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

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541–550 of 592 posts

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

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Childhood is a rather modern concept and child labour exploitation peaked just a few centuries ago during the Industrial Revolution. What historical events and periods are you referring to in the past millenia?

corrupting the youth was one of the charges against Socrates made by essentially political opponents.

Which, incidentally, he was undoubtedly guilty of. By putting all sorts of notions into their heads.

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

#542
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how so many people instantly associated that argument with gun control :)

Maybe because guns harm more children than Facebook?

I would put money on that being absolutely, positively, patently false.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if data could be generated that shows cyber bullying on Facebook results in more child suicides than children murdered in school shootings per year.

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

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WFIW I didn't advocate backdooring either, I'm just asking how we, as technologists, balance what I think are reasonable and compelling goals: protect user data, and protect children. One reasonable answer is that FB/Google/etc. should donate or donate more (Google is called out as donating already) to these organizations. I think another reasonable answer is that technologists donate our time, perhaps as 20% project…

I did read the article, though I think I may now see your point: this technology has greatly enabled abusers, perhaps more than it has helped finders-and-punishers-of-abusers. Your question is a good one: "how we, as technologists, balance what I think are reasonable and compelling goals: protect user data, and protect children."

"How do we, as postal workers, balance the reasonable and compelling goals: get people their mail, and protect children."

One is our job that we are directly and morally responsible for (like a civil engineer being responsible for having a bridge not collapse at a load of >2 cars), the other is not. Call me callous, call me cold, but that is not explicitly up to us, we can't be under the delusion that we are the one key to everything and anything. It wouldn't make sense to have a "quick-release" button forcibly installed on all bridges that would cause an instant collapse if triggered "because countless children that are victims of human trafficking are taken over bridges everyday."

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

#544
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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 is trivial to prove that the second a criminal realizes a given communication mechanism is insecure they do not stop using it if it is convenient. Has every criminal in the world stopped using the phone after the first phone was ever tapped? And ALL of the above…

You do know software can be downloaded without knowing how to program it yourself right?

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

#545
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's quite a stretch for a title ambiguity: attorney general or soft drink? Submitted title was "AG Barr Will Ask Zuckerberg To Halt Plans For End-To-End Encryption".

I mean, I doubt that many UK natives know the name of the US Attorney General off the top of their heads. It seems like a reasonable mixup to me.

Entirely reasonable! I didn't mean that one end of the stretch was less natural than the other, just that it was a long one.

(On another note, it's amazing how easy it is for a comment can sound like a bit of a putdown inadvertently. Even after years of practice trying to skirt around such misinterpretations. Tone of voice and body language must be the greater part of how we avoid this in person.)

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

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

corrupting the youth was one of the charges against Socrates made by essentially political opponents.

Which, incidentally, he was undoubtedly guilty of. By putting all sorts of notions into their heads.

from the perspective of a contemporary Athenian, yes, he did say things that were incompatible with the state religion. I don't think a modern reader necessarily has to agree that that's "corrupting the youth". the Athenians also probably didn't care very much about this anyway. the charge was literally true, but it was also bullshit because none of the accusers actually cared about any of the offenses they were charging him with. what they actually cared about was that he had humiliated them in public on many occasions and his association with (though not outright involvement in) the reign of the thirty tyrants.

so actually fairly analogous!

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

#547
post #221
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's quite a stretch for a title ambiguity: attorney general or soft drink? Submitted title was "AG Barr Will Ask Zuckerberg To Halt Plans For End-To-End Encryption".

A stretch if you have the context of a US reader but imagine if the chief medic in the UK were called Dr Pepper and, well, the rest writes itself :)

Oh, I didn't mean it was a stretch for a UK reader to read "AG Barr" that way—as I now know, that's obviously what it means there.

By 'stretch' I just mean that there's quite a distance between an attorney general and a soft drink. Usually the things that get conflated are not so incongruous.

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

#548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better to just call it a substantiated theory at this point.

It's not substantiated, it's speculation. There's still a possibility it was an actual, non-coerced suicide.

Wrong. It's a substantiated theory, because there's lots of evidence suggesting this theory is correct. But it is not a fact, you're right there's stil la possibility it was an actual suicide, but I'm right in calling it a substantiated theory that Epstein was "suicided"

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

#549
post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that simple. Two potential unintended consequences of this no-encryption rule come to mind that might actually not just not help, but in fact make it worse for the victims. 1. They said that FB captures 99% of those illegal activities by themselves. What makes us think that government will be able to capture that last 1% on their own? 2. Encryption gets removed, potential perpetrators move to another platfo…

Facebook relies on the fact that most Facebook messages are not end-to-end encrypted to detect illegal activity. Forget the last 1% – how would Facebook continue to detect the 99% without access to decrypted message contents?

Client-side detection. You can probably argue that it can be evaded easily because it is client-side, but most people won't bother + it isn't like FB has an open API with a ton of third party FB clients.

I spent less than a minute thinking about this, but there are probably tons of other strategies they can employ. People familiar with the domain, I would actually love to hear your takes on this, as the topic is fairly fascinating.

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

#550
post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, for marijuana. But not all substances are the same. If you've ever gone through the hell of having a family member or close friend being addicted to heroin or coke or other physically-addictive "hard" drugs, you'll see that they're not in the same risk category at all.

But then you also had the whole "coke vs crack" thing in the 1980s - where crack was a predominantly used drug by ethnic minorities, and cocaine was more likely to be used by "high rollers" who could afford it - usually white and rich, yuppies, etc. Wall Street types and the like. But rarely did you see or hear about any of those people landing in jail or prison for long periods. If you heard anything it was more or…

I'm not denying the double standard, just reiterating that some drugs are extremely harmful to people and their use should be discouraged/banned/whatever, no matter who is using them.
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