<story><title>The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/fbi-should-stop-attacking-encryption-and-tell-congress-about-all-encrypted-phones</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cm2187</author><text>Another argument against the &amp;quot;going dark&amp;quot; claim is that before smartphones and the internet, the only conversations the FBI could monitor was through phonelines and mail. These were known to be easily monitored and I doubt there was much more criminal activity happening through those then than now.&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the conversations that have gone online are the interactions that were previously happening in-person (at least in term of criminal activity), to which the FBI didn&amp;#x27;t have access before.&lt;p&gt;There is something Orwellian with the idea that there shouldn&amp;#x27;t be a word that can be pronounced in the country that the government cannot record and listen to after the fact. The limits of what is legal or not have always moved (see homosexuality, drug and alcohol consumption, etc). So a 100% enforcement of the law is counter-intuitively undesirable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lbblack</author><text>I find it extremely alarming that law enforcement almost everywhere around the world is attempting to undermine almost a century-fold of legitimate mathematics and science with regards to encryption and cryptography.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a tad embarrassing that lawmakers (who aren&amp;#x27;t even computer scientists like c&amp;#x27;mon are we for real here?) somehow forgot how and who broke the Enigma Machine. Alan Turing did that.&lt;p&gt;Same thing with the Tor browser developed by the US Navy. Either everyone has access to a tool which can guarantee that you can blend in with the rest of the crowd, or every civilian has a special color and we all pop out while the lawmakers and police are somehow wearing grey.&lt;p&gt;How did cypherpunks and computer scientists get blasted from the government like this? Shouldn&amp;#x27;t there be some laws regarding digital privacy for US citizens?&lt;p&gt;Somehow AD revenue is caked everywhere but I can&amp;#x27;t use a computer without the FBI wanting my social security card? What the duck. Shucks I thought this was America.</text></comment>
<story><title>The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/fbi-should-stop-attacking-encryption-and-tell-congress-about-all-encrypted-phones</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cm2187</author><text>Another argument against the &amp;quot;going dark&amp;quot; claim is that before smartphones and the internet, the only conversations the FBI could monitor was through phonelines and mail. These were known to be easily monitored and I doubt there was much more criminal activity happening through those then than now.&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the conversations that have gone online are the interactions that were previously happening in-person (at least in term of criminal activity), to which the FBI didn&amp;#x27;t have access before.&lt;p&gt;There is something Orwellian with the idea that there shouldn&amp;#x27;t be a word that can be pronounced in the country that the government cannot record and listen to after the fact. The limits of what is legal or not have always moved (see homosexuality, drug and alcohol consumption, etc). So a 100% enforcement of the law is counter-intuitively undesirable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_wldu</author><text>15 years ago, if I had said that society would build a tracking system and that most people would happily carry a tracker in their pocket and pay monthly fees to support the tracking networks, I would have been laughed out of the room.&lt;p&gt;But that is what happened, and most people are oblivious to this fact.</text></comment>