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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.?

#271
Yes, this is something that literally everyone who reads HN will oppose. Meanwhile do you hear the deafening silence from the average Joe who thinks he has "nothing to hide"?

Don't hate the politicians who keep pushing this. They're just trying not to get fired. And the surest way to get fired in a western country right now is to be seen doing nothing about the terrorism problem and then having terrorist acts committed under your watch. So the politician asks the security forces "what can we do to stop terrorism?" Security says "get us access to messages of terrorism suspects". Seems reasonable, let's go ahead with it.

Yes, we know that it doesn't stop with terrorism suspects. Then law enforcement wants to read the messages of drug kingpins, then drug suspects, then shoplifters, then jaywalkers, then everyone, just to be on the safe side.

But as long as people are told that they need to give up some privacy in exchange for security, they'll take the latter every time.

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

#274
post #234

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…

Still remember how one German Islamist terror group just used their web-email provider's draft feature. They never 'sent' anything. There are often quite simple ways to circumvent this kind of thing.

Yeah only a stupid person can think that backdooring whatsapp will actually prevent the next 9/11. And that's in my opinion the core issue with most politicians, stupidity/tech illiteracy.

I'd love to hear about either a possible alternative government structure in which there are no politicians or a way to attract the smartest people in governments.

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

#275
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

Thanks for clarifying and stating your opinion about the quality of my comment. However, seems a bit too broad-stroke to use downvoting for both the (lack of) quality of the comment and to express disagreement.

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

#276
post #184

So to which messenger should we finally switch to? Telegram, Signal, Threema, Wire or some other newcomer?

matrix seems pretty good, but it is still young and buggy (at least with the the client that I use, riot.im)

What's buggy?

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said this before, but you can't outlaw the maths. There's nothing stopping anyone from rolling their own encryption, using well documented algorithms. You'd need to literally outlaw Wikipedia. Hell, even one-time-pads could still be used by truly motivated bad actors that wanted to communicate securely.

They can make it so if they spot you using it (for other than communication with approved banks and retailers and such, maybe), that's instantly something they can charge you with. Then go after a few people who're spotted using it on the Internet by traffic sniffing, meaning the only folks left using it are cranks and actual bad guys.

A total tangent, but the words chosen in this comment and how it relates to the logic behind the US War on Drugs are eery - down to "sniffing" out paraphernalia, "trafficking" illegal goods, end users are "cranks" and bad guys...

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

#279
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still remember how one German Islamist terror group just used their web-email provider's draft feature. They never 'sent' anything. There are often quite simple ways to circumvent this kind of thing.

Yeah only a stupid person can think that backdooring whatsapp will actually prevent the next 9/11. And that's in my opinion the core issue with most politicians, stupidity/tech illiteracy. I'd love to hear about either a possible alternative government structure in which there are no politicians or a way to attract the smartest people in governments.

That structure is called Republic, as opposed to Democracy.

https://youtu.be/rgUs5wtXgL4 (the video is a bit dated unfortunately)

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