You can't tell criminals not to use confidentiality, they won't listen, but if you deny lawful people to use confidentiality, you effectively punish lawful people and not criminals.
Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
81–90 of 255 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#82Compare it to an envelope in the regular mail. How would they feel if every post office along the way opened their mail, made a photocopy, and put it back in a new envelope before passing it on? Because that's the way things currently are with e.g. Facebook Messenger, Gmail, etc. E2E is when your envelopes are only opened by their final recipient.
I'm with you, but as a critique for your metaphor: Does the layperson receive meaningful mail anymore? With the exception of my W-2 and the occasional jury summons, I feel like nothing about my life would change if the post office just threw away my envelopes.
Rarely important stuff passed through the mail as everything has moved to email... Thus, making the issue even more prominent.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#83If I were arguing by analogy I would ask why we allow door locks. Door locks let people do bad things inside their houses. Yet we are all safer from criminals because of them, overall. And it also helps keep police honest about getting a warrant first before they disturb your house.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#84It’s none of your business.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#85Its important that enforcing the law be difficult and expensive. It prevents tyranny by keeping the governments tools of oppression tied up dealing with necessities. It creates a cost for enforcing every new hypothetical restriction.
E2e encryption being prevalent makes law enforcements job much more difficult.
Child sexual abuse and terrorism being completely solved are incompatible with free society. Those kids need to take one for the team.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don’t grok your question. Indiscriminate (“unreasonable”) use, without a warrant, is unconstitutional.
So as long as the same legal hurdles are in place, you don't have a problem with Facebook (for example) being required to provide law enforcement with access to unencrypted comms?
Don’t put words in my mouth. Your example is not the same thing to me.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#87I don't need arguments in favor of it, you need arguments against it. The burden should never be on me to justify my freedom, but on you to justify your oppression.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#88My main concern isn't the 'Big Bad Government' but just good old fashioned incompetence and corruption.
If law enforcement can read my messages so can engineers at the company, or anyone a hacker or disgruntled employee sells the data to.
Those messages may contain sensitive information like financial details, passwords etc.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#89I'd ask to spell out the particular concerns. It doesn't make much sense to try to respond without the other person giving more details.
Otherwise you're going to be in the role of making propositions and the other side will be shooting them down. Make them argue their case and poke little nagging holes into it.
Re: Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?
#90Politicians propose to forbid all buildings from having doors. After all "bad people/stuff etc." could lock the doors and hide behind them. Anyone arguing against that is obviously against safety. Counterpoints: - Do we currently have a big door problem? - Wait, don't doors also serve an important function? - Won't that make everybody much more insecure and basically do nothing against "bad stuff"? - What if I put a…
I'm not sure this is a great analogy as yes, we permit people to have doors and locks but society also provides a mechanism for the government to lawfully get access to them. If the Police have a legit reason to access a property they go to court and get a warrent, and if they need to they'll kick the door in to get in. The current government requests to be able to access encrypted info with a warrent are an extensio…
Shouldn’t they come to me then and look into my phone instead of constantly looking into my messages on the server?
I think the door is a great analogy.