Slashdot Mirror
Tim Cook: "Weakening Encryption Or Taking It Away Harms Good People"
Patrick O'Neill writes: Over the last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly made headlines as a spearpoint in the new crypto wars. As FBI director James Comey pushes for legally mandated backdoors on encryption, Cook has added default strong encryption to Apple devices and vocally resisted Comey's campaign. Echoing warnings from technical experts across the world, Cook said that adding encryption backdoors for law enforcement would weaken the security of all devices and "is incredibly dangerous," he said last night at the Electronic Privacy Information Center awards dinner. "So let me be crystal clear: Weakening encryption or taking it away harms good people who are using it for the right reason."
Too many things these days that don't make sense. If you have a hole in a system it will be abused by malicious people.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Are you honest person? You have something to hide?
Yes, every honest person has a lot to hide and it is called privacy! And it is important that everyone would value their privacy and encrypt everything just in sake of others rights for privacy!
If some authority has problems, they are free to come to knock on my door or call me. I can talk on front door or in the phone.
Anybody who stands to lose more by having their (illegal) activities uncovered compared to being penalized for using (banned) encryption will still use it, so only the good guys, who don't use it to cover up their criminal activity will stop using encryption. At the same time they will be more exposed to data and identity theft, blackmail and illegal snooping. This just shows how little actually the FBI cares about the safety of common, law-abiding citizens. They don't see their mission as protecting people from becoming victims in the first place, but rather as catching criminals after the fact. It's logical if pretty evil - the more crime there is in USA, the more money and power the FBI gets. But folks - which one of those is better for us? Prevention or prosecution?
This is an exclusive OR. Choose only one.
"Either we build our communications infrastructure for surveillance, or we build it for security. Either everyone gets to spy, or no one gets to spy", as Bruce Schneier says.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
The advantage Apple has is that they don't rely on advertising for any significant part of their revenue. Which means people who buy their products are still customers, not products. That's a good thing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
But the director of the FBI, would must know what he is talking about, and must know that its just completely wrong.
Of course he knows. He knows better than most people do. When he talks of breaking encryption, he's talking about weakening your encryption, not his. He's going continue to use the most robust tools at his disposal to protect his privacy. But he's the good guy, at least in his mind. You, he's not so sure about.
In the end it doesn't matter what he wants. It's a foolish request that can't be implemented. The tools to communicate securely over unsecure channels are freely available to everyone at no cost. More importantly, we have the math. You can't outlaw math.
Guns have strong offensive uses.
Which are only effectively countered by people defending themselves with guns.
God created Man. Sam Colt made them equal.
Grandma (and the physically disabled, young women, etc) has a chance against a young, fit, male attacker if she has a gun. More than without a gun. Much more than blowing a "rape whistle" and peeing herself, or waiting for police who, in many small towns including the one I live in, typically wait at the donut shop until the shooting is over before arriving to take a report and have the body(s) removed. As one cop told me in a moment of frankness; "I ain't dodging gunfire for no $70k a year and a pension!"
Police in the US have no legal obligation to protect citizens.
Police handle the paperwork. Citizens are the true "first responders".
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
is the same is saying we should not allow people to lock their cars/houses because criminals might hide something behind a locked door.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
So using encryption properly is an offense in the UK.
Services like SpiderOak sacrifice features people want, in order to get that. For instance, no search. No web preview or editing. Clunky sharing. No password recovery if you forget.
Still, I was mostly thinking about other services. If you look at some of the features Google Photos has like being able to do text search for untagged photos using image recognition, there's no technical way to do that in a blind manner right now.
Two Words: The Fappening Imagine Government has access to your private files LEGALLY, such that exposure of your files, your property, your life is completely unprotected by legislation?
Why do you speak of legalities as if that were a constraint around our government today?
Let me be clear. They break the law. And there's not a fucking thing you can do about it.
And no, it doesn't matter what puppet you vote into office.
The problem with weakening encryption is that weaknesses do not care who uses them and once discovered they cannot be corrected. And weaknesses WILL be discovered sooner or later. Probably sooner. There is no way to only let the "good guys" in while keeping the "bad guys" out. You cannot weaken encryption without making it completely useless in the process.
Grandma (and the physically disabled, young women, etc) has a chance against a young, fit, male attacker if she has a gun.
Only if she has it out, loaded, safety off, is capable of pointing it in the right direction before the attack occurs and is aware of where the attack is coming from. It's an absurd hypothetical strawman that NEVER actually happens in the real world. Do you really want granny carrying a sidearm at all times given the extremely remote chance of her actually getting attacked outside of your imagination? Personally that's not a society I care to live in. Firearms have their time and place and I'm not remotely arguing against the 2nd amendment but they aren't what keeps crime in check. Guns are used FAR more often to facilitate crime than to prevent it. Real security comes from a properly structured civil society. Guns play a role but it should be a very minor one.
As one cop told me in a moment of frankness; "I ain't dodging gunfire for no $70k a year and a pension!"
The number of cops that EVER discharge their weapon intentionally in the line of duty is miniscule. It's significantly less than one percent. If your story is true then it shouldn't be surprising at all - almost all cops never have to "dodge gunfire" or shoot at a live person. However if he really wanted a safe job and a pension then he should have picked another line of work. There are easier and safer ways to make a decent living.
Police in the US have no legal obligation to protect citizens.
Police have a legal obligation to enforce the laws and guess what? The laws (usually) protect the citizens. (unless you are a minority - then you are apparently on your own judging by police response times) Countries with far stricter gun control laws somehow miraculously manage to have even better crime statistics than the US and FAR fewer deaths by firearm. Having a civil society isn't merely a result of everyone packing guns and having a Mexican standoff.
Police handle the paperwork. Citizens are the true "first responders".
What a bunch of delusional macho BS. When was the last time you actually saw someone grab a gun and go be a "first responder" to a crime? You haven't. The notion that you are going to protect society with a firearm isn't justified by the evidence. The evidence shows that the odds are FAR higher that the gun will be used in a suicide or result in an accident. I don't have a problem with people owning guns but let's not pretend that the citizenry are marching out to fight crime. If we get to that point I'm moving to someplace civilized.