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To: usurper
We need to pass legislation to ensure that teck companies maintain the keys so that legal warrants can be excised.

Um, no. Strong encryption is strong encryption. If it's unbreakable, then that's the government's problem, not the individual's. You can't ban math—or require that a person store their private key with a third party—just because the math is hard.

If a tech company is storing my private key, then I might as well not be using encryption in the first place. If a person decides to go to great lengths to make their papers "secure", then they can't be forced to surrender their password. Seems like a Fourth and Fifth Amendment issue to me.

The situation is qualitatively different than having a physical key to a safe deposit box, for example. What if the duplicate key is lost? The government has to break into the box, right? Same is true for encryption. Only it's harder to "break in".

There's no legitimate way you can force individuals to give the government their private encryption keys...

58 posted on 11/07/2017 2:33:48 PM PST by sargon ("If we were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, the Left would protest for zombies' rights.")
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To: sargon

“You can’t ban math”

You nailed it and that is literally what the pro-government anti-encryption forces want.
1984 had a theme where the government literally tried to ban math. 2+2=5.

And keys with the government? This government just had 22 million SF-86s security clearance forms stolen by China.
Anyone remember equifax...like a whole month ago?

If someone stores a key, there is no encryption at all.


74 posted on 11/07/2017 2:54:44 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ...)
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To: sargon
If it's unbreakable, then that's the government's problem, not the individual's. You can't ban math—or require that a person store their private key with a third party—just because the math is hard.

So you would be Okay with a company in 1941 selling shortwave radios to the general public with an extra ENIGMA feature during WWII and the company refusing to give the US the codes?

Or a US company that provides secure coms to the mob, drug cartels or Jihadies.

Doesn't make much sense to me. Seems to me that they are providing material support to illegal organizations for the sole purpose of evading law enforcement and crippling the ability of our intelligence agencies to preempt future attacks.

And the worst part is that these companies aren't doing this out of some sense of respect for the constitution they are doing it to make money and marking it that way.

108 posted on 11/07/2017 4:21:57 PM PST by usurper ( version)
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