Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #78

wonderwonder wrote: post #12

Sometimes I can understand the willingness to reduce the privacy of self and others in order to ensure that the law is able to prosecute those involved in heinous crimes. Our current political environment though involved a president openly calling on foreign governments to investigate his political opponents. What is to stop them from going after the private communications of those same opponents in the name of targe…

> Encrypt it, end to end, the government does not need to be able access all private communications of private citizens. Law enforcement and security agencies need to be able to access any communication. This does not mean that they should monitor all communications. They can eavesdrop on any phone call. They do not eavesdrop on all phone calls. The problem with E2E encryption is that it prevents eavesdropping even w…

'Law enforcement and security agencies need to be able to access any communication.'

Why? And while we are at it, why is this such a given that they need it.

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

#272

Post by selectodude » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #265

selectodude wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 horr…

I don't disagree. We catch child pornographers all the time and they are on the bleeding edge of encryption. There's no practical benefit to banning encryption. The .gov just doesn't feel like going through the effort and would rather enjoy, say, the ancillary benefits to being able to read all of our messages forever.

But yes, the mere knowledge that pictures of you being abused on the internet is extraordinarily difficult to deal with. Maybe not the best direction to go in when arguing.

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

#273

Post by sakisv » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

I, for one, love the sweet irony where the Attorney General is making Zuck and FB appear like the good guys.

Also, should we read this request as "if you implement E2E encryption we will no longer have visibility over what FB users say"?

If so, and because the connection between us and FB is over https, I assume there are deals in place where various 3-letter-agencies from these 5 countries are given (or they take themselves) the contents of our private messages? I wonder why they would be opposed to something like E2E then /s

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

#274

Post by anon9001 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

therwey wrote: post #228

anon9001 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All phones could be mandated to record audio/video at all times and stream it to government servers for archiving and processing, for example.

And you could set up society so that you'd be useless without carrying your phone, as we're most of the way there already. Not streaming your complete data to the government would become a crime.

All public places could be recorded in a similar way.

If you combined it with satellite tracking of the whole planet, you could even identify people that have chosen to go off the grid for some period of time, so you could solve crimes that happened in the forest if you want.

That's pretty close to perfect surveillance.

I can't think of a crime that couldn't be solved this way, but it's not a society where I'd want to live.

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

#275

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by Kalium » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

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…

> I'm not entirely sure how those four examples are supposedly invalidated by giving them a clever nickname.

It's not supposed to invalidate the reality of the matters concerned. It's supposed to suggest that that they're not actually the issues at hand, with CP and Drugs and Terrorism being used as stalking horses because being in a position of being seen to defend the privacy rights of terrorists makes for terrible PR.

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

#277

Post by hinkley » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

If Bill Barr asked to borrow my lighter right now I'd throw it on the ground and stomp it to oblivion while making intense eye contact. And it's a really nice lighter.

I'm still waiting for the headline for disbarment proceedings against that sad sack. Fuck him, his requests, and everything he (fails to) stand for.

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

#278

Post by Havoc » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

Zuck looking like the good guy in an exchange about privacy. Now that takes some doing...

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

#279

Post by FOXKids » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

greyfade wrote: post #266

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a reason FOX Kids rhymes with Trucks kids, and anything else.

FOX off, basically.

It's a dystopian world. Call Phil Collins.

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

#280

Post by Kalium » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

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'm asking what's the nuance in privacy vs crime prevention.

If someone has an idea that can help prevent abuses and protect privacy without enabling abusive governments, I'm all ears. Unfortunately, to date all we've seen are proposals like the Clipper chip which amount to a backdoor to everything. Understandably, experts are somewhat skeptical of replaying the experience.

> 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 used to harm the most vulnerable.

You are absolutely right. Absolutely, complete, perfectly correct in every way. Yet, might it be possible that cryptography is not the right context for this discussion? Perhaps there are other tools better suited to the question at hand that do not have the same ugly record of pervasive invasions of privacy? I would love to discuss those! Do you have any suggestions as to where we might start?

This seems like a question best posed to the people on the front lines of this effort - what do they think they need? The rest is so much second-guessing.