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Comment by iamleppert | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how the people who wrote crypto software and provide secure messaging services feel about terrorists and other bad people using their products to execute their plans? Most of these people wouldn't have the ability or access to such technology had it not be for the efforts of a few who have made it very accessible and user friendly.

I know there are plenty of legitimate uses, but especially for the services that essentially bill themselves as secure and untraceable, you have to know at a certain point you've designed and built technology that is actively being used to hurt innocent people. For me it would be difficult to quantify if the amount of good is worth the all the bad people in the world.

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This is the "think of the children" argument used by many manipulative government news agencies when discussing

anonymous money anonymous communication anonymous residence anonymous weapons

etc

Maybe we should make hands illegal since they do illegal things and you can only use your hand with a license from the smart-over-lord-government, right?

Or less dramatically, all technology and all constructions from home improvements to particle accelerators to hairspray to encrypted internet should pass review from the government and people can only work on what the government approves and use things they have licenses for.

Do you want to apply your same argument to car manufacturers? Cars can be used by kidnappers, bank robbers, rapists and murderers to flee crime scenes. So car manufacturers should stop producing cars because all of the good they are used for (visiting loved ones in the hospital, visiting your kids baseball game, going to work) isn't worth the carnage caused by the "bad people"?

Exactly right. It goes with almost anything, if you make it, someone will end up finding a way to use it in a negative way. If everyone lived thinking X shouldn't be created because it could turn into Y then we would all be living in caves afraid of everyone else.

Did you see the frontpage today? EU clamping down on bitcoin to avoid viking invasion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10594453

You just made me laugh out loud :)

Give me a half hour and a $500 budget (cash) to go shopping at Home Depot, Canadian Tire or some other DIY shop and I can do some fairly bad things. Tools will always be dual use, the same encryption that powers your e-commerce can be used to fairly reliably communicate between two parties if the best-before-date of the communications is something on the order of a few weeks to months.

So you basically get to choose: we stop all tools from being freely available and we open up all our communications to criminals and governments alike or we will have to take the good with the bad.

The people who wrote crypto software (and the people who built TOR and who operate anonymous proxy servers, VPN services and so on, built bitcoin, the internet, your browser and your mail client) all realize their work is 'dual use' and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it so just let it go and accept it.

That same hammer that can pound in a nail in the hands of a carpenter (skilled or not) can be used to bludgeon someone to death. Should we ban hammers? How should the person who invented the hammer feel?

A tool I invented is used by some pretty bad people. I don't like it much. But I recognize that that same tool is also used for good, and that those good uses are probably the majority of them. It used to bother me, but I got over it, now I do think longer and harder about if there is any possible bad use of the stuff I make that I can make harder by designing the stuff I build in a different way. It doesn't always work out and people are pretty clever about finding alternate uses.

I always find this type of reasoning absolutely hilarious. It relies on some odd hyperdualism that "good people" and "bad people" are two biologically distinct entities and that the latter engaging in activity immediately makes it zero-sum. As if good people are human and bad people are space lizards.

Bad people are people. They will do the exact same things that people in general do. They will use the exact same services that people in general use.

You know what has objectively led to much more innocent people being hurt than crypto? The Internet. Why aren't you out there guilt tripping all people who work on it?

It's like saying, how the people who invented a knife and provide a way to cut fruit feel about criminals and other bad people using their products to kill people.

It is said that one of the reasons that led Alberto Santos-Dumont to commit suicide was the use of airplanes in warfare[1][2].

I wonder if anyone believes that the world would be better today if we didn't have airplanes, even if they are sometimes used to hurt innocent people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont#Death

[2] http://global.britannica.com/biography/Alberto-Santos-Dumont

I work at Silent Circle (Phil's new company), writing secure communications software. Sure, hitmen and thieves may use the software, but I trade the slightly higher risk of crime against me for the extra privacy.

> Most of these people wouldn't have the ability

That's a dangerous assumption in any situation (it's never a good idea to assume your opponent is stupid). We do not have a monopoly on mathematics; you never know who has read [1]الكتاب المختصر في حساب الجبر والمقابلة‎.

> I wonder how the people who wrote crypto software and provide secure messaging services feel about terrorists and other bad people using their products

Are you going to ask shoemakers the same question? I'm sure most terrorist prefer the advantage of durable shoes when fighting. While I don't have any numbers, I suspect durable shoes have helped more terrorists than encryption.

...

The problem is you're anthropomorphizing technology. Each new technology is neither good nor evil (or neutral). I'll let Feynman explain:

    I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good
    thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

    Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a
    man said, “I am going to tell you something that you will never forget.”
    And then he said, “To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven.
    The same key opens the gates of hell.”

    And so it is with science. In a way it is a key to the gates of heaven,
    and the same key opens the gates of hell, and we do not have any
    instructions as to which is which gate. Shall we throw away the key
    and never have a way to enter the gates of heaven? Or shall we struggle
    with the problem of which is the best way to use the key? That is,
    of course, a very serious question, but I think that we cannot deny
    the value of the key to the gates of heaven.”

Encryption is just a tool, and like every tool that has ever been made it will occasionally be used jby bad people doing bad things.

We keep learning more and more science and technology, and I don't think it is truly possible to stop that trend. I suggest we start finding ways to live with each other in the presence of technologies like encryption, because he problem is only going to get worse. We, as a species, are going to have a serious problem if we haven't learned that lesson by the time someone invents a way to make nuclear weapons with common household parts... or some unknown technology that is even worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Compendious_Book_on_Calcul...

How can you make that argument when it's clear that bad people would have found other means to encrypt their communication anyway?

It is so easy to do basic crypto if you're a terrorist - to them, whether xMessenger.app has it is a marginal usability difference. Giving terrorists a marginal usability difference, to many, is okay in exchange for securing the bulk of innocent communications from overreaching governments.

http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/01/09/24/162236/philip-...

Zimmerman's response to being described as "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt" in article following 9/11 and the possibility that his encryption tools had been used by the plotters.

Everything can be used for bad. Does someone who makes a knife feel bad about if it is used for murder or torture? Probably yes, I know I would, but do I feel guilty? Hell no. I cannot control what a bad person will do with my good thing. Encryption is no different, it can be (and is) used for good. Keeping people safe with secure communication is just one of those things. Yes that also means bad people can use it to plot an attack. It is unfortunate but there is no stopping its use. Terrorists have used encryption for as long as the "good guys" have.

In the same way one might wonder how the people that make door locks and window blinds feel about terrorists and other bad people using their products to execute their plans.

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