Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jessaustin 3064 days ago
Sort of like automobile manufacturers, who with all their airbags and crumple zones have defaulted drivers who don't ever think about safety to extremely strong safety. It's really disheartening, to read security professionals hoping to deny security to regular people. I guess I'm somewhat mollified that you've stopped pretending this is about catching criminals.
1 comments
idlewords 3063 days ago
Some of the people getting this unbreakable security by default are really, really bad people, and we want the police to be able to catch them.
link
jessaustin 3063 days ago
Oh yeah, what are their names? If these really really really bad people who can only be caught by ignoring 4A actually existed, one or more of them would have been prosecuted in the last decade. This is movie-plot threat analysis. Despite the ironclad logic to the contrary upthread, you cling to the idea that this is about catching criminals. Because you trust what the enforcement-industrial complex tells you about crime and the security of personal computing devices. Why is that? I can't imagine you'd believe what they tell you about crime and ideal incarceration rates...
link
tptacek 3062 days ago
No, horrifying crimes are not movie plots, sorry. Some of the crimes we're talking about are issues virtually everyone on HN seems to care about (for instance: securities and banking fraud) and are already extremely difficult to prosecute without the kinds of evidence we're discussing.
link
jessaustin 3060 days ago
I won't presume to speak for "everyone on HN", but my personal concern about "securities and banking fraud" is the capriciousness and corruption exhibited by our current prosecution of those. Multiple people are in prison because they sold BTC to someone who sold BTC to someone who used BTC to buy drugs. Meanwhile HSBC, Wachovia, etc. have been caught red-handed laundering billions in drug money, and no one has seen the inside of a jail. Lots of other big banks screwed up badly enough on securitization of subprime loans that their paid-for Treasury Secretary had to bail them out with public funds, and who do the prosecutors go after? Some tiny little Chinese immigrant bank who actually caught and reported a loan officer who tried to write some fraudulent loans. Giving LEOs more power to snoop into every part of citizens' private lives isn't going to make this sorry situation any better.

The phrase "horrifying crimes" makes me think of something violent. Evidence in violent crimes tends to be physical rather than mobile-phone-based.

Of course, you've also already admitted [0] that none of this is about catching criminals.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16239680

link