,
9 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
So I want to talk about human rights for a moment, and what we are seeing in China. On one hand, we are seeing the crack down on Hong Kong. On the other, China spent $millions on iPhone 0days to spy on one of their ethnic minority.
The definition of "fundamental human rights" is the list of things that despotic overlords will take away so that they can oppress their citizens. You'll almost certainly disagree with this definition.
This means "end-to-end" and "full-disk" encryption are fundamental human rights. Sure, in America, we want police to be able to decrypt cellphones to solve child abduction and terrorism cases. But as China demonstrates, it's something they outlaw in order to oppress citizens.
We can see the right to speak publicly playing out in Hong Kong right now after months of protests and crack down. But equal to this right is the right to speak privately, to organize such protests without government eavesdropping on the communications and punishing organizers.
I deal with a lot of law enforcement types who are focused on the value of backdooring crypto to fight crime. They think privacy is a tradeoff, that the 4th amendment balances the interests of privacy with the interests of police solving crime.
This "balancing" may be something the 200 years of Supreme Court decisions have agreed upon, but it's garbage. The revolutionaries who wrote the Declaration of Independence didn't write about "balance" but a "long train of abuses and usurpations".
Human rights are universal. If it's an essential freedom for the Chinese citizens to remain free under the yoke of their government, then it's an essential freedom for Americans, too.
Sure, the US government isn't as oppressive as the Chinese government, so won't abuse backdoor encryption the way the Chinese would. But the same is true of all our other rights, like free speech or due process.
Thinking that since we live in a free country that government won't abuse its authority is backwards. It's rules preventing government abusing its authority that makes this a free country. History shows our free country still abuses its authority when it can.
