[pdkl95]

> What I don't get is the repulsion people here seem to have with the simple idea that the state is entitled to evidence

I don't think many people have any significant objection to the state acquiring evidence, as long as proper procedure (warrants/etc) is followed.

While the repulsion is primarily over breaking encryption (key escrow nonsense, etc) and the damage that would cause, there is another problem with the Government's desire for "access" that I haven't seen much in the reprisal of the Crypto Wars compared to the previous round in the 90s.

The government is implicitly demanding additional work be done on it's behalf. Managing a key escrow system (or part of it) isn't free. There is a labor cost and a cost in damage to a business's market position and reputation (their product will be seen - rightly - as less valuable).

A warrant isn't a guarantee that a search will produce the desired evidence. It is unreasonable to demand that we (everyone, before any warrant is involved) should change our behavior and try to preserve evidence or compromise our own security to make it easier for the government at some hypothetical time in the future.

[tptacek]

I think government interference in the engineering decisions of private companies are a valid reason to oppose crypto backdoors. I don't think it's the strongest reason --- we ask private companies to expend extra effort to comply with engineering requirements in all sorts of other products. But I sympathize with the argument.

A warrant isn't an engineering technique or a mathematical axiom. It's a directive from a court that its recipient must comply with a demand to produce some information. Warrants are, in some sense, about people.

If you encrypt some piece of information such that you retain the ability to decrypt and recover it, then as far as the law is concerned, you're capable of responding to a warrant for that information. Technology is going to make it possible for everyone, not just the tech savvy, to refuse to comply with those kinds of warrants. Public policy will need to adapt. As I said, we may not like how it adapts.