[bangaladore]

> I.e.: If the security/privacy guarantees really are as advertised, then ipso facto someone could store child porn in the system and the provider couldn't detect this.

But what they would be storing in this case is not illegal content. Straight up. Encrypted bits without a key are meaningless.

There is nothing stopping a criminal from uploading illegal content to Google drive as an encrypted blob. There's nothing Google can do about it, and there is no legal repercussion (to my knowledge) of holding such a blob.

[saithound]

You're simply wrong about this. "I don't know the key" is not legal defense even against hosting an encrypted blob of copyright infringing contemt, much less an encrypted blob of illegal pornography.

[bangaladore]

If this were the case nobody would ever offer file hosting services (eg. Google Drive). Do you have any case history to show any company getting prosecuted for unknowingly hosting encrypted blobs of illegal material?

Obviously if they have to ability to know material is illegal, that's a problem.

And exactly what algorithm can you provide to me that takes an encrypted blob as an input and returns whether it is not illegal material. Clearly that doesn't exist, so your point makes zero sense.

You may be conflating "I forgot the key" vs "I've never been provided the key"

[saithound]

I think you misunderstand jiggawatt, who wasn't talking about unknowingly hosting illegal material.

We're talking about knowingly hosting encrypted illegal material without knowing the key. This is unambiguously illegal whether or not you ever knew the key.

If the police show up and tell you that your site has an encrypted zip file containing illegal porn, of course they can instruct you to stop hosting it, and hold you liable if you refuse to follow those instructions.

They're not going to give you the decryption key to check for yourself, and it'd not even be legal for them to do so.

Jiggawatt is saying that if you have a truly uncensorable system, it's impossible to comply with the police instructions to selectively remove the illegal material, and so the whole thing becomes illegal.

> And exactly what algorithm can you provide to me that takes an encrypted blob as an input and returns whether it is not illegal material. Clearly that doesn't exist, so your point makes zero sense.

This on the other hand, tells me you don't know much about how legal systems work. I recommend you start with the essay "What color are your bits?" [1]

[1] https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

[bangaladore]

I'm not sure I agree that OCs argument was focused on knowing that you were hosting illegal material that is encrypted. I'd argue that no-where in jiggawatt's comment is that argued. I think that's your argument, which is fine, and I agree with that. I also agree that you can be compelled to remove data, encrypted or not from your servers through lawful orders and if your system is designed in a blockchain like manner where it is not possible to remove illegal content, that's an even bigger issue.

My point all along, is that Google is not liable for someone uploading previously encrypted blobs of illegal content to Google Drive. And even more so, Google isn't liable if someone uploads illegal content to Google Drive that isn't encrypted. Google simply needs to remove it and follow the correct processes if reported / detected.

Could you make an argument for either that theoretically they could be? Sure. But in reality, no, they are not liable.

This is law due to Section 230:

> Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, provides limited federal immunity to providers and users of interactive computer services. The statute generally precludes providers and users from being held liable—that is, legally responsible—for information provided by another person, but does not prevent them from being held legally responsible for information that they have developed or for activities unrelated to third-party content. Courts have interpreted Section 230 to foreclose a wide variety of lawsuits and to preempt laws that would make providers and users liable for third-party content. For example, the law has been applied to protect online service providers like social media companies from lawsuits based on their decisions to transmit or take down user-generated content.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46751 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

Also, the blockchain problem already exists. I've linked some commentary about it.

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/94558/what-prev...