[Alupis]

> Again, who are you arguing with?

Why do you keep trying to shut this down? I'm clearly arguing against points you have made in the quotes cited in my post.

> Abuses of systematic collection are a great reason to support universal encryption. Certainly, it's the primary reason I support it.

I think we finally agree here. I just don't know why you appear to keep making counter arguments if this is how you truly feel.

[tptacek]

Because systematic collection isn't the only, or even the most important, issue at stake in the "going dark" debate.

[Alupis]

Then what is at stake here?

We have essentially a decade of evidence to show having access to electronic communications (both encrypted and not) has little to zero effect on law enforcement's ability to do their job.

Just recently, the Paris attackers use unencrypted cell phone text messages to coordinate and plan their attack. Nobody detected it...

Before that, the FBI successfully caught Ross Ulbricht, through good 'ol police work (because they couldn't beat his encryption and proxy usage).

We don't need access to private communications (both encrypted and not) in order to conduct lawful law enforcement -- we just need better law enforcement practices.

All this anti-encryption rederick put forth by the government is really just smoke and mirrors, covering up systematic failures of law enforcement.

[tptacek]

This seems far-fetched. Encryption has historically had zero effect on law enforcement, but collection of electronic evidence has made thousands of felony cases. Meanwhile, the issue isn't simply what criminals encrypt today, but the fact that everything they do will be encrypted in 15 years.

[Alupis]

> the issue isn't simply what criminals encrypt today, but the fact that everything they do will be encrypted in 15 years

Everything everyone does will be encrypted in 15 years -- and that's a good thing. It makes it harder for the bad guys to be, well, bad.

Identity theft happens to far more Americans every year than the number that have been involved in a terrorist attack since the founding of our nation.[1] Backdooring/weakening/banning encryption will literally make stealing people's identities far easier. We want to make the government's job marginally easier to spy on everyone at any time, but we're ignoring the major side-effects of doing just that.

[1] http://www.techjuice.pk/a-data-scientist-explains-odds-of-dy...

[tptacek]

I'm confused as to why you keep bringing terrorism up. I haven't brought it up once. I am not especially concerned with terrorism, and I'm not especially concerned about identity theft --- at least, not to the point where I think we need to address it with regulation on consumer devices.

[dragonwriter]

> Meanwhile, the issue isn't simply what criminals encrypt today, but the fact that everything they do will be encrypted in 15 years.

No, everything they do will not be encrypted in 15 years. Most relevantly, except when the crime at issue itself is an act of communication, the crime won't be encrypted, or even subject to encryption, so all the usual police work that enables solving crime based on the actual criminal act and the evidence naturally attaching thereto will remain available.

[tptacek]

I'm not sure what this has to do with my argument, which is that electronic evidence definitely plays a nonzero role in law enforcement today.

[Alupis]

The argument being laid out is that electronic surveillance, in whole, has played a very minimal (close to zero) role in law enforcement. None of the NSA programs can be attributed for stopping some plot on their own[1] - the few they did lay claim to already had mountains of other kinds of evidence collected through regular law enforcement means.

Coming back to the encryption debate - if we cannot stop plots and crimes from taking place that were orchestrated over clear-text communications[2][3][4] - then there is practically zero hope of success by forcing everyone to not encrypt communications.

To say that better - if we can't stop crimes that are communicated in clear-text, then having the ability to decrypt messages does not change our probability of success.

Yes, encrypting all the things will provide some level of convenience for the "bad guys", but it also provides immense levels of security for the "good guys", as well as us regular people. Going back 15 years - we did not have capabilities to intercept and decrypt mass communications - yet we still caught the "bad guys". September 11th happened, and now we're all still whipped into a frenzy thinking somehow if we could just backdoor encryption, we would have prevented that attack (which is absurdly false).

The big point I'm making - backdooring/weakening/banning of encryption makes nobody more safe. Maybe we catch one or two plotters before they do something - but we also expose all citizens to online attacks on their identity, finances, privacy, and more.

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/nsa-program-stopped-no-ter...

[2] https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/signs-point-to-unencrypt...

[3] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/11/after-par...

[4] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/paris-police-find...

[dragonwriter]

> We have essentially a decade of evidence

For extremely large values of "decade".