Nice use of rhetorical sloganeering and a concept upon which the entire idea of breaking crypto is based. But is it not? Do we not have the absolute right to keep things private if we choose? Sure, what is done in public cannot be private, but as long as I break no laws, why would I not have an absolute right to keep a thing private? In fact, we actually have restrictions placed upon the government via the 5th amendment which allows citizens to keep a thing private even if they have committed a crime. So where does this idea that our right to privacy is not absolute come from?
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Oh God, need to have the “illegal math” talk with them again…
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The compulsion to surveillance by any means necessary hints at some deep-seated insecurities - isn’t it sufficient to have entire departments dedicated to hacking citizens and foreign nationals alike? Do we have to have weak crypto, too?
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I suspect arswright is correct, but the insecurities lie within us. Part of the reason that our Intelligence community and their proxies in Law Enforcement insist on total awareness and control is we have demanded it of them. We tell them that: “There must NEVER be a repeat of 911…” After every terrorist act, we partially blame the Intelligence community and Law Enforcement. And, when criminal acts damage the public welfare, we partially assume that Law Enforcement SHOULD have prevented it. Our expectations have locked our defenders into “Control” or “Total Awareness” modes of security.
I created a video that tries to explain the various modes of security for my security students.
Our defenders will probably keep passing these unreasonable demands back to us, as long as we keep making unreasonable demands of them. Of course, when Intelligence and Law demands Total Awareness and Control, we must reject it as unreasonable. But, we must also stop demanding that they know and prevent every bad thing. We need to accept that bad things happen even when our defenders do their best.
Of course, we can demand that our defenders actually DO their best. But we need to carefully adjust our requirements so that their best doesn’t destroy us.
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