Tea

Encryption Is Not a Crime

https://programming.dev/post/28846283

programming.dev - A collection of programming communities

I’ve been day dreaming about a social media platform built entirely on a peer-to-peer (P2P) model, leveraging the existing BitTorrent protocol. The idea is to decentralize content creation, distribution, and moderation, eliminating the need for centralized servers and control. Here’s the high-level vision: - Posts as Torrents: Every original post creates and seeds a torrent file on behalf of the OP. - Upvotes as Seeds: Upvoting a post downloads and seeds the post, reinforcing its availability. - Comments as Torrents: Each comment generates and seeds a torrent file somehow linked to the original post. - Comment Upvotes as Seeds: Upvoting a comment downloads and seeds the comment, amplifying engagement. - Text Only: to avoid exposing users to potentially graphic content (due to lack of centralized moderation) this platform would initially be limited to text content only. This would also drastically reduce the compute and bandwidth requirements of the seeder. - Custom BitTorrent Clients: Open-source Social Media BitTorrent clients would display the most popular social media content by day, week, month, or year. These clients would allow users to seed only the content they find valuable thus organically moderating the network of ideas. Relevant content continues to be seeded and shared, while outdated or unpopular content fades due to a lack of seeds. This setup seems like it could address key issues in traditional social media—privacy, censorship, and centralized control—while naturally prioritizing high-value content. Why hasn’t a system like this been widely adopted? Is it a matter of technical limitations, lack of a viable economic model, or something else? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Apr 18, 2025 at 8:10pmWeb
Show threadEm AdespotonApr 18, 2025
Yet.
Show threadFartsWithAnAccentApr 18, 2025
It's kind of integral to the function of enterprise?
Show threadzerofatorialApr 18, 2025
The entire financial system literally relies on encryption
Show threadFartsWithAnAccentApr 18, 2025
Lots of really critical stuff needs encryption, it's absolutely insane to try and ban it.
Show threadundefinedApr 18, 2025
to try to* ban it
Show threadJimVanDeventerApr 18, 2025
People lock their doors; everyone understands.
Show threadKairosApr 18, 2025
In China, basically every enterprise uses a VPN to get uncensored internet when needed.
Show threadannette_runnerApr 18, 2025
It’s definitely not integral. You could just control the connection points. Ie, all your software tools on intranet and wired connection only. Any data can be decrypted.
Show threadNaibofTabrApr 18, 2025
No one can bank online without reliable encryption. No one can transact business online without reliable encryption.
Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
You can actually. It just wouldn’t be encrypted.
Show threadhalcyoncmdrApr 19, 2025
Instead you just have to trust that anything you’re doing is actually with who they claim to be. No encryption means no identity or security guarantee.
Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
Closed systems don’t require encryption.
Show threadhalcyoncmdrApr 19, 2025
Are you stupid enough to actually think the Internet is a closed system?
Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
No lmao. How did you get that from all the talk about radio transmission and encryption?
Show threadhalcyoncmdrApr 19, 2025
This specific thread is talking about transacting business and banking online. You should be more careful to keep your arguments separated. Otherwise you not only look like an idiot but you also prove you can’t multitask for shit.
Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
This specific thread is about criminality of encryption.
Show threadNaibofTabrApr 19, 2025

In which case anyone who wants to can read the message traffic and make changes to it before passing it on to the receiver.

No, you can’t conduct business this way.

Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
Thats why it would have to be a closed system with controlled transmissions rather than omnidirectional radio transmissions.
Show threadrottingleafApr 19, 2025

You mean, for everyone to have their own infrastructure, many times what we have now, and still some jerk can literally wiretap like in old times?

Or send messengers?

Show threadFartsWithAnAccentApr 18, 2025

No, you are wildly incorrect for multiple reasons both technical and practical.

I'm not even going to waste any more of my time pointing out how intensely ridiculous your assertions are.

Show threadannette_runnerApr 18, 2025
Please tell me banking didnt exist before radio transmission.
Show threadFartsWithAnAccentApr 18, 2025
Please continue to highlight your spectacular ignorance so that everyone knows for sure that you should not be taken seriously.
Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
Everyone? You mean the 10 people that read this thread?
Show threadrottingleafApr 19, 2025
That’s correct, but your point is not clear. Public infrastructure is not a closed system. If your “closed systems” have to communicate, they either build and support their own parallel infrastructure or don’t, or communicate without encryption over public infrastructure. Which is not acceptable.
Show threadrottingleafApr 19, 2025

People used encryption for commercial purposes since Antiquity.

If your point is how it mostly was right “before radio transmission” - that latency would break civilization. You’d have to send messengers with safes for correspondence. The contents of which would be encrypted.

By the way, in those days nobody in their right mind would suggest banning encryption. If you need to read something - get a court order to read it first, if you read it without that you’ve committed a crime and it’s not admissible. If it’s encrypted, you could get the court to demand someone to decipher it, if it’s certain that they can.

A lot of steps, see, to not infringe on private life.

Show threadhenfredemarsApr 18, 2025
They’ll send you to the Gulag here even if you didn’t commit a crime.
Show threadannette_runnerApr 18, 2025

I think it’s contextual. It is definitely relevant to bring into a criminal case that criminals made attempts to obstruct gathering of evidence in commission of the crime. It’s no different than shredding or burning paper files. Evidence of criminals taking steps to hide the criminal activity is how you prove that a transgression is willful rather than negligent. That matters in cases like murder.

Encryption is also criminal in some contexts, like encrypted radio broadcasts on frequencies for public use.

It definitely belongs as a talking point in a courtroom, imo.

Show threadRevvApr 18, 2025

With respect, this is a short-sighted take. There’s literally no legitimate crime that is made worse because a person tried to avoid it being detected. Plot a murder over tor? Not a good look. But in what universe is someone less morally culpable because they just posted on craigslist?

On the other hand, allowing the use of encryption or other privacy methods to affect the criminality or punishment assigned to an action just creates a backdoor to criminalizing privacy itself. Allowing that serves no real purpose in deterring folks from hurting others, but it sure does further the interests of an oppressive or authoritarian regime.

Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
How does covering up a crime not make it worse when it allows you to get away and commit more crime?
Show threadjmfApr 19, 2025
Doing crime in the privacy of my own home allows me to get away with it and commit more crime, doesn’t mean we should have transparent walls that everyone can watch what you do through.
Show threadannette_runnerApr 19, 2025
I don’t disagree with that but the article is talking about what arguments are permissible in a court room which is a little different. Same as using tools to commit a crime. It’s not illegal to own or use tools but when used in commission of a crime, this can be a factor in proving elements of a crime that require proof of intention or malice.
Show threadjmfApr 20, 2025
Not sure I understand how you are reading the article. That’s like saying having a steak knife in your home is a factor in proving elements of a crime. Tools are completely neutral parties that are unrelated to prosecution, and encryption should be no different.
Show threadrottingleafApr 19, 2025

It’s no different than shredding or burning paper files.

Both are normal if you work with information you wouldn’t like to leak. Or something very personal.

They are that thing you said only if they are unusual for the circumstance. When that gives information that a person did something not normal.

Because that’s a sign of something, kinda similar to shaking hands and missing shovel and sudden lack of time for guests.

Encrypting everything on Internet-connected machines is not unusual. It’s perfectly normal. It’s f* obligatory.

Encryption is also criminal in some contexts, like encrypted radio broadcasts on frequencies for public use.

Because that’s almost jamming, if everyone could broadcast all they can, nobody could use those frequencies. And since you have to make space there, private transmissions probably belong somewhere else. Doesn’t matter when using wire. This is irrelevant to encryption.

It definitely belongs as a talking point in a courtroom, imo.

No it doesn’t. Even if someone suddenly started encrypting everything, no. Maybe they learned how the world works and decided to learn to do it just in case.

Show threadOpisekApr 18, 2025
It’s the Cypherpunk’s Manifesto all over again.
Show threadCosmicTurtle0 [he/him]Apr 18, 2025
Show threadanonApril2025Apr 19, 2025
Too bad the paper proclamation that is the constitution means nothing today
Show threadadrianApr 18, 2025
And backdoored encryption is just as bad as unencrypted, maybe worse, since it lulls you into a false sense of security.
Show threadturmacarApr 19, 2025
Mathematically worse.
Show threadCalipherJonesApr 19, 2025

I heard the Salt Typhoon attack was only able to happen because of backdoors in encryption.

wired.com/…/chinas-salt-typhoon-spies-are-still-h…

China’s Salt Typhoon Spies Are Still Hacking Telecoms—Now by Exploiting Cisco Routers

Despite high-profile attention and even US sanctions, the group hasn’t stopped or even slowed its operation, including the breach of two more US telecoms.

WIRED
Show threadMagnusApr 18, 2025

Encryption is only a crime if done by a poor or not the government. So long as it’s got the rich people backing it, it’s not even in the same league.

When will you people see that this world doesn’t have universal rules. It has rules for the poor. And those for the rich.

Show threadaltkey (he\him)Apr 19, 2025

There’s a mass without roofs, a prison to fill

A country soul that reads post not bills

A strike, and a line of cops outside of the mill.

There is a right to obey, and the right to kill.

© Rage against the Machine

Show threadGreg ClarkeApr 19, 2025
Encryption is not a crime *unless you’re doing it to someone else’s data to extort them for bitcoins
Show threadGuy IngonitoApr 19, 2025
Legalize it
Show threadMikeApr 19, 2025
They’ll just make it a crime and pretend you were wrong all along. We’re not playing by moral rules anymore.
Show threadrottingleafApr 19, 2025
Encryption is not just not a crime, it’s a republican virtue, those arguments usually used about guns, they are even better applicable to encryption. Encryption is actually a civil duty, because of herd immunity being damaged by people not using encryption. That public institutes’ erosion we are seeing in the last decades - it’s because the technological progress made the need for encryption to blow up, not accompanied with sufficient public perception. That erosion is a result of bad people having gotten orders of magnitude more information about everyone to plan their actions.
Show threadBigBenisApr 19, 2025
Encryption should be no more a crime than locking your house or storing your valuables in a safe.
Show threadFriendBestoApr 20, 2025
Who is the removed who would that encryption is a crime?
Show threadSturgistApr 20, 2025
A fairly large portion of governments globally
Show threadjsomaeApr 20, 2025
I believe in some jurisdictions it is in some circumstances a crime, yes.
Show threadcy_narratorApr 21, 2025
Encryption is like a lock, it has keys. Its like saying “All of you should provide a print of all your keys used in your home to the police, else how would we know you are not hiding a body in there?”