Sex trafficking is a very difficult problem to address. Even if you were to shutdown an online network, someone could fly to a third world country to personally do it, and there are always going to be takers lining up.

People in third world countries are poor, and may be desperate. A purely technical solution is not going to address this. Rather, we need ways to lift people out of poverty, and improve their standard of living. No one should ever have to live like that to survive.

I don't know if it is possible to stop child pornography (anyone anywhere in the world can create it and anyone anywhere can view it), but it should be able to reduce the amount of sex abuse in the world, if the government were to pursue prevention initiatives to stop it where ever possible.

>and yet the government remains terrible at solving either problem

You don't kill the cash cow.

> Because that worked out so well for HDMI? It'll be what, maybe 90 days before those "law enforcement keys" are public?

This is a completely different context to having one copy (or a small number) of said low-bandwidth silicon held exclusively by an agency vested in keeping it exclusive, plus another copy held by the company themselves, such that both copies would need to be broken for security to be weakened.

> If it's already backdoored then there is no need for such an act, the problem is already solved.

Seriously? Microsoft having the ability to install a keylogger on any random person's machine is not the solution to finding networks of criminal activity.

> [government bad]

I'll debate the technicals but I'm not going to argue politics here.

I'm going to start naming a few major government security breaches:

+ TSA keys

+ OPM (all of it)

+ NSA's hacking tools

Were these incredible skilled sidechannel attacks? Movie esque infiltrations?

+ TSA accidentally published the keys

+ OPM was a master password from a contractor who was bribed for about the cost of an ipad

+ NSA hacking tools was.. an email trojan? A CD walked?

Do you really trust these people with anything?

Putting a backdoor into encryption is less secure than a random Microsoft employee backdooring me. At least I know it's Microsoft who will be doing the backdoor...

This isn't politics, this is history. This is not the first time, nor the last time we've seen these moves. We know 5 eyes have had major incidents of internal abuse because we have their own documentation on it - and we have their own documentation that they decided to do nothing about it.

It requires external oversight for any organization to truly follow compliance, otherwise the incentives to cheat the system are overbearing. If they won't take us at our word, why would we take them at theirs?

> Putting a backdoor into encryption is less secure than a random Microsoft employee backdooring me. At least I know it's Microsoft who will be doing the backdoor...

My point isn't about how much you trust Microsoft, but that Microsoft has keys, which are more easily stolen and in many regards more valuable than the scheme I gave.

> TSA keys

Not remotely comparable. These were never designed to be secure in the sense we're talking here.

> OPM (all of it)

> NSA's hacking tools

Hence the scheme I gave, which isn't vulnerable in the same way.

Basically all your arguments have been proved false in a short amount of time. Agencies could not name a single case where mass surveillance helped. And don't kid yourself, if you have a master key to encryption, it is mass surveillance you try to implement and it will be used as such.

We had security agencies that had the info but didn't act in case of Vienna. Encryption wasn't the issue here, this is an incontinent case of saving face at best, a deliberate attack against civil rights at worst.

> These were never designed to be secure in the sense we're talking here

Encryption today is a protection against access for a limited amount of time. It is an intrinsic rule about every encryption algorithm. It is fundamental property and widely known.

So you admit defeat on the politics aspect of it? Because every one of your points was political, save for 1a.

This kind of comment is exactly why I'm avoiding the politics side of things. I don't want to subject myself to this sort of bad faith jabbing, as much as it comes with the topic.

It was not meant as a jab, and certainly not bad faith. I'm just telling you that your comment was of exactly the same character. Either refrain from making a political comment yourself or have it be responded to.

Making a political comment but then trying to shut down discussion of it by stating that you will not participate in political discussions is a double standard, though perhaps you were unaware that you were doing it.

I never said people couldn't respond to them. I said I wasn't going to debate it. Saying “so you admit defeat” (or the many, many variations) whenever someone exits a heated part of a debate is a textbook jab, and has no place in honest conversation.

Fair. I retract my comment.

I think what prompted me to react was mostly your `[government bad]` blurb. It felt like you got to state your political position and caricaturise the political position of the responder while avoiding further discussion. That felt wrong.

Fair in turn. I'll try to do better next time :).