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United Nations Special Rapporteur David Kaye has written that encryption is necessary for freedom of expression and privacy:
No restrictions may be imposed on the right to hold opinions without interference; [...] opinions, however held online, result in surveillance or harassment, encryption and anonymity may provide necessary privacy. Restrictions on such security tools may interfere with the ability of individuals to hold opinions.
Interference may also include such efforts as targeted surveillance, distributed denial of service attacks, and online and offline intimidation, criminalization and harassment. Targeted digital interference harasses individuals and civil society organizations for the opinions they hold in many formats. Encryption and anonymity enable individuals to avoid or mitigate such harassment.
Efforts to restrict encryption and anonymity also tend to be quick reactions to terrorism, even when the attackers themselves are not alleged to have used encryption or anonymity to plan or carry out an attack. Moreover, even where the restriction is arguably in pursuit of a legitimate interest, many laws and policies regularly do not meet the standards of necessity and proportionality and have broad, deleterious effects on the ability of all individuals to exercise freely their rights to privacy and freedom of opinion and expression. [...] Outright prohibitions on the individual use of encryption technology disproportionately restrict the freedom of expression, because they deprive all online users in a particular jurisdiction of the right to carve out private space for opinion and expression, without any particular claim of the use of encryption for unlawful ends.
States should promote strong encryption and anonymity. National laws should recognize that individuals are free to protect the privacy of their digital communications by using encryption technology and tools that allow anonymity online. [...] States should not restrict encryption and anonymity, which facilitate and often enable the rights to freedom of opinion and expression. Blanket prohibitions fail to be necessary and proportionate. States should avoid all measures that weaken the security that individuals may enjoy online, such as backdoors, weak encryption standards and key escrows.
The report hits on many digital liberty topics, shaming Russia, China, and South Africa for online "real-name" policies, calling compulsory SIM card registration "well beyond any legitimate government interest," calling for access to Tor, proxies, and VPNs to be "protected and promoted," and asserting that data retention "of all users has inevitably resulted in the State having everyone's digital footprint."
By contrast, newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has become the latest Obama administration official to express "concerns" over encryption hampering anti-terrorism and law enforcement efforts.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @05:31PM
I wonder what they say about the people who whine about AC posts?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by CortoMaltese on Friday May 29 2015, @06:14PM
hidden, down modded, saged and reported.
Seriously though, anonymity (most often than not) in the internet implies separation between your virtual self and your real self, while I may have an account and you may not, we both don't know who really is typing the post (on the internet no one knows you are a dog), so unless someone reveals their identity here for all practical purposes everyone is anonymous here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Friday May 29 2015, @06:56PM
that's not necessarily true. i use this pseudonym everywhere, and have been using it for as long as i've been online (like 20 years). even though its not my "real name", this is still a name that uniquely identifies me. i've noticed a few other people using this pseudonym in other places (because i wasn't able to sign up there using it myself), but that's not much different from all the hits that come up when my real name is googled (far more hits come up for my real name than pseudonym). just because its not the name on your birth certificate doesn't mean it doesn't uniquely identify you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @07:37PM
Amen. My "real" self is also a pseudonym and part of no less than 10 email names, been using since 1990 and CompuServe.
What is your oldest AOL diskette? :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @06:51PM
Bitch, please! "Necessary privacy" and "AC posts" aren't comparable in this context at all.