>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.

Encryption seems highly likely to have saved many people from, say, losing their life savings by having their banking credentials hijacked.

I am less certain about license plate cameras. Hence, the ask. I will leave the questioning of encryption up to someone who actually questions its utility.

Can you genuinely not think of situations in which law enforcement being able to pin a specific vehicle to a time and place might help them catch dangerous criminals or be used as evidence in a trial to help get them convicted?

In any significant capacity? No. Because we'd see it in crime stats; the widespread successful use of license plate scanners should show up in a chart. The world before and the world after their introduction appears very similar from a crime rate standpoint; it stands to reason getting rid of them would be similarly low-impact.

I really don't think that'd be the same if we got rid of encryption tomorrow.

>In any significant capacity?

Notice the subtle shifting of the goalposts. Who said anything about "significant capacity"? The original argument was "it helps save actual lives". Now we need to see "widespread successful use" in the "crime stats"? How would that even be possible? These systems can't be implemented in a vacuum and crime stats are constantly fluctuating for countless reasons, so how could the specific cause ever be isolated? Yet crime has generally been on a downward trend for decades, can we be sure these type of systems aren't responsible for some piece of that?

>I really don't think that'd be the same if we got rid of encryption tomorrow.

Once again, why aren't you asking "Is there evidence in that direction?" You are demanding evidence for one and the other is just a hypothetical based of what you "think" might happen. But what is that thought based on? Do crime stats show that identity theft has gone done since the popularization of online banking

You are not treating these issues with the same rigor. Can't you recognize that?

> You are not treating these issues with the same rigor. Can't you recognize that?

Sure. I have an opinion on the two issues. "Encryption good" is not something I personally feel needs a bunch of references. If someone else does, they can ask for it.

"License plate readers good" is something I'd want more evidence for, because the downsides seem much clearer to me, and the upsides of their widespread adoption over the last decade don't appear to show up in crime stats. I know they're everywhere in my town… and it doesn't seem to have done much?

If someone asserts "I am Chris" I will believe them. If they assert "I am the LORD, your God", I will require slightly more evidence. You may find both claims equally believable; that is your right.

>"Encryption good"... "License plate readers good"

More moving of the goalposts. These weren't the arguments. The question wasn't whether these are net goods, it was whether they save lives. And when it comes to that, these are closer to the "I am Chris" side of the spectrum and it comes off as disingenuous to argue otherwise.

I think it's because you don't have to look too hard to find examples of authoritarian regimes leveraging information technologies for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda. Or how US government agencies use loopholes to get around the 4th amendment and buy sensitive civilian data from private data brokers. Or how data breaches are becoming larger and more frequent each year.

> 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?

Even ignoring saving lives... encryption is how the entirety of societal interactions online work. Without it, we would not have _most_ of the things we rely on online, which is a large portion of things we rely on overall.

Saying that encryption is necessary for modern life is pretty much like saying food is necessary for modern life. Is it possible to live without it? Sure, but only by changing everything about modern life; for the worse.

Maybe I didn't make this clear enough prior. No one is arguing to completely remove encryption from modern life. I was criticizing how these issues are discussed. You are making an entirely different type of argument and therefore I have no problem with what you are saying here.