Antidote to Statist Anti-Encryption Laws: Fake Surface Layer Decryption

It's time to tell statists what they want to hear if you work in the IT field. They suffer from fear from that which they do not understand and it's time to take these child politicians by the hand to guide them into the new world that is becoming. Specifically, there was a new law passed in Australia that makes it illegal for software developers to inform their superiors in the company they work for whether they've been ordered to "backdoor" the software their superiors have employed them to make for the company that is paying them.

This has obviously highly questionable ethics implications and sets employees at odds with their employers. Employers will also have to wonder if their employees have ever been ordered by their government to weaken their software. This is bound to lead to some rather interesting annual employee evaluations which might include the question, "has the Australian government ordered you to back door any part of the software we hired you to write for us?". Indeed that would be a very relevant question and one that if not answered truthfully could lead to being fired by the company for not answering truthfully, and if answered truthfully, sent to jail for divulging national security information. A real catch-22.

source

The question is, how is government to even know? Conversely, with code review, how is the employer not to know? They apparently have not heard of TrueCrypt's plausible deniability scenario (TrueCrypt is now defunct, but lives on in other open source software). There is also something known as steganography which adds layers of messages and also hides them in plain sight. An example of this can be found in one of Andreas Antonopoulos's bitcoin transactions that hid millions of USD worth in bitcoin in a picture of kittens.

There's also the ability for the employer to provide a way out using a secret warrant canary that is a proprietary secret known only to employees and their employers (and not their government). It's also very possible to layer encryption with different messages. One layer of decryption can offer a "duress" password given to authority that shows a "safe" message whereas the intended recipient would receive the deeper hidden message. This option already exists for the technically sophisticated. Therefore, the criminals will typically get away with such schemes which means that the only use for such a bill would be to further weaken security for the law abiding.

The Pre-Crime Dilemma

We are quickly reaching the boundary to the privacy of thought itself. Ask yourself the question, does government have a right to know what you're thinking? If they could technologically determine what you are thinking, would they even be able to understand the context? If you think the answer is yes, then you are a statist and also very naive about the nature of life itself and likely very insecure and immature as a human being. When was the last time you had full control of the thoughts that you had enter your head? Hint: nobody has full control; therefore all incorrect thoughts must necessarily make one guilty as charged.

Robert Schmidt (Philosopher/Mathematician) once explained an important concept called aitia which is highly relevant to the idea that the state uses to try to assign accusation...

(αἰτία) - the Greek word for cause, but means to ask for or demand something; from Aristotle's idea of accusation. Aitia is the imputation of blame or an accusation that supports a demand for redress. Later the word goes from the imputation of blame or guilt, and comes to mean blame or guilt itself. Once aitia takes on the meaning of blame (or credit), the redress takes on the meaning of "effect", so aitia is cause and redress is effect. Then aitia shifts from the blame itself, to the subject responsible for the blame. Once it gets into the legal context, then later the meaning is shifted again to mean the effect that anything can have on something else. The word that is associated with the effect is "apotelesma": the full payment of what is due.

This is what is happening to the legal system; the shifting of blame and guilt onto the wrong parties because they cannot (read sometimes do not want to) distinguish between intent and accident, so they no longer try. The "me too" movement is also a symptom of the failure to assign context to blame or guilt. The ultimate reason for this is because we have shifted away from personal sovereignty. A state that says that you cannot be responsible for your actions (because the state owns you) will necessarily shift the blame away from the true causes because it cannot grant you sovereignty without dissolving its own power and control over you.

The answer to these political problems can be found in the philosophy of voluntarism.

---

Donations (public bitcoin address):

3FwxQsa7gmQ7c1GXJyvDTqmT6CM3mMEgcv

---

---