[hn_version_0023]

I always giggle a little when really smart people forget thugs exist and do what they’re told. If that includes breaking the knees of M people to get what they’re after, then M pairs of knees are gonna get destroyed.

This isn’t hard to understand, but it’s easy to forget our civilization hangs by a thread more often than any of us care to admit.

[ibejoeb]

I don't remember the provenance of the quip, but somewhere at a def con or a hope, I heard, "The point of cryptography is to force the government to torture you."

[jacquesm]

They're perfectly ok with that, and depending on where you live this may happen in more or less overt ways. If the government wants your information, they will get your information. Your very best outcome is to simply rot in detention until you cough up your keys.

[ibejoeb]

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was a session about root zone security, and Adam Langley was in the room. I was thinking, damn, kinda sucks to be the guy that holds Google's private keys. They want someone's information, so they let you rot...

[jazzyjackson]

power in numbers

can't torture us all!

[actionfromafar]

Are we deep enough in the thread for the customary reminder that each measure makes it incrementally harder to attack a system?

(Including a system of people.)

Even nation state adversaries don’t have infinite resources to allocate for all opponents.

[__alexs]

I think you can probably get away with only breaking one pair of knees and sending a video of it to the other people.

[solardev]

Youtube would delist that before they could all see it though.

[sofixa]

You know there are other ways to have a video and send it to people than YouTube, right? You can just email a link from dropbox or gdrive, or an attachment, or send a WhatsApp/Telegram/etc. message, send a letter with a USB drive, etc.

[solardev]

Yes. It was just a dumb joke :/

[lmm]

> You can just email a link from dropbox or gdrive, or an attachment, or send a WhatsApp/Telegram/etc. message

Why do you think governments are demanding those services give them access to quickly remove "misinformation"?

[MichaelZuo]

Any organization that is really really serious about security will obviously keep at least N-M +1 folks, along with their family, in other countries.

Which is a much much higher bar to clear for any would be rubber hose attackers.

[solardev]

Your secrets aren't really safe unless Xi and Putin each have part of your key personally memorized.

[Randomizer42]

That’s hyperbole