Lawbreaking is one of the means that people have to fight against an unjust system.
I don't think most people have the innate sense of wanting it to be possible for everyone to commit crimes; I think it's much more selfish in that they just want themselves and their associates to get away with committing crimes.
Who are those people, exactly?
I run in mostly right-wing circles (online especially), and the vast majority of people on the right seem to be opposed to the "War on Drugs" on the grounds of individual liberty. I can't imagine many on the left are in support of it - am I wrong?
I don't think it's nearly as popular as it might seem.
I think the OP is calling some these people out as hypocrites who demand "touch on crime" policies that disproportionally affect poorer communities, while they themselves break laws.
That aside, I find the hypocrisy elsewhere, namely the people who want small government but who want everyone to pay billions for mass incarceration (and raise taxes for more police) as a result of these policies.
You might run in right-wing libertarian circles, but I'd speculate that if your experience was based on the religious right you may perceive higher levels of support.
I do agree with you though, it's lost a lot of momentum over the years and now opinion seems to be that it's clung onto by law enforcement and the lobbyists of the companies who supply them because it allows for their continued militarisation and supports a significant portion of their budgets.
Sometimes things are illegal, and society changes and decides they shouldn't be illegal (interracial marriage, homosexuality, alcohol, marijuana, etc)... if people couldn't 'dabble' in the illegal thing at all, there would be no way for people to learn enough to decide that the laws are wrong and need to be changed.
What am I supposed to do if I ever come across a cache of information revealing the literal Holocaust 2.0 happening in China?
If the Holocaust had been discovered by a US citizen who broke intercepted German communication, would we have allowed Germany to persecute the civilian for hacking their infrastructure?
The ability to break the law, and get away with it is not just vital for the functioning of society, but for social progress to keep advancing.
Gay rights would never have been won if it were possible for law enforcement to jail all gay people for existing (sodomy laws, etc.), for example.
"Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime" - Lavrentiy Beria
So the right to privacy (and therefore the ability to break the law) is one of the most important checks against government.
It's said out loud all the time (or maybe my filter bubble is less authoritarian). The problem is that politicians seem to be using the cesspools of Twitter, Reddit, etc. as their primary data feed.
I'm not convinced a very dark future is preventable
The lie detector in the regular process is when the federal employee investigates whether the answers on your questionnaire match up with public records and in-person interviews.
The polygraph is security theater intended to intimidate the subject and possibly reveal previously undisclosed issues by provoking a stress response. That's why they keep using it.
Most of the time, comments about “lie detectors” are a reference to polygraph tests, which only apply to an extremely minor percentage of the overall cleared workforce; I just wanted to point that out, that it’s not quite as bleak as implied by the parent.
The lie detector in a polygraph test is always the human running it, and they're about as fallible and unreliable as anybody else, with respect to determining honesty. They could just chuck the machines in the trash and call it a "veracity interrogation", but selling the machines and training the people to use them is a better money sink, and gives more ass-cover when someone invariably deceives the investigators. "Trained to beat the machine" sounds better on paper than "really good liar".
Security theater needs its props.
As far as I know, only those working in secure compartmentalized facilities and with high-value assets ever get polygraphs.
If you hold a key and wait by a coded terminal in a nuclear missile silo, you get one. If you reduce and analyze anti-ballistic missile test telemetry, you don't. If you write systems code for submarines, you might get one. If you write route-planning software for in-flight refueling tankers, you don't. My guess is that it ultimately depends on how much Country X would probably pay you to borrow or copy your access. If it's above $Y, they do a little more to scare you into being a good little guardian of the nation, and hope you're not another Snowden.
They just have way too much need for cleared personnel to spend enough to actually make certain, for everybody. Doing it correctly always costs more, in time and money. Why do it right when you can make it look like you did it right, and get paid the same?
I really don't think there is much hope. He just thinks everything works out in the end when in reality it is people fighting tooth and nail and giving up their lives to fight for this shit.
Who's read The Truth Machine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_Machine
See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/burr-feinstein-proposa... for the previous bill.
The concern is that law enforcement apparently can't understand that "Warrant-compatible encryption" is an oxymoron.
If encryption is a munition (if privacy is a weapon) then the 2nd Amendment is in play, eh?
(edit: WWII, Turing, Bombe, Enigma.)
It sure does, just like my front door requires a key :)
Finding the answer to law enforcement being able to make these warrants useful while also maintaining rights is complex. Seeing a terrible solution as terrible is simple.
The current state of affairs is a clear violation of one of the US’s founding principles: “innocent until proven guilty” (and also the 5th amendment).
The ability, power, and right to investigate crimes is certainly reserved to both the states and the Fed. Government in the Constitution.
The fact that modern life typically entails recording and documenting almost every single thing you do during the day, and yet law enforcement complains about “going dark”? Utter nonsense.
People have never been more widely tracked, or more widely accountable. The absolute last thing we have is a privacy epidemic.
The government has the right to investigate crimes. They do not have a specific right for defendants to keep records of what they did wrong or to be provided that evidence, outside the context of business regulations which require specific paperwork be maintained.
And by the way, the Constitution specifically enumerates what powers the Federal government has. All Else is reserved to the States, or to the People.
Which is why we weren’t supposed to need a Bill of Rights in the first place. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate Speech or Assembly as something the government can control, therefore it is not. However the Framers didn’t all agree we shouldn’t go and list a bunch of things just in case, except that it might make people think if it’s not listed then maybe it’s not a Right?
And the entire concept is backed by State violence. People are only compelled to testify under threat of violence in some form. This form used to be open torture, but we've found ways of outsourcing the torture to other criminals in order to wash the State's hands clean of blood.
Sometimes we need to catch a bomber. If you ask me, that problem is only getting worse and "sometimes" may turn into "often". However, we can't risk a journalist or political activist being caught in the jaws of the system while attempting to expose the State's secret crimes. And less severely, the State doesn't have the right to know what your shopping list was last week.
The entire crux of this argument revolves around the fact that at one time it was easier to do this stuff thanks to wiretapping laws and banned encryption, but now it's harder. However, the wild west of the 70-90's isn't the base line for sensible policies when it comes to digital intrusion of your life by the State without reasonable cause.
I say this below, though, when people refuse to serve access to a lawful warrant, there are now multiple cases where people will be held in contempt of court essentially indefinitely, likely for life. The court is certain that the information necessary to convict them exists, but is being vexatiously withdrawn by the suspect.
I don't really think that's a good end. I think holding people in contempt that long is a system failure. What do we do about that? Just release people when they hide evidence that they can still have full access to once they're released?
I think it's been easier to do this stuff since the founding of the government, but our government does have certain powers, lawfully enacted by the wills of all of the states for the betterment of society. If some of those powers can't reasonably be enforced, and other, less lawful, more coercive powers arise in their absence, I think everyone loses.
So we must accept that a certain amount of State violence is necessary to keep the peace. Think of a schoolyard Bully going unchecked; it takes someone standing up to them and enforcing the threat of future violence in order to end the actual occurrence of violence.
But there is a clear legal framework here:
I don't have to produce any materials to the State without a warrant acquired by due process (and not parallel construction). This is my protection from unwarranted search and seizure as outlined by the US Bill of Rights.
However, I don't have to tell you where it is. I can't prevent you from taking it, but I have the right to not have to testify. Because the enforcement for my testimony comes from State violence, and we learned from the Dark Ages what happens when we allow the government the power to extract information with force.
It would be quite ironic if, in our quest for not "going dark", we enter the Digital Dark Ages.
This seems like a pretty clear distinction to me that could be argued in court. But, as I said... not a lawyer.
A great solution in many of these cases would be to work alongside companies like Apple to implement more products like Face ID. With Face ID, they can take a few pictures of a person, 3D model their face, open the phone. It's an easy thing with the right resources. It's a technological equivalent of interrogation. The same can be done in other contexts, they just need better hackers, better investigators, and more resources on their side.
Do you see what I'm getting at? You came up with warrant-breakable encryption, but didn't call it that. This is why it's not an easy question-- the solutions are nuanced, and some are a lot uglier than others.
Note that Face ID is intended to be resistant to this kind of attack.
People are acting as if unbreakable encryption and secure computing is a given. It isn’t. It is extraordinarily difficult and in nearly all use cases not foolproof.
The warrant excuse is fairly ludicrous anyways. We now have vast information pools of where people have been and what they were doing. We have DNA evidence. Law enforcement has never been easier in the history of human civilization.
Encryption is reversible. The information encrypted can be retrieved, changed, shared, etc. It proves itself potentially continually useful to the person who would hide evidence.
Just as in burning with a fire, that suspect can be charged with willful destruction of evidence or obstruction of justice, contingent on mens rea.
The judge may be unlikely to believe that the data is irretrievably encrypted, just as they may be unlikely to believe all records were burned.
Should it be illegal to burn a piece of paper?
The FBI and our police forces have been complaining about the 'going dark' problem for years. But in reality, it is far easier today to spy on or collect data than it has ever been before. If the argument was that our data collection was substantially lessening, maybe we could have a discussion about that.
But data collection is substantially expanding, and the FBI is essentially saying, "yeah, but it's not expanding fast enough." The FBI is phrasing this as a complicated question because they're saying it's a choice between the status quo and "the FBI can't listen in on anything." But in practice, if you look at the direction surveillance capabilities are heading, the real choice is between the status quo and "the FBI can listen in on everything."
And that's a really easy question to answer. Of course we shouldn't give up all of our freedoms just so the police can always access everything they want, all the time. Of course people should be able to exercise personal freedom even if it occasionally means a police investigation is hampered.
The FBI wants to phrase this as a choice between encryption and anarchy, but given the direction government surveillance is headed, encryption is the middle ground position. What the FBI wants is the ability to access anything they can get a warrant for, no matter what, for any reason.
And I guarantee once they got that, the next "complicated question" would be whether or not warrants were hindering their investigations too much.
I agree with you, this is a problem. What I advocate for to anyone who'll listen is to encourage more use of warrants, and sharply curtail the use of subpoenas. Subpoenas allow for bulk collection, and much much much more violation of the 4th Amendment happens under bulk subpoenas than it does under warrants.
That doesn't make sense to me. If your argument is that every warrant should be executable, no matter what, then both fire and encryption block warrants.
If anything, fire is worse, because at least encryption is reversible. If you burn something, we can never get it back -- that makes fire way more risky and dangerous to law enforcement investigations, so I would expect it to be much more highly regulated.
The canonical example here is child pornography. Consumption and distribution is a crime. If a person destroys it before the state sees it, well, that may be destruction of evidence, but the state will never know. If the person can have full access and go back to consumption and distribution, then justice can't be done, and most people agree it should.
I don't think that any warrant should be executable. I'm saying this problem is complex, people are coming up to ways to address it, and they're not the utopic visions of personal privacy-- they involve unconvicted detention, coercion, etc. Miscarriages of justice.
This is sort of going back to what I was saying in my original post though. Encryption isn't a utopic vision of privacy, it is the middle ground. It's not harder today to catch child pornographers than it was before the Internet existed -- it's easier. The fact that we have encryption is being balanced out by the fact that we also have video surveillance, and remote exploits on Internet connected devices, and more payment tracking.
The FBI is not looking for a sensible, middle ground between privacy and bringing people to justice -- the argument they're making is, "if even one criminal escapes, that's too many."
Again, if we were in the opposite situation, if encryption did really mean that we couldn't catch criminals any more, then I'd be more inclined to say this was a complex problem. But the 'going dark' problem is largely a myth; with the advent of the Internet, it has never been easier to monitor citizens or access their data.
This is only a difficult question if it is genuinely a question between anarchy and encryption, but we're not even close to that being the choice we have to make.
You may not be of the opinion that every warrant should be executable no matter what, but when the question is put into the context of modern surveillance, it seems obvious to me that this is the FBI's stance.
This is always the example used to justify anything unreasonable to suspects. For me it's an automatic argument loser, like Godwin's Law.
(If I have a DRM encrypted file that I don't have the keys for, am I now committing two offences? Are law enforcement entitled to a free copy of the HDCP keys?)
Mob mentality doesn't make a very good government, especially when manipulation of information comes so easily. No matter the crime, we can't start the basis of infringing upon an individual's rights on "well most of us on the island agree we should do this". William Golding illustrates this well in Lord of the Flies.
In the case of hidden documents, warrants/subpoenas are used to compel their production. Certain actions (like holding someone in contempt) can also make cooperation more likely (though not guaranteed).
Why do similar procedures not suffice for encryption?
Maybe it's time we change the language and stop letting government officials label individual rights which are working as intended as "roadblocks" into government investigations.
> experts generally agree that Congress is unlikely to pass a bill requiring warrant-compatible encryption
Boo hoo. That's the system working as intended. Do your job correctly and stop making an enemy out of the People and you'll find requiring a warrant isn't a "roadblock".