Australian Gov't unveils plans to gain access to encrypted messages

[rewird]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

the tech industry should just give the middle finger and let Australia go back to SMS and see how they like it

given our communications framework were not far off that..or sending coded messages via roos

[Serin]

3 hours ago, rewird said:

given our communications framework were not far off that..or sending coded messages via roos

Smoke signals, mate.
Then again I don't reckon the indigenous peoples would cheap out on firewood... 

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, Serin said:

Smoke signals, mate.
Then again I don't reckon the indigenous peoples would cheap out on firewood... 

Give me a bull roarer any day of the week. 

 

 

[Teddy07]

16 hours ago, bcguru9384 said:

maybe its time to move from germany then they abolish that stupid law as no faster way to end kings reign then king suppressing the population

3

That is exactly what I am doing right now. I quit my office job, went to university to study computer science. It will take a few years but I will have a way better chance abroad than with my office job.

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

Not blanket surveillance, just surveillance.  The question then becomes, should the proposed new measures actually work, would it stop more?  I don't think we can know until it happened (ASIO are not going to just handout their operating MO just to prove this).

Well we can never know for sure, but what we do know is that mass surveillance actually had a negative impact on the attack in France. The more data you collect, the noisier the signal gets.

Basically, survillience is like finding a needle in a hay stack, and mass surveillance is like saying "well we can't find this one needle we're looking for in this tiny hackstack, so let's just dump more hay and hopefully we will increase the number of needles in the stack too". The problem is that it becomes exponentially harder to find even a single needle the more hay you add, because the amount of hay dramatically outweighs the amount of needles.

I'll try to find the article where the police said that they did not have the resources necessary to properly analyze all the info they were collecting before and during the terror attack in France.

 

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

I'm not, But this of course is still hangs on the assumption that they just want the ability to spy on everyone without question or appeal.

Considering the massive amount of information that has been leaked over the course of a few years now, I find that a very reasonable assumption to make.

Everything points towards it being the case.

 

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

Nah, he's a politician, and to be as bigoted as him and still get voted in you have to be a good one.  He knows nothing of the technology.  His job is to get the measures through.  This makes it hard for average citizens like us to properly understand how the measures will effect us.  That is another reason why I said we deserve transparency.

The way he (accurately but clumsily) differentiated between data and meta data indicates to me that he knows what he is talking about. It's just that he wanted to deceive people but the way the reporter phrased things made it hard to do.

 

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

I call it paranoia because concluding the government has alternate motives that are actually only founded on a fear and not really evidenced

Have you been living under a rock for the last couple of years? Have you heard of for example PRISMA?

Governments wanting mass surveillance is not at all unfounded.

If you want even more evidence that they want mass surveillance and don't care about targeted surveillance, they are actually claiming that they can already break E2E if they want. So according to their own statements, they can already do targeted surveillance if they want. The only logical explanation for why they would want this law passed is therefore that they want to spy on everyone, not just the ones they know are dangerous.

 

 

19 hours ago, mr moose said:

2. Provide a backdoor that might get breached like wannacry, in which case you are trading potential losses for companies that don't want to implement basic security measures for the potential to stop deadly terror attacks.  

On top of that, you are also compromising the freedom of your people. It is a fact that if people know they are being watched then they will behave differently, for example they will be less likely to bring up things they feel others will see as minority opinions. It is a very well studied field and it is genuinely a direct threat to the fundamentals of democracy.

 

19 hours ago, mr moose said:

It really is that black and white when it boils down to it.  Maybe there is a middle ground compromise, but we will never know while people outright refuse to discuss it and lobby against/for it.  And by this I mean all sides of the debate. As I said before, the internet has brought a whole new realm of issues for fighting crime and the old laws don't work anymore.  New laws can be (and have been) exploited so discussion needs to happen, not outright dismissal.

Sadly, there is no middle ground. It is not possible to create a secure system which also has backdoors. Backdoors is the definition of insecure by design. With so much being tied to technology today, there is absolutely no room for engineering in flaws in extremely important infrastructure.

[mr moose]

25 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

 

Sadly, there is no middle ground. It is not possible to create a secure system which also has backdoors. Backdoors is the definition of insecure by design. With so much being tied to technology today, there is absolutely no room for engineering in flaws in extremely important infrastructure.

Then we are fucked. Period.  Compromise is the only way the Human race is going to move forward, both as individual nations and a global community.

25 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Well we can never know for sure, but what we do know is that mass surveillance actually had a negative impact on the attack in France. The more data you collect, the noisier the signal gets.

Basically, survillience is like finding a needle in a hay stack, and mass surveillance is like saying "well we can't find this one needle we're looking for in this tiny hackstack, so let's just dump more hay and hopefully we will increase the number of needles in the stack too". The problem is that it becomes exponentially harder to find even a single needle the more hay you add, because the amount of hay dramatically outweighs the amount of needles.

I'll try to find the article where the police said that they did not have the resources necessary to properly analyze all the info they were collecting before and during the terror attack in France.

 

Considering the massive amount of information that has been leaked over the course of a few years now, I find that a very reasonable assumption to make.

Everything points towards it being the case.

 

The way he (accurately but clumsily) differentiated between data and meta data indicates to me that he knows what he is talking about. It's just that he wanted to deceive people but the way the reporter phrased things made it hard to do.

 

Have you been living under a rock for the last couple of years? Have you heard of for example PRISMA?

Governments wanting mass surveillance is not at all unfounded.

If you want even more evidence that they want mass surveillance and don't care about targeted surveillance, they are actually claiming that they can already break E2E if they want. So according to their own statements, they can already do targeted surveillance if they want. The only logical explanation for why they would want this law passed is therefore that they want to spy on everyone, not just the ones they know are dangerous.

 

 

On top of that, you are also compromising the freedom of your people. It is a fact that if people know they are being watched then they will behave differently, for example they will be less likely to bring up things they feel others will see as minority opinions. It is a very well studied field and it is genuinely a direct threat to the fundamentals of democracy.

 

 

 

Not under a rock, just a different perspective with different information pertaining to the specific government we are talking about.

[LAwLz]

29 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Then we are fucked. Period.  Compromise is the only way the Human race is going to move forward, both as individual nations and a global community.

I strongly disagree.

In a lot of scenarios compromise is not the solution. Did we come up with a compromise for owning slaves? Did we come up with a compromise for letting women vote? There are a ton of more examples if you want, but all of those were very controversial topics and looking back at it the solution was obvious, and it was not a compromise between the opposing sides.

 

 

32 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Not under a rock, just a different perspective with different information pertaining to the specific government we are talking about.

Well I can't think of any other logical reason for why they would want to push this. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that they want mass surveillance of everyone, including the average Joe.

Remember, they have already said that they can decrypt communication if they want to, and yet they want backdoors for easy access in programs the average Joe uses.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

I strongly disagree.

In a lot of scenarios compromise is not the solution. Did we come up with a compromise for owning slaves? Did we come up with a compromise for letting women vote? There are a ton of more examples if you want, but all of those were very controversial topics and looking back at it the solution was obvious, and it was not a compromise between the opposing sides.

 

 

Well I can't think of any other logical reason for why they would want to push this. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that they want mass surveillance of everyone, including the average Joe.

Remember, they have already said that they can decrypt communication if they want to, and yet they want backdoors for easy access in programs the average Joe uses.

We have already compromised much in order to maintain society, All laws that force people to behave in a specific way are a form of compromise of personal liberties.  Not everyone agrees with guns laws, religious culture, land ownership (look at bolivia), so on and so forth. 

 

 

You can't think of another logical reason becasue you refuse to entertain the idea that controlled access to specific information may be necessary in some cases.   You know as well as I that their is a lot of data they cannot crack already. If they already could they wouldn't be trying to get more access.

 

 

[LAwLz]

54 minutes ago, mr moose said:

We have already compromised much in order to maintain society, All laws that force people to behave in a specific way are a form of compromise of personal liberties.  Not everyone agrees with guns laws, religious culture, land ownership (look at bolivia), so on and so forth. 

In some instances compromises are fine, but that is not to say compromises are always the best solution.

When it comes to mandatory security vulnerabilities in products used by hundreds of millions of people I don't think there is any room for compromises.

 

54 minutes ago, mr moose said:

You can't think of another logical reason becasue you refuse to entertain the idea that controlled access to specific information may be necessary in some cases.   You know as well as I that their is a lot of data they cannot crack already.

Can you give me another logical explanation for this? (Added emphasis because I am very curious about what explanations you can come up with)

Remember, they actually claimed that they can already break E2E with the help of GCHQ. So targeted surveillance is according to their own statements not an issue. They can already do it without any of these backdoors getting implemented. That is the implication of their statement that they can break the encryption.

 

54 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If they already could they wouldn't be trying to get more access.

Like I said before, my guess is that IF (big if) they got a method for breaking encryption on the platforms they want already, then it is a difficult thing to do so it is not suitable for mass surveillance. I think that's why they want backdoors. Because their methods of breaking encryption is not something they can apply to the 24 million citizens in Australia.

 

This explains it very well if you got 11 minutes to spend. It also brings up a lot of examples of for example times the British government has abused their current mass surveillance powers (as well as employees using it for personal gains).

 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

In some instances compromises are fine, but that is not to say compromises are always the best solution.

When it comes to mandatory security vulnerabilities in products used by hundreds of millions of people I don't think there is any room for compromises.

 

 

No, but when compromises are not the best option then more options other than just blanket dismissing the issue are required. 

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

 

Can you give me another logical explanation for this? (Added emphasis because I am very curious about what explanations you can come up with)

Remember, they actually claimed that they can already break E2E with the help of GCHQ. So targeted surveillance is according to their own statements not an issue. They can already do it without any of these backdoors getting implemented. That is the implication of their statement that they can break the encryption.

 

 

I think the explanation I gave was sufficient.  If there are no other options or compromises then you have to pick your poison.  

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Like I said before, my guess is that IF (big if) they got a method for breaking encryption on the platforms they want already, then it is a difficult thing to do so it is not suitable for mass surveillance. I think that's why they want backdoors. Because their methods of breaking encryption is not something they can apply to the 24 million citizens in Australia.

 

 

Maybe that's why they want backdoors. but I have already addressed that:

 

 

I have watched that video before, I don't think he says anything I haven't already addressed.   We are faced with a serious problem where modern technology has effectively blindfolded the police.  This has to be addressed and as is always the case, as soon as the topic is raised, the goto response is to blanket dismiss the gravity of the situation and resort to a stance of all or nothing, no hope, dangerous to compromise.  Then mix that in with heavy doses of "the governments out to get me", which is a direct accusation based on fear rather than the more realistic fear of said backdoor being stolen or exploited by a third party.   

 

 

[Jito463]

49 minutes ago, mr moose said:

We are faced with a serious problem where modern technology has effectively blindfolded the police.

No it hasn't.  E2E encryption is no different than putting a seal on a letter.  You wouldn't argue that seals on letters should be banned, because they prevent the police from opening them up and reading them, would you?  I would hope you wouldn't, anyway.

[mr moose]

8 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

No it hasn't.  E2E encryption is no different than putting a seal on a letter.  You wouldn't argue that seals on letters should be banned, because they prevent the police from opening them up and reading them, would you?  I would hope you wouldn't, anyway.

seals on letters do not prevent the police from opening them though.

 

EDIT: and I still believe there is sufficient encryption tech out there that, for all intents and purposes, can't be decrypted.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

seals on letters do not prevent the police from opening them though.

Well, from what I've been reading in the back and forth above, the Australian gov claims that E2E doesn't stop them, either.

[mr moose]

Just now, Jito463 said:

Well, from what I've been reading in the back and forth above, the Australian gov claims that E2E doesn't stop them, either.

but you and I know that isn't exactly the case.  They might know how to break some, or they might know how to infect one end with a program to bypass the encryption or deliver the key.  But that is not the same as being able to decrypt all e2e messages.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

but you and I know that isn't exactly the case.  They might know how to break some, or they might know how to infect one end with a program to bypass the encryption or deliver the key.  But that is not the same as being able to decrypt all e2e messages.

Be that as it may, I have to agree with @LAwLz.  Putting an intentional backdoor into encryption, is a surefire recipe for disaster.  In any event, there's ways around any methods the police/gov can think up.  I recall a story a while back, where criminals were using the PSN voice chat because it had no logging.  They'd jump on a channel and conduct their business.  If someone else joined, they'd change the topic to something game related.  No one would be able to eavesdrop, unless they had surveillance on the physical location.

 

Given that, putting the security of everyone at risk - just to attempt to stop a few individuals - seems illogical at best and utterly criminal at worst.

[Zodiark1593]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

Then we are fucked. Period.  Compromise is the only way the Human race is going to move forward, both as individual nations and a global community.

 

Not under a rock, just a different perspective with different information pertaining to the specific government we are talking about.

The very goal of encryption is to prevent anyone that isn't supposed to from accessing the materials. In the case of encryption schemes such as AES, they haven't been compromised as of now, and can only be brute forced (or hope that the individual left a copy of the password somewhere, or made a very weak password). Leaving out my own opinion, and assuming AES remains robust, the only other technical means I see of any sort of compromise (beyond backdoors) is to place a limit on how long the password can be (long enough for small servers to not be unfeasible, yet short enough for government and large scale ASIC servers to take on), yet even in the best scenario, you put important data at ever growing risk as computing power increases.

 

Side channel attacks rely upon weaknesses in the implementation of the encryption rather than attacking the encryption directly, which may include backdoors and master keys. However, these backdoors and other vulnerabilities do not care whether the cracker is a knight of justice, or Satan himself, and can thus be accessed by anyone with the information and skills. It is understandable that anyone or any company that cares about security would consider known vulnerabilities as an unacceptable risk. Vulnerabilities within common messaging apps can be bypassed anyhow by encrypting the contents independently before transfer (via email or some other communication)

 

Bringing in my own opinion now. I would be more than willing to provide police or a judge with an encrypted file or container upon producing a warrant, however, they will have no help from me in actually deciphering it. As far as I'm concerned, they would already have the contents, even if it's in a form that cannot be understood.

[mr moose]

17 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Be that as it may, I have to agree with @LAwLz.  Putting an intentional backdoor into encryption, is a surefire recipe for disaster.  In any event, there's ways around any methods the police/gov can think up.  I recall a story a while back, where criminals were using the PSN voice chat because it had no logging.  They'd jump on a channel and conduct their business.  If someone else joined, they'd change the topic to something game related.  No one would be able to eavesdrop, unless they had surveillance on the physical location.

 

Given that, putting the security of everyone at risk - just to attempt to stop a few individuals - seems illogical at best and utterly criminal at worst.

Yes, but that still doesn't address the issue. Technology is making it easier for criminals to carry out business.  This results in deaths and I am sure it's not "a few individuals"  we are talking about.  So somewhere along the line we have to do something about it.  So far the governments of the world have only suggested one thing, and all the tech experts and forum nerds the world around have not been able to suggest a better option.   Something has to be done.

 

8 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Bringing in my own opinion now. I would be more than willing to provide police or a judge with an encrypted file or container upon producing a warrant, however, they will have no help from me in actually deciphering it. As far as I'm concerned, they would already have the contents, even if it's in a form that cannot be understood.

 

I think a court warrant should be at the start of all data acquisition.  Even if that warrant forces you to hand over the key to all encrypted data.  Because to me that is the difference between blanket surveillance and justified investigation powers. But even that gets poo pooed all too often.

 

 

[Jito463]

7 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Yes, but that still doesn't address the issue. Technology is making it easier for criminals to carry out business.  This results in deaths and I am sure it's not "a few individuals"  we are talking about.  So somewhere along the line we have to do something about it.  So far the governments of the world have only suggested one thing, and all the tech experts and forum nerds the world around have not been able to suggest a better option.   Something has to be done.

And that's how the slippery slope begins.

Quote

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

For the record, my comment of "a few individuals" was in comparison to the majority of law abiding citizens.  Unless you somehow believe a large portion of the population is comprised of criminals.  I mean, I know Australia started as a penal colony, but I wouldn't go so far as to classify everyone (or even most) there as a criminal.

 

Criminals will always find ways around the system.  No one said criminals were smart, but they can be quite inventive (insert obligatory necessity quote).

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

And that's how the slippery slope begins.

For the record, my comment of "a few individuals" was in comparison to the majority of law abiding citizens.  Unless you somehow believe a large portion of the population is comprised of criminals.  I mean, I know Australia started as a penal colony, but I wouldn't go so far as to classify everyone (or even most) there as a criminal.

 

Criminals will always find ways around the system.  No one said criminals were smart, but they can be quite inventive (insert obligatory necessity quote).

I don't personally believe slippery slope arguments are valid, remember when marijuana led to heroin and porn led to rape?   In the case of freedom and liberty  if you can't control your government then you never had either from the beginning.

[Zodiark1593]

27 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Yes, but that still doesn't address the issue. Technology is making it easier for criminals to carry out business.  This results in deaths and I am sure it's not "a few individuals"  we are talking about.  So somewhere along the line we have to do something about it.  So far the governments of the world have only suggested one thing, and all the tech experts and forum nerds the world around have not been able to suggest a better option.   Something has to be done.

 

 

I think a court warrant should be at the start of all data acquisition.  Even if that warrant forces you to hand over the key to all encrypted data.  Because to me that is the difference between blanket surveillance and justified investigation powers. 

 

 

There was once upon a time that in school, I would hand encrypt my notes, then pass them to other students in plain sight. The math teacher thought it amusing, though my English teacher, not so. Of course, there was no way for the teacher to discern whether the note was meant for anything malicious, or genuinely harmless. Even if the contents of the message were made with ill intent, because of the knowledge within my brain, there would be little the teachers would be able to do aside from bringing in someone skilled in cryptography.

 

As mentioned, the government is more than welcome to try to legislate backdoors into "secure" products and services. However, it merely takes a pen, paper, and some slight amount of mathematics to render this law powerless (even AES can be performed by hand for important messages). In the case of a computer system that will happily run whatever the user desires, just a compiler is all that's required to bypass backdoors or vulnerabilities in common commercial software.

 

The problem with the warrant is that they are only truly reliable in the case of concrete evidence that police can physically hold, or physical persons. Coercing cooperation is an entirely different matter as an individual may just as easily give the judge the middle finger, and willingly take the jail cell over giving up a decryption key (which in the case of terrorists, may be a definite possibility). Laws are far from an absolute power. It is only by choice that we obey them.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

There was once upon a time that in school, I would hand encrypt my notes, then pass them to other students in plain sight. The math teacher thought it amusing, though my English teacher, not so. Of course, there was no way for the teacher to discern whether the note was meant for anything malicious, or genuinely harmless. Even if the contents of the message were made with ill intent, because of the knowledge within my brain, there would be little the teachers would be able to do aside from bringing in someone skilled in cryptography.

 

As mentioned, the government is more than welcome to try to legislate backdoors into "secure" products and services. However, it merely takes a pen, paper, and some slight amount of mathematics to render this law powerless (even AES can be performed by hand for important messages). In the case of a computer system that will happily run whatever the user desires, just a compiler is all that's required to bypass backdoors or vulnerabilities in common commercial software.

 

The problem with the warrant is that they are only truly reliable in the case of concrete evidence that police can physically hold, or physical persons. Coercing cooperation is an entirely different matter as an individual may just as easily give the judge the middle finger, and willingly take the jail cell over giving up a decryption key (which in the case of terrorists, may be a definite possibility). Laws are far from an absolute power. It is only by choice that we obey them.

I did say:

On 7/15/2017 at 8:19 AM, mr moose said:

He's just parroting his advisors here,  The real problem is wanting to be able to circumvent encryption, not that he doesn't fully understand the difference between an intentional backdoor and an exploit.

 

 

Not too sure how this is going to achieve anything given very few people they want to target are going to use an encryption their ISP/phone manufacturer can unlock.  I guess at the end of the day information is power, and in this day and age controlling the internet is controlling the information. 

 

Just replace ISP/phone manufacturer with government/asio/NSA/whatever.

[Zodiark1593]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

I did say:

Just replace ISP/phone manufacturer with government/asio/NSA/whatever.

You also mentioned that "something has to be done". Yet you also acknowledged earlier that (beyond mass surveillance) there is little chance of achieving anything useful with what had been speculated (backdoors in encryption implementations)? You wanted discussion concerning some sort of compromise, of which mathematics does not know, severely limiting the options technically possible. Said options would only be possible on the implementation, and not the core mathematics. The biggest victims would probably be the companies forced to follow such legislation, followed by the largely indifferent populace. Not quite sure what discussion is to be had here, tbh.

 

If I was a taxi driver, I'd probably be fired for ending up right where we started.

[Jito463]

56 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

As mentioned, the government is more than welcome to try to legislate backdoors into "secure" products and services. However, it merely takes a pen, paper, and some slight amount of mathematics to render this law powerless (even AES can be performed by hand for important messages). In the case of a computer system that will happily run whatever the user desires, just a compiler is all that's required to bypass backdoors or vulnerabilities in common commercial software.

 

The problem with the warrant is that they are only truly reliable in the case of concrete evidence that police can physically hold, or physical persons. Coercing cooperation is an entirely different matter as an individual may just as easily give the judge the middle finger, and willingly take the jail cell over giving up a decryption key (which in the case of terrorists, may be a definite possibility). Laws are far from an absolute power. It is only by choice that we obey them.

On that note, it would be relatively simple for criminals/terrorists to hire some college kid or out of work programmer to code them a custom encryption software that has no backdoor.  I wouldn't be surprised if it's already been done, actually.  So, as usual, the criminals would be free to do as they wish while law abiding citizens would suffer.

 

It's not really any different than the topic of DRM in games.  Pirates get away with all the benefits and virtually none of the detriments, while legitimate customers suffer because of them.  Yes, the stakes are different, but I was simply using that as an analogy (in my opinion, an apt one).

[mr moose]

24 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

You also mentioned that "something has to be done". Yet you also acknowledged earlier that (beyond mass surveillance) there is little chance of achieving anything useful with what had been speculated (backdoors in encryption implementations)? You wanted discussion concerning some sort of compromise, of which mathematics does not know, severely limiting the options technically possible. Said options would only be possible on the implementation, and not the core mathematics. The biggest victims would probably be the companies forced to follow such legislation, followed by the largely indifferent populace. Not quite sure what discussion is to be had here, tbh.

 

If I was a taxi driver, I'd probably be fired for ending up right where we started.

Most of my beef is simply with the flatout dismissal of any discussion.  However I don;t know where people got the idea I was in favor of a backdoor, I don;t think I implied that in any of my posts.   And yes, I do think something has to be done.  Otherwise (imo) society will spiral into a place where honest citizens are the ones paying for the lack of ability to hold criminals accountable.

4 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

It's not really any different than the topic of DRM in games.  Pirates get away with all the benefits and virtually none of the detriments, while legitimate customers suffer because of them.  Yes, the stakes are different, but I was simply using that as an analogy (in my opinion, an apt one).

Exactly,  a somewhat much less serious state of affairs,  but I feel it is very analogous to the issue. 

[Zodiark1593]

57 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Most of my beef is simply with the flatout dismissal of any discussion.  However I don;t know where people got the idea I was in favor of a backdoor, I don;t think I implied that in any of my posts.   And yes, I do think something has to be done.  Otherwise (imo) society will spiral into a place where honest citizens are the ones paying for the lack of ability to hold criminals accountable.

Exactly,  a somewhat much less serious state of affairs,  but I feel it is very analogous to the issue. 

In both examples, those with the knowledge (either of encryption, or breaking the DRM) are the ones holding the power over others, as you've said earlier as well. In a sense, knowledge can be a power that is greater than that of law, and can be readily weaponized to the detriment of a great many people by those with the will to do so. Cryptography is merely one such example. Those that code viruses, ransomware and other such software are those that weaponize their knowledge of programming (a skill that is typically looked upon highly and is accessible by many) to exploit and harm the public, in anonymity no less, safe from the reaches of the law within the confines of their mothers' basements.

 

To an extent, we're already at the point where criminals operating online are extremely difficult to hold accountable (barring some fatal mistake on their part) due to the additional layer of separation the internet provides.

 

Given the unrestricted access to knowledge, and the anonymity the internet provides, had governments of the world known in advance what the capabilities would amount to, would there have been any efforts to regulation? Given that terrorists of years past were perfectly capable of operating before the internet, I don't think this would be a big factor. 

 

edit: Took me awhile to figure out what to write. I do hope something in this scrap I've written proves mildly intriguing.