Comment by prophesi
20 days ago
When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Regular citizens lose, oppressive governments & criminals win.
>When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives.
So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer?
> If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal.
Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway.
And the flip side of this argument should also be considered. Do we think the Nazis would have given up on their genocide if they didn't find this data?
>So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer?
Yes, but only in the most ignorant "this quarter the state dug through the DB fined the shit out a bunch of people for papers violations and therefor I am safer" line of reasoning.
In all the cases where there's a "real criminal" they're after the database provides very little information that isn't redundant to the old fashioned police work they'd do to begin with (like getting a warrant and looking up the person's phone and transaction records)
>Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway.
There's a special kind of irony in picking examples that all have large swaths of the populations that think we could wholly do without that category of laws.
>In all the cases where there's a "real criminal" they're after the database provides very little information that isn't redundant to the old fashioned police work they'd do to begin with (like getting a warrant and looking up the person's phone and transaction records)
This is a rather authoritative and specific claim. How did you reach this conclusion?
>There's a special kind of irony in picking examples that all have large swaths of the populations that think we could wholly do without that category of laws.
If we are playing this game, sharing this information with ICE is also something large swaths of the population support. Let's stop pretending that an idea is valid just because lots of people believe it. If you are still arguing against any form of gun control with the frequency of gun deaths in this country compared to all our peer nations with stricter gun laws, than I frankly don't dare about your opinion anymore as you are clearly living in some libertarian fantasy land.
> Does that not make us all safer?
Is there evidence in that direction?
Thank you, this is a perfect example of the type of inconsistencies I’m talking about when discussing these issues. The prior comment says encryption saves lives and that is accepted without question, but the idea that empowering law enforcement saves lives is met with a request for evidence. Why did you not reply to both claims the same way?
And if you truly believe that finding and arresting criminals does not make us safer, that is an indictment of our entire justice system. It would also make license plate cameras a rather silly place to draw the line.
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