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by 9rx 425 days ago
Which high security vault can the government not gain access to under any circumstances? I expect you'll find decent explosives or a bulldozer will get them in just fine.
3 comments

So will a hardware backdoor planted by your maid, or a telescopic lens pointed at your screen, or laser microphone on your window, get them into your e2e encrypted chats.
Huh? The encrypted data is at rest and the only person who knew the key is dead. Your plan makes no sense.
Generally the set of people who are relevant in the debate of the balance of privacy rights and criminal prosecution, are living.

Dead people are distinctly immune to prosecution, and generally granted fewer rights.

If you intended to reply to a different thread and accidentally ended up here instead, there is truth to what you say, but it has nothing to do with this one.

As it pertains to this thread, where the sole key holder is dead and took the knowledge with him, how do you anticipate to carry out gaining access to the data using live attacks? There are plenty of reasons why the government wants access to data even where prosecution isn't necessary.

The overlap between data that was never shared and data that is relevant after the person was dead is excruciatingly small.
It is excruciatingly small in all cases, which is why laws haven't been crafted yet. But if that changes...
Is encrypted data at rest belonging to dead people such a problem, that it's worth sacrificing everyone's privacy?
> that it's worth sacrificing everyone's privacy?

Is the appeal to emotion really necessary? Surely we can discuss the facts without devolving into some kind of "But I want that!!!" toddler behaviour?

There was no emotion, only an accurate description of the consequences of the proposed policy.
I said appeal to emotion. There is no logical foundation for the question. It can only be asked in the context of how one arbitrarily feels about the subject, serving no purpose, and derailing was taking place for no good reason. How you one feels about the subject has no impact on what we are talking about and trying to draw a link between them is completely nonsensical.
The issue isn't "gain access to" - it's "gain access to without destroying the contents."

Explosives and bulldozers are likely to harm whatever was motivating the entry in the first place. The vault system can be engineered to ensure this conclusion, as well.

The question specifically asked which one(s) you are talking about, not about your dreams. Which high security value is the government not able to gain access to?

And, sure, if enough perfectly engineered vaults were impeding the government from carrying out the activities it wants to carry out, there would be calls to make building/using such a vault illegal too. In the real world, such vaults, if they exist at all, don't meaningfully get in the way. Thus there is no reason to think about it. We don't create laws on what theoretically might be a problem in some magical imagined world. We only create laws after something is identified as an actual problem.

> The question specifically asked which one you are talking about, not about your dreams. Which one is like that?

After your five ninja edits, it's been hard to keep up:

Glass relocker mechanisms have existed (in reality) on safe doors for decades and will often result in the destruction of contents if triggered and opening is still required.

Governments are normally seeking evidence: a stack of cash or a quantity of bulk substances are substantially harder to rig to destroy (obviating evidence gathering) than documents or data.

> After your five ninja edits, it's been hard to keep up

No need to reply within the first second. Take your time.

In fact, consider taking a lot more time as you still haven't named the specific vault, or set of vaults, that is causing such a big problem for the government. If we don't know what vault it is, even if your description is vague, how would anyone come to think of it as a problem? Laws are not created by some all-knowing deity. It is just people.

That such a vault might be theoretically possible to build is irrelevant.

> as you still haven't named the specific vault

Vaults and safes are boutique products. Glass relockers have been sold for decades - can you not extrapolate that heat and impact might destroy something inside of a highly thermally-conductive container?

HSMs and similar tech have had tamper detection systems for decades with internal battery backups.. these aren't illegal yet. My server cases from 20 years ago had tamper switches for exactly this purpose. How hard is this stuff to engineer?

> Glass relockers have been sold for decades

And...?

Let me ask again: Which vault(s) are currently, or at least in recent enough memory for anyone to recall, causing great strife for the government? Even a rough location would be sufficient. We can offer that in the case of encryption. There are countless news articles about police not being able to decrypt data they deem important.

Without that, it doesn't matter. Laws are not created based on imagined situations that you can dream up. They only are created after something has become a problem. You can use a perfectly impenetrable vault all day long and as long as the government doesn't want in, it is never going to care.

Of course, the greater subject is really about houses, not vaults. The government has good reason to want to get into your house. For example, you might perish in it, and it needs to get in to deal with your mess. This is a relatively frequent task placed upon government to carry out. If you've made your house impenetrable, government isn't going to remain amused for long. If the government starts encountering that problem often, absolutely it would become illegal.

It is not illegal today because it has never posed a real problem.

With physical access, global superpowers can break both vaults and strong encryption.