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Comment by ethbro | Hacker News Reader

I'm on the "encryption is a right and essential to functioning software systems" train with you. But I don't want stick my head in the sand and pretend the other side doesn't have valid points.

If all network devices were trivially penetrated by government surveillance, a hypothetical terrorist plot with a WMD has chance A of being discovered. If network devices that are impenetrable to government surveillance are used, I'm not going to argue that the same plot doesn't have < A chance of being discovered (ceteris paribus).

I happen to believe that's a good and just tradeoff to preserve the values of a democratic society, but I accept that others might think otherwise.

The US (and France, and the UK, and everyone else grappling with this that cares to pretend to be a democracy) should absolutely have a thorough, resolute discussion about our options.

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If alcohol prohibition was reinstated it would probably save about 88,000[0] lives a year in the US. Between 1995 and 2014, 3503[1] US Citizens worldwide were killed by terrorism. If congress wants to save lives it could be done in a much less constitutionally suspect way. This is why I suspect that saving lives is not the true reasoning.

[0]http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm

[1]https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_AmericanTerrorismDeaths...

The same point can be made about gun control, but there are definitely "true believers" who think that limiting access to guns is the most important political issue _because_ it would save lives. There are even people who are scared of mass shootings, which have killed ~700 people in 35 years[1] in the USA. I've seen blogs use that statistic as an argument for stricter gun control! There are people who are scared of flying, when 429 people died in 2013 from aviation accidents[2] (albeit overwhelmingly in GA, not commercial). Yet these same people happily drive to work every day, even though ~32,000 died in automobile accidents in 2014[3]!

Everyone knows that humans are terrible at estimating small risks of large dangers. The really scary thing is that humans are also by-and-large incapable of updating based on that knowledge.

[1]: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... [2]: http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/AviationDataSt... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

Prohibition stops 88,000 people from drinking themselves to death. But how many lives are lost due to the illegal alcohol trade? How many people die from drinking denatured alcohol, mouthwash and vanilla extract? Bootleg booze? Illegal distillery explosions?

If you want to know what kind of black market arises when you prohibit a popular drug, you have multiple examples from recent history to look to. Such as the drug war, and the last time we tried to 'save lives' with alcohol prohibition.

I used terrorism as my man of straw, but the same point applies to any other illegal activity that encrypted communications would help facilitate. That's not a consequence we as technical professionals can ignore if we want to win this debate.

The first step to making a convincing argument is acknowledging reality: the proliferation of hard encryption will alter the balance between individuals and the state.

Prohibition was repealed because it was an abject failure. It did not make the public safer last time, and I very much doubt this time around would be any different.

The claim that reinstating prohibition would prevent all alcohol-related deaths is simply not based in reality.

And the current anti-terror programs are a resounding success?

I neither said not implied anything about the anti-terror programs. I solely wanted to address your claims about reinstating prohibition, lest someone support it based on that flawed analysis.

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