My biggest issue with all this is that when you give them the power to take away rights to prevent terrorism or protect children, the government will use their powers wherever convenient. For example, the patriot act has been used in 1,618 drug cases and only 15 terrorism cases[1]. It has also been used for everything from copyright violations to Las Vegas money issues[2].<p>1. (2011) <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/post/patriot-act-used-to-fight-more-drug-dealers-than-terrorists/2011/09/07/gIQAcmEBAK_blog.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/post/patriot-...</a><p>2. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_the_Patriot_Act" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_th...</a>
Blatant attempt by intelligence services and law enforcement to get their personal wish lists legislated by shamelessly exploiting a tragedy.<p>I'll happily donate a constant percentage of my company income to fight whatever useless laws come out of this. It'll be fought immediately if they try to legislate backdoors or any equivalent tinkering.<p>Last time we had a big legal fight about strong encryption, we got a supreme court ruling that source code implementing strong encryption was free speech, didn't we? Wonder how counterproductive the governments own actions will be this time.
<i>“If we find evidence of a terrorist plot… and despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can’t penetrate that, that’s a problem,”</i><p>If you can penetrate that with evidence of a terrorist plot, 1) you can penetrate that without evidence of a terrorist plot, and 2) probably so can others.<p>Both of these make us less safe.
What really twists the knife for me is the idea that a belief in privacy is unpatriotic.<p>"Of course, they'll want to subvert private communications. They're <i>patriots</i>."<p>The world needs a hell of a lot less <i>patriotism</i> right about now.
So its Crypto Wars 2. There are two possible ways this will play out:<p>a) Obama is just being polite given that "Call me Dave" is in town and has an election to fight so he can't been seen as being soft on terrorism. He knows that its highly likely that Cameron will be out of a job in six months time so is just stringing him along.<p>OR:<p>b) The fix is in, a tame lawmaker will drop a bill that they just happened to have prepared that was sitting in their drawer for a rainy day. Given the Republican's have never met a national security bill that they didn't like expect it to pass through the house and senate with the usual added pork and pardons for the NSA/CIA to make sure nobody goes to jail for recent revelations (Democrats being too chicken to filibuster).<p>If we don't see a huge outcry from the tech industry pointing out what an insanely bad idea this is on Tuesday then I fear for the future.
George Orwell's 1984 should be a required reading for high school students. Not just in the U.S., but world wide. It really highlights just what dangers come from the idea that you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the sheer amount of power and influence a global, instantaneous, and always on intelligence network can have over the population.
<p><pre><code> “We expect companies to be able to help with this,” he
said. “That doesn’t mean that you always have to write bad
cryptography.”
</code></pre>
Yes, actually, that's exactly what it means. What in the world is this author doing giving the NSA the last word? What's really sick is that it sounds reasonable, like he's exposing a false dichotomy. But is it so hard to see that it's actually a real choice?
This is absolutely terrifying. You can't use "the way things currently are" to argue for giving governments access to personal data. You have to think about, and protect "the way things might end up". How easy do you want to make it for corrupt government leaders to suppress opposition?
'Patriots' is an interesting word in this context. I say giving foreign intelligence agencies access to your customer's private communications is treason.
> [Obama] said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the problem. “They’re patriots.”<p>He's right that they're patriots, but he's wrong about the problem they're trying to solve. They're fighting different terrorists. Terrorists hiding in government.
This discussion so far contains: 52 times "terror", 11 times "safe", 5 times "fear". I'm tired of those words. Having no TV and reading no news I don't see any connection between those words and the world that surrounds me.<p>It's sad to see homeless or drunk people in the street, but that's the worst I see.<p>I think eating healthy, exercising, having friends and a job does much more for our "safety" than ridiculous laws and surveillance.<p>I don't understand why people fear so much. Is it not possible to just refuse to fear? Be conscious about the effects it has. Talk about it. Why not just be brave and ignore the nonsense? Living with fear is no good life. We can't choose what happens in the world, but we can choose what we feel about it. We will die if we have to die. So what? It's not the end of the world.<p>edit: I remember seeing the tv in Finland. They play hours of crime-related series every day. What can you think of the world if you just see murders all day?
"If we find evidence of a terrorist plot…"<p>Have I missed something important? Is there a case, or even evidence of one, wherein encryption was a factor in a plot coming to fruition? If there had been, I would have expected the Obama, Cameron, et al., to trot it out.<p>Are we legislating this just in case? Strong encryption is already out there. I suppose if we make it illegal, the terrorists will just have to make do with weak encryption. But why don't we just make terrorism illegal, then?
This all seems to be a bit of a red herring:<p>1) Based on what I've read from experts and what I know, if a national security agency targets your data, they will get it. Even government systems containing state secrets, protected by other state security agencies, have proven to be vulnerable. Banks are penetrated; even RSA's crown jewels were stolen, IIRC.<p>2) Even if 'content' data is encrypted, metadata almost certainly is not. Security agencies can identify which data belongs to their target and collect it, even if encrypted. Also, IIRC, recent leaks indicated that the NSA automatically collects much encrypted traffic, including Tor and maybe VPN traffic.<p>3) Metadata, as most people here probably don't need to be reminded, is as valuable as content. Again, regardless of what encryption you use your metadata probably is vulnerable and security agencies can easily collect it and utilize it.<p>4) Therefore, it seems that encryption only prevents low-cost search of bulk-collected content. It doesn't provide any security for metadata (usually), encrypted content still can be collected, and unencrypted content probably is vulnerable if you are a high-value target.
> “If we find evidence of a terrorist plot… and despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can’t penetrate that, that’s a problem,” Obama said.<p>Yes, it's the kind of problem you get when a patriot whistleblower exposes rampant corruption and unlawful behavior at the NSA; behavior that, above and beyond civil liberties, hurts American commercial interests, and then you do nothing about it.<p>> He said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the problem. “They’re patriots.”<p>He's right about them being patriots. He might be wrong about what patriotism means in this case.
So Obama is the least transparent president in history, cracked down the most on whistle blowers and is diametrically opposed to privacy. When will everyone admit that they voted for a charming fascist.
Allow me to ask what I'm certain is an incredibly naive question, so please bear with me. But it's a question that the average / non-tech folks ARE asking, and I'm not looking to be attacked, I'm looking for an intelligent answer (or corrections if my assumptions are wrong.) Base scenario:<p>We have adversaries. Our adversaries are plotting something objectively bad - to blow up things and kill innocent people. They are plotting and coordinating these bad things via communications with one another. Historically, we have been able to intercept those communications, read them, and interrupt our adversaries from the bad things they are plotting.<p>If our adversaries' communications are completely impossible to intercept, we have lost one of the most valuable tools in our ability to prevent them from doing bad things. How are we supposed to prevent them from doing these bad things?<p>Again - please don't attack me - just looking for a smart answer here.
Well what he actually said was that if the US government has a warrant, they shouldn't be stopped by encryption.<p>And if the company is a US company, who would disagree with that?
"They're patriots"<p>This is the same argument Obama tried to use with Abbvie while trying to block their takeover of shire for tax purposes. He used the phrase "economic patriotism".<p>But in the end the government had to go with a more mundane solution and reward Abbvie 100% of contracts for their new hepatitis drug with Medicare rather than give split the cohtract with gilead.<p>My point - look for some large government contracts with apple and google in exchange for dropping encryption on their platforms.