[lisper]

Fine. Here's my contribution to the conversation: Mr Barr, your entreaties in this regard are based on the presumption that the government can be trusted. But our nation was founded on a mistrust of government, and your own actions demonstrate that the government cannot be trusted. Your own special counsel has issued a report that implicates the president in a felony (obstruction of justice) but you have failed to follow up in any way except to imply that there is "nothing to see here, move along." The fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and the ninth amendment to the Constitution guarantees that the people retain un-enumerated rights. I, as a citizen of the United States, maintain that one of those unenumerated rights is my right to employ technological defenses against government overreach. Those are rights guaranteed to me by the Constitution. The right of the government to catch those it deems to be "the bad guys" is not.

[slg]

The problem with this line of argument is that it is a general argument against government and not specific to this issue. You could use the exact same argument for why you shot a police officer who broke down your door after securing a warrant. It would quickly be dismissed in that instance so it should carry little weight in the discussion of encryption. If you want the government to completely give up this line of thinking, you need a way to explain to them why a digital lock/encryption should be treated different legally than a physical lock.

[lisper]

> You could use the exact same argument for why you shot a police officer who broke down your door after securing a warrant.

No, I couldn't. The operative word there is not "shoot", it's "warrant." The fourth amendment explicitly makes an exception for warrants. If the government has a warrant then I am legally bound to hand over my keys. If I don't, they can put me in prison for that.

[slg]

Your initial comment seemed to imply that a warrant to break the encryption was "government overreach". If not, I don't see how what you originally posted is an argument against ways around encryption. The question is whether the government should be able to access this information and not whether the government can be trusted with access to that information. If your argument is the latter, than you are arguing against warrants in general.

[lisper]

> Your initial comment seemed to imply that a warrant to break the encryption was "government overreach".

I have no idea how you could possibly reach this conclusion. My initial comment did not contain the word "warrant".

By "government overreach" I mostly meant spying on me without a warrant, e.g. the activities brought to light by Edward Snowden, and the common practice of seizing devices at the border.

[slg]

Not including the word "warrant" is exactly why I thought your problem was with warrants specifically.

From you original comment:

>The fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and the ninth amendment to the Constitution guarantees that the people retain un-enumerated rights. I, as a citizen of the United States, maintain that one of those unenumerated rights is my right to employ technological defenses against government overreach.

I read two ways to interpret that:

- "Government overreach" is to include even searches authorized by a warrant in which case you are defending unrestricted use of encryption.

- "Government overreach" is to only include warrantless searches in which cause you are only defending using encryption in a manner in which a warrant can break the encryption.

Considering the second option is basically the government's position and the rest of your post seemed anti-government, I thought you were advocating for the first interpretation.

[lisper]

> the second option is basically the government's position

The second option is the government's ostensible position. But you seem to have forgotten the central point of my argument which is that the government is not trustworthy. Just because the government says that it will only use its decryption keys when it has a warrant, history shows that the government cannot be trusted to keep its word on matters like this. The government does end-runs around Constitutional rights regularly. Therefore, the power to enforce the Constitution's constraints on government action cannot be entrusted to the government. It must remain with the people.

[chrshawkes]

Sort of a side note, if police kick down the wrong door (this happened not long ago) they're not justified in pursuing murder charges in that case. If they served the right warrant at the right address than yes, that is justified.

This entire write up stinks and I don't trust the government to implement this overreach in any sort of way which benefits the average American citizen. :(