Blessed are the cryptographers, labelling them criminal enablers is just foolish Nearly a decade ago I decided to try my hand as a cryptographer. It went about as well as you might expect. I’d gotten the crazy idea to write a tool that would encrypt Twitter’s direct messages - sent in the clear - so that your private communications would truly be private, visible to no one, including Twitter. Writing the …
Not my definition Jake. But basically anything involving violence gets treated much more seriously than without.
Thats why a white collar criminal who fleeces thousands of people of their savings destroying their lives in the process will almost always get a much lighter sentence than a mugger who knocks down an old woman and breaks her hip in order to steal her handbag.
No one said its right, but it is the way the world works at the moment...
I'm not laughing at the crime(s) involved, far from it ... I'm laughing at the pompous politicians using language to make their own deeds look bigger and better than the last guy's ... Next thing you know we'll have Most Serious And Organized Crimes, and then Most Serious Heinous And Organized Crimes or the like ... better if the acronym can be massaged to spell something that is patriotic, at least to today's sheep electorate.
Whatever happened to just "crimes"? Kinda covers it all, no?
Not really. Not in my opinion.
Otherwise, our justice system would be quite simple : you committed a crime, you get executed.
There are degrees, and they must be taken into account. A group of thieves who stake out a house, find out when the occupants are gone, break in and loot the place and get gone will get less attention than a group who break in and murder everyone, then loot.
And that is logical.
Not my definition Jake. But basically anything involving violence gets treated much more seriously than without.
Unless it's violence against women for some reason. Hence the UK government's provisions in the Policing Bill for ten year sentences for attacking a statue, but much lesser sentences for rape.
Everyone should be angry about this sort of disproportionality.
IANAL, but I think the distinctions here are:
Organised crime = crime committed by members of a criminal organisation (such as a modern slavery ring, people smugglers or various "Mafia" organisations)
Serious crime = anything listed as such in the Serious Crime Act of 2015. I think the basic definition is anything where the perpetrator could be considered a risk to the public at large. As with politically defined things, it's a bit fuzzy, but I don't think it actually covers things like physical assault, which, sadly, are common and widespread, and not treated as seriously as they should be.
Organised crime refers to crimes committed by a group of people who cooperate with each other in order to perpetrate various crimes. Serious crime refers to crimes that are considered to be of a serious nature (Not sure of the exact definition, but ISTR is any crime that has a maximum sentence of 5 years or longer).
A group of people who organise the fly-tipping of building waste would be an organised criminal gang, but this would probably not be considered to be *serious* organised crime. A person who murders his next door neigbour over a fence dispute would have commited a serious crime but it would not be an *organised* crime.
Robberies and murders etc carried out by a group of people acting in a common interest would be considered serious organised crime.
HTH
Yes, they run in packs... and usually run a waste disposal entity. Dipping your beaks in places not welcome by Organized Crime is a way to end up as death statistic. You gots to be part of the system, or an opponent.
There is plenty of room for small time Johnnies, but usually that operation will be "absorbed" by the group already controlling the area. It really is a corporate structure, not so may laws.
Disclaimer, I grew up near Chicago and lived there for 3 years while in Uni, while working the food service business. It was all loosely connected, with a few names at the top. Some had the same last names as politicians, coincidence to be sure...
When i use my online bank services, I believe (and seriously hope) that all traffic is strongly encrypted. Does that make the banks criminal? (O.k., they may be, but for other reasons). What about the VPN I need to use to access my work server when not on the local network? What about using https instead of http? And so on.
If governments do not want us to use crypto, they should show an example and stop using it themselves, making all documents and communication public. Like that's ever gonna happen.
Absolutely agree. It's the first thing I want to say to any idiot with a public mandate. You want backdoored encryption ? Fine, let's start with your communications. See how you like that.
After all, leading is showing by example, right ?
Okay, stop pushing, I'm on my way out.
I think banks come under the heading of serious disorganised crime British bank TSB says it will fix days-long transaction troubles tonight
Soon Pi will no longer be 3.14, but just plain 3 as the .14 is clearly messy and the sign of a creator who had no idea what they were doing :P (/sarc in case it wasnt obvious)
I still stand by my view that if the tech companies wanted to, they could demonstrate to countries and the idiots running them what will happen when crypto and privacy is removed by simply turning off the service for 7 days (1 calendar week) in that geographical location.
In this instance but turning off Fb / WhatsApp / Instagram / Signal / Telegram / Twitter etc etc ad infinitum (I dont know, nor care to know them all) as well the banks turning off all secure pay options for online services too (after all thats encrption too right? :P ) for all Aussie users, the government and the idiots running it could them observe what is the outcome of what they desire but I suspect they wont like the result (I'm guessing total riots and breakdown of society within 72hours).
You'd lose all online and remote banking payment services
No MS Teams / Zoom / Skype etc
No online shopping, pretty much no online services
No ATMs
No Legal advice or complex cases dealt with by lawyers
No mobile phone services - this would probably affect the emergency services radio systems too, military too potentially
Contracts would probably grind to a halt as well
All of these things are underpinned by encryption in some form or another. In some cases yes there are ways around that but its slower, more labour intensive and requires more input from the "customer"
Are all the 20-somethings today used to having everything at their fingertips going to go back to doing things how it happened in the 50s? Will they be happy about that?
I suspect it would cause an awful lot of problems, especially if the tech companies/banks etc could co-ordinate to bring their withdrawl of services at the same time. It might make government ministers actually pay attention to the fact that encryption and privacy are needed. Also yes I do believe it would lead to riots and an increase in violence and cause societal issues of a magnitude that could cause some countries to struggle to manage it.
Blacksmiths do as well.... or so I was told by a highly talented blacksmith who was trying to teach me how to hit hot metal.
Now what that says about the U.S. Army, or indeed blacksmiths, I wouldn't dare to contemplate let alone post on a public forum - both groups (and most of the individuals within them) are bigger than me!
I'd suggest that it means neither group are all that bothered with absolute accuracy (or as near to as possible) Lets face it do the US army really care where their shells/missiles land? Based on their performance since 9/11 I'd suggest not (and that appears to apply to most allied armed forces too).
As for blacksmiths, well the process of fettling matters and can be used to make a forged peice fit, and you can always weld on an extra bit if appropiate etc, there are ways to make things work and add/remove materials
However context matters, and when talking about maths and crypto, preciseness and accuracy matter a lot (which was the point of the joke). You cant just make up the rules of maths to suit your needs in such situations where you care or there is the potential to introduce large gaping security holes. (or in the case of Nasa forgetting the change between Imperial/Metric, losing a multimillion probe to mars another good example of preciseness/accuracy mattering)
“Soon Pi will no longer be 3.14, but just plain 3 as the .14 is clearly messy and the sign of a creator who had no idea what they were doing :P (/sarc in case it wasnt obvious) “
It has already been tried https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
Hopefully it did serve as an example.
Phil Zimmerman felt the heat of the US government when it conducted a criminal investigation into his (alleged) 'munitions export without a license', i.e. PGP being made available globally. Thankfully this was dropped.
(All) governments have this lovely double standard - they want to keep their own communications secure and private, but be able to read everyone else's.
That was nothing but security theater, and everybody knew it.
A far better example is Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" book, my copy of which includs source code examples both in the text (which did not fall under the export restrictions) and in the CD, which was bound into the cover (and very definitely did fall under those restrictions). From daft people come daft laws. Do you vote? For daft people? Are you sure?
I'm bookmarking this article for the next time a commentard insists they can throw together an encrypted chat app using off the shelf components in five minutes. I feel many would get the same reaction if they ever did put one together and release it publicly. Nobody who has any understanding of this stuff is complacent about how hard it is to get right.
There's a problem with a couple of your examples.
Political activists and whistle blowers are both treated as criminals by politicians and law enforcement agencies by default. Even when the political action is as simple as a quiet vigil near the scene of a tragic murder. (Once the popular duchess has left the area, natch.)
Despite there being an opera house Australia has no claim to being a cultural powerhouse in any respect. The brightest, thrown up by through regression towards the mean by even the most unpromising stock, leave. Thereby they make no contribution back toward maintaining genetic diversity.
Let's not sell cars because they're used as getaway vehicle
Do not lock your house because we may want to get in
.. inevitably leading to ye olde backdoor argument, so let's drop a few there too:
Let's have a backdoor - and see your TSA keys now even sold on Amazon
Hello Clipper II - new arguments, just as stupid
Is it just me or is there a seven year cycle to this stupidity? That said, I'm starting to get the impression that his particular cycle hasn't shown any signs of abating just yet.
Using algorithms (even the good ones) without understanding the basics is the same as having the best DIY tools but no understanding of the basics laws of nature.
In the case of a hammer you could try to prevent beginners from hitting their own thumbs by suggesting they hold it with two hands but that only means the threat now moves to their toes, but I'm getting a bit off track here.
What I wanted to say is that you have to have a grasp of the fundamentals of security and protection or your use of a secure algorithm is leaving plenty of weaknesses to bypass the barrier the good crypto will present, and getting that whole framework right, well, that's why good people study for years and still find new things to improve and even then the occasional gifted amateur trips them up and dials it again a notch higher.
I'm glad these people are around.
"In the case of a hammer you could try to prevent beginners from hitting their own thumbs by suggesting they hold it with two hands but that only means the threat now moves to their toes, but I'm getting a bit off track here."
Just a bit off track ... but a good place to add something useful ... When first teaching someone to split wood, put them on their knees in front of the log, and the base of the log at ground-level. That way, when they miss the target, the sledge or axe strikes the ground, not their shins or feet. Saves on hospital visits. The actual loss in impact force is minimal, as measured by me, using a couple nieces & nephews, and a couple of adults as test subjects (that's strikers, not strikees).
I buried a cutting block in the ground out at the woodshed just for this.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
