You know, every time I see something like this, I really hope the legislation passes. Then as the enforcement attempts to handle their impossible task we get to sit back and watch as Tor and I2P and EFF get funded, citizens and politicians gain a basic understanding of encryption, and governments learn that one does not simply ban crypto.
It would be fun. So more power to them! Let's see Britain create their own crypto free internet! Let's watch the public uproar as Google and WhatsApp becomes unavailable in Australia! These things are just big opportunities to get people familiar with what's at stake.
This is dangerous. Bad laws usually involve discretion so, sure, everyone would be in violation of the letter of the law, but the govt would choose and decide who gets sued. That's worse.
Exactly. If a law like this were to get passed, they'll pick and choose cases to prosecute for use of end-to-end encryption.
Someone suspected of a crime for which there's no strong evidence could potentially be imprisoned just for talking to someone over an encrypted channel. "We can't get them on the main charge, but we can always just charge them for the encryption. If they weren't doing anything shady then why would they be using encryption anyway?"
Yeah I knew someone would pull the China card, being a communist country that doesn't even pretend to support western ideas of freedoms they're obviously an exception
Care to elaborate how China has banned it? Last time i was there I had no problem using VPN, and a dozen or so services that utilise encryption, PGP didn't magically stop working the moment i touched down. Customs were far more concerned about my camera batteries than tools of digital freedom on my laptop.
Seems like you are conflating the efforts of the Great Firewall with the word encryption here.
I thought that went without saying. It should be pretty obvious that this doesn't include communist states and governments that don't pretend to allow Western ideas of freedom.
I wish the gun nuts in the US realize that the constitutional protection of gun rights was drafted in a time when guns weren't niche and were necessary as a check on government power.
Today, encryption is a check on government overreach, and guns are effectively a vestigial hobby (unless you're in a gang or the illicit drug industry).
Well, if you call us gun nuts, we might not respond well. Most of the folks I know who love guns are pretty protective of their other rights, but fighting constantly to keep one right does tend to drain the coffers for other causes. FreedomWorks cares quite a bit about both.
I am not fond of the EFF because they don’t win. I would gladly contribute to an NRA for encryption if it was shown the people running it would use the exact same tactics as the NRA. No prisoners, no compromise, and flag waving. It’s better to be feared than weak in politics.
As I understand it, Australia already got rid of guns, so it’s no real surprise that their government is taking more of their liberties away.
There are an awful lot of people in the U.S. who are very committed to protecting gun rights, and are willing to vote on that issue. I don't think we've gotten to that point with crypto; it's a much newer issue, kinda geeky, way less visceral.
So the NRA collects a lot of money, targets unsupportive politicians, and can turn votes against them. The EFF has less money, and it's questionable whether ads attacking politicians for not supporting crypto would work. To the extent gun owners have bought the Republican scaremongering about terrorists, it might even backfire.
The EFF does what it can by focusing its efforts on the judicial system instead.
My point is that the government claims it needs to break encryption to protect us from terrorists. Republicans tend to push that anti-terrorist angle pretty hard. Given that most activist gun owners are Republicans, they might not be all that supportive of cryptography.
Libertarian gun owners definitely support both gun rights and crypto, but that's a smaller group.
You can only carry out the "election suicide" strategy if you have enough popular support. Until then you're stuck with what the EFF does: education and legal action.
I think you'll find a lot of gun owners who are Republican think the party leadership is out to lunch on some issues, and frankly opinions on side issues in the party have changed multiple times. Witness a lot of the MJ debate.
> You can only carry out the "election suicide" strategy if you have enough popular support. Until then you're stuck with what the EFF does: education and legal action.
Well, education and legal action are fine things, but they will not get you to where you want. They need to get over themselves and get a booth at the next NRA convention and maybe a booth at some gun shows. A nice catch phrase linking the protection provided by gun ownership with the protection offered by encryption would be a nice bonus.
There's a cultural divide here; many Australians do not consider gun ownership a "liberty" in the same way as Americans do because we do not share the same revolutionary history.
If anything in Australia's history guns were used for oppression (of Aboriginal people) and not for liberation.
Nobody got rid of guns in Australia. We removed semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. And when I say we "removed" them, we bought them back at a fair price.
You can still own a gun in Australia. We just have a gun-averse culture, we do background checks on those who do have guns, and we have a National Firearms Agreement across all states and territories. Something I note that you don't have in the U.S. (well, some states do background checks, which is irrelevant if you buy a gun in a state that does not and move to the state that does).
You could, of course, read the Agreement yourself:
> I would gladly contribute to an NRA for encryption if it was shown the people running it would use the exact same tactics as the NRA.
You might be aware that, to get involved in electioneering and financial support of candidates, an "NRA for encryption" would need to have a different tax status than EFF does.
Whether guns are 'niche' are not is to some extent dictated by culture and existing legislation.. In DC, they were all but banned until recently, and I believe still are hard to come by.. big surprise, they are very 'niche' (unless, as you said, you were in a gang or illicit drug industry)
Places where this is not the case and where you will find as you call them 'gun nuts', they are very common, and it is to some extent more 'niche' to be a gun restriction advocate, who, from this perspective are 'gun control nuts'. Or at least the two are more balanced ends of a spectrum.
Many people in the latter category still view firearms as a necessary check on government power, and those who advocate gun control as wishing to remove this check, much along the same logic as you support in your argument against encryption control.
As for whether guns could or could not be an effective check on government power in the modern 'high tech' age - see just about any ground conflict against armed insurgents the US has tried to involve itself in in the past 50 or so years.. while it hasn't always gone the way of the 'enemies', it has rarely been smooth sailing..
It is no surprise that some of the biggest restrictions against firearms have come during periods of rebellion/lawlessness - prohibition and gangs (1938 act) and the turmoil of the late 60's (1968 act)..
I fail to see how your line of reasoning doesn't lead to a future where encryption should be banned because the state can crack it anyway..
Encrypted messages are used by both criminals and whistleblowers.
Weakening encryption will likely help apprehend criminals and even create a chilling effect on criminal communications.
It will equally help apprehend police and government whistleblowers and create a chilling effect on criticism of authorities.
Although export restrictions on encryption were eased after Bernstein v United States and the political fight over the 'international edition" of Netscape/etc, I believe encryption for military purposes is still on the Munitions List.
It's necessary, but certainly not sufficient. There are tons of ways that the 5-eyes nations' mass surveillance agencies can get even to those who do use end-to-end encryption.
I wish anti-gun nuts would realize guns are just as relevant as ever as a means of checking government power. Besides, self protection is a basic human right.
2) Nuclear weapons are the only physical weapon that can check the US Government. That's why they shit their paints when a basically inconsequential country such as North Korea launches a potential nuclear rocket.
3) In the 1700s guns were the best weapon of the time. Nuclear weapons did not exist. Civilians were able to own basically military grade weapons and could theoretically rebel and potentially win.
4) In current days, if you wanted to legitimately make the claim of government check on power with civilian weapon ownership, you'd at least have to argue for military grade, fully automatic weaponry ownership rights by civilians. Not to mention the ability to stockpile explosive weapons and missiles. A bunch of civilians with gimped semi-auto ARs and hunting rifles would have been the 18th century equivalent of the right to bear bow and arrows or pitchforks and shovels.
1) My comment was as not specifically pro-gun as yours was anti-gun.
2) Yes, that's why the USG had no trouble brushing aside the Iraqis and people in Afghanistan who didn't want us there.
3) Irrelevant. Nuclear weapons are so hopelessly overscaled you can't actually use them - they're only good for threatening. It's not like Washington is going to nuke Los Angeles.
The reality is every successful indigenous revolution requires a schism in the military. That's the way it's always been. But an armed citizenry means a whole lot fewer military units have to defect.
4) Soldiers in the US army don't get fully automatic weapons at the individual level - those are squad level weapons. The fancy drones and missiles require a fully functional economy to create and maintain. Once a civil war starts all those supply lines dry up.
Pushed on how encrypted messages could be read when service providers don't hold the keys necessary decryption, and Turnbull had this to say:
Well, the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only laws that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.
Turnbull understands perfectly well he can't outlaw Math. What he can do is build and international alliance to outlaw end-to-end encryption.
That's the goal here, and laughing at 'stupid' comments instead of looking at how it might actually be accomplished is what got us metadata retention laws.
"First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" doesn't just apply to good things.
The obscene thing is, any organisation large enough to willingly plot the downfall of western civilisation is going to have a guy, or be able to outsource the production of to a guy, who can develop an end to end encrypted communications channel on an open platform.
Unfortunately our prime minister whoshiuld know a lot better as a result of being an IT pioneer in this country, is being fucking rediculous when it comes to his current political reality, because he doesn't have any balls.
If it's illegal to send encrypted communications it will still have an impact. If the source of any unapproved encrypted transmissions could be identified there is a good chance the sender could be apprehended.
Indeed, unless the traffic/file is explicitly labeled as encrypted (protocol, file header etc.) I think there's no way to tell if a particular piece of data is encrypted or not.
More generally, the incredible stupidity in those calls for encryption bans is that the "bad guys" will abide to the law. There's a dark market for botnets etc., so why not for custom stealth encryption tools? I wouldn't be surprised if it already exists.
That's a very good point; even if it's possible to detect steganography of encrypted messages it's probably expensive to do so, especially in the torrent of digital traffic online.
I guess it will only impact law abiding citizens then.
We just have to mercilessly FOI his private communications via encrypted channels, which he used to reclaim party leadership.
a number of folks have put forward that private encrypted apps would be subject to FOI.
They have to respond by law; even if it takes 18 months and dragging then through the AAT - and the response will be fuel for ridicule if it (predictably) refuses in the grounds of being too hard
> the response will be fuel for ridicule if it (predictably) refuses in the grounds of being too hard
If ridicule worked, this madness would have already stopped at the point where the Australian PM implied the laws of mathematics are secondary to the laws of Australia.
Assange has written about the chilling implications in Cypherpunks:
JACOB: The force of nearly all modern authority is derived from violence
or the threat of violence. One must acknowledge with cryptography no
amount of violence will ever solve a math problem.
JULIAN: Exactly.
JACOB: This is the important key. It doesn’t mean you can’t be tortured,
it doesn’t mean that they can’t try to bug your house or subvert
it in some way, but it means that if they find an encrypted message it
doesn’t matter if they have the force of the authority behind everything
that they do, they cannot solve that math problem. This, though, is the
thing that is totally non-obvious to people that are non-technical, and
it has to be driven home. If we could solve all of those math problems,
it would be a different story and, of course, the government would be
able to solve those math problems if anyone could.
Yeah, the thing that's missing in the commentary is that Turnbull used it as a throwaway line. He doesn't actually think you can break mathematical laws. He's not a stupid man, and was just answering a comment comparing natural laws against national laws, which are clearly not the same thing.
One thing I miss from yesteryear is how people used to be able to understand what a politician was saying between the lines, and when a politician was going for a bit of dry humour. Now they just analyse the surface content. It's pretty sad.
Also don't forget that Australia is part of the "five eyes". Which means you can get bet the other countries: UK, US, NZ and Canada have been consulted and are likely to be supportive.
Assuming he wants to address the most common devices, he's right. Since smartphones run walled gardens, he can legislate around math. Doesn't close all loopholes, but he gets the majority.
Though when you look at FBI or whatever vs Apple last year ... what does it even matter? All this proclamation does is claim that OZ gov't entities are incompetent compared to their US counterparts.
Firstly, understand the politics. The Labor party might tweak some corners on the legislation but will basically support it. Their policy is to support the government position on anything related to national security.
So any argument needs to be made understanding this.
At the moment the argument that "deliberate vulnerabilities makes us all vulnerable" has some traction, especially every time news comes out about a major hack. This is especially the case if it is linked to a state-actor, especially China or Russia. This is a good argument because it attacks the national-security justification.
Another good argument is one that was made to Turnbull on ABC Radio: Given your use of Wickr, what is to stop a foreign power from obtaining a warrant for an Australian politician or business person's communications? We already now of cases where the Australian security apparatus was used to benefit Australia's trade interest (in the Timor sea). Won't this make us more vulnerable?
Then there's the "Australia will be left behind" argument. If the US doesn't do this as well, then at least some US companies will refuse to comply and withdraw from Australia. That puts us at a competitive disadvantage, and if the same companies operate in the US it is hard to argue they are "bad".
Well if they do ban encryption they probably would still use it themselves (government, politicians). That would literally mean different laws for different people. Fight it on the basis of that. Remember how France tried to outlaw the encryption in the 90s and it didn't work because government servers were also using it.
It may not be explicitly proposed, but I'd wager it's still implicitly there. Definitely for army/police, but probably for ruling class as well.
So, again, a mistake. Understand the fight you are in.
Understanding the fight you're in is definitely key. I don't know enough about the Australian people, but I know that reframing the situation in a way where another privilege is taken away from the common folk, but will still be there for the ruling class -- this would motivate a lot of people to rally against the proposal where I live.
In addition, in the age of Trump & co, it should be clear to everyone that facts don't matter. I mean we have the PM himself saying here that math doesn't work in Australia. It's completely possible to reframe the whole discussion in a myriad of ways that aren't based in reality. Use fake news & propaganda to move the needle in favor of encryption. One could argue that this undermines the greater goal of having a fact respecting society, but it's irrational to claim that such tactics won't work for achieving narrower goals like saving encryption.
I mean we have the PM himself saying here that math doesn't work in Australia.
He didn't say that.
He said math can't prevent you from being charged with an offence; math can't bestow upon you protection from the law; math can't grant you a legal privilege.
It wouldn't grant you anything you would become a criminal if you use the certain math regardless of the motives. Why don't we prohibit certain kind of music as well (let's say hard rock since terrorists might listen to it), and french baguettes and humus because they might eat those, etc.
It's horrifying that standards of education have fallen so far that a national political leader can say things like this with a straight face and enough voters will believe them to make it a viable political strategy. Our leaders here in the UK and in several of our European neighbours are no better.
>A bullet killing a person is the 'law of physics'. It doesn't mean it can't be outlawed.
Illegal or not, it actually still happens, this is a fact that can not be argued. Pretending that making it illegal automatically stops all bad things from happening is also bad.
All that said, I'm pretty glad that hurling bullets is not legal because shooting someone is rarely ever good (argue self-defence, etc) but the whole privacy debate is a different monster.
What straight face? He's presenting the policy, and a journalist asks him "won't the laws of mathematics trump the laws of australia". When have you ever seen a senior politician reply to something like that with "Oh, you're right. I withdraw the policy". It was standard politician's bluster, answering a question in kind; it wasn't meant to be taken as a literal truth.
Do you think the journalist who asked the question thought that mathematical law and national laws were the same kind of thing? Shouldn't you be mocking the journo just as much for asking such a silly question? People wonder why politicians hedge everything they say these days, and refuse to say much of substance. This is why: they get crucified on any single comment which sounds funny when taken out of context.
Disclaimer: not a conservative voter, and indeed generally vote on the far opposite side to Turnbull.
> It was standard politician's bluster, answering a question in kind; it wasn't meant to be taken as a literal truth.
I see it differently. The standard operating procedure for a career politician is to "pivot" and "stay on message". You cannot ignore the enemy. You shouldn't underestimate them.
Look at this stupid war on drugs. This isn't funny. We have no option than to assume that this is the message and we must oppose it.
Have a read of the comment in context. He's primarily saying that the G20 is going to lean on the providers as the method of action. The journalist throws out a quip and he quips back. The journalist raises the point of 'what about outside the jurisdiction of the G20' and he responds that we've gotta start somewhere.
I think it's a misguided push missing some fundamentals and am totally opposed to it, but in context it's clear that they're not trying to legislate maths to behave differently.
Regardless of how exactly it's presented on any specific occasion, it is unfortunately very clear that several prominent first world political leaders now believe either that they can have their cake and eat it when it comes to encryption and online security or that enough voters are ignorant enough to believe that even if the politicians know it to be untrue. Either way, this is not a healthy situation, and either way, it reflects very poorly on the political leaders in question.
Just to add a moment of levity, I'm reminded of a great quote from Alan Sokal:
Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)
I see that we Australians have resumed our international role as laughing-stock of the technology industry. As much as I disagree with the Greens generally, losing Scott Ludlam at this moment is a serious loss.
For those of you able to donate, the equivalent of the EFF in Australia is the EFA: https://www.efa.org.au/
Did we ever stop being the laughing stock? Our only recent claim to fame is Atlassian (plus some of the stuff CommBank pioneered). Aside from that, everything else has been a total shit-show.
There was a time when we had a world-class telephony setup, the CSIRO was making waves (literally as well as figuratively), and we punched well above our (actually rather small) weight in the high tech and medical research fields.
Although murdering people is really illegal. And that seems to deter at least some murderers. It's a similar logic with encryption. The only difference is that encryption is mostly used for non-nefarious purposes, but 99% murders are bad.
There is no reason to laugh at the statement. We should highlight that benefits of encryption far outweigh the few possible misuses. What he's saying is perferfectly logical if he views encryption like a weapon used by bad actors (like a sniper gun).
You joke, but I believe police in the US is already installing advanced microphones along with CCTV cameras to hear what people are talking about from a distance.
I think calling this a ban on end-to-end encryption is an mis-characterization.
According to the press conference where this comes from[1] it seems that they're talking about legislation that would expand the Telecommunications Act's provisions to require communications providers to assist law enforcement[2] to cover internet messaging platforms.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Facebook would be obligated to backdoor their encryption or store a keys for all communications or change the architecture of their platform. They would be obligated to comply with interception warrants to the best of their ability.
Forms that this assistance could take (from the act):
(7) A reference in this section to giving help includes a reference to giving help by way of:
(a) the provision of interception services, including services in executing an interception warrant under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 ; or
(b) giving effect to a stored communications warrant under that Act; or
(c) providing relevant information about:
(i) any communication that is lawfully intercepted under such an interception warrant; or
(ii) any communication that is lawfully accessed under such a stored communications warrant; or
(ca) complying with a domestic preservation notice or a foreign preservation notice that is in force under Part 3-1A of that Act; or
(d) giving effect to authorisations under Division 3 or 4 of Part 4-1 of that Act; or
(e) disclosing information or a document in accordance with section 280 of this Act.
I prefer to see law enforcement have broad authorizations but limited special powers (i.e. they're allowed to do a lot of things in pursuit of an investigation but they don't have many ways to compel assistance) but I think this story is overblown (largely because Turnbull's quote out of context is pretty funny).
Well I assume he has to if the law comes into place, or he'd be breaking it.
I'm fine with the government tracking everything as long as it goes both ways. If this goes through, Turnbull shouldn't be able to so much as send a fucking Facebook poke without the population of Australia knowing it.
The police look down on speeding, but they are allowed to speed, go through red lights, etc. The law doesn't apply to the ones that make them, apparently.
> The law doesn't apply to the ones that make them, apparently.
The police do not make the law, their job is to enforce it, essentially a monopoly on violence. Sadly however, it is the case that the law often does not apply to politicians. All men are equal but some are more equal than others.
At least in the Netherlands they have to turn on both lights and sirens before they are allowed to break traffic laws (such as passing red lights or speeding), but out of the 3 times I've driven on the highway near a cop car, twice they were speeding by quite a lot without being in any pursuit.
Of course it's an excellent way of speeding: stay behind the cop car at as great a distance as possible. They know where their colleagues are (or speed cameras) and they don't want to get caught breaking the law themselves.
As I understand it, it means banning end to end communication between clients. So you can chat over https, but only if the server in the middle (which can be served warrants) is doing the encryption.
Regulations on private economic interaction says that I can't give you a ride for money, or vice versa. It's restricting totally private action between two consenting adults. I don't see a ban on private communication being fundamentally more immoral.
Taxes on income, rather than say natural resource consumption, means requiring a person to disclose their private transactions to the state under penalty of imprisonment. I'm not sure why you're not seeing the parallels between this and banning private conversations.
It's because there is no meaningful parallel. Conversations are not economic transactions. Period. You can try to stretch analogies ("walking is illegal because of traffic lights!1") but that's stupid and unhelpful.
The Constitution doesn't guarantee a right to private communications. This is the problem. Period. The 4th amendment was sacrificed during the anti-drug/anti-black eighties. Right now the moment information leaves your home -- whether its a phone call or a letter or a bitcoin transaction -- the government has the right to intercept that. They don't even need a warrant in practice.
It's going to require a Constitutional amendment, really a new 4th amendment, that will clearly and unambiguously extend privacy to a person's communication and data. Complaining about taxes on barter isn't going to help and is nothing but distraction.
Of course they're different: private communications are not economic interactions, but both are private interactions between mutually consenting parties. So there are parallels.
That people choose to deny any link is not surprising.
Like I said, society has accepted these classes of restrictions on private interaction, and that means it will be very hard to make a coherent argument against prohibiting private communication. Such arguments will be hobbled by arbitrary judgments that this private interaction ought to be free from interference, invasion or censor, while this other private interaction should not. Cognitive dissonance will make a concerted push against prohibitions on private communication difficult.
As for the US Constitution, that only relates to the US. The global question will be decided by the majority's perception of the morality of right to privacy and autonomy.
Regulating Uber and Airbnb is BS protectionism. Regulating companies to stop pollution is essential and I support it wholeheartedly.
Tax is a different subject and I agree the way the system works now is suboptimal however paying tax is an important part of maintaining a healthy and functioning society.
Banning private conversation however is not beneficial to individuals or society. There is no reason anyone would suggest this approach unless they were planning to exploit it in a nefarious fashion. I would much prefer to live in a world with some terrorism that can be dealt with through education, improved foreign policies and opportunities for all than a dystopian world with no private conversations.
Pollution is not a private interaction between consenting parties. It's a negative externality, that is morally in the same class of behaviors as theft and assault. I was referring specifically to laws prohibiting the former.
As for your justification for taxes on private income, it's the same argument that mass surveillance advocates make for prohibiting encryption that doesn't let the state see private communications. You've both accepted the right of the state to limit people's privacy. You're just bargaining over when the ends justify the means.
I'd rather live in a stateless society too however it's all I've ever known. That's not the case for private communication and to be fair banned private communication makes changing the status quo practically impossible. It sits on a layer above everything else.
To clarify: I'm not advocating for a stateless society. I'm advocating for the right to personal autonomy and privacy. That means ending taxes on private transactions, not all taxes.
I don't see a ban on private communication being fundamentally more immoral.
In the US it would be, since one is Constitutionally protected and the other isn't. That doesn't mean we can let our guard down, of course.
And our First Amendment and Fourth Amendment are no help to the Australian people at all, sadly. They will have to stand up for themselves on this one, and I hope they do.
To play the devil's advocate, how do we enforce taxes on a private transaction? Do we bake in some kind of asymmetry like a sales tax where one party has a financial incentive to report the expense so we can check if the recipient declared it as income?
"We" audit a sample of citizens and if any of them had large non-private transactions (for example, buying a house, or investing millions in a hedge fund) we demand they explain where the money came from. If they don't explain it, or explain it came from a transaction which they should have disclosed, we confiscate their property or imprison them.
It's hard to hide everything from the likes of the IRS.
> Do we bake in some kind of asymmetry like a sales tax where one party has a financial incentive to report the expense so we can check if the recipient declared it as income?
The distinction between income and consumption taxes is largely political. The buyer's consumption is the seller's income.
For example, VAT as applied to securities transactions is basically just another name for capital gains tax.
VAT isn't traditionally applied to the purchase of labor, but that doesn't make much difference because only expenses where VAT was collected on purchase should be deductible when it's collected on sale, so it just means the same tax is paid on the other side when the products of the labor are sold.
To me it is. The server you'd be talking to in my case is physically mine, in my home, so if I'm an endpoint and someone else is an endpoint, and they have an encrypted connection to the server, for all intents and purposes, it's end to end encrypted.
Of course, there's no way you can tell from the outside since it looks like an ordinary https connection to an ordinary server. Then again, I can think of more ways to implement end-to-end encryption over wiretapped channels without it being obvious that encrypted data is being exchanged (stego is quite easy to make but very hard to detect if you don't know the method). So the whole ban is pointless.
Terrorists and other criminals have an interest in arranging this, and it's quite easy, so they'll succeed. The general public will not care enough, and any widely used end-to-end solution will be banned anyway, so they'll just have to give up a little bit of privacy. No gains but at least the government is trying, right?
Can you elaborate? If I am communicating with a server over tls, how is that not e2e encryption?
The communication between both clients (my computer and the server) are encrypted locally such that mitm are not able to read our secure communication. The "end" of the connection is either the server or my laptop.
"End to end" refers specifically to the two people involved - that is, nobody but the sender and recipient of a communication can read it. Twitter DMs happen over TLS, but they're not end-to-end - Twitter knows the content of the messages.
> The server you'd be talking to in my case is physically mine, in my home, so if I'm an endpoint and someone else is an endpoint, and they have an encrypted connection to the server, for all intents and purposes, it's end to end encrypted.
There are two people who can read the communications: me and whoever I'm talking to.
But rather, my point was this:
> Terrorists and other criminals have an interest in arranging this, and it's quite easy
Setting up https is easy, and steganography is easy to do. Thus, a ban would be pointless because everyone who needs it for criminal activities, still can do it. It's everyone else that's put at a disadvantage.
> . . . application-specific features reside in the communicating end nodes of the network, rather than in intermediary nodes . . .
No one ever said it was people. We're talking about communication between two nodes that is simply facilitated by intermediary nodes. Your own source supports the argument, I think you should reread it.
Were you unhappy with the fact that no one felt like arguing with your reply to SpaceManiac, so you're trying again?
The scenario you presented, client <-> server, has nothing to do with wisty's original statement,
"As I understand it, it means banning end to end communication between clients. So you can chat over https, but only if the server in the middle (which can be served warrants) is doing the encryption."
which is client <-> server <-> client, and is completely irrelevant. You are changing the definition to client <-> server. Think about it.
"The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia" Once they pass a law barring gravity from affecting police investigations, it will be a crime to use gravity to prevent flying cops from investigating.
May as well let's ban talking. Wait, and thinking too! Except for dickheads that run for office because ... (somebody smarter and better connected than me please end this sentence in a way that makes sense).
I usually go the high route and write something insightful or informative on HN. However, the only thing that comes to mind after reading this are phrases like "What a fucking nut", or "Did no one review his speech for him, because they were too busy pulling the stuck fruit loops from his nose?"
Australia, shame on you for letting this moron take up this position of power. Oh wait.... I live in the USA.... Shame on me too.
Smart? Yes. He's very intelligent, a former investment banker and very clever politician.
Good? Far less clear. He's done some ok things and some things like this.
It would be fun. So more power to them! Let's see Britain create their own crypto free internet! Let's watch the public uproar as Google and WhatsApp becomes unavailable in Australia! These things are just big opportunities to get people familiar with what's at stake.