Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones(jonathanmh.com)
jonathanmh.com
Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones
http://jonathanmh.com/re-obama-on-fetishizing-our-phones-yes-we-can/
328 comments
Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans.
But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every device, all the way down to the corporate desktop, in a way that not even the company executives themselves can read the email of their own employees, then lots of regulations the government applies to companies would be mooted.
Taken to the extreme, if all communication is digital, and 100% impregnable, and people maintain good OpSec, then it will be hard to impossible to execute lawsuits or regulatory investigations into malfeasance because they'll be no paper trail.
The end result of going full tilt on crypto is cryptoanarchy. This was pretty much well argued in the 90s among the cypherpunks community. Most of the libertarians and Objectivists were salivating over how strong crypto protocols would end fiat currency, end taxation, end regulation, and so on.
So how far as a society are we willing to take this? Does it just extend to private data? Does it extend to transactions? To payments you make for things? To transfers of money? To business transactions? Will Democracy be able to audit nothing of the interactions of citizens or our institutions in the future?
You don't have to agree with Obama's position to see that cryptoanarchy and Democracy are on a collision course, and it makes sense to discuss the possibilities openly without just plugging your ears and taking an absolutist position that demonizes anyone who disagrees.
But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every device, all the way down to the corporate desktop, in a way that not even the company executives themselves can read the email of their own employees, then lots of regulations the government applies to companies would be mooted.
Taken to the extreme, if all communication is digital, and 100% impregnable, and people maintain good OpSec, then it will be hard to impossible to execute lawsuits or regulatory investigations into malfeasance because they'll be no paper trail.
The end result of going full tilt on crypto is cryptoanarchy. This was pretty much well argued in the 90s among the cypherpunks community. Most of the libertarians and Objectivists were salivating over how strong crypto protocols would end fiat currency, end taxation, end regulation, and so on.
So how far as a society are we willing to take this? Does it just extend to private data? Does it extend to transactions? To payments you make for things? To transfers of money? To business transactions? Will Democracy be able to audit nothing of the interactions of citizens or our institutions in the future?
You don't have to agree with Obama's position to see that cryptoanarchy and Democracy are on a collision course, and it makes sense to discuss the possibilities openly without just plugging your ears and taking an absolutist position that demonizes anyone who disagrees.
[deleted]
Rather than rhetoric, it would be nice to see more HN arguments based on the strongest possible counterarguments [].
http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/
I think a lot of libertarians miss the fact that many of the communications monitoring aspects that the administration is proposing includes authorization by court order.
It's not like your communications are being monitored by random government employees at will for no reason. There's a specific safeguard here for personal privacy, and that's through a court order.
If government is monitoring your communications, then there's a pretty dammed good reason, as determined by a judge.
Sure, you might call that final safeguard as not enough or susceptible to corruption, but once you do that, you cease to be able to function in a society.
Judicial review is the "trust zone" that citizens are expected to have on society. If you don't trust judicial review, then there's no hope left for you to function in a normal society filled with other people. If you don't have such a "trust zone" in government, then you are basically forced to build your own army to protect you, since you don't trust government.
Since having your personal army is stupid, your best option is to make sure judicial review cannot be corrupted.
It's not like your communications are being monitored by random government employees at will for no reason. There's a specific safeguard here for personal privacy, and that's through a court order.
If government is monitoring your communications, then there's a pretty dammed good reason, as determined by a judge.
Sure, you might call that final safeguard as not enough or susceptible to corruption, but once you do that, you cease to be able to function in a society.
Judicial review is the "trust zone" that citizens are expected to have on society. If you don't trust judicial review, then there's no hope left for you to function in a normal society filled with other people. If you don't have such a "trust zone" in government, then you are basically forced to build your own army to protect you, since you don't trust government.
Since having your personal army is stupid, your best option is to make sure judicial review cannot be corrupted.
Would like to see more detailed logic in the original post. For e.g. why specifically the parallel between physical world and digital is flawed.
This is incredibly naive bordering on puerile. To suggest that POTUS' view on this is without nuance is to miss his point. POTUS went on to cite existing warrant mechanisms and their underlying principle:
"And we agree on that, because we recognize that just like all of our other rights ... that there are going to be some constraints we impose so we are safe, secure and can live in a civilized society."
I'm not suggesting that this means POTUS and the government have the right answers at the moment. Despite that, we can't ignore the important role law enforcement plays in society, the requirements in support of their role, and the complexities surrounding the right to privacy. We need people advocating for the right balance, not just getting each other frustrated.
OP may have worries other than US law enforcement being from another country. This is one of the /many/ complexities in this space.
"And we agree on that, because we recognize that just like all of our other rights ... that there are going to be some constraints we impose so we are safe, secure and can live in a civilized society."
I'm not suggesting that this means POTUS and the government have the right answers at the moment. Despite that, we can't ignore the important role law enforcement plays in society, the requirements in support of their role, and the complexities surrounding the right to privacy. We need people advocating for the right balance, not just getting each other frustrated.
OP may have worries other than US law enforcement being from another country. This is one of the /many/ complexities in this space.
Obama, our manipulating word artisan of a president yet again attempting to use strong language (i.e "fetishizing") to polarize our view.
One strong point that comes out is reference to the transitory nature of governments, just because you trust yours now (!), does not mean you can trust future incarnations, don't give this kind of power to an unknown.
Fetish. Rubber hose "security". Coincidence?
I honestly didn't expect this to be seen. /me is humbled and reading comments
so they tell us that we have to arrange our private lives in such way that it would be easier for them to investigate/persecute us, if sometime in the future they decide that we are guilty of breaking their laws.
[with great sadness]: how low have we fallen if we seriously discussing this instead of grabbing pitchforks.
[with great sadness]: how low have we fallen if we seriously discussing this instead of grabbing pitchforks.
This interview with Snowden has been broadcasted tonight in Spain. Ended just minutes ago.
http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/noticias/entrev...
http://www.lasexta.com/programas/el-objetivo/noticias/entrev...
We're going to fight hard so our grandchildren have really secure email in a world where everything they do and every word they say is uploaded to the internet, transcribed and annotated in realtime by swarms of drones controlled by other kids that, only 50 years earlier, would have been at home doxxing people on Twitter.
Privacy will die, not because it's undesirable or a bad idea, it'll die like copyright and DRM - because it's technically and economically easy to defeat, and people will be motivated to do so. What's more, those people will be hard to catch - after all, the drones will be communicating over very strongly encrypted channels.
[Please refute - I genuinely have nightmares about this future]
Privacy will die, not because it's undesirable or a bad idea, it'll die like copyright and DRM - because it's technically and economically easy to defeat, and people will be motivated to do so. What's more, those people will be hard to catch - after all, the drones will be communicating over very strongly encrypted channels.
[Please refute - I genuinely have nightmares about this future]
Obama, the technology, sir, is absolutist. You can have it one way, with privacy, or another, complete lack of it. That's how things are, and you are, with all due respect, stupid for arguing otherwise.
In the end, they are going to introduce laws that make it illegal to implement end-to-end encryption. This sucks, but it's going to happen. France is already moving to do it [1], and in the US, John McCain and others are also calling for similar laws [2]. They will all start off saying that it will be controlled carefully etc., as Obama keeps saying, and then it will be used with reckless abandonment.
What this essentially means is a move to Android for criminals, terrorists, and anyone that wants privacy (since Android allows installation of apps that have not been approved by a gatekeeper bound by the laws of the countries it operates in, whereas iOS does not by default). Open source Android apps with strong encryption will be built in countries without such laws. All of this will likely be the downfall of a few lazy drug dealers that don't want to give up their iPhones, but since the cat is out of the bag and apps with end-to-end encryption already exist and will continue to be built, the governments making these moves will not actually catch any reasonably intelligent terrorists that install and use these apps. They will, however, gain exactly what they want: the ability to conduct surveillance on most people in the world whenever they want.
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/03/04/french-law-apple-iphone-encryp...
[2] http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/senator-mccain-joins-...
What this essentially means is a move to Android for criminals, terrorists, and anyone that wants privacy (since Android allows installation of apps that have not been approved by a gatekeeper bound by the laws of the countries it operates in, whereas iOS does not by default). Open source Android apps with strong encryption will be built in countries without such laws. All of this will likely be the downfall of a few lazy drug dealers that don't want to give up their iPhones, but since the cat is out of the bag and apps with end-to-end encryption already exist and will continue to be built, the governments making these moves will not actually catch any reasonably intelligent terrorists that install and use these apps. They will, however, gain exactly what they want: the ability to conduct surveillance on most people in the world whenever they want.
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/03/04/french-law-apple-iphone-encryp...
[2] http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/senator-mccain-joins-...
This is akin to the politicians that don't want to believe the science around global warming. They believe that if they just deny it, they will turn out to be correct. Obama is doing the same with "golden key" encryption. It is not that the experts are correct and know what they are talking about, it is just that they are disengaged and being stubborn.
"I'm the President of the United States of America and if I say that there must be math that gives me what I want. If you don't invent it, you are disengaged."
"I'm the President of the United States of America and if I say that there must be math that gives me what I want. If you don't invent it, you are disengaged."
> So if your argument is strong encryption, no matter what, and we can and should, in fact, create black boxes, then that I think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years.
Mr. Obama, you are the one who upset the balance with secret, dragnet surveillance of nearly all communications. That's not the bargain the public has had with law enforcement for the last 300 years. Widespread, end-to-end encryption is simply the natural reaction to the arms race you started. We would have never come to this point if the government had kept surveillance within court-supervised bounds.
Mr. Obama, you are the one who upset the balance with secret, dragnet surveillance of nearly all communications. That's not the bargain the public has had with law enforcement for the last 300 years. Widespread, end-to-end encryption is simply the natural reaction to the arms race you started. We would have never come to this point if the government had kept surveillance within court-supervised bounds.
This has been the default position of US government across administrations at least since the 1976 Arms Export Control Act. Nothing has changed except that "the terrorists" have replaced "the communists".
It doesn't matter who says it.
It doesn't matter who says it.
A couple of other fun quotes:
"And what we realized was that we could potentially build a SWAT team, a world-class technology office inside of the government that was helping across agencies. We’ve dubbed that the U.S. Digital Services."
Yes, that's a great analogy! Go with that!
"And this was a little embarrassing for me because I was the cool, early adaptor President."
Cooler and adepter!
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/03/11/transcrip...
"And what we realized was that we could potentially build a SWAT team, a world-class technology office inside of the government that was helping across agencies. We’ve dubbed that the U.S. Digital Services."
Yes, that's a great analogy! Go with that!
"And this was a little embarrassing for me because I was the cool, early adaptor President."
Cooler and adepter!
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/03/11/transcrip...
If law was adopted to require backdoors - those who are privacy conscious would simply move their data to countries that allow for strong encryption as well as deniability.
It'd still pose an issue for when people are accessing their data, however depending on your setup this will be very hard to prove from a third-parties perspective given ample security precautions taken (ie using an offshore VPN all the time, data never full accessed locally).
For larger tech companies, I'd assume setup of a new company structure offshore and sensitive data handling to be "outsourced" offshore too (ie parts of the EU, other OECD countries).
It'd still pose an issue for when people are accessing their data, however depending on your setup this will be very hard to prove from a third-parties perspective given ample security precautions taken (ie using an offshore VPN all the time, data never full accessed locally).
For larger tech companies, I'd assume setup of a new company structure offshore and sensitive data handling to be "outsourced" offshore too (ie parts of the EU, other OECD countries).
Obama always telling people what to do. Its just not a good look.
[deleted]
I used to think that Bush was bad and Obama was good... I'm really upset that I was wrong and that now Bush appears to be the better of the two.
Obama, like all the recent US presidents is just a puppet.
Let's get the facts straight about encryption and security. The DOJ needs our help, and we need theirs
We need a grassroots movement here. I know we have the EFF and Apple and a slew of others. But we all need to be writing about this to have our voices heard.
I am in between projects and writing about this extensively online. Would anyone like to work together to organize facts and promote discussion in a concerted manner? The goal would be a) to make a concise message that is understandable by a non-techie, b) back it up with facts and primary source, and c) seek out public figures who can share our message. I have a running summary of events here which I will put in a github repo [1]
Dear technologists:
The task of educating the public and our government on encryption may be even harder than you think. Everyone needs to understand the issues at stake in order to make up their own mind, and it could take years to educate the general public about encryption.
We can expect to continue seeing terrorists attacks in the news regardless of what laws Congress passes. This much we know, and this is, of course, out of our control. However, uninformed law enforcement will blame encryption and they will blame technologists for not allowing them to catch these attacks. Unless all law enforcement truly understands the technology, then they will always blame citizens for fighting for their right to privacy.
Of course, we know this is about security vs. security, not security vs. privacy. Privacy is a secondary focus for many. But law enforcement believes our primary focus is privacy.
My primary concern is that law enforcement does not know how to keep us safe in a world where criminals can sometimes communicate with smartphones across the world in a way that cannot be monitored with a warrant. Regardless of whether Cyrus Vance, James Comey, Loretta Lynch or Obama truly understand this or if they are putting up a smoke screen, the fact is that law enforcement across the country trust them the most. Non-technologists will be more moved to understand the security and economic implications of forcing backdoors upon Americans and US phone manufacturers. For the most part, they are not going to see eye to eye with us on privacy concerns. Lindsey Graham has already changed his view. We can share facts with others and let them make up their own minds.
Some damage is already done. The fact that Vance and Comey have been fighting this for so long is going to make it difficult for them to go back and convince officers of the law that technologists were right, and they were wrong. Many officers will continue to feel snubbed by the tech community.
If we're to advance to the next level of our mutually trusting society, we must all understand encryption technology and its implications. To the extent that we do not all understand encryption, and the ease of which it can be used regardless of government mandates, we will continue infighting and not progress together.
The idea that technologists feel the issue is black and white or absolutist is absolutely incorrect :-). Math is black and white, but our public safety and security is not. It is a complex equation that must be balanced, and we have that focus just as President Obama does. The difference between us and the DOJ is we understand a few more pieces to the equation. I'm open to the idea there are pieces that technologists do not know about, and I encourage the administration to share these details with us. Until all the details are on the table, we won't be able to come up with a solution together. Let's focus on discussing and sharing the variables and their weights. Given information, people can make up their own minds.
If backdoor laws are passed, it's not the end of the world, but our industry will suffer while non-technologists struggle to understand why terrorist attacks continue to occur. It'll be another 4-8 years until we can dig ourselves out of that hole. Let's keep the great country we have and bring facts to the table for open discussion.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/49otvu...
We need a grassroots movement here. I know we have the EFF and Apple and a slew of others. But we all need to be writing about this to have our voices heard.
I am in between projects and writing about this extensively online. Would anyone like to work together to organize facts and promote discussion in a concerted manner? The goal would be a) to make a concise message that is understandable by a non-techie, b) back it up with facts and primary source, and c) seek out public figures who can share our message. I have a running summary of events here which I will put in a github repo [1]
Dear technologists:
The task of educating the public and our government on encryption may be even harder than you think. Everyone needs to understand the issues at stake in order to make up their own mind, and it could take years to educate the general public about encryption.
We can expect to continue seeing terrorists attacks in the news regardless of what laws Congress passes. This much we know, and this is, of course, out of our control. However, uninformed law enforcement will blame encryption and they will blame technologists for not allowing them to catch these attacks. Unless all law enforcement truly understands the technology, then they will always blame citizens for fighting for their right to privacy.
Of course, we know this is about security vs. security, not security vs. privacy. Privacy is a secondary focus for many. But law enforcement believes our primary focus is privacy.
My primary concern is that law enforcement does not know how to keep us safe in a world where criminals can sometimes communicate with smartphones across the world in a way that cannot be monitored with a warrant. Regardless of whether Cyrus Vance, James Comey, Loretta Lynch or Obama truly understand this or if they are putting up a smoke screen, the fact is that law enforcement across the country trust them the most. Non-technologists will be more moved to understand the security and economic implications of forcing backdoors upon Americans and US phone manufacturers. For the most part, they are not going to see eye to eye with us on privacy concerns. Lindsey Graham has already changed his view. We can share facts with others and let them make up their own minds.
Some damage is already done. The fact that Vance and Comey have been fighting this for so long is going to make it difficult for them to go back and convince officers of the law that technologists were right, and they were wrong. Many officers will continue to feel snubbed by the tech community.
If we're to advance to the next level of our mutually trusting society, we must all understand encryption technology and its implications. To the extent that we do not all understand encryption, and the ease of which it can be used regardless of government mandates, we will continue infighting and not progress together.
The idea that technologists feel the issue is black and white or absolutist is absolutely incorrect :-). Math is black and white, but our public safety and security is not. It is a complex equation that must be balanced, and we have that focus just as President Obama does. The difference between us and the DOJ is we understand a few more pieces to the equation. I'm open to the idea there are pieces that technologists do not know about, and I encourage the administration to share these details with us. Until all the details are on the table, we won't be able to come up with a solution together. Let's focus on discussing and sharing the variables and their weights. Given information, people can make up their own minds.
If backdoor laws are passed, it's not the end of the world, but our industry will suffer while non-technologists struggle to understand why terrorist attacks continue to occur. It'll be another 4-8 years until we can dig ourselves out of that hole. Let's keep the great country we have and bring facts to the table for open discussion.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/49otvu...
This is not a fetish. This is a conflict between a government that has gotten away from the "we serve the citizens" mentality, and gone to "we'll do anything we want, routing around the constitution whenever we want, and use "serving citizens" as the excuse, and the citizens who should be able to specify, to any level detail that we want, exactly how those "servents" will serve us. It seems to be sliding away from us.
All this talk about "warrant-proof spaces" presumes that they're something new, when in fact they aren't. In the past, conversations in private tended to not be reduced to tangible form and were lost to law enforcement unless they had the foresight and the warrant to bug the location. Now that so many of our communications are mediated by technology, they are by necessity reduced to a tangible form. Secure end-to-end crypto merely takes us back to the status quo antebellum.
"You don't need encryption"
"You don't need a gun"
Oddly enough both are classified as munitions.
"You don't need a gun"
Oddly enough both are classified as munitions.
I hate it when leaders get all upset when the balance is shifted away from them, and yet are perfectly fine when the balance tilts in their favor.
FTA: "then that I think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years."
200 years ago, it was not possible to cast a dragnet and catch everyone who was doing Something Bad(tm). The government had to get a warrant to open mail; today, the NSA can sift through billions of messages (metadata, they say) in a second.
Even considering US Mail: you could not keep track of who was sending whom mail, at scale. But today, every letter that is mailed has its front and back scanned (for reading the address); but more importantly, these images are saved for future use.
All of this is possible thanks to technology. And when the balance was tilting in their favor, the Establishment was quite happy. But when the balance tilts the other way, suddenly they're crying like a spoiled child whose toys have been taken away.
You can't just throw tantrums when things don't go your way. If the technology permits E2E encryption, they'll just have to live with it and find other ways to catch criminals.
FTA: "then that I think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years."
200 years ago, it was not possible to cast a dragnet and catch everyone who was doing Something Bad(tm). The government had to get a warrant to open mail; today, the NSA can sift through billions of messages (metadata, they say) in a second.
Even considering US Mail: you could not keep track of who was sending whom mail, at scale. But today, every letter that is mailed has its front and back scanned (for reading the address); but more importantly, these images are saved for future use.
All of this is possible thanks to technology. And when the balance was tilting in their favor, the Establishment was quite happy. But when the balance tilts the other way, suddenly they're crying like a spoiled child whose toys have been taken away.
You can't just throw tantrums when things don't go your way. If the technology permits E2E encryption, they'll just have to live with it and find other ways to catch criminals.
Maybe it's that he decided to use his political clout to pick healthcare as his signature in American history, not wage war against the NSA, but either way it saddens me to have campaigned for someone who has empowered a surveillance state instead of fight against it.
Liberty literally means "freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control", and freedom in the information age means the liberty to communicate and store information. Anything to compromise that makes us all more vulnerable to control in all parts of our lives, not just those stored in zeros and ones. I believe America can be "Land of the free, home of the brave", but not without digital liberty.