A nice example of the complexity in this space: the Ben Franklin quote "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" means something rather different when taken in context (1).

(1) https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Not really. While that specific quote wasn't about surveillance, Franklin was decidedly pro-encryption, as were most of the Founding Fathers. They all "encrypted" their letters regularly with elaborate codes and ciphers to thwart surveillance by colonial authorities. The Revolution probably would have been impossible without it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/h3ll0-mr...

Also I think "Security" was the wrong term to use - maybe "Societal Order" is better?

What I mean is if companies are required to build in law enforcement backdoors, we could see X benefit (ie some % reduction in certain types of crime) and Y damage (some reduction in technical security, some reduction in govt accountability, etc).

Personally, I place a lot of value on the Y damage, so I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. But those are just my values, and I think it's possible / reasonable to have different values that change the balance.

> reply

The problem isn't that it's algebraic though. There are no back doors, once governments have it then all your freedom to communicate against them is broken. I don't know why anyone would look at the likes of world leaders such as Xi, Putin, KJI and Trump and think this is a good idea in any way.

But those citizens need to restrict the freedom and security of others.

In Europe we have many examples of human trafficking where officials had problems to investigate because of political reasons and other problems, mainly understaffed law enforcement.

Every police force asks for more powers, every interior ministry wants more surveillance.

Even with decryption tools, I don't see how traffickers would suddenly not be able to obfuscate their communications.

What becomes very easy is to crack down on dissent though. And being able to communicate with others without any listeners is a security requirement. So freedom and security aren't orthogonal at all.

Exactly, it's not like they'll be using legal encryption versions lmao. This is just a way for governments to monitor their citizens in a wholesale fashion.

> I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this

It's also important to remember that not every nation will have the same set of values on this and that as the world becomes more international you're relationship with other world governments becomes more M * N.

Imagine a world without encryption where the Saudi government had our access logs and decided to share what porn we were looking up. Or for something closer to the real world, imagine the CCP leveraging their influence to cut off services to anyone sharing Winnie the Pooh pictures.

OTOH, it's the point of having nation states to allow different prioritizations of values and different legal systems to coexist. It's the same reason the US is proud of being a federation of states.

> Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it.

That's fine, they can make the trade-off. I mean they can give up their own freedom for whatever security that gets them. What many people want is to make the same trade-off for others.

Privacy is a human right. Encryption backdoors for governments are human rights abuses.

It has nothing to do with safety; it is not a debate about “how much safety do we purchase with reduced privacy”.

It’s just as firearms rights have nothing to do with hunting, or a militia.

I said this in an earlier comment: for both encryption and guns, they will always come at a cost to society, but that cost is the price of democracy. They will always cost something, and we will always need them, but we can work to create environments that need less of them and environments that make them less costly.

Encryption also provides immense benefits to society. Modern commerce couldn't work without encryption. Companies wouldn't be able to protect their trade secrets. And so on.

Plenty of non-technical people think that they can have their cake and eat it by giving a backdoor to "the government". Which government though? The one of Burkina Faso? The fact is that backdoored encryption is broken encryption.

That's also depends on the society. Obviously it wouldn't benefit the interpol in this case.

For companies, they would have to change their business model that is not relying on trade secret, I would even argue that not having to spend time, money or effort to protect trade secret is a benefit.

Human rights are man-made and arbitrary. They aren't some kind of holy text that must be protected at all costs. They must be bent and ignored if necessary. You can't just say "this is a human right" to shut down any discussion.

Human rights were fought for an won in bloody struggles. We do not want to lose them again.

Thats true if we assume that every human want the same thing. But the reason there is bloody fight in the first place is not all human want the same thing. Is good for you if you are in the winning side, you certainly don't want to lose them but you can't say the same for the other side. They too want to be on the winning side.

Obviously since there is no God then yeah they are "made-up", but their value is obvious. Governments have a tendency to want more and more power, and by governments I mean the ones in charge like Xi, KJI, and Hitler. Those sorts do not like human rights and think they know better than everyone what is best, especially if it makes them richer and more powerful. This is why human rights are important and why they shouldn't be compromised for "safety" because you might get a little safety in the short term, but tomorrow brings genocide.

That's a hilariously bad take.

Can u elaborate? If human rights is not arbitrary nor man made then its come from god ?