A) Even when the government has the data to stop someone, they don't: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/terrorists-were-already-...
B) Outlawing crypto just doesn't work. You can't outlaw math. You can try all day long, but that only hurts the masses
At some point, you have to realize that breaking encryption has nothing to do with safety, but is all about power.
b) I think actually the FBI is mainly talking about the defaults in software, like how Apple enabled strong encryption for any user. Defaults matter when you consider the 95% of people who would not otherwise use encryption, including all kinds of criminals. I think everyone realizes you can't remove encryption from the face of the earth, it's just not doable and not worthy of discussion and that's not what I'm talking about. The FBI is doing this because they try to reverse the Apple defaults and don't really have any other way. The next step is to "have the debate" but as we can see that is incredibly difficult.
Regarding your last point. Sure, that's one way to talk about it, but if it is the case that it's all about power, then why do we even have governments? All the trust is broken and we are essentially asking to be left alone to solve crimes that happen in our neighborhoods. The government and the FBI / others are supposed to work FOR us, for society as a whole, based on the laws we vote for/lobby for. They aren't meant to have their own will and goals like "power". Only private corporations and individuals want power, that's what the whole point of this government thing was in the first place.
> They aren't meant to have their own will and goals like "power".
Yet they undeniably do. Pretending that they don't is sheer naivety.
I'm not much of a political theorist, but we have government because we tend to trust them more than the average mob. They aren't infallible though, and we need checks and balances to keep them in place.
You are right that considering the whole history of encryption and the FBI, they don't want it anywhere, but as James Comey has himself said, this debate kicked into high gear late 2014 when Apple started with the default encryption, and law enforcement saw an increase in devices they couldn't get into. I think if strong encryption had been on the outliers as it was before that time, we wouldn't have seen this issues raised by the FBI in this manner. I think it is undoubtable that the default is a big reason for this because if many companies start to follow suit, it can have real consequences.
Even though James Comey's proposal of wanting "both strong encryption AND government access" probably came from a place of ignorance of the technology, I do think there is a debate to be had there about securing servers with keys or whatever else just like Google and Facebook and Apple are expected to secure all their other data. Right now, it is completely out of the question when you ask a tech person, because of lack of trust.
> They aren't infallible though, and we need checks and balances to keep them in place.
Absolutely, the way I like to look at it is basic costs and benefits, pros and cons.
There are real harms to strong encryption, whether one would like to admit it or not, so the point is to weigh the costs and benefits and go from there. Right now encryption seems more like a religion, a last bastion of freedom or something. Maybe there are other ways to have accountability.
> There are real harms to strong encryption, whether one would like to admit it or not, so the point is to weigh the costs and benefits and go from there. Right now encryption seems more like a religion, a last bastion of freedom or something. Maybe there are other ways to have accountability.
Oh, there absolutely are cons, I don't see anyone saying otherwise. But, just statistically speaking, there is vastly more harm in not having strong encryption. The cost/benefits are so skewed to one side, it's not even really a discussion. Maybe there are other ways to have accountability, but I have yet to see a viable one.
What I see is that if evidence collection becomes seriously hampered because of strong encryption, then hacking, backdoors and surveillance will have to go up to compensate, and that's not a good situation either. If there comes a point where a large percentage of pedophiles, 'common criminals' and others can't get convicted because of default encryption (the evidence is on their phones), then the FBI and police will move to other methods, like the aforementioned ones. Because of this, I'm not sure your last point holds:
> But, just statistically speaking, there is vastly more harm in not having strong encryption. The cost/benefits are so skewed to one side, it's not even really a discussion.
Maybe we just haven't seen the actual consequences yet. Unless the FBI and the police are lying, then it will get worse as time goes on.
Here's a quote by Comey
http://www.msnewsnow.com/story/32698131/fbi-chief-calls-for-...
> Speaking Friday at the American Bar Association annual conference in San Francisco, James Comey said the agency was unable to access 650 of 5,000 electronic devices investigators attempted to search over the last 10 months.
Barring some bigger discussion about government power altogether, this seems to be the issue we are facing. I also want to say that it's not just about conviction and putting someone in jail. Sure in a lot of these cases, there will be other evidence and other things to nail them on, but it's also about revealing the full scope of a crime and not just a harsher crime. In the name of justice so to speak.
I don't see why it should. Encryption isn't taking something away that the government has always had, it's about taking something back that they never should have been collecting in the first place, and evidently don't know how to use properly anyway. Just because we've taken away their new toys doesn't mean they get to continue to abuse the system.
> Maybe we just haven't seen the actual consequences yet.
Really? I've been pretty civil with this, despite my inclination that you are just trolling, but I can't even take this part seriously.
> Unless the FBI and the police are lying
Either they are being malicious, or they are being ignorant. I'm not sure which is worse. But we have plenty of evidence that they are and have been lying.
You keep framing this discussion as though it's reasonable they are the good guys looking out for everyone, but there's just too much evidence that this isn't the case.
EDIT: > 650 of 5,000 electronic devices investigators attempted to search over the last 10 months
How many conversations about crimes were had in private that they couldn't record? I'm guessing many more than 5,000. Does that mean we should ban non-transcribed conversations?
This is almost a non-sequitor. If your private life is transparent then it ceases to be private. You're in fact advocating no private life. I strongly disagree that this position would be good for society.
It's funny how you'd think you have to be an 'anarcho-capitalist' to want privacy.
The rest of your comment is a strawman, whatever your feelings about 'anarcho-capitalism' is irrelevant to having a right to privacy.
No, I'm not advocating for anything per se, I'm just bringing up opposite points of view. I don't have an easy answer either. Second, no privacy is what has been the standard since governments started. There has been no technology that has been able to make some aspect of reality 100% private, other than the decay of physical objects over time, essentially erasing the evidence.
The fact that we can have permanent 100% private aspects of life is a brand new thing, and thus must be discussed in that manner. That's why I brought up the extreme of anarcho-capitalism - not to speak against it but as a counterpoint to what we have now/what has been.
So let's all go back to in-person conversations, right? It's not that easy. Friends and loved ones no longer live as close as they once did, as technology has allowed us to stay connected at greater distances. This means that our options under the current state of the world are (a) keep sensitive information away from our trusted confidantes until we see them in person, whenever that is, or (b) get used to the idea that sensitive information could be exposed. Either one of these options brings with it increased psychological stress. This is a big reason why people want "unbreakable" security, and there's nothing nefarious about it!
The first problem with this is that influence and power in society is proportional to how many people a person has access to and is around in some way. So yeah you could be private before but you couldn't do nearly the same damage or have the same influence without having people around. Technology empowers people across the world while at the same time potentially leaving no trace. The second problem is that communications is one thing, but evidence and 'data at rest' is another. Things like sexual abuse pictures, financial logs like cryptocurrencies, gps coordinates of where you've been, app logs in your phone and whatever else that may serve as evidence. In the old world, you had no choice but to burn or bury that evidence, but that also eliminates their usefulness to the criminal so there's a choice to be made by them before they destroy it.
Basically in the old world you had physical items in a physical world, observed by the people around you, and your only friend was physical isolation, physical obfuscation (burying, using a safe, both of which aren't 100% private), or the decay/destruction of the physical items. Today you have pristine copies at global scale with 100% privacy and this is far more effective.
For the proper functioning of government for the legitimate benefit of society, there is a balance between privacy and transparency. The government is going beyond that balance, seeking more transparency. The anarchists go the opposite direction, seeking more (preferably total) privacy. Neither is in the public interest.
I think we have to realize that some transparency into private lives is needed to have a proper society, and the anarcho-capitalists want full privacy from the get go and then increasing transparency as needed for society, while government is kind of hovering on the "we need transparency everywhere for any arbitrary reason because we don't know when we'll need it", and this is a difficult position to hold.
I think unfortunately if we are to have a government, we need to do the latter, because the government can't intrude on privacy NOR punish people without evidence or at least minimum cause, while in a completely private anarcho-capitalist society the individuals who don't comply can be punished indirectly with exclusion and isolation from society. Personally this seems like a pretty crappy way to do things but that's a post for another time.