[haswell]

I don’t think this particular devil needs more advocacy.

Law enforcement agencies currently have more data about each of us and more sophisticated tools to investigate crimes than at any time in human history.

> Politicians are (mistakenly) asking for a master key - but what I feel we should as a community support is some fine-grained legal process that would allow limited access to user information if justified by a warrant.

The problem with all backdoors is the human element. Master keys will be leaked. A process to gain access to a temporary key is also subject to the human factor. We’ve already seen this happen with telecom processes that are only supposed to be available to law enforcement.

The other issue is one of a legitimately slippery slope. The asymmetric nature of the power dynamic between governments and their citizens makes it even more critical to avoid sliding down that slope.

And finally, in the environment you propose, criminals will just stop using services that are able to provide such services to the government. Criminality will continue while ordinary citizens lose more and more of their rights.

[wulfstan]

Well that's your view - but these demands aren't going to go away, and what I think is sensible is for us a technical community to consider reasonable alternatives. Every society is a compromise between anarchic freedom and authoritarian tyranny, and this is another discussion about how a (relatively) new set of technologies can fit into that compromise in a way that is acceptable and reasonable.

I acknowledge the problems you raise, but it does seem to me that we have a good set of systems in place in the form of PKI that has a remarkable amount of flexibility.

It's frankly a bit of an article of faith in our community that encryption == unalloyed good and I think we'd be right to think more critically about that position.

[haswell]

> but these demands aren't going to go away

To me, this just means that we must remain vigilant. The slow creep towards authoritarianism isn’t going to go away either. The solution is not to look for reasonable ways for authoritarian rules to exist. Continuous harmful pressure must be met with continuous resistance.

> Every society is a compromise between anarchic freedom and authoritarian tyranny

Except not every society is such a compromise. Some are fully under authoritarian control, and serve as a warning for others who are tempted by authoritarian ideas.

> this is another discussion about how a (relatively) new set of technologies can fit into that compromise in a way that is acceptable and reasonable.

Breaking encryption need not inherently be part of that compromise. And until someone can explain how breaking encryption will actually stop the kind of bad actors used to justify such a direction (vs. driving them deeper underground, i.e. even if you outlaw encryption, it’s not as if law breakers will obey such a law), I see no merit in entertaining such a compromise. The crimes being committed are already illegal.

> It's frankly a bit of an article of faith in our community that encryption == unalloyed good

I don’t think most people in our community see it as inherently/perfectly good, but as extremely important and necessary. This is a critical distinction. As with everything, there are harms that come with the good, and such is the nature of all things. The question becomes: are the harms allowed worse than the good that is preserved? And would the new harms of disallowing the status quo be potentially worse than the harms supposedly prevented?

> I think we'd be right to think more critically about that position.

I agree that we need to think critically about this. But clearly we disagree about what one should conclude from such a critical analysis. I’d argue that taking the position that the government needs more power - especially at this moment in history - is the result of not thinking critically enough.

[wulfstan]

> Except not every society is such a compromise. Some are fully under authoritarian control, and serve as a warning for others who are tempted by authoritarian ideas.

Every society is on a continuum, and so represents some compromise between freedom for the citizen and power for the authorities. No society is perfectly free and no society is entirely authoritarian.

> Breaking encryption need not inherently be part of that compromise. And until someone can explain how breaking encryption will actually stop the kind of bad actors used to justify such a direction (vs. driving them deeper underground, i.e. even if you outlaw encryption, it’s not as if law breakers will obey such a law), I see no merit in entertaining such a compromise. The crimes being committed are already illegal.

Being able to legally access a private citizen's encrypted data in specific situations would help to (at least more rapidly) prosecute certain crimes more successfully. This is, I think, inarguably true. You can decide for yourself if that is worth a compromise. I'm somewhat on the fence.

> I don’t think most people in our community see it as inherently/perfectly good, but as extremely important and necessary. This is a critical distinction. As with everything, there are harms that come with the good, and such is the nature of all things. The question becomes: are the harms allowed worse than the good that is preserved? And would the new harms of disallowing the status quo be potentially worse than the harms supposedly prevented?

I think it's convenient and useful, but I hardly think it's necessary. Society managed to function just fine (although less conveniently) when strong encryption wasn't available for communications. Banking still happened, money still changed hands.

> I agree that we need to think critically about this. But clearly we disagree about what one should conclude from such a critical analysis. I’d argue that taking the position that the government needs more power - especially at this moment in history - is the result of not thinking critically enough.

It depends on how you define power. As society changes and new technologies emerge, maintaining existing government authority in new areas - and working out ways to ensure that authority is maintained - isn't really giving governments more power, but trying to ensure your society remains in the agreed location on the freedom/authority continuum.

If you see this as expanding powers, I can see how you would consider that a problem. But I think this is more about ensuring existing power is maintained correctly over a new area where crime is being committed.