Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 592 posts

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#221

Post by mprev »

dang wrote: post #100
mprev wrote: post #81

Forgive the OT comment but in the UK we have a soft drinks manufacturer named AG Barr, most famous for Irn Bru. I spent a few moments trying to understand what had led to the manufacturer of Tizer, Irn Bru, and various other traditional British soft drinks getting involved in this. https://www.agbarr.co.uk/

Wow, that's quite a stretch for a title ambiguity: attorney general or soft drink? Submitted title was "AG Barr Will Ask Zuckerberg To Halt Plans For End-To-End Encryption".

A stretch if you have the context of a US reader but imagine if the chief medic in the UK were called Dr Pepper and, well, the rest writes itself :)

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#222

Post by tomp »

brunoTbear wrote: post #138
zzzcpan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There has to be some nuance from the absolute privacy folks on this one. How do we balance the need to fight child abuse with privacy? There isn't. This is a logical fallacy. Violating everyone's privacy is not the way to fight child abuse, not even one of the ways that can do anything to prevent it.

I'm not sure what the logical fallacy is you're referring to. I'm not advocating that we backdoor encryption. I'm asking what's the nuance in privacy vs crime prevention. I guess your position is one of an absolute, and therefore, to me, not especially interesting. I am curious what you think are the ways we can fight child abuse. It seems to me we have some obligation as technologists to see that our works aren't us…

> I guess your position is one of an absolute, and therefore, to me, not especially interesting.

Every position is absolute. Either you have 100% user privacy, or you 100% don't have user privacy. People pretend that the latter option can potentially include "checks and balances" and whatnot, but Snowden showed us how that plays out in reality...

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#223

Post by Clubber »

saagarjha wrote: post #5

> We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety. Oh, so you’re asking for more end-to-end encryption? > While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism-related content t…

For you younger folks, whenever the government proposes to do something, "for the children," it's a ruse and you shouldn't support it.

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#224

Post by ccrush »

saagarjha wrote: post #5

> We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety. Oh, so you’re asking for more end-to-end encryption? > While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism-related content t…

In light of all the Epstein stuff, it sure sounds like "were raping children, so don't implement end to end encryption, or someone might rape your children." I'd say it's ballsy, but with how publicly they executed Epstein right under our noses, it seems like they just don't face punishment for breaking the rules and want to rub it in our faces. It's not like any of us would get away with that. Fucking pathetic. The best anyone will do is tug on their leash a bit. Back to the treadmill, and pump out money for your masters you fucking sheep.

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#225

Post by thelittleone »

jefftk wrote: post #207
thelittleone wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. There is no convenience that would ever convince me to have an always on listening device in my home. PRISM was proof that governments pressure tech companies to become sources. How to build a program to retain power: 1) Make new tech that is very convenient but has potential to become surveillance vector. -> e.g, Phone with voice recordings, fingerprint Face ID, location data, network of friends. Smart TV, sma…

> There is no convenience that would ever convince me to have an always on listening device in my home. Many smartphones have this, and will respond to "Ok Google" or "Hey Siri". Do you view this differently?

They're both rich information gathering sources with potential for abuse.

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#226

Post by reggintoggaf »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #181
Kinnard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Second Great CryptoWar: https://reason.com/2013/03/12/the-second-great-crypto-war/ > "The proponents of this process use fear tactics to win support, what the four cypherpunks dub "The Four Horsemen of the Info-pocalypse: child pornography, terrorism, money laundering, and the War on Some Drugs." In other words, laws passed to go after child pornographers, terrorists, money launderers, and drug dealers end up chi…

I'm not entirely sure how those four examples are supposedly invalidated by giving them a clever nickname. I'll take the privacy side in most any discussion of privacy-vs-security, but categorically denying the possibility that some crimes could be aided by encryption seems a step to far. It's also bad PR strategy: anybody not already on your side will be put off by your apparent lack of reasoning skills. Instead, ac…

The clever nickname is not to invalidate them, it is to address the invalidation the government does by misusing these laws to make its job easier when it comes to lesser crimes.

I am a hardcore privacy advocate, but if these laws had a provision that they won't be used for other crimes, and if misuse such as parallel construction would be seriously punished, I'd have nothing against them.

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#227

Post by russler23 »

ashelmire wrote: post #141
saagarjha wrote: post #5

> We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety. Oh, so you’re asking for more end-to-end encryption? > While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism-related content t…

It's like when the Republicans said in the 90s that you don't solve problems by throwing money at them. But that's exactly how many problems are solved.

Which is why US healthcare is the standard of the world. Because it’s so profitable. /s

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#228

Post by therwey »

anon9001 wrote: post #198
mlindner wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought that people can remove all crime or get anywhere near it is faulty from first axioms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." If you start thinking that parents "can be" the criminals then you've decided that parents are automatically guilty and must be proved innocent. This goes against the very moral fiber of the ent…

How is the idea that we can remove all crime faulty? Blackstone is just saying that we shouldn't try to remove all crime because it's more harmful to society to try than to let some crimes go unsolved. His main argument is that there might be an ambiguous situation where someone appears guilty but actually is not guilty. It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with a high degree of acc…

> It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with a high degree of accuracy.

Unless the state itself is criminal. Not only can law stray from morality, authorities of the state can even violate the laws of that state itself. If you can imagine an extreme authoritarian state with a constitution, can't you also imagine that the leaders of that state choosing to ignore that constitution?

But before even getting into the above, you've assumed the possibility of perfect surveillance. Who or what and how could that ever be possible?

The only way I can conceive of perfect law enforcement is to have very few if any laws. Everything else is an excuse for the personal fancies of authoritarians.

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#229

Post by LinuxBender »

jefftk wrote: post #207
thelittleone wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. There is no convenience that would ever convince me to have an always on listening device in my home. PRISM was proof that governments pressure tech companies to become sources. How to build a program to retain power: 1) Make new tech that is very convenient but has potential to become surveillance vector. -> e.g, Phone with voice recordings, fingerprint Face ID, location data, network of friends. Smart TV, sma…

> There is no convenience that would ever convince me to have an always on listening device in my home. Many smartphones have this, and will respond to "Ok Google" or "Hey Siri". Do you view this differently?

I do see some difference. Home, always on, always capable of transmitting, unlimited power means they can listen as much as they want.

The phone has to cherry pick phrases and capture times. With the right codex, the phone could keep recording for a long time after the right phrase or your IMEI is targeted. Still sub-optimal, but not as easy as Alexa. My bigger concern around phones is GPS data. That's why I've not had a phone in my name in the last twenty years and never owned a smart phone.

Now put the data sets from your phone, Alexa, your credit/debit card together and that paints quite a full picture.

The Ring device is very interesting. It faces the street. I mean, the house on the other side of the street. A network of those can track the movement of anyone that lives near one.

Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption

#230

Post by lozaning »

salawat wrote: post #159
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you could always do an audit and see what percent of a thing your automated system catches. That definitely doesn't seem inherently unknowable.

You're not quite getting it. You measure accuracy of detection via a training set of definitely known examples, and comparing it to the detections reported by your system. You can say with certainty that their system catches 99% of your training data set, but that doesn't mean it Will generalize to "all permutations of child abuse ever". That's two totally different things. In the end their use of that statistic illu…

Alex Pinto gave a phenomenal DefCon talk several years ago that really highlights this issue, "Secure Because Math". It gets into how modern ML/AI/Voodoo IPS systems essentially can't work because the training data or baseline is so impossible to accurately come up with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYVCVzEJhhQ

Post reply on HN