Yea, LE/IC clearly have gone too far in many modern tactics.
Yea, it's possible to build a surveillance/police state much more efficiently than ever before.
Yea, we should be vigilant against authoritarianism.
What if we change the last bit after the "because" to "these sometimes are used at unsafe speeds and, intentionally or not, kill people who are not in cars?"
Because, at least for me, the answer is an unambiguous yes.
I agree that privacy and security should be available to everyone. But we also shouldn't count on being able to find people who are doing vile things--to children or adults--because the person messed up their opsec. I think Apple is correct here but as an industry we have to be putting our brains to thinking about this. "To outlaw large sections of mathematics" is hyperbole because we use mathematics to do a lot of things, some useful and some not.
How is this different from how police find anybody else who commits a crime? Like if they're trying to solve a murder, they're looking for DNA, clues, etc... They're literally looking for where the person who committed the crime "messed up their opsec" to use your wording.
Governments and law enforcement agencies have access to more information than they've ever had before. They have more cameras, location data, tons of data compiled by data brokers. But it's not enough - of course they have to have this too.
On top of that, there's a long history now of governments buying zero day vulnerabilities or even technology from firms like NSO and guess what? It's not being used to catch pedophiles (cue shocked Pikachu face) but it is being used to target political dissidents.
This is so frustrating, because it feels like a siege on a city. Collectively, people have to fight against bad legislation in various countries constantly. But the other side only has to "win" once.
I'd say that "we" as an industry should be putting out brains to trying to figure out ways to make it even harder for these people to legislate encryption out of existence, than trying to find ways to appease geriatric lawmakers.
Recently invented encrypted chat rooms allow people to coordinate and transfer CSAM without any government official being able to infiltrate it. And just being able to freely discuss has been shown to make the problem worse as it facilitates knowledge transfer.
This is all completely different to in the past where this would have been done in person. So the argument that we should just do what we did in the past makes no sense. As technology advances we need to develop new techniques in order to keep up.
Any source for that statement ? My understanding is that child abuse - while still existing - is at an all time low in modern western societies. Children working in brothel used to be common, children getting abused by the church used to be a well know fact etc.
Overall a using children is harder than ever even if it has not completely disappeared.
Technology - which allows efficient transfer of information, testimonies etc - is instrumental to that evolution.
Fuck that.
The "old-fashioned methods" that they used in the past included intercepting communications of people that were suspected of crimes, such as by getting a warrant allowing them to force the person's phone company to record and turn over the person's calls, or by getting a warrant to intercept and inspect the contents of the person's mail at the post office.
> To outlaw large sections of mathematics because of this is absurd
No one has or is proposing outlawing large sections of mathematics, or even small sections of mathematics. The laws are outlawing some applications that make use of mathematics.
Calling that outlawing mathematics is as absurd as saying that building codes that won't let me use asbestos insulation in new construction are banning sections of thermodynamics. Or saying that laws that restrict how high I can fly a drone are banning large sections of aerodynamics.
Stop equivocating. You're banning the mathematics. The mechanism is literally the mechanical implementation of the mathematics.
>Calling that outlawing mathematics is as absurd as saying that building codes that won't let me use asbestos insulation in new construction are banning sections of thermodynamics.
...Except that's not even an analogous comparison? The asbestos is forbidden not because it's too good an insulator/foiler of thermodynamics, but because of it's danger to the health of everyone.
Trying to ban applications that use encryption is exactly banning asbestos because it's too good an insulator, and you're interested in seeing whatever is wrapped in it burn.
Yes. If consumer cars’ speed was capped to 100 mph it would affect a very small percentage of people and zero legitimate use.
The difference with encryption is that while it protects criminals from the police, it also protects legitimate users from criminals.
How many more times do we have to see this movie before people remember how it ends.
There is no parallel to be drawn between better encryption and worse outcomes for kids. Should we also outlaw high-performance cars because these sometimes serve as effective getaway vehicles for criminals?
CSAM producers and consumers should be found and punished via old-fashioned methods. How was this done in the past? Did we just never catch any human traffickers / rapists? No, we had detectives who went around detecting and presumably kicking down doors.
To outlaw large sections of mathematics because of this is absurd. And from the amount of power it would give big governments / big businesses, the fabric of society doesn't stand a chance.