At the end of the day, Facebook isn’t the arbiter of whether bad actors can speak privately or not. Anyone can communicate privately using encryption tools. Do we shut down every website that offers to convert your message into cypher text? A scary world it would be if all communication was accessible by government. I liken this to stopping gun violence by pointing to mental disease. Is Facebook really the way to stop bad actors? What about the next communication device like cell phone transcripts? Is that fair game too because criminals communicate by phone?
Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
311–320 of 592 posts
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 think the two key things to remember are that "failure will happen" and Blackstone's principle. We have to, as a society, decide which direction we want to fail (modes of failure). We also have to decide what amount is acceptable (having 0 crime is a good goal, but we will never get there and need to be realistic). I think it is clear which way the founders of the country wanted failure to happen, which is Blacksto…
> How I read the horsemen comment is that these topics are used as boogie men.
Yes they are. And it works because we can't multiply, emotionally. I tend to avoid LessWrong links around here, but this one is appropriate: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply.
My first comment alluded to the torture vs dust speck dilemma. Horsemen vs privacy is nowhere near as extreme (especially at the dust speck end), but it has the same structure. If lay people realised this, the horsemen would not convince anyone.
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#313No Libra? Eat this! I removed Moxie's E2E encryption from WhatsApp for you, I can put it back, you know.
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 sat…
Who watches the watchers? Who prevents the watchers from deleting footage/recordings? Unless you're genetically engineering humans to no longer have any desires, anyone can be bribed or blackmailed for the right price.
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 think the two key things to remember are that "failure will happen" and Blackstone's principle. We have to, as a society, decide which direction we want to fail (modes of failure). We also have to decide what amount is acceptable (having 0 crime is a good goal, but we will never get there and need to be realistic). I think it is clear which way the founders of the country wanted failure to happen, which is Blacksto…
I agree with much of your argument, but what makes you say so confidently that we capture or punish almost all of the people who engage in child exploitation?
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#316If 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.
Just light him on fire and keep the lighter.
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#317The timing of this this seems suspicious. Combined with the ramp up of antitrust investigations, it almost comes across as a shakedown.
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#318> 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…
"Think of the children!" The most ridiculous, stupid argument that US politicians have loved for decades, maybe longer. What a bunch of bullshit. I can't believe that I'm siding w/ Zuckerberg on something. Then again, we're talking about the AG. I hope Zuck stands firm on this and gives them the middle finger. That's the only response to something like this. Have them pass a fucking law or shove their fucking open letter up their own asses.
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#319Earlier 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…
Some crimes can also be aided by whispered in-person conversation. Should we require all in-person conversation to be shouted near a government office? The societal default used to be that substantially all conversations were inaccessible to the government except through testimony. Encryption does nothing to change the availability of information through testimony. Previously, remote conspirators could collaborate th…
"The societal default used to be that substantially all conversations were inaccessible to the government except through testimony"
Sure. Before the telegraph was invented. And even before that people used security measures, such as wax seals on letters to prevent tampering or at least have an ability to detect whether or not the message has been tampered with.
You seem to think of messaging systems as if they were spoken conversations in private. They are not. Just because you are chatting with someone from the privacy of your own home, doesn't negate the fact that your words are traveling through a lot of wires and boxes belonging to all sorts of private and public entities.
During WW2, American federal government established Office of Censorship whose sole purpose was to review and censor all communications coming into and out of the country. Now imagine them finding that someone is mailing letters written in an unbreakable code. How long do you think it would take for the FBI to break down that person's door?
I am not saying we should not have end to end encryption. I am saying that government spying on citizens is nothing new, it is not something that was ever limited to totalitarian dictatorships and it should not be surprising to anyone that the government is trying to fight it. The news is not that the government wants to keep an option to read your communications. The news is that first time in history there is a chance people might want to and be able to stop them.
Re: Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some apps (like Signal) force you to upgrade or they eventually stop working. It's a terrible practice.
Right, because the alternative of having a broken user experience for a monotonically increasing set of your users isn’t terrible.
How would letting people continue to use what's been working for them cause a "broken user experience"?
Users should have to power to decide when and if to update. If their old version causes them technical problems or exposes them to security issues that is their business. Software can (and often should) offer auto-updates to make things easier for most users but it should respect a user's choice not to update. Especially when updates often introduce anti-features and/or disable existing features.