Live data from Hacker News

Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

asia.nikkei.com

101–110 of 281 posts

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#101
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to get into a death toll deal discussion but people killed by KGB and Stasi is just as low. You cant be serious.

Please correct me If you believe otherwise. But no indirect deaths please, the nuclear folks don't count these too. No inconveniences, life altering, career ending troubles, those don't appear on the only "few died due to nuclear accidents" statistics too. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear however I don't buy the "Chernobyl and Fukushima are note big deal" message that the low death toll numbers convey.

The death toll from the KGB and associated state violence is likely in the millions, not a few dozen people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_So...

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#104
post #56

let’s call it 6 eyes :)

Revelation 4:8, NIV: "Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: ''Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,' who was, and is, and is to come.'"

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#105
post #47

1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? 2. What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. The cat is out of the bag. Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it. Do the people behind these proposals not see that?

> How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? The difference is that the infrastructure is in place and can be turned on at will so it feels within the reach of the people who think they deserved to do that. They think that deserve it because they believe that the job they do is the most important thing in the world and they can suddenly gain acce…

> The concept is the bedrock of many religions anyway. It’s something that a lot of people want.

This is exactly the reason communist systems have to destroy religion and replace it with the state. Because if people realise they're not being watched over by some all powerful benevolent entity, and that it is just a bunch of other (self-interested) people, they lose "the faith" pretty quickly.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#106
As much as I hate it, I think this battle is already lost. Be it a social media company like Facebook or a computing devices company like Apple. They are going to kowtow to the wishes of the state to earn their profits.

Also, I don't think it is just the state. There is no way to know if they are in majority but I am sure many people also buy into this argument. If you argue for encryption and antonymity, I am sure someone will bring up one of the four horses of infocalypse.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#107
post #22

Isn't it obvious how the widespread knowledge that the government can read everything you do online - your FB posts, your emails, your texts - contributes to the erosion of trust in government and institutions? As an anecdote, I went to DEFCON last year. I was at a blackjack table and surrounded by midwestern salt-of-the-earth types. I had my badge on which flashed lights, and someone asked if I was "one of those com…

> Is not privacy a fundamental American principle?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy#United_States says activist judges provided privacy, mostly over the latter half of the twentieth century, but strict constructionists would answer: it isn't.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#108

1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? 2. What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. The cat is out of the bag. Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it. Do the people behind these proposals not see that?

> What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available.

At least on phones with gatekeepers like Apple, they can get them to comply on apps.

Thankfully, web is still free for now.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I, and the foundational mindset of "secret services" in Anglo-sphere ("5 eyes") explains everything. The modern secret services are based on British Empire's model, itself an outgrowth of Elizabethan intelligence services. The reason the "5+J eyes" -- btw, Israeli eyes don't count? -- insist on knowing everything about everyone in "the realm" is because Catholics and Protestants were hav…

Secret services also provide continuity in methods, if not personnel, across hostile administrative changes. For instance, the KGB inherited its methods (continuously) from the Cheka, which had inherited its methods (discontinously) from the Okhrana. "He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana Detim to tili du kombat wit inyalowda, to gonya du sheru du owta…

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#110
post #47

1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? 2. What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. The cat is out of the bag. Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it. Do the people behind these proposals not see that?

> How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? The difference is that the infrastructure is in place and can be turned on at will so it feels within the reach of the people who think they deserved to do that. They think that deserve it because they believe that the job they do is the most important thing in the world and they can suddenly gain acce…

I'm not really sure what your point is here. And the reason to be pro-nuclear is the vast quantities of environmentally friendly energy. The argument isn't that Fukushima or Chernobyl won't happen again (although they probably won't) - the argument is that after including Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear power is still, according to the evidence, safer and more environmentally friendly than solar or wind. The damage solar and wind does in terms of habitat damage, waste and effort required is underplayed.

This compares very poorly with a surveillance state, where there is no particular theory that a surveillance state ever does anything good. The nuclear industry base-case positive is 2.5 Petawatts of power a year enabling hundreds of thousands to millions of people to live first world lives. The nuclear industry downside is evacuating Fukushima once every 20 years, no fatalities.

The best-case positive for a surveillance state is people lose any expectation of privacy but a few hundred criminals a year get caught who wouldn't otherwise. The downside is enabling groups like the Chinese to genocide Uighers and effectively suppress resistance, or supressing political resistance in Soviet Russia, or hunting down Jews in Nazi Germany, or all the examples that weren't history-defining catastrophes in various dictatorships. Who knows what sort of damage it will cause in the Five Eyes countries next time a moral hysteria sweeps through the public, but I'd rather not find out.

The issue here isn't the form of the argument, it is the magnitude of the positives and negatives.

Post reply on HN