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Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

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Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#261

Post by kick »

verizonuser wrote: post #242
GordonS wrote: post #220

The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…

Disagree on hypocrisy. US still affords significant freedoms and largely respects human rights. Whether your communications can be decrypted or intercepted on networks that are government regulated anyway is not hypocritical. Residents of the US are still free to use whatever mathematical algorithm they want to encrypt their comms. Transporting OTP's across physical borders is trivial, and not technically illegally i…

While I don't agree that your argument was high-quality:

Paul Graham:

I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

News Guidelines:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#262

Post by [deleted] »

verizonuser wrote: post #242
GordonS wrote: post #220

The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…

Disagree on hypocrisy. US still affords significant freedoms and largely respects human rights. Whether your communications can be decrypted or intercepted on networks that are government regulated anyway is not hypocritical. Residents of the US are still free to use whatever mathematical algorithm they want to encrypt their comms. Transporting OTP's across physical borders is trivial, and not technically illegally i…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#263

Post by GordonS »

merpnderp wrote: post #246
Simon_says wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? Yes. Absolutely. That's the only logical endgame.

Not possible in the US unless the Supreme Court stops giving a crap about the first amendment. Incredibly unlikely no matter how unpopular free speech might become.

Oh, as well as the Clipper debacle, in the 90s I seem to recall there was a big push towards forced key escrow, on both sides of the pond.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#264

Post by rkagerer »

verizonuser wrote: post #242
GordonS wrote: post #220

The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…

Disagree on hypocrisy. US still affords significant freedoms and largely respects human rights. Whether your communications can be decrypted or intercepted on networks that are government regulated anyway is not hypocritical. Residents of the US are still free to use whatever mathematical algorithm they want to encrypt their comms. Transporting OTP's across physical borders is trivial, and not technically illegally i…

Take a gander at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Notable_individuals

Some of those individuals were guilty of little more than political activism but experienced real harm (e.g. deportation) thanks to surveillance overreach.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#265

Post by andrewflnr »

naniwaduni wrote: post #254
verizonuser wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What indication is there of this?

There is no other endgame in which this is pointful.

You're assuming the people making these rules actually understand encryption, which is doubtful at best.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#266

Post by [deleted] »

brenden2 wrote: post #182
dessant wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that laws are not enough, independent verification must be possible. But your right to use secure software, and to audit it without risking to spend your life in prison or being killed, is ensured by laws. This is why moving the goalposts and further normalizing surveillance is extremely dangerous. The rights that you enjoy today are not universal, and can obviously be eradicated in less than a generation.

Agreed! Thankfully software is protected by the 1st amendment in the US[1]. If not for that, I don't know where we'd be. [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...

[deleted]

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#267

Post by adev_ »

verizonuser wrote: post #242
GordonS wrote: post #220

The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…

Disagree on hypocrisy. US still affords significant freedoms and largely respects human rights. Whether your communications can be decrypted or intercepted on networks that are government regulated anyway is not hypocritical. Residents of the US are still free to use whatever mathematical algorithm they want to encrypt their comms. Transporting OTP's across physical borders is trivial, and not technically illegally i…

> Disagree on hypocrisy. US still affords significant freedoms and largely respects human rights.

If you are US citizen maybe, for the rest of the world. Definitively not.

Without being a lawyer, I'm pretty sure random drone strike on civilians in Pakistan, torture in Guantanamo or intercepting entire world communication is not an example of "respect of humans rights".

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#268

Post by blackflame7000 »

merpnderp wrote: post #246
Simon_says wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? Yes. Absolutely. That's the only logical endgame.

Not possible in the US unless the Supreme Court stops giving a crap about the first amendment. Incredibly unlikely no matter how unpopular free speech might become.

If congress and the president decide they want to increase the SC to 99 justices and add and additional 90 of their choosing then that's when the US Constitution officially dies but it can be done according to the law.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#269

Post by damnyou »

smcleod wrote: post #229
damnyou wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram group chats are not e2e encrypted, while Signal is notorious for being unreliable at actually delivering messages. Also, if you change your phone number the official Signal recommendation is to manually tell all your friends about the new number. WhatsApp just lets you do it. I use both apps regularly but neither of them is perfect.

Out of interest what is your citation for Signal being nutritious or having messages going missing? Anecdotally speaking, neither I or my friends that have been using Signal for years have every had any messages go missing, so I’m just interested as to why you might be experiencing this.

Every single person I know who uses Signal has complained about this. I'm glad Signal is reliable for you but that is not our experience.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#270

Post by freeflight »

GordonS wrote: post #220

The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…

> Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries?

Funny story about that, those used to be considered controlled munitions [0].

[0] http://www.treachery.net/~jdyson/crypto/tattoo.html

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