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A comment on US spy device 'tested on NZ public'. Parent comment

Re:US spy device 'tested on NZ public' by Zigurd on Monday May 27, 2013 @01:31PM (#5775602)
The choice is starker than that. Phone "lines" are no longer tied to houses, addresses, and the identities of the people living there. It is possible to have communications devices that are pseudonymous and hard to trace to an individual, and communications payload that is completely opaque to police, and all this is cheap enough that every person could have communication that is completely opaque to inspection.

Do you think having that should be illegal?

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Re:US spy device 'tested on NZ public' by rayiner on Monday May 27, 2013 @02:04PM (#5775773)
No, but all that still goes through a highly centralized infrastructure (att, google, etc). I think there should be provisions for reasonable police access to that data, with appropriate safeguards.
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Re:US spy device 'tested on NZ public' by Zigurd on Monday May 27, 2013 @03:14PM (#5776092)
But that's the rub: You can buy and use a device fairly anonymously. Although systems like Thin Thread, as they are described, seem to be able to attack this kind of anonymity, and there are a variety of other attacks possible, that's not the same as a pen register or wiretap, and it takes significant resources to make it work in practice.

4G voice is just data, so that it can be end-to-end encrypted such that, as far as is known, calls can be made secure against any attack. There is no "man in the middle" with access to clear data.

So you say that should not be illegal. Good, so far. But that also means that it is out of reach of law enforcement, and can even be made safe from "rubber hose" code-breaking.

That's what I mean by a stark choice. There is no middle ground. The algorithms exist and that can't be undone. If you put your documents in a safe strong enough to keep a mafia or foreign spy agency out, you can keep anyone out.

Should that be illegal? This isn't just a hypothetical. Any businessman or government worker traveling to places that are corrupt or have repressive governments would be a fool not to guard important documents and communications this well, and the tools are readily available.

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