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Comment by skee0083 | Hacker News Reader

The earn it bill is already unenforceable. open source crypto already exists and is available everywhere. so yea. good luck stopping people from using it.

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This means anyone implementing and using effective crypto will be flagged for closer monitoring. A jury is made up of twelve people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. It won't be hard for a prosecutor to convince them that going out of your way to use encryption is proof of possessing child pornography. Or terrorist stuff. Or drug stuff. Or whatever else people are terrified of at the time.

Then start sending random bytes of everyone. Random bytes are undistinguishable from encrypted data. If everyone is in possession of what appears to be encrypted data, then it's no longer reasonable cause for suspicion.

Unless receiving/storing unexplainable random bytes becomes illegal (like "forgetting" your password).

Right that's why you send random bytes to other people. You're forcing everyone else to receive or store random bytes. Thus rendering any actual enforcement of a law forbidding possession of encrypted data (or random bytes) nigh-impossible.

If someone gets charged for possession of random bytes, send the prosecutor and judge a bunch of random bytes and see if they're still intent on moving forward with charges.

But how do you force other people to accept your illegal random bytes? If people actually risked legal penalties for accepting them, I imagine that spam filters would get much stricter about deleting attachments from unknown senders, for example.

>A jury is made up of twelve people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

You're assuming that every citizen is either ignorant or disdainful of their responsibilities as citizens.

That's sad. I've never tried to get out of jury duty, because I see that as part of my responsibility to my community.

That said, in the half-dozen or so times I've been called, I have yet to be selected for a jury.

But I'll do the same next time, because it's the right thing to do.

I'd add that if I were involved in a trial, I certainly wouldn't want someone who would prefer to shirk their responsibilities as a citizen on my jury, that's for sure.

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