Is too much encryption a bad thing? post Your opinion?

[Tech_Dreamer]

Post Your opinions down below..

 

 

Security vs privacy , both can be abused to certain limits to counteract one another , not going to make a standing point , as far as situation call for it , both are necessary but in varying amounts, which is pretty much impossible to keep up in a democracy it's either one or the other even tho we can have a ton of debates around it & not change shit except make some noise around the issue like a panicked swarm of bees  , too much encryption can restrict & interfere with progress to truth & too much loose uncontrolled oversight can lead to serious issue in terms of a persons right & state & even political groups could target rival group or even individuals & abuse their power, should it be locked down for ethical reasons or should we keep a single over-watch to keep things in checks? if it comes down to it, what would you prefer happen?

 

[yourmomitouched]

I'm not sure what you mean. How does too much encryption interfere with progress?

[Tech_Dreamer]

12 minutes ago, yourmomitouched said:

I'm not sure what you mean. How does too much encryption interfere with progress?

as in the case of Apple , where they stood their ground & this trend spreads over to other areas where government is unable to act , or should it rather be the other way around, where government have access to electronically generated information(every form)

[minibois]

12 minutes ago, yourmomitouched said:

I'm not sure what you mean. How does too much encryption interfere with progress?

He just means if there was no encryption in the world, the feds could more easily get all info in the world.

 

IMO: yes, we need encryption. Not only to protect ourselves from the 'big bad government', but also from other people.

There is a reason you lock your front door, no encryption or security is just leaving yourselves open for the government to watch over you and thieves to rob you.

[yourmomitouched]

I see. I think the issue with encryption is kind of a moot argument, since it's likely not going to go anywhere for a long time. Encryption is the result of something called a one-way function, which is easy to do, but much more difficult to undo. As of now, we simply don't have the computing ability to search for enormous numbers and factor them in order to break the encryption. It's not so much a "tech" issue as it is a mathematics issue. If someone were to find a faster way to factor large numbers mathematically, weakening encryption may be an option. But as of now and the foreseeable future, it's going to be around. 

[yourmomitouched]

And for the record, I'm a huge fan of encryption. Even if there were a way to break it, I'd be vehemently against it. It's not just an issue of personal privacy, either. The government wants back doors created for national security reasons, but in my opinion, our national security would suffer tremendously from a lack of security in our data. We'd be open to an insane amount of cyber attacks if encryption could be broken or devices were build with some kind of back door. 

[xentropa]

Not sure how too much encryption leads to interference of progress.

 

These anti encryption measures and pushing for security backdoors is not about keeping people safe. The gov just wants more control and to spy on everyone.

[Mira Yurizaki]

What kind of progress are we talking about here? Because this sounds like a pretty broad use of the term.

 

Technologically speaking encryption/decryption has overhead. So depending on your timing needs, there is such a thing as too much encryption as it starts to eat away at your performance to the point of being too slow.

 

Also well understood encryption is important. If files are encrypted in a format that is not well understood, known, or documented, if the way to decrypt them is lost, then it becomes impossible or nightmareish to unlock it. For example, there are some arcade games that remain unplayable because the developer used an encryption method so obscure that nobody's been able to crack it yet.

[SerialAceTU1]

2 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

What kind of progress are we talking about here? Because this sounds like a pretty broad use of the term.

 

Technologically speaking encryption/decryption has overhead. So depending on your timing needs, there is such a thing as too much encryption as it starts to eat away at your performance to the point of being too slow.

 

Also well understood encryption is important. If files are encrypted in a format that is not well understood, known, or documented, if the way to decrypt them is lost, then it becomes impossible or nightmareish to unlock it. For example, there are some arcade games that remain unplayable because the developer used an encryption method so obscure that nobody's been able to crack it yet.

examples?

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 hours ago, SerialAceTU1 said:

examples?

A bunch of games from Seibu Kaihatsu. Raiden II has been for the longest time unbroken. I think they've gotten it to be emulated ,but with workaround rather than decrypting it.

[BrightCandle]

If the government can get to it then so can the bad guys. Part of the reason privacy matters is because quite often the really bad guys are the government.

 

Even if you think that somehow we should avoid using encryption and everything becomes public (like your pin numbers and your passwords and your private emails and your youporn subscription details etc etc) you can't actually get rid of it. Its just mathematics and the reality is that you couldn't stop the use of encryption if you wanted to, you can even make it illegal its still not going to stop people from using it. Its been used for centuries and its the basic underpinning of eCommerce, without it there is no commercial internet and with no commerce on the internet it doesn't exist. LTT could never exist without encryption, because all the products and companies selling them and the audience that watches those adverts and shows depends on encryption existing.

[ThomasD]

17 hours ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

as in the case of Apple , where they stood their ground & this trend spreads over to other areas where government is unable to act , or should it rather be the other way around, where government have access to electronically generated information(every form)

So your question isn't about "how much" encryption there is, but whether there can be any privacy from government intrusion.

 

Personally, in general I tend to err on the side of privacy.  In the Apple case even more so.  Based on all their other behavior it was quite obvious that the perps would have left nothing of use in that phone.  The government only chose to have that fight at that moment because they though the terrorism angle would scare everyone into complying.  It wasn't so much about finding what was in that specific phone as it was about trying to establish a precedent for future cases.

 

Bad cases make for bad laws.

[Centurius]

17 hours ago, Minibois said:

He just means if there was no encryption in the world, the feds could more easily get all info in the world.

 

IMO: yes, we need encryption. Not only to protect ourselves from the 'big bad government', but also from other people.

There is a reason you lock your front door, no encryption or security is just leaving yourselves open for the government to watch over you and thieves to rob you.

The problem with that example though is that the government, with a legal warrant, can have your door unlocked. In cases of absolute encryption this is not the case.

[BrightCandle]

7 minutes ago, Centurius said:

The problem with that example though is that the government, with a legal warrant, can have your door unlocked. In cases of absolute encryption this is not the case.

But the point is there isn't a choice. Encryption is an absolute defence, we haven't yet managed to make an unpickable lock or a door that can't be knocked down. But we have made a 1 way function that can take a piece of information and stop it being accessible to everyone that doesn't know the secret key for likely 1000s of years. That genie doesn't go back in the bottle. If we made impenetrable doors you wouldn't be able to undo that invention either.

[Centurius]

1 minute ago, BrightCandle said:

But the point is there isn't a choice. Encryption is an absolute defence, we haven't yet managed to make an unpickable lock or a door that can't be knocked down. But we have made a 1 way function that can take a piece of information and stop it being accessible to everyone that doesn't know the secret key for likely 1000s of years. That genie doesn't go back in the bottle. If we made impenetrable doors you wouldn't be able to undo that invention either.

While true, that isn't the point of this debate. The OP is asking whether or not too much encryption is a bad thing, regardless of the technological realities. 

[minibois]

43 minutes ago, Centurius said:

The problem with that example though is that the government, with a legal warrant, can have your door unlocked. In cases of absolute encryption this is not the case.

well you can make your door out of solid steel and your walls reinforced and make them 2 meters thick. wouldn't that be the same as really good encryption in your example?

[Centurius]

18 minutes ago, Minibois said:

well you can make your door out of solid steel and your walls reinforced and make them 2 meters thick. wouldn't that be the same as really good encryption in your example?

No, because with the tools the government has they could still get in within a reasonable timeframe.

[minibois]

5 minutes ago, Centurius said:

No, because with the tools the government has they could still get in within a reasonable timeframe.

Well shouldn't this be a wake up call for the government to actually try to get some better IT staff, to hire some people who actually know a lot about encryption and hardware, etc. so they CAN get in there? I'm not saying that is easy, not at all. But to say "yeah, we can't break into your encryption... so please don't use it" is only going to stop the people who don't want to break the law. The 'bad' people will still use it.

[Centurius]

1 minute ago, Minibois said:

Well shouldn't this be a wake up call for the government to actually try to get some better IT staff, to hire some people who actually know a lot about encryption and hardware, etc. so they CAN get in there? I'm not saying that is easy, not at all. But to say "yeah, we can't break into your encryption... so please don't use it" is only going to stop the people who don't want to break the law. The 'bad' people will still use it.

There's only so much IT staff can do when the globally available processing power is the limiting factor. 

[ThomasD]

1 hour ago, Centurius said:

The problem with that example though is that the government, with a legal warrant, can have your door unlocked. In cases of absolute encryption this is not the case.

Just like those situations where they use a warrant to justify breaking down a door the need to breach encryption should be handled on a case by case basis - not by a blanket restriction on the use or manner of encryption.  

 

Which is entirely akin to giving the government a master key to open every door lock ever made.

 

Worse case scenario, the government has a warrant to access some sort of encrypted info, and the owner refuses to provide they keys, then the owner is locked up until they choose to comply.  Same as if the same person were under legal subpoena and refusing to testify.

[ThomasD]

21 minutes ago, Minibois said:

Well shouldn't this be a wake up call for the government to actually try to get some better IT staff, to hire some people who actually know a lot about encryption and hardware, etc. so they CAN get in there? I'm not saying that is easy, not at all. But to say "yeah, we can't break into your encryption... so please don't use it" is only going to stop the people who don't want to break the law. The 'bad' people will still use it.

As more and more people end up with their personal information in "the cloud" less and less people will buy the argument that encryption is only for those doing wrong.

 

Encryption is the only way you will ever be able to keep your information (physically stored someplace you do not control) yours. 

[SerialAceTU1]

10 hours ago, ThomasD said:

As more and more people end up with their personal information in "the cloud" less and less people will buy the argument that encryption is only for those doing wrong.

 

Encryption is the only way you will ever be able to keep your information (physically stored someplace you do not control) yours. 

Storing your digital files offline (in a HDD/SSD) may help.

If the government needs to get their hands on them,

they'll have to get past you.

(If your data is in Dropbox, they can easily get them by

hacking the cloud)

It's not that I'm against any governments.

 

 

 

[thekeemo]

I believe if everyone is open about everything the world would be a better place

[ybriK]

I encrypted my mountable drive inside an encrypted mountable drive and inside that is another encrypted mountable drive? Is there a problem here?

[WEEEEEE]

On 5/20/2016 at 1:16 PM, yourmomitouched said:

I see. I think the issue with encryption is kind of a moot argument, since it's likely not going to go anywhere for a long time. Encryption is the result of something called a one-way function, which is easy to do, but much more difficult to undo. As of now, we simply don't have the computing ability to search for enormous numbers and factor them in order to break the encryption. It's not so much a "tech" issue as it is a mathematics issue. If someone were to find a faster way to factor large numbers mathematically, weakening encryption may be an option. But as of now and the foreseeable future, it's going to be around. 

True at least until quantum computers come along, since they are really good at factoring large primes.

12 hours ago, Minibois said:

Well shouldn't this be a wake up call for the government to actually try to get some better IT staff, to hire some people who actually know a lot about encryption and hardware, etc. so they CAN get in there? I'm not saying that is easy, not at all. But to say "yeah, we can't break into your encryption... so please don't use it" is only going to stop the people who don't want to break the law. The 'bad' people will still use it.

It isn't a matter of IT staff. Encryption is mathematically impossible to break within a reasonable amount of time, using current computing technology.