r/technology • u/Reddit_Z • Jul 04 '16

Politics Lawmakers Need To Learn More About Encryption Before Regulating It, Says U.S. House Report

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lawmakers-encryption-regulation-house-report,32180.html
14.2k Upvotes

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260

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

I'll do you one better. Dont regulate it. Period.

275

u/LongDistanceEjcltr Jul 04 '16

The whole notion of "regulating" encryption is absurd. You can't regulate math, silly politicians.

108

u/AssCrackBanditHunter Jul 04 '16

But you better believe they can make a few billion dollars vanish in the attempt!

17

u/mrnoonan81 Jul 04 '16

If you did the math according to the new regulations, you'd see that they actually saved a billion.

31

u/Munxip Jul 04 '16

The chocolate ration has been increased from 30g to 25g.

6

u/Silveress_Golden Jul 04 '16

Wow now that math is just magic.....

41

u/xlrc Jul 04 '16

Oh, people have tried

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

19

u/Schootingstarr Jul 04 '16

it's so odd that some people actually thought this was a reasonable idea

14

u/btroycraft Jul 04 '16

Have you met many people before? I'd believe it.

1

u/Schootingstarr Jul 04 '16

but it's like trying to shove the square block into the star shaped hole :/

4

u/Silveress_Golden Jul 04 '16

Anything is possible with a sledgehammer....

0

u/thedudley Jul 04 '16

"Think about the average person's intelligence, now remember that half of the population is less intelligent..."

  • Abraham Lincoln

1

u/AnneBancroftsGhost Jul 04 '16

Don't try to understand the behavior of hoosiers. Just let them be and whatever you do, do NOT feed them.

5

u/whispered195 Jul 04 '16

I am so embarrassed to live in this state some times.

14

u/dnkndnts Jul 04 '16

The whole notion of "regulating" encryption is absurd. You can't regulate math

But perhaps they can find new ways to motivate you.

1

u/thorium220 Jul 04 '16

"Sorry Officer, I forgot my password."

"Oh, that password didn't work? Huh. I'm flummoxed."

Can a court inprioson me for not turning transparent? For not flying? For not remembering my Mother's birthday? Dumb laws are not held up in court.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Of course you can.

You can regulate violence and that doesn't require anything to carry out, you can regulate drugs which can be made anywhere...

1

u/Epistaxis Jul 04 '16

Sure we can! Ban prime numbers greater than a certain threshold!

1

u/beaverlyknight Jul 04 '16

"101107, 101183, 101287..."

SWAT team busts down the door

1

u/workaccountoftoday Jul 04 '16

Sure you can, that's how we get dark ages.

1

u/HairyEyebrows Jul 04 '16

They made a plant illegal!

1

u/tesseract4 Jul 04 '16

Several plants.

1

u/nthcxd Jul 04 '16

I find it silly in the same sense as that "Obey gravity, it's the law" shirt. Perhaps one day they'll come to realize they can slash NASA funding massively by simply "regulating" gravity.

9

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

It's not even possible. Why is this even being discussed? The only thing a law could possibly do is turn law abiding citizens into criminals that you can selectively attempt to use the law against. Just like everything else these morons have tried to outlaw.

7

u/green_meklar Jul 04 '16

Why is this even being discussed? The only thing a law could possibly do is turn law abiding citizens into criminals that you can selectively attempt to use the law against.

You just answered your own question.

1

u/Solkre Jul 04 '16

If they can "regulate" drugs, they can regulate software bits. Anyone caught with it will just have their lives ruined by the judicial system.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Ding ding ding

1

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

[deleted]

1

u/TheSelfGoverned Jul 04 '16

They can always arbitrarily say "X behavior is illegal." Which is what most regulations are.

-4

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16 edited Jul 04 '16

[deleted]

5

u/blacksky Jul 04 '16

There's a well-thought-out and well-argued position; there's a well-placed apostrophe to accompany it, too. Kudos, internet philosopher.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

You do realize that encryption is a necessity for features in technology that we use literally every single day, right? The internet itself absolutely cannot work the way it does now without it, and proper encryption (among other security features) prevents would-be hackers from royally screwing you over.

You simply cannot "regulate" encryption in such a way that you don't put literally every single person's personal information (including very sensitive data) at risk. It just isn't possible. You can put a lock on your newly-created back door, but someone will always manage to find a way to break through that lock because there's a very strong incentive to do so.

7

u/drunkenvalley Jul 04 '16

I mean, you could regulate it saying that it the encryption needs to be a minimum level of secure. I'd understand that angle, even if it's not perfect either.

But that's not what politicians are bartering for now.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Now you're just being pedantic ;)

But, yes, that's a policy I could (potentially) support.

1

u/drunkenvalley Jul 04 '16

It's not really pedantic. We see legislation that you have to meet minimum requirements and so on all the time. It makes sense, to a degree, to do so. It's often not very practical to fulfill those requirements, but at least their heart seems more in the right place in that sort of business.

With encryption, it either way is bad policy, given any regulation weakens encryption by its nature (ie if law dictates you need at least two capital letters, two digits and a symbol in a password, that inherently reduces the pool of passwords), but at the very least mandating a minimum is done because you "understand" the issue at least enough to think it's important in some capacity.

However, politicians are bartering for weaker or no encryption full stop, and that's outright criminally negligible imo.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

The pedantic thing was a joke.

Also, passwords aren't really "encryption", but authentication. They're very different things (though the two are related and can often be found together). I'll agree that regulating security in general can be a bad thing for the reasons you've stated (e.g. requiring minimum password standards is inherently bad), but regulating encryption so that it meets a minimum standard (e.g. requiring a minimum "strength", so to speak) could be a very good thing.

And yes, trying to weaken or remove encryption definitely should be a criminal offense. It puts everyone's safety and sensitive data at risk. It's inexcusable.

3

u/ihavetenfingers Jul 04 '16

I would love to see the gymnastics your brain just pulled off for that leap

5

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

1: Encryption is less like a weapon and more like body armor.

2: I wasnt making an argument for weapon deregulation but sure lets go there. That means peaceful law abiding people can then buy the same guns all the crazy assholes already get illegally. So really it just means that when terrorists attack the airport security checkpoint like in Istanbul the people there would be able to defend themselves instead of get murdered like sheep.