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Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

asia.nikkei.com

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

#121

Post by [deleted] »

bacon_waffle wrote: post #116
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #6

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?

> 1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? Could you explain this question to someone who doesn't have a Facebook account? As far as I understand, US phone companies are required to provide law enforcement with the ability to tap phone calls going through their exchanges, yet it doesn't seem that is on the same level as a government mandated…

[deleted]

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

#122

Post by m12k »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #111
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #6

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?

> Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Trivially easy but probably in practice too much of a bother. I imagine most traffic isn't between well trained members of international terrorist or crime organisations planning major heists, but people who are friends, family members and acquaintances. They're already using WhatsApp to talk with other f…

The thing is, by building backdoors into the widely used platforms, we gain maybe 10 years of arresting idiot criminals until they learn to use Signal, the same way they learned to use burner phones, but at the same time throw everybody's privacy out the window while opening a huge security hole in our infrastructure. It's just not a good trade-off, not even from a pragmatic, non-idealist perspective.

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

#123

Post by foolmeonce »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #111
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #6

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?

> Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Trivially easy but probably in practice too much of a bother. I imagine most traffic isn't between well trained members of international terrorist or crime organisations planning major heists, but people who are friends, family members and acquaintances. They're already using WhatsApp to talk with other f…

So the goal is to make sure crime is left to true professionals who think big, the kind who will bribe cops honestly, if they aren't already in the tier above with the CIA anyway?

We can really get the visible crime off the streets, or at least get thrown a bone every once in a while to look like we are policing despite the bulk of crime being done by our network of police state associates.. Who is going to explain how this works to Tony?

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

#124

Post by lanevorockz »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #6

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?

1. Simple ... you are already giving all of this away to Facebook for free. If you are so worried with government, it is as bad to let a corporation have if not much worse.

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

#125

Post by tonyedgecombe »

m12k wrote: post #122
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Trivially easy but probably in practice too much of a bother. I imagine most traffic isn't between well trained members of international terrorist or crime organisations planning major heists, but people who are friends, family members and acquaintances. They're already using WhatsApp to talk with other f…

The thing is, by building backdoors into the widely used platforms, we gain maybe 10 years of arresting idiot criminals until they learn to use Signal, the same way they learned to use burner phones, but at the same time throw everybody's privacy out the window while opening a huge security hole in our infrastructure. It's just not a good trade-off, not even from a pragmatic, non-idealist perspective.

A lot of crime is opportunistic. If people feel they are more likely to get caught then much of it will just go away.

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

#126

Post by aikinai »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #6

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?

The right-wing terrorists they just arrested in Michigan posted about their plans in private Facebook groups. This is probably much more common than criminals with any understanding of OPSEC. They’re not smart, but they’re still dangerous.

Not that I’m arguing for these backdoors; just pointing out that “but criminals can still encrypt their messages” is mostly irrelevant.

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

#127

Post by cgriswald »

moonchild wrote: post #63
dannyw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9/11 and the “you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists” mentality happened.

9/11 certainly provided that argument with a lot more ammo, but the rhetoric has been around for ages. Remember the cold war and McCarthyism?

McCarthyism was bad and I see what you’re saying but it isn’t quite the same thing. McCarthyism wasn’t really about government control but about a sort of mass hysteria. It was more like the Salem witch trials.

Much of the rhetoric during the Cold War actually made these types of government activities unacceptable to the average person because not doing these things was used to differentiate the US from the Soviets. “Microphones in every house? What is this, Soviet Russia?”

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

#128

Post by jchw »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #125
m12k wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, by building backdoors into the widely used platforms, we gain maybe 10 years of arresting idiot criminals until they learn to use Signal, the same way they learned to use burner phones, but at the same time throw everybody's privacy out the window while opening a huge security hole in our infrastructure. It's just not a good trade-off, not even from a pragmatic, non-idealist perspective.

A lot of crime is opportunistic. If people feel they are more likely to get caught then much of it will just go away.

This claim is weird. “A lot” — well wait, how much is a lot? I tried to look, but a couple cursory searches yielded little in the way of attempts to quantify the amount of “opportunistic crime” versus premeditated. And frankly, going by raw quantity might not be good enough. How much damage are they doing relative to premeditated crime? Shoplifting a candy bar versus a murder, you know.

I also wonder if this has much to do with this article. If you are conversing about future criminal activity on Facebook or SMS, can you argue it was not premeditated in some fashion?

And even if this makes sense... how much loss of our personal freedoms is it worth to eliminate xx% of crime? (And, is it possible that there are better ways, like perhaps looking at the causes rather than trying to curb the effects...)

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

#129

Post by nix23 »

bacon_waffle wrote: post #116
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #6

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?

> 1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? Could you explain this question to someone who doesn't have a Facebook account? As far as I understand, US phone companies are required to provide law enforcement with the ability to tap phone calls going through their exchanges, yet it doesn't seem that is on the same level as a government mandated…

I think he gets it totally wrong, the microphones (private assistants) the camera (your smart-tv) and the rest (IoT-Devices) all come from Private Company's and often from a completely different Country...what the Government missed is to protect us from them (private/~state company's) it would be really interesting how many "SmartTVs etc" recorded quite important company-meetings.

Edit: With ~State-Company i mean stuff like Lockhead Huawei Tencent

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

#130

Post by JumpCrisscross »

psychoslave wrote: post #60
m3at wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Maybe it's not about the criminals? Governments have a tendency to seek to increase control of citizens, surveillance being part of it. Saying it's about "tools for terrorists and child traffickers" is the traditional rethorical ploy no-one can argue against. You wouldn't want to protect child traffickers would you?

Beware, government is not those who command it. If there was some real democracy out there where citizens all should be actively implicated in the government (as opposed to supposedly delegate it), then what would it mean to have citizen wanting to increase control on citizen?

> what would it mean to have citizen wanting to increase control on citizen?

The breakdown of the rule of law. It’s what happened in Athens and is why pure direct democracy doesn’t work: the tyranny of the majority [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

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