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

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

#371
post #360

Maybe what we need is an "encrypted messaging system" generator. If there is an infinite supply of encrypted channels, controlling them all becomes literally impossible.

I think you're describing PGP. Other than some platforms having character limits, you can run PGP over any text format as long as both clients (or humans) know what to do with the encrypted messages.

A system that handled things like performing the encryption and decryption of messages over any platform would be interesting, the only pushback you would get from an authoritarian government is them telling providers to "block all pgp/encrypted comms on your platform" and/or the platform actively attempting to block your client's access to the API.

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

#372
post #345

Earlier 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…

>It's a hard sell. Just picture a politician on live television having to choose between having this cute little child being raped for years before they commit suicide (letting the perpetrators off the hook), or ramp up the surveillance a bit. Picture them choosing the rape. But the argument doesn't even make sense. It makes the horrible assumption that pedophiles will continue using a service they know to be insecur…

>But the argument doesn't even make sense. It makes the horrible assumption that pedophiles will continue using a service they know to be insecure. That's literally a provably false assumption. The second they realize it's insecure (which will take exactly one raid), they'll switch to something else.

It's not an assumption at all. The fact that people engaged in child pornohraphy have had decrypted communications used against them in court demonstrates this to be true.

Ephemeral conversation is not new and implicit in a right to privacy assuming it extends beyond your actual corpus.

The only way I understand your arguments to be a justification to break encryption is if you believe we should not have freedom to share privately.

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

#373

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.

How many thousands of people would you kill to save your own child? For many people the answer might well be all of them. Turns out emotional response isn't a reasonable way to come to a logical conclusion for how we ought to order society.

I'm sympathetic to those people's plight but ultimately I place a very high valuation on not only my privacy but everyone's privacy, A much lessor but still very great valuation on preventing such evil happening to the victims, and only a small valuation on preventing the ultimate sharing of those images between perverts except insofar as it serves to lead us to people doing the wrong.

I believe that via a substantial effort we can work to reduce the abuse of children, I think we can via a lot of work take down the groups of people sharing such data by infiltrating such groups and taking down the people participating. I believe that outright stopping all such sharing is probably impossible and I'm unwilling to implement 1984 to try.

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

#374

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…

If you don't see a reply link below on the main comments page try clicking their comment link which looks like "7 seconds ago" and you should find a reply to link there. I think hacker news is designed to make it harder to have a quick back and forth discussion for some reason.

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

#375
It is interesting that they chose to control Facebook instead of calling it a monopoly and splitting it into two, because it's their interest to have a choke point that they can conveniently go after. Apple is big and they provide e2e encryption, but they're not a choke point because not everyone uses Apple. On the other hand, everyone (except me) uses Facebook.

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

#376
It is amazing to me that people that are supposedly "pro-business" and "pro-market" are against encryption.

Mostly encryption protects privacy and business information. Corporate espionage is bigger than state espionage or terrorism my many multiples, and directly threatens national security as well as markets.

Encryption is pro-business and pro-privacy for business and individuals. Without encryption or with backdoors you are trusting that bad actors don't get access to it, they will.

Why have a world class security system, yet plenty of keys under rocks in the backyard?

I wish encryption was framed like this:

Going without encryption or including backdoors is another level of trust, like leaving your window open on vacation and putting a note that says, "Only Sally the neighbor can come in through the window, please" (Sally being the gov't). Guess what, Sally won't be the only one coming in. In that situation you may as well open the front door because that is the same as the backdoor or window, just less obscurity but more attractive to underground/opposition forces whether that is state, corporate, personal or more.

Oversight and security has gotten lazy, two decades of surveillance based detective work without warrants over real detective work with warrants has made enforcement and security lazy and unable to operate without all the noise that comes with access to everyone's data. Initially it was about terrorism, but everyone knows it is about business information, personal information and other over steps like the drug wars or fights against sex workers or other wars on people that are low hanging fruit that are picked on constantly. Good detective and intel work needs to come back and less of the surveillance type.

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

#377

> 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…

The first quote is almost literally a contradiction. "Remove your security without removing your security" WAT

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

#378
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…

Implementing end to end encryption in these messaging apps won't make any of these issues worse. The criminals this will supposedly help already have easy and convenient ways to do the same thing. The government has not caught anyone of any importance this way, so encryption of Facebook messages won't hinder any real investigation methods.

This won't increase the number of people affected or reduce the number caught. The only thing encryption can do in this case is make it more difficult for the government or foreign governments to read personal messages.

Not implementing encryption here can only help people violate people's privacy, it cannot help the government do its job.

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

#379
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-prot…

Check out Matrix. Sounds like what you’re describing.

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

#380

> 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.

Do you even mean that for “save the environment”?
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