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

261–270 of 592 posts

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

#261

Post by selectodude »

ryanlol wrote: post #253
hashkb wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing unlimited copies of child abuse videos is a new kind of crime, which whispering would not have aided.

Why should anyone give a shit? Sharing unlimited copies of child abuse videos does not actually hurt anyone. I for one am not willing to give up any freedoms in order to prevent the sharing of such vile material. Perhaps the creation, but not the sharing.

>Sharing unlimited copies of child abuse videos does not actually hurt anyone.

I'm sure some of the kids in those videos would have something to say about that.

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

#262

Post by pyrale »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #148
SamBam wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rephrase as "They are responsible for capturing 99% of the illegal content that is caught." i.e., of the illegal stuff that goes through their system, some of it is captured, and the majority of that is caught by Facebook's own system. Note, this article is recent and highly relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-... > And when tech companies cooperate fully, encryption and anonymizatio…

If this article is for real, then it's certainly not being pushed mainstream. > The Times’s reporting revealed a problem global in scope — most of the images found last year were traced to other countries — but one firmly rooted in the United States because of the central role Silicon Valley has played in facilitating the imagery’s spread and in reporting it to the authorities. Clearly the NYT is laying the problem a…

It is not surprising that creating automated reporting systems increases the number of reports. The article simply gives no way to make an informed opinion.

There are two things I would point out: 1) I would be surprisesd that the ease of communication the internet brought did not benefit to criminals 2) The article describes several problems that won't be fixed by encryption ban (e.g. the lack of means for report clearing houses) and also gives exemples of cases solved despite encryption. I would like to understand why encryption is described as the problem here.

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

#263

Post by greyfade »

dheera wrote: post #110
hannasanarion wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A third party observer cannot read the messages as they pass through the whatsapp network, but Facebook can read the messages at both ends. Facebook has said that they don't do this outside of Australia, where it is required by law, but come on, are we really going to take Zuckerberg's word for it?

> Facebook can read the messages at both ends This is why I believe that end-to-end encryption is not truly useful unless the source code of the clients is public, or the protocol is open. Any closed source client can read messages at the ends, or be forced to do so by an evil government. At the very least, they could open up XMPP compatibility again so that people could write their own open source clients for it. Au…

I've been bouncing around the idea of a fully decentralized end-to-end encrypted chat protocol for exactly this reason, but I've been afraid to work on it for precisely the reason this thread is being discussed. I know that if my name were attached to the project, I'd be facing all kinds of unwelcome scrutiny from the government and news agencies. I'd lose the very privacy I want to maintain by designing privacy-protecting software.

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

#264

Post by lisper »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #254
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm not entirely sure how those four examples are supposedly invalidated by giving them a clever nickname. They're not. A number of horrible things will happen as a result of pervasive end to end encryption. However. You have to run the numbers here. On the one hand, perhaps a bit more crime, some of which horrible. On the other hand, the privacy of everyone . It's a hard sell. Just picture a politician on live tel…

> I'm not even sure I'm safe writing it here.

Yep. I'm pretty sure you just torpedoed any hope you may have had at a political career.

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

#265

Post by ryanlol »

selectodude wrote: post #261
ryanlol wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should anyone give a shit? Sharing unlimited copies of child abuse videos does not actually hurt anyone. I for one am not willing to give up any freedoms in order to prevent the sharing of such vile material. Perhaps the creation, but not the sharing.

>Sharing unlimited copies of child abuse videos does not actually hurt anyone. I'm sure some of the kids in those videos would have something to say about that.

Do you regularly run into child porn on the internet? I don't.

I don't see those kids getting hurt any further unless they happen to be the sort of people that go out of their way to seek out child abuse material. It's hard to imagine anyone ever accidentally running into images of themselves being abused. You can't possibly be re-victimized if you don't know.

I don't mean to sound heartless, obviously these are horrific acts which hurt people deeply. I simply don't think banning encryption or otherwise eroding our rights to go after distributors and consumers is really going to have much practical effect on how the victims end up feeling.

E: HN doesn't let me reply to selectodude below

>the mere knowledge that pictures of you being abused on the internet is extraordinarily difficult to deal with

I absolutely agree with this. I just know that nobody can ever go tell the victim that now those pictures are forever gone off the internet.

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

#266

Post by greyfade »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #256
ccrush wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Epstein committed suicide. Did you miss the news coverage? And I’m not sure what the AG has to do with Epstein’s crimes. Did you get some people mixed up?

There's enough conflicting information about the suicide that that particular conspiracy theory is going to have legs for a long time to come.

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

#268

Post by xgb84j »

danShumway wrote: post #182

> mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children. Oh, bull crap. By this argument, literally no protection or liberty that allows even one child to be harmed could ever be tolerated. Why stop at vetting baby-sitters or teachers? We ought to require mandatory background checks for every person who ever visits a family or goes into a public space that might contain children. Law enforcement also o…

The argument about children is easily invalidated by the fact, that for some reason that during the Vietnam / Afghanistan / Irak war many children were harmed for much less than everybody's privacy.

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

#269

Post by tomc1985 »

bduerst wrote: post #68
tomc1985 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framing it in terms of business models and inevitability dodges the question of whether they should be doing it in the first place.

You mean, should free advertising-subsidized services even exist?

As if this were the only way to support such a service...

How about we techies stop kissing ass to the advertising execs and stand up to them for once??

They want more data, more relevant ads, more more more more more. Their ask is impossible without massive invasions of privacy. Fuck them, I say

Return to scattershot ads, they can understand me as an audience without having to mine every ounce of my life for it. That approach will produce more relevant ads for me anyway

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

#270

Post by smueller1234 »

buboard wrote: post #163
smueller1234 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite simply because this makes it hard for Facebook to fight back. If they do, they look like they're on the wrong side of morality. If the demand was phrased around security, it would be less emotionally laden (for most).

who falls for that ?

I think anybody not paying close attention, with insufficient technical knowledge and other things on their mind.
Post reply on HN