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+# Phillip Rogaway - The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
+
+:::: tags
+- Cryptography
+- Society
+::::
+
+An appeal to cryptographers to ponder on the [Russell-Einstein
+manifesto], consider the moral implications of their work, take a step
+back from "crypto-for-crypto", and focus on "crypto-for-privacy" (or,
+to name the threat more explicitly, "anti-surveillance research").
+
+Harps on FBI Director James Comey's "law-enforcement framing":
+
+> 1. Privacy is *personal* good.  It's about your desire to control
+>    personal information about you.
+> 2. Security, on the other hand, is a *collective* good.  It's about
+>    living in a safe and secure world.
+> 3. Privacy and security are inherently in conflict.  As you
+>    strengthen one, you weaken the other.  We need to find the right
+>    *balance*.
+> 4. Modern communications technology has destroyed the former
+>    balance.  It's been a boon to privacy, and a blow to security.
+>    Encryption is especially threatening.  Our laws just haven't kept
+>    up.
+> 5. Because of this, *bad guys* may win.  The bad guys are
+>    terrorists, murderers, child pornographers, drug traffickers, and
+>    money launderers.  The technology that we good guys use - the bad
+>    guys use it too, to escape detection.
+> 6. At this point, we run the risk of Going Dark.  Warrants will be
+>    issued, but, due to encryption, they'll be meaningless.  We're
+>    becoming a country of unopenable closets.  Default encryption may
+>    make a good marketing pitch, but it's reckless design.  It will
+>    lead us to a very dark place.
+
+This framing is dismissed as "inconsistent with the history of
+intelligence gathering, and with the NSA's own mission statement",
+without further explanation.
+
+I wish the author had spent some prose explaining how exactly this
+framing is fallacious.  There is a footnote providing some references,
+but as far as I can tell these references mainly reinforce the point
+that the NSA's surveillance methods are a threat to privacy; it is not
+obvious how "the NSA overreaches" contradicts "it's harder to catch
+bad guys once they get better crypto".
+
+For what it's worth, I found that [Aaron Brantly's
+article](#aaron-brantly---banning-encryption-to-stop-terrorists-a-worse-than-futile-excercise)
+does a better job at showing the shortsightedness of this line of
+reasoning, as does this footnote:
+
+> When crypto is outlawed only outlaws will have crypto.
+
+[Russell-Einstein manifesto]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manifesto
+
+# Aaron Brantly - Banning Encryption to Stop Terrorists: A Worse than Futile Excercise
+
+:::: tags
+- Cryptography
+- Society
+::::
+
+The debate can be phrased as follows:
+
+> Is increasing security in one narrow area worth degrading it in
+> every other?
+
+Answering "yes" overlooks two things:
+
+1. Weakening officially distributed encryption will not impact
+   terrorists, who will simply move to new, unregulated platforms.
+
+2. Once they have done that, we end up in a situation where lawful
+   citizens are stuck with insecure communication channels, and
+   terrorists are the only ones benefiting from state-of-the-art
+   confidentiality/integrity/authenticity.