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Do the FBI want you to to keep your content unencrypted? (dubfire.net)
36 points by ddol on Feb 22, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments



An excellent article by a top-flight law-and-technology expert.

We're just about to discuss this on the Twitter privacy chat -- http://cdt.org/twitterchat


If you have nothing to hide then why encrypt what your doing, but honestly anything you do can be possibly misconstrued in some way and you never know what can come bite you in the butt later on.

"The FBI knows that most services are not going to be using full end-to-end encryption, and as such, there is not much to be gained by fighting a public battle over encryption backdoors."

Either way, I rather have the FBI have to get a subpoena in order to get the non encrypted data sitting on a hard drive on the other end then to easily be able to listen in on what im doing just becaue they "suspect" that something might be going on.

It allows me and the people to haver their right to privacy.


Exactly. The "if you have nothing to hide" canard glosses over the significant fact that we all have something to hide, at least from the truly malicious.

This isn't new. Just consider the infamous remark by the notorious Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), as quoted by that other monster of the State, Henry Kissinger; "Give me six lines written by an honest man, and I will find something in it with which to hang him".

The nasty thing about truly nasty people is that literally anything you say can (and will) be used against you - provided they retain room enough to maneuver. Sensitive information is simply that which has the greatest propensity for abuse in the hands of the abusive. People like this tend to dislike strong and open courts, where they're sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under penalty of perjury.

Needless to say, Cardinal Richelieu was careful to avoid accountability of that kind. Kissinger too.


There's not really anything the FBI could've done in this case. Nowadays all you have to do is be able to use Google - you can find complete guides on how to set up encrypted hard drives, email servers, etc. Stopping a semi-intelligent criminal from doing so would be very difficult.


Yes, incriminate math, that's the way forward.


I think I missed the part where the FBI wants to incriminate math. What are you talking about?


Implying that cryptography is just math and the FBI somehow wants to criminalize end-to-end. Which I don't think is the case...

Does anyone think totally encrypted storage and transport for files and email has a market?



Not really, a simple "No." in response to this question isn't negative.




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