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Encryption should be no more a crime than locking your house or storing your valuables in a safe.
Encryption is not just not a crime, it’s a republican virtue, those arguments usually used about guns, they are even better applicable to encryption. Encryption is actually a civil duty, because of herd immunity being damaged by people not using encryption. That public institutes’ erosion we are seeing in the last decades - it’s because the technological progress made the need for encryption to blow up, not accompanied with sufficient public perception. That erosion is a result of bad people having gotten orders of magnitude more information about everyone to plan their actions.
They’ll just make it a crime and pretend you were wrong all along. We’re not playing by moral rules anymore.
And backdoored encryption is just as bad as unencrypted, maybe worse, since it lulls you into a false sense of security.
“After Salt Typhoon’s hacking campaign targeting US telecom networks came to light last fall, then FBI director Christopher Wray described the phone company breaches as China’s “most significant cyber-espionage campaign in history.” The intrusions, which in some cases exploited the wiretap mechanisms built into telecoms for law enforcement use, prompted CISA and FBI officials to go so far as to recommend that Americans use end-to-end encrypted communication apps like Signal and WhatsApp to avoid leaving their texts and calls vulnerable to China’s real-time spying.”
Mathematically worse.
Encryption is only a crime if done by a poor or not the government. So long as it’s got the rich people backing it, it’s not even in the same league.
When will you people see that this world doesn’t have universal rules. It has rules for the poor. And those for the rich.
Encryption is not a crime *unless you’re doing it to someone else’s data to extort them for bitcoins
They’ll send you to the Gulag here even if you didn’t commit a crime.
It’s the Cypherpunk’s Manifesto all over again.
Yet.
I think it’s contextual. It is definitely relevant to bring into a criminal case that criminals made attempts to obstruct gathering of evidence in commission of the crime. It’s no different than shredding or burning paper files. Evidence of criminals taking steps to hide the criminal activity is how you prove that a transgression is willful rather than negligent. That matters in cases like murder.
Encryption is also criminal in some contexts, like encrypted radio broadcasts on frequencies for public use.
It definitely belongs as a talking point in a courtroom, imo.
It’s no different than shredding or burning paper files.
Both are normal if you work with information you wouldn’t like to leak. Or something very personal.
They are that thing you said only if they are unusual for the circumstance. When that gives information that a person did something not normal.
Because that’s a sign of something, kinda similar to shaking hands and missing shovel and sudden lack of time for guests.
Encrypting everything on Internet-connected machines is not unusual. It’s perfectly normal. It’s f* obligatory.
Encryption is also criminal in some contexts, like encrypted radio broadcasts on frequencies for public use.
Because that’s almost jamming, if everyone could broadcast all they can, nobody could use those frequencies. And since you have to make space there, private transmissions probably belong somewhere else. Doesn’t matter when using wire. This is irrelevant to encryption.
It definitely belongs as a talking point in a courtroom, imo.
No it doesn’t. Even if someone suddenly started encrypting everything, no. Maybe they learned how the world works and decided to learn to do it just in case.
With respect, this is a short-sighted take. There’s literally no legitimate crime that is made worse because a person tried to avoid it being detected. Plot a murder over tor? Not a good look. But in what universe is someone less morally culpable because they just posted on craigslist?
On the other hand, allowing the use of encryption or other privacy methods to affect the criminality or punishment assigned to an action just creates a backdoor to criminalizing privacy itself. Allowing that serves no real purpose in deterring folks from hurting others, but it sure does further the interests of an oppressive or authoritarian regime.
How does covering up a crime not make it worse when it allows you to get away and commit more crime?
Doing crime in the privacy of my own home allows me to get away with it and commit more crime, doesn’t mean we should have transparent walls that everyone can watch what you do through.
I don’t disagree with that but the article is talking about what arguments are permissible in a court room which is a little different. Same as using tools to commit a crime. It’s not illegal to own or use tools but when used in commission of a crime, this can be a factor in proving elements of a crime that require proof of intention or malice.
