There is nothing stopping encrypted data through an unencrypted channel, so suppose a communication application has an API that allows another application to send and read files through it, that application could potentially encrypt a given piece of text or file and send it through the communication application. Only to be decrypted at the other end by a similar secondary encryption application.
Yes, that’s two applications instead of one, but the communication one would never need to be opened.
Exactly. There’s nothing stopping me and a buddy from swapping keys in person, in a different app, in the mail, via fucking carrier pigeon, etc then sending encrypted text via Discord or Facebook Messenger. All the app would see is a garble of junk data. It would be cumbersome and require us to manually encrypt/decrypt every message… But it would be encrypted.
As long as communication exists, encryption will be impossible to block. All the government could realistically do to dissuade the above scenario is create harsh penalties for sending encrypted data.
That’s precisely how the OSI model works. Every layer is written/read by a different process, and exactly why you can’t ban encryption. So long as a communications channel can accept arbitrary language, that channel can accept anything expressible in that language, including coded messages.
There is nothing stopping encrypted data through an unencrypted channel, so suppose a communication application has an API that allows another application to send and read files through it, that application could potentially encrypt a given piece of text or file and send it through the communication application. Only to be decrypted at the other end by a similar secondary encryption application. Yes, that’s two applications instead of one, but the communication one would never need to be opened.
Exactly. There’s nothing stopping me and a buddy from swapping keys in person, in a different app, in the mail, via fucking carrier pigeon, etc then sending encrypted text via Discord or Facebook Messenger. All the app would see is a garble of junk data. It would be cumbersome and require us to manually encrypt/decrypt every message… But it would be encrypted.
As long as communication exists, encryption will be impossible to block. All the government could realistically do to dissuade the above scenario is create harsh penalties for sending encrypted data.
That’s precisely how the OSI model works. Every layer is written/read by a different process, and exactly why you can’t ban encryption. So long as a communications channel can accept arbitrary language, that channel can accept anything expressible in that language, including coded messages.
Exactly, you can’t ban encryption in messaging applications in the same way that you can’t ban it on a MAC frame.