software-based and is as available to people connected to the internet as checking out a book from the library. Using encryption is free, and writing software that makes use of encryption is something anyone could teach themselves.
I think what you're getting at is, why can't we have some forms of encryption that have back doors for government, and other forms that have no back doors.
Think about computer viruses. They are designed to infiltrate your system, and any system that is like yours. If a virus targets Windows 7 and infects your computer, then it would be able to infect any Windows 7 machine. The same is true for bugs or vulnerabilities within legitimate software.
Say I run a WordPress site. The computer that serves my website runs WordPress 3.4, for example. Let's say a weakness is found in WordPress 3.4 that allows anyone using the username "jabberwocky" to log into my site and gain administrator privileges. This enables them to edit text and photos on my site. WordPress discovers this weakness and releases an upgrade to 3.5 which fixes the bug and no longer allows users to gain administrator status when logged in as "jabberwocky".
If I don't upgrade my site to 3.5, my system is still vulnerable. Further, everyone knows about the weakness in WordPress 3.4 because the 3.5 release notes explain the reason for the upgrade. My site becomes an instant target for any hackers. If my business were based on this website it could really hurt my reputation, profits etc. if someone were to gain control of my site.
What the government is asking Apple to do is allow them to login as "jabberwocky" whenever they have a warrant. By doing this, Apple enables anyone to login as "jabberwocky" so long as they have the special software which Apple is being asked to write. And, since the government is asking for this access permanently, Apple will never be allowed to modify this security weakness sufficiently so that it does not exist, because by court order it must exist.
The final point I would make is that since encryption is so readily available, any user can download software that makes use of encrypted communications in less than a minute with an internet connection. Compelling Apple to weaken their encryption system does nothing to provide the DOJ with access to data within these other communication programs. Some examples are Signal, wickr and Telegram. Senator Lindsey Graham makes this point at the end of his questioning of Attorney General Loretta Lynch [1]. I hope you'll give it a listen.
Germany, for instance, looks rather pro privacy at the moment. But I am pretty sure they'd be some of the first to follow the UK/US.
In the US we actually have a chance to push back on our rights and enshrine them constitutionally. For the US this must be the end goal of the discussion on the privacy and encryption discussion. Protecting and clarifying existing rights, 1st, 4th, 5th all apply here and the courts should uphold them in the face of the executive branch and commercial interests pushing invasion into normalcy.
If we fail to protect those rights and clarify their meaning in the 21st century the answer to the question "But where will you go" will be "there is no place to go".
Iceland, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, Hungary, Mexico, Argentina, Israel, India?
The result of these kinds of policies is brain drain. The people you are trying to ban the actions of are both some of the most driven and outspoken in the world, and also some of the most economically desirable in the world. If you prevent them from investigating their pet projects in their homeland, they will simply go and do it in another country, because it's not an obstacle for them. There's a tonne of countries out there that would gladly roll out the red carpet for a tech exodus from the former commonwealth states.
Hungary is a borderline dictatorship. Ukraine is a war-torn mess, and then some. Mexico is one of the most corrupt countries, with little to no history of respecting individual rights. Argentina just nearly became a failed state on par with Venezuela (the verdict is not yet in on whether they've avoided that outcome).
Half of that list is terrible and entirely unrealistic. Silicon Valley developers are not going to Hungary and Mexico.
They pretty much blackmailed RIM into handing over encryption keys.
Have a look at what the Stasi were up to in East Germany until 1989 to understand why Germans feel privacy is important.
I don't know a single (German) person outside of tech who thinks anything they (ordinarily) do online or on their smartphone could be used against them in one way or another. Some may complain about the government but they didn't change their habits when it comes to using their smartphone or laptop. They don't realize that, for instance, every picture they add to facebook will train algorithms that could be used for all kind of purposes.
President Gauck doesn't think it is valid to compare the Stasi and the NSA
> Gauck wehrt sich gegen Vergleich der NSA mit der Stasi
Das erklärt auch, warum er in dem Interview jeden Vergleich zwischen den Methoden der Stasi und den Aktivitäten der NSA weit zurückweist. Die Stasi habe wie jeder Geheimdienst in einer Diktatur "Krieg gegen das eigene Volk geführt". Sie habe die Bürger bespitzelt, um diese Bespitzelungen gegen die Bürger zu richten. Davon könne aktuell nicht die Rede sein. "Hier sprechen wir von einer Gefahr für die Demokratie innerhalb der Demokratie."
http://www.nzz.ch/international/nsa-forschte-merkel-umfassen...
And Chanchelor Merkel declared data the "raw material of the 21th century" and urged Germans to rethink their position on privacy
> Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel hat Daten als "Rohstoffe des 21. Jahrhunderts" bezeichnet. "Hier müssen wir jetzt aufpassen, dass der Datenschutz nicht die Oberhand über die wirtschaftliche Verarbeitung gewinnt", sagte die CDU-Politikern am Montag in Berlin beim Verlegerkongress Publishers' Summit.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Merkel-Daten-sind-Roh...
Both, Merkel and Gauck, grew up in the GDR!
Thanks for elaborating. I feel somewhat foolish trying to tell a German about the Stasi. On the internet we assume everyone is an American - well unless you're the NSA watching in which case it's definitely not domestic surveillance ;-)
On the internet we assume everyone is an American
As a European of 30+ years, I am actually pretty optimistic in that there is, in all areas of politics, a certain point at which EU governments will refuse to follow the US down the rabbit hole.
Germany feels pretty strongly about privacy (albeit not absolute privacy), and I doubt that they will start passing laws just "because the US did it".
UK, I'll give you that. Then again, the UK is culturally closer to the US than to mainland Europe in many ways, this being one of them.
Regardless of what you think of the Cock.li service or its owner, the seizure of all the company's emails suggests that demands from police authorities or politicians take precedence over data privacy concerns - even in privacy-conscious Germany.
[1] http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/01/cock-li-server-...
"Made in Estonia with European-grade security"
"EuroSec(tm) certified to respect your privacy"
As for UK, from what I understand they have an open channel with US in terms of information exchange for anti-terrorism. Perhaps due to that it's expected from them to follow suit with US in legislation if they want to stay in the same terms. That would probably extend to a few other countries who are in such a privileged relationship.
Never going to happen, even in wild fantasies. Trying to get developers to all move in the same direction is like trying to herd cats.
Maybe all those IBM and Yahoo layoffs will consider the value of unionizing while fishing for new work in the next few months....
We should find something more targeted that could have a greater impact in a shorter timeframe.
The consequences would become clear soon enough. Bonus points if the White House and Houses of Parliament sites were taken offline with it.
Google is the enemy. Like Apple, they're a PRISM participant, and while that doesn't necessarily mean they offer "direct and open access to all user data" like some believe, it still means they willingly collaborate with the NSA, because they're required and obligated to do so under the law. Any company subject to US law is also subject to NSLs, with which they can be forced to act as covert agents for the NSA.
We're all in the same boat, but that's because the enemy is us. The entirety of the United States' IT and electronics industries is the enemy, here, and the victim.
Sure, employers would be wrongfully punished, but they'd all spend more money buying political decisions in favor of encryption (and spending money seems to be the only way to influence politicians in the US nowadays).
Every moment we are building that inheritance.
If we want to give your children and theirs a world where their hearts and minds are nurtured, where they are able to live with integrity and human-heartedness, then we're going to have to make some uncomfortable changes.
I should note that I don't really have a strong opinion on the idea of a boycott. I'm just reacting to the feeling of impossibility that people always express whenever someone proposes a challenging idea. In my experience, that feeling is typically where we hide the simple solution to a problem.
More like rightfully influenced.
That is exactly and precisely how it works. In a common law legal system like the UK everything is legal until it suddenly isn't because some act of legislation makes it so. There is no constitution to restrict what legislation the government may choose to enact. There is a body of EU law that has some bearing but much that is relevant here (e.g. Convention of Human Rights) either comes with or was enacted into UK law with 'except because crime or national security, think of the children' tagged onto every clause.
Over just the last few decades UK governments have banned all manner of things, all of which were things people were doing every day. Hunting, smoking, various types of porn and 'legal highs' are some that immediately come to mind, but there are plenty more.
The only thing you can say for sure about humans is that we possess a capacity for change and adaptation whose bounds have yet to be identified. But if you want to live in a box, then that's what you'll get.
The UK is fairly close to crossing a line which would require me to either stop working (and do everything under the radar), or leave the country.
It sounds like the US might be doing a similar thing soon.
What happens if all of the (semi-competent) developers suddenly either refuse to work or simply can't?
The whole situation is truly bonkers to me - there is no debate to be had at all. If you ban secure encryption I cannot stay in your country any more - it is the last warning sign I will accept, if I wait too much longer the borders will close before me.
It represents my elected government telling me that I cannot do a thing which I do every single day without fail. It's as if someone turns around and says to my grandmother 'knitting is banned'. That just isn't how it works.