SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 29 2015, @11:37PM
Let's hope she can go fuck herself. If not there's always the option to bend over and let someone help out.
Perhaps the right to anonymity and encryption will be included in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It's obvious that this may be abused in many ways and protect really bad people. But it's also clear that for a sustainable democracy there needs to be some absolute protection from people in the government that does bad things to any opposition.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 29 2015, @11:58PM
Although I was tempted to call encryption a "human right" in the headline, the report's argument is more that encryption and anonymity are necessary for human rights, like freedom of expression and privacy, as well as protection from people harming you.
The report says this:
It doesn't say how courts are supposed to compel suspects to decrypt, and it obviously doesn't recommend weakening decryption, so it gives wiggle room. There are circumstances where you lose your right to freedom of expression anyway, such as shouting "FIRE" or urging people to commit genocide.
That was the killer line in this report.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday May 30 2015, @05:44AM
'Restrictions on encryption and anonymity, as enablers of the right to freedom of expression, must meet the well-known three-part test: any limitation on expression must be provided for by law; may only be imposed for legitimate grounds (as set out in article 19 (3) of the Covenant); and must conform to the strict tests of necessity and proportionality."
Restricting these things simply should not be allowed at all in the general case (i.e. for everyone). And for individuals, the government shouldn't be able to jail someone forever because they claim they forgot the key and therefore can't surrender it. The human brain is faulty and it is incredibly unjust to expect people to somehow prove they forgot. The government may have a legitimate authority to attempt to decrypt the information after being subject to legal oversight, but it does not have the power to make your rights vanish just to make it easier for the government to solve crimes (i.e. mandatory backdoors).
There are circumstances where you lose your right to freedom of expression anyway, such as shouting "FIRE" or urging people to commit genocide.
I'm not aware of a general ban on shouting "fire".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Saturday May 30 2015, @07:34AM
However most people seems to subscribe to the "I have nothing to hide" without realizing the systematic consequences and human cognitive inability. So voting on this issue is probably futile and the process is also likely to be put under pressure for special interest.
It's kind of killing someone just a little bit. It doesn't work that way.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 05 2015, @12:53PM
During the WWII. The population experiences selective pressure that took away a lot of "I have nothing to hide". Perhaps this is the foreplay for a similar scenario?