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0 pointskube-system11mo ago0 comments

I’m not saying every layer of the onion is individually encrypted. But there are plenty of layers that are.

There is plenty of encryption used when you send any sort of message from an iPhone, even SMS. You can’t even turn the dang thing on and unlock it without encryption. Then when you send it, it’ll be encrypted by the radio before transmission. Then in transit it may or may not be encrypted at various points.

And POTS is not the internet.

My overall point is that encryption is used all of the time when people use the internet for routine tasks that they expect to work, and would not work in a modern reasonable way without it.

People use these technical implementations details to muddy the water of this conversation and demonize encryption, when the reality is that everyone uses it literally all the time for almost everything.

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gruez11mo ago

>There is plenty of encryption used when you send any sort of message from an iPhone, even SMS. You can’t even turn the dang thing on and unlock it without encryption. Then when you send it, it’ll be encrypted by the radio before transmission. Then in transit it may or may not be encrypted at various points.

If your argument for encryption is "we need encryption because if it's banned overnight all our phones will turn into bricks!", then yeah sure I guess it's true. But even the diehard encryption opponents aren't arguing for this. My point is that you can very much have no encryption, but not "anyone could log into any of your accounts, take your money ...".

kube-systemOP11mo ago

Colloquially, there is a perception among some that encryption is a thing that only the military, criminals, etc use.

Many people are unaware that they use it in everyday life.

If you listen to discussions on this topic outside of technical forums, this perception is not uncommon. It’s important to be clear to laypeople about the ubiquity of encryption, because they are the majority of voters.

OhMeadhbh11mo ago

Another aspect is traditionally the administrative burden for state actors to receive permission to eavesdrop on POTS technology is relatively high. Or at least it was before the Patriot Act. I would argue it is still higher than eavesdropping on modern digital communications (IPCMS, Email, web browsing, etc.)

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