I am reminded of a quote from The Princess Bride: "...you cannot track it, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords." And that just infuriates the prince, to the point where he just has to go destroy something beautiful, out of spite.
People put locks on their homes to keep criminals out. It does not matter if the government can break those locks, until the government itself begins to act like a criminal. At that point, it becomes necessary to build locks that even a government cannot break.
The Snowden alarum showed us all that a portion of the US government has become functionally indistinguishable from an organized crime ring. So, sorry Comey, but perhaps the FBI should focus for a while on investigating and burning out the criminal corruption within its own umbrella organization before we talk about maybe allowing it the power to intrude upon our personal lives at will, in the name of the greater good.
By the house metaphor, law enforcement is more like vampire legends. The vampire has the strength to batter down any door, but if it crosses the threshold without first being invited inside, it loses its power. Except the cop-vampire can also be invited in by a magistrate who issues a warrant.
And perhaps even that is too lenient. Maybe our warrants should be issued by a grand jury. Allowing them to be issued by a sole judge, or panel of judges, seems an invitation to erect secret, rubber-stamp courts like those used for FISA warrants. Maybe your secret keys should be protected by an M-of-N consensus algorithm using about 30 cryptographically-random peers. The government then has to convince a bunch of presumably reasonable strangers that it should be allowed access to your keys. Should be no problem if you're a dangerous criminal, but impossible if the state just wants to sniff around in your dirty drawers.
People put locks on their homes to keep criminals out. It does not matter if the government can break those locks, until the government itself begins to act like a criminal. At that point, it becomes necessary to build locks that even a government cannot break.
The Snowden alarum showed us all that a portion of the US government has become functionally indistinguishable from an organized crime ring. So, sorry Comey, but perhaps the FBI should focus for a while on investigating and burning out the criminal corruption within its own umbrella organization before we talk about maybe allowing it the power to intrude upon our personal lives at will, in the name of the greater good.
By the house metaphor, law enforcement is more like vampire legends. The vampire has the strength to batter down any door, but if it crosses the threshold without first being invited inside, it loses its power. Except the cop-vampire can also be invited in by a magistrate who issues a warrant.
And perhaps even that is too lenient. Maybe our warrants should be issued by a grand jury. Allowing them to be issued by a sole judge, or panel of judges, seems an invitation to erect secret, rubber-stamp courts like those used for FISA warrants. Maybe your secret keys should be protected by an M-of-N consensus algorithm using about 30 cryptographically-random peers. The government then has to convince a bunch of presumably reasonable strangers that it should be allowed access to your keys. Should be no problem if you're a dangerous criminal, but impossible if the state just wants to sniff around in your dirty drawers.