There is nothing dumb about these people. It's important to understand the underlying belief that drives stupid encryption policy though. They interpret a limit on their omniscience as a limit on their sovereignty. If I could summarize the way people I've met in government moralize policies like these it's, "Leviathan, c'est moi."
Consequently, I don't know that they are persuaded by principle or reason. They understand power, but that's about it. The main thing that comes out of laws that sabotage encryption is they shift the burden of proof of innocence onto the accused, because if there are encrypted files involved, there is no legal presumption of innocence.
This is the most serious crux of the issue: anti-encryption laws violate the presumption of innocence that underpins the western legal system, and that's what makes them so desirable to certain establishments. Encryption isn't about hiding anything, it's about whether there is a physical/logical limit to the discretion of the state, and whether the presumption of innocence of the accused is an inalienable right or just a convention.
Exactly. And my first response is to ask that person to hand be their unlocked phone. I promise to keep anything I learn secret. They care about their privacy, no one elses.
This is really the problem of the "nothing to hide" arguments. It isn't that you have anything to hide so much as people can use the information against you by interpreting it wrong, removing necessary context, bringing up old information that is no longer relevant today (e.g. youthful indiscretions), etc.
Like imagine you and a college friend have a running joke where you do something slightly offensive to each other, and the other person acts all surprised.
To you both, that’s just a funny running joke, but it could be taken out of context and shared with the world to make you look like a creep. If someone has a record of that, they can cut out the part right afterwards where you laugh and hug.
Will it be used against you? Probably not. But what a powerful weapon for someone to have hanging over your head.
I suspect there are some that instead think in much more utilitarian terms: yes, of course bad guys will continue to use other services that don't accept a backdoor. But those will be easier to target for covert action instead. Getting criminals off the mainstream platforms saves money and effort! Yes, everyone else has their privacy thrown away for no direct good reason, but that's an acceptable cost of keeping them safe.
But that's the rhetorical distraction from the concrete legal and charter or constitutional question of the relationship between encryption and the presumption of innocence.
It's a much better framing than encryption as freedom of speech or uncodified notions of privacy - this is a straight up challenge to whether individuals have any inaliable rights in your society, or, as mere subjects of the crown in the UK and commonwealth, the discretion of the sovereign is absolute.
America's bill of rights is unique in the world, but the next order question if the presumption of innocence isn't defined as a right is, has it been defined in precedent - which it certainly has. IANAL or a legalist at all, but I have done a great deal of work related to encryption policy and privacy within government
(infosec and privacy in the public sector is essentially government governance), and encryption and privacy are a forcing functions for a lot of very important questions about sovereignty and state.
Playing devil's advocate here, I'm not sure why encryption would be the forcing factor there and not, for instance, CCTV, blanket data retention or preflight passenger screening? If presumption of innocence necessarily had to mean immunity from precautionary, non-discriminating security measures, then none of the things I listed should be happening (NB: I'm not saying they're OK, I'm just saying the ship sailed on your argument long ago). And there's nothing rhetorical about my comment, so far as I can see.
As for the UK, the discretion of the sovereign hasn't been absolute for many many centuries.
And fair arguments. The "nobody has privacy, get over it," argument from the CEO of Sun years ago as well. I called it rhetorical because encryption policy has very concrete consequences because you have to actively implement the compromises in code, and there is no natural base state where authorities have access to your communications.
Even the American "papers and effects," doctrine is using their 4A framework is a weaker argument than presumption of innocence question stated above. Regarding non-discriminating security measures at airports, oppressing and degrading everyone doesn't make it justified or fair, and on this forum we all know what "random" means, but the way random is applied in airports is really just covert, it is not random.
The only legitimate random search I would concievably accept would be if the officer chose a number, and I rolled my own 20-sided dice and if the number came up, I would consider submitting to a random search - but anything else is demonstrable bullshit. How do the authorities trust my dice? They pick a random number.
In the UK, the sovereign is the crown and its agents, and indeed, the Queen doesn't have discretion, but without a constitution with inaliable rights, agents acting with the authority of the crown do have unlimited discretion. Canada has a "notwithstanding" clause in its charter and a bunch of mealy mouthed language about reasonableness elsewhere that has produced some astonishingly derisible results.
It is a power you give them, and if you don't give it to them, they are taking it, and my argument is that this is a question of whether compelling people to sabotage algorithms as a means to surveil them a legitimate allocation of powers. In a state with inaliable rights, it's not, but in these other places, we should just call it what it is.
>"Yes, everyone else has their privacy thrown away for no direct good reason, but that's an acceptable cost of keeping them safe."
Total BS.
First - government can't really "keep them safe". We see it all over.
Second - it is simply not their friggin' business what is on my computer and what I and my friends send to each other. We are so eager criticizing "bad" countries and how they infringe on freedom. Well do not fucking take a road to the same direction.
Someone needs to tell these govt fools that the cat is out of the bag on encryption, you can go on github and download libraries that would allow anyone to make an encrypted messenger.
Okay, but when you’re a subject of an investigation and you’re found to be using those libraries, you’re assumed guilty. Defend yourself against „but you are using encryption, you’re guilty, prove to us you DIDN’T do anything wrong” argument.
Consequently, I don't know that they are persuaded by principle or reason. They understand power, but that's about it. The main thing that comes out of laws that sabotage encryption is they shift the burden of proof of innocence onto the accused, because if there are encrypted files involved, there is no legal presumption of innocence.
This is the most serious crux of the issue: anti-encryption laws violate the presumption of innocence that underpins the western legal system, and that's what makes them so desirable to certain establishments. Encryption isn't about hiding anything, it's about whether there is a physical/logical limit to the discretion of the state, and whether the presumption of innocence of the accused is an inalienable right or just a convention.