(06-09-2021, 10:45 PM)ABNARTY Wrote: You bring up a good point. You never know who is running your particular product. Could land you in some hot water. But then again if you are running drugs, child trafficking, or stolen weapons maybe you need to be in hot water.
From a purely personal perspective, I don't believe ANY drugs should be illegal - it's none of my business how someone else decides to destroy himself, and it would improve the species by culling the weak. Child traffickers should be shot on sight. They ought to have an open season on them year round, and a high bag limit so that everyone could assist in their eradication. That would improve the species, too. I've never caught the government doing much at all about stolen weapons, except in one case, and even then the thieves returned the weapons because a private citizen was hunting them down with blood in his eye and a take no prisoners attitude - the government didn't have much to do with it at all, and really wasn't any help.
The bottom line of encryption, though, is that the algorithms don't care who is using them, or what for. They can be used either for good or evil, and so they will be. It appears, however, that criminals don't have the time to put in to researching them, what with all that crime they have to do and all. So they get their asses caught in the cracks, and I'm ok with that.
Like guns, the Powers That Be don't even attempt to take them, or encryption, out of the hands of only criminals. They instead target law abiding citizens, because it's not just the criminals they want to spy on. As a matter of fact, and again like guns, criminals are not going to care what laws they pass. Criminals ignore law. That's kinda sorta what makes them criminals.
So when Comey was pushing to ban encryption in America, the law abiding were up in arms, and the criminals were saying "Really? So what? How in the hell does another law I'm gonna ignore impact ME, exactly?"
So, since Comey failed in that attempt, they have to install fear of encryption in the law abiding, because no one can police a person like he can police himself. All this is going to do for criminals is cause them to hire folks to vet the encryption system for them before they use it. The law abiding don't have those kind of resources, so they have to vet it out for themselves, if they have the time or know-how, and most folks don't.
So anti-encryption fear will work to government advantage, and still not really affect the criminal element.
Take this operation for example - the governments busted 800 people worldwide out of... how many? They claim to have put 12,000 of these phones out there, and still only caught 800? I bet most or all of those 800 were pretty low level, too, and the bosses got off scott free. They seized 8 tons of cocaine, but claim to have video of "hundreds of tons of cocaine being smuggled in fruit shipments"? 8 tons seized out of hundreds of tons known? Seized 250 guns? 800 people, but only 250 guns? Even when we consider they KNEW of "hundreds of tons", and all of those had to be guarded by men with guns? They still only got 250 guns?
Frankly, I have doubts that this was about the criminal drug smuggling element at all. Seems that if it was, it might have been a smidge more successful.
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Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’