If you receive a sealed letter and the police get a warrant, they can search your drawer and open that letter.
Also, if you have a letter, you can discard of it as you see fit, and the information therein vanishes into the aether. This agency is removed when we move into the realm of bits over digital networks, where information can be copied and retained without one's authorization.
The agency to discard of the letter as you see fit, at a time of your choosing is in effect restored through the use of strong cryptography.
If you have a private conversation with someone, a prosecutor can subpoena that person and force them to testify about what you told them.
Having an unauthorized recording of an event, and asking someone to recount an event are very different things.
attempting to maintain powers
It's not about the 'police maintaining powers they already have' because the situations are different. If the situations were the same, the powers would be the same, and this conversation wouldn't exist.
The situations may seem similar to you, because we make sense of the world through analogy, but there are important differences.
The essentially instant and infinite nature of bits and digital data allows for all those 'warrants' and 'subpoenas' to be 'served' before they have even seen a judicial system. I.e. governments can suck up all the 'locked' data into giant 'pre-crime' databases. Or, require that communication networks retain data, when it's not already happening as a matter of course.
If governments are then given the key to that locked data they essentially have a time machine to attempt to dredge up any evidence, or whatever they want from people's personal effects.
There's nothing similar about that to anything. Nothing like that has ever existed in the history of the world.
So we have a new situation, and with it a new choice to make. This choice requires we ask ourselves, Do we want to lean towards tyranny or lean towards liberty?
Terms like 'progress' are relative and subjective, but still useful when there is mutual understanding. What is being progressed towards? A freer society with less potential for government overreach and tyrannical actions.
So in that case, yes this bill is regressive.
And, that's just one aspect of what makes this bill objectionable, and frankly, retarded.
Anyone with an inkling of how the modern economy works and it's reliance on cryptography, knows that this bill is ridiculous.
The simple matter is that you can't have modern strong cryptography with 'backdoors,' or whatever doors. It doesn't exist, it never will, the two are mutually exclusive. And further, the cryptography genie is not going back in the bottle, that is just as inconceivable. So it would be best for everyone if governments educated themselves on these matters and stopped wasting everyone's time and money on this.
I think you're conflating the very different situations of the government requiring companies to keep around communications data and the government requiring companies to be able to decrypt data the government has obtained by other means. I find the bill objectionable, don't get me wrong, but I don't read anything in there that precludes a service provider that doesn't store a history of users' communications.
>government requiring companies to keep around communications data
You seem strangely narrowly focused on that. Who really cares about that? That is a point of minor interest.
The big issue at hand is this bill is attempting to coin some Orwellian doublespeak in mandating that there exist some secure cryptographic communication channels, with 'backdoors.'
That's a logical impossibility. That can't exist, it is either one or the other.
>but I don't read anything in there that precludes a service provider that doesn't store a history of users' communications.
Precludes from what?
But once again the data storage thing is a red herring, who cares, governments are not lacking in collected data. The fact that some of that data is now the form of secret codes bothers some in the government, but rendering the secret code making tools ineffective is not going to make the world a better place.
Also, I should add that I noticed how after I took the points you raised, rendered them moot, and indeed turned them into points of support for my continued coherent argument, you countered with this semi-parseable red herring deflection.
Quite clearly, you have lawerly skills, but that was a dirty trick.
It would be nice if you attempted to address the issue head on. Or, concede.
I think we should be appreciative that there are people willing to debate the other side of this issue, or at least to try to lend some clarity to that other side, rather than being petulant when those people don't agree with us.
As important as these discussions tend to seem to us at the time, they are in fact awfully boring HN threads, because for the most part they're just nerds competing to see who can agree harder.
Also, if you have a letter, you can discard of it as you see fit, and the information therein vanishes into the aether. This agency is removed when we move into the realm of bits over digital networks, where information can be copied and retained without one's authorization.
The agency to discard of the letter as you see fit, at a time of your choosing is in effect restored through the use of strong cryptography.
If you have a private conversation with someone, a prosecutor can subpoena that person and force them to testify about what you told them.
Having an unauthorized recording of an event, and asking someone to recount an event are very different things.
attempting to maintain powers
It's not about the 'police maintaining powers they already have' because the situations are different. If the situations were the same, the powers would be the same, and this conversation wouldn't exist.
The situations may seem similar to you, because we make sense of the world through analogy, but there are important differences.
The essentially instant and infinite nature of bits and digital data allows for all those 'warrants' and 'subpoenas' to be 'served' before they have even seen a judicial system. I.e. governments can suck up all the 'locked' data into giant 'pre-crime' databases. Or, require that communication networks retain data, when it's not already happening as a matter of course.
If governments are then given the key to that locked data they essentially have a time machine to attempt to dredge up any evidence, or whatever they want from people's personal effects.
There's nothing similar about that to anything. Nothing like that has ever existed in the history of the world.
So we have a new situation, and with it a new choice to make. This choice requires we ask ourselves, Do we want to lean towards tyranny or lean towards liberty?
Terms like 'progress' are relative and subjective, but still useful when there is mutual understanding. What is being progressed towards? A freer society with less potential for government overreach and tyrannical actions.
So in that case, yes this bill is regressive.
And, that's just one aspect of what makes this bill objectionable, and frankly, retarded.
Anyone with an inkling of how the modern economy works and it's reliance on cryptography, knows that this bill is ridiculous.
The simple matter is that you can't have modern strong cryptography with 'backdoors,' or whatever doors. It doesn't exist, it never will, the two are mutually exclusive. And further, the cryptography genie is not going back in the bottle, that is just as inconceivable. So it would be best for everyone if governments educated themselves on these matters and stopped wasting everyone's time and money on this.