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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-exercise)
-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 Exercise
-
-:::: 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.