It's hard to know where to even begin in arguing against this.
There's the freedom/privacy argument, but I guess this is debatable depending on if you view computer files as an extension of your ideas/knowledge, or an extension of your physical possessions.
Someone brought up the entire "risk of overreach and abuse" argument.
There's also the likelihood of any tools the government has being leaked and used by bad actors (as we have seen too much recently).
Oh, and the "it's technologically impossible" argument, which should be the only one you need -- but they refuse to hear that. (Are there some supposed experts who are telling the DOJ this can be done?)
> Someone brought up the entire "risk of overreach and abuse" argument.
I don't have a problem with the authorities operating within the purview of the Constitution, eg. a warrant from a court for a particular device. That, however, is not how we got to where we are today.
> - In many countries guns are illegal. Yet criminals do own them. If encryption becomes illegal, criminals would still use it
Making guns illegal doesn't stop criminals from using them, but it does make it possible to jail someone only because they had a gun.
Outlawing encyrption won't stop criminals from using encryption (just look at China) but it does make it possible to jail dissidents only because they were using encryption.
Surveillance will be easier if encryption is illegal, but surveillance would be easier if everyone was obligated to wear a GPS tracker as well. "Making surveillance easier" is not sufficient to argue it should be implemented. There needs to be checks and balances. And when only the government can keep secrets, and they will, there are no more.
> - In many countries guns are illegal. Yet criminals do own them. If encryption becomes illegal, criminals would still use it
The main reason why recent terror attacks in Europe used trucks and knives was because guns are really hard to buy in most countries. Even on the black market it'll be hard to get guns in many European countries. Not saying that there's no black market but most people wouldn't have the contacts to get any. So outlawing helps a lot and while it doesn't reduce gun crime by 100%, it probably reduces it by >90%.
While encryption is easier to get online (no physical shipping), I doubt many people have the knowledge to identify good encryption without backdoors. Most would probably fall for mechanisms planted by intelligence services.
I think their intent is not so much to make criminals not use it, but have companies use backdoored encryption, so they can get Apple's keys to a device with a warrant.
The problem remains that they constantly abuse their power and are able to even circumvent the warrant part once they know that those keys exist.
> It's hard to know where to even begin in arguing against this.
It's really not.
Encryption is all-or-nothing.
Either encryption works, or it fails. You can't pick and choose for whom it will work, and for whom it will fail.
So that frames the question, "Who is allowed to use encryption?"
This is a dangerous question to be asking, which is why it is hidden behind rhetoric by those who are asking it.
Encryption is speech.
Anyone can create and use a cypher. Such techniques were invented long before modern computing. Encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data, and possibly even unencrypted data.
Encryption is math. Cyphers are mathematical functions, whose derivations are public knowledge.
That brings us to the next question: "How?"
Either you control speech, or make math secret. Neither option is scalable, and neither option is moral.
I guess if you set the bar for what you want to accomplish at barely above "nobody is allowed to encrypt anything, ever." Nobody would knowingly use such a scheme. It's also a security hole giving access to anyone with the key, which is sure to be leaked/compromised if shared with the entire DOJ and others. Also, once the key is compromised, everything in the past that was ever encrypted is now readable by anyone.
Actually, most people would use it because most people just don't care that much.
>which is sure to be leaked/compromised if shared with the entire DOJ and others
But this is a policy issue, not an issue with the idea of backdoored encryption. There are policies that could reduce the probability of leak to negligible levels (e.g. a secure NSA facility does all the decryption). Not to mention that only the NSA will be in a position to decrypt your communications from 5 years ago. No one else is storing such a vast quantity of data.
There's the freedom/privacy argument, but I guess this is debatable depending on if you view computer files as an extension of your ideas/knowledge, or an extension of your physical possessions.
Someone brought up the entire "risk of overreach and abuse" argument.
There's also the likelihood of any tools the government has being leaked and used by bad actors (as we have seen too much recently).
Oh, and the "it's technologically impossible" argument, which should be the only one you need -- but they refuse to hear that. (Are there some supposed experts who are telling the DOJ this can be done?)