Whenever I look at these proposals I am never sure if the people that wrote that law are not aware that you can’t tap one person without making spying on everyone really easy very quickly, they don’t care or they actually want it. Although this seems like a slightly more sensible version of what they proposed years ago (which was essentially adding the government to every chat).

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DeepSeaTortoise 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I always find it very ironic people apply the "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" principle to politicians, who are part of the government.

Have you ever had a really great mentor or teacher who was excellent at explaining things to you? Good news, you've now got a budget to hire several of them in full-time exclusively for yourself.

Unsure about something? Just ask and a huge apparatus of several departments, featuring dozens of expert panels with hundreds of domain specific experts each will sift through huge databases, many of them not available to anyone else but the government, of state-of-the-art research, current events, historic events, standards, whatever ..., they will analyze your problem from every possible perspective and make the result of these efforts available to you, together with several recommendations of actions according to the guidelines you provided.

I highly doubt that there are more than a hundred people on this planet who could be incompetent under these conditions. What we're observing is not incompetence, but a conflict of interests, between what they want and how often they need to throw you a little bone to keep you obedient.

	▲	actionfromafar 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You assume everyone is interested in the facts. Many, perhaps the majority are more interested in swaying opinion, loyal coworkers and possibly a grift or two on the side. In no particular order.

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palata 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think they are not in a position where they have to actually solve the technical problem, but rather in a position where they decide what they believe is best for the society.

"If you were able to break encryption only for criminals, it would increase the security of the people. Please try to break encryption only for criminals" is not completely unreasonable.

The problem, of course, is that it's not possible. But for those politicians, cryptography is pretty much magic. Why wouldn't it be possible?

Same thing happens for climate change: instead of understanding the problem and facing reality, politicians (and honestly most people) stop at "scientists just need to find a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere efficiently". That's not how it works, but it doesn't prevent them from behaving as if it was possible. "It's magic, just do this one more spell".

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numpad0 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> "... Please try to break encryption only for criminals" is not completely unreasonable.

And the engineers' response is "not our job, it's yours. Please invent and patent such thing yourself, then we MAY execute". As it stands, it is in fact completely unreasonable.

	▲	palata 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You can't remove 2/3 of my sentence and then say it is completely wrong.

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pfortuny 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unfortunately, it is not the point of government to do what is best for society. It is to organize what individuals want but cannot by themselves (emphasis on want). They are not there to “give us the best” but to give us the “minimum”.

	▲	palata 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't understand what you are trying to say.
	▲	martin-t 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The government is emergent behavior of evolutionary pressures. For most of human history, war of aggression was a matter of a cost-benefit analysis which often have more benefit than cost. That has changed (relatively) recently because of how destructive it is that even the winner does not gain from it. Point being, hierarchical authoritarian structures are very good at war (and other kinds of competition). That's why they exist. But they should no longer be needed. They are entrenched and we need to evolve away from them.

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HighGoldstein 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The problem, of course, is that it's not possible. But for those politicians, cryptography is pretty much magic. Why wouldn't it be possible?

Few, if any, politicians are nuclear physicists, and I'd argue nuclear physics is far more complex than cryptography, yet I haven't seen any of them ask the weapons industry to manufacture a nuke for just the bad guys.

Let's not attribute blatant malice to stupidity. People in these positions have the resources and advisors to know exactly what the consequences will be.

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palata 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I'd argue nuclear physics is far more complex than cryptography

We're not talking about "being able to do it" but "being able to understand what it can do". Nuclear weapons are a lot easier to grasp than cryptography in that sense: it is a thing that explodes. It is absolutely obvious to everybody that a bomb destroys whatever is in the vicinity.

> Let's not attribute blatant malice to stupidity. People in these positions [...]

It's not people in these positions: the vast majority of the population doesn't understand the limits of cryptography.

> have the resources and advisors to know exactly what the consequences will be.

Seems to me like you haven't been in contact with lobbies and expert advisors. Many times, politicians will have to ask experts from the industry. They would not contact an average engineer for advice, but rather the company itself. If there is money to be made, the CEO or some executive will give their advice. This advice is systematically beneficial for the company. It's not necessarily malice: a CEO has to believe in what they are doing, even if it is objectively bad for society.

It is very hard to find unbiased experts to help you forge policies.

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martin-t 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I say stupidity should be punished the same way as incompetence. Exactly to stop malicious people from faking incompetence to avoid punishment.

And yes, this is an attack on basic human freedoms and should be punished, not just prevented.

	▲	palata 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is an interesting comment, because you are making exactly the same mistake as those politicians: - They think it's easy to just ask engineers to magically make safe backdoors. - You think it's always easy to know what is right and what is wrong. "We should just punish those who harm society". Sure, we should! And we should have safe backdoors!

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nickslaughter02 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Analyzing text is still debated and not ruled out completely.

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Tangurena2 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I am never sure if the people that wrote that law

No. Much of the legislation that gets introduced is provided as "model legislation" by political action groups (such as ALEC). This is why so many states seem to introduce the same legislation all at once.

The party whip tells them what to vote for. Sometimes, sensible people stop deranged legislation from getting out of committee (such as banning all mRNA vaccines (ID in 2024 & 2025, KY in 2025) or requiring blood banks to provide "pureblood" (from people who never had covid vaccines) at no additional cost to anyone requesting same (ID & KY in 2025). Or the one from ID in 2024 that would have made providing blood from a person who had a covid vaccine a felony.

You can follow along with the state legislatures at: https://www.billtrack50.com/info/

And the feds at: https://www.congress.gov/

For example, HR 22 passed the House of Representatives along party lines. The Senate has not scheduled the bill for hearing/vote yet. This bill is only 2 pages long, but I would like you to read it and take a guess at who they are trying to ban from voting in Federal elections. It has never been legal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22/t...

> A form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005 that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States.

This is called an Enhanced Driving License and only 5 states (MI, MN, NY, VT, and WA) issue these. From the front, they look just like the REAL ID compliant ID/DL from that state but with a cute little American flag on the front. The back has the funny OCR text like the page in your passport that has on the page with your picture.

They are trying to ban the following from voting in Federal elections:

1. Transgender people.

2. Non-citizens.

3. Women who took their husband's name upon marriage.

4. People who changed their name.

5. People who can't afford the $200 for a US Passport (if you never had one before, or lost yours like I did, this is about what you have to pay, otherwise it runs $110).

6. All of the above.

7. Something else (please explain)