<story><title>DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot</title><url>https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/02/doj-plans-strike-against-encryption-while-techlash-iron-hot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caleb-allen</author><text>A small anecdote.&lt;p&gt;A few years ago in an undergrad business class, we were having some discussion and the topic of encryption came up during one of my presentations. A student asked a question related to the ethics of encryption (I don&amp;#x27;t recall exactly what), and I was clearly confused by the question.&lt;p&gt;To clear up confusion, the professor asked those who thought encryption was &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; to raise their hand, and at least 60% of the class raised their hands.&lt;p&gt;It was pretty jarring to me, and makes me pessimistic about the outcome of a DOJ campaign to demonize and regulate encryption</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cvwright</author><text>I think we in the tech community tend to vastly under-estimate the threat of legal restrictions on encryption.  When the public gets scared, they look to governments to &amp;quot;do something&amp;quot;, whether that something is really a smart thing or not.&lt;p&gt;If we&amp;#x27;re unlucky and we get caught unprepared, we run the risk of getting stuck with a backdoor or &amp;quot;exceptional access&amp;quot; mechanism that provides little or no technical safeguards against massive and nearly unlimited government overreach.&lt;p&gt;IMO this makes it our responsibility to figure out how we might design such a system that &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; have strong protections against misuse.  Of course that is a very difficult thing to do.  Doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we shouldn&amp;#x27;t try.</text></comment>
<story><title>DOJ plans to strike against encryption while the Techlash iron is hot</title><url>https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/02/doj-plans-strike-against-encryption-while-techlash-iron-hot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caleb-allen</author><text>A small anecdote.&lt;p&gt;A few years ago in an undergrad business class, we were having some discussion and the topic of encryption came up during one of my presentations. A student asked a question related to the ethics of encryption (I don&amp;#x27;t recall exactly what), and I was clearly confused by the question.&lt;p&gt;To clear up confusion, the professor asked those who thought encryption was &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; to raise their hand, and at least 60% of the class raised their hands.&lt;p&gt;It was pretty jarring to me, and makes me pessimistic about the outcome of a DOJ campaign to demonize and regulate encryption</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>westmeal</author><text>It sounds like a majority of the students had no idea what encryption was and because the authority figure (the professor) asked them whether or not it was bad they just went with it? I&amp;#x27;m having trouble understanding why people would say mathematical functions are bad.</text></comment>