I take issue with the phrasing. No one can force upon me their moral obligations. It’s my choice alone.
Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
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Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#12The easiest way to combat "you have nothing to hide" is if you were in a country taken over by dictators or terrorists, those leaders don't care and cannot be reasoned with. They will use the backdoor at any time to punish dissent or any misalignment with their rules. And if people say, "but our country is free", tell them that if your country was not, how would you get back to freedom? Is your software and hardware…
> If the E.U. really made Chat Control, it would require a DRM that would restrict non-signed OS from running
I have seen this claim, but I don’t believe it is necessarily true. If EU legislation limits encryption on WhatsApp and other messengers offered on the Play Store, then that already implements the law for the vast majority of the population. Us nerds might be able to run whatever OSs we want, but we and even non-nerd sideloaders are nearly a rounding error.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#13Latest news is Gerard Darmanin, french minister of the interior, is trying to use the latest attack in a french school to ban encryption or at least force encrypted messaging vendors to add backdoors for governments: https://www.numerama.com/tech/1533652-attaque-a-arras-darman...
Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.
If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone.
I'm Spartacus.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#14Latest news is Gerard Darmanin, french minister of the interior, is trying to use the latest attack in a french school to ban encryption or at least force encrypted messaging vendors to add backdoors for governments: https://www.numerama.com/tech/1533652-attaque-a-arras-darman...
Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.
> Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.
Besides using encryption, I also have surveillance-evading conversations and activities; I even hide thoughts in my head.
At some point we might want to recall that not being snooped on is a natural state.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#15[deleted]
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#16[deleted]
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#17Legislation in favour of the consumer is almost starting to seem detrimental to the startup founder. The number of barriers, prerequisites, requirements, etc that a founder needs to consider pre-launch is bordering on insurmountable.
This might just be me feeling like this, but even considering geo-residency in some of my early prototype designs feels very odd.
I was optimistically hoping PaaS providers would catch up and fill in the middle ground. But seemingly for every Enterprise customer I'm manually filling out a document declaring our data residency, our vendors residency and how we use certain data.
I'm an advocate for privacy, but f* me this is getting to be overwhelming.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.
If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. I'm Spartacus.
> If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone.
Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it.
I'm not sure if we're mindful of this but Gov's only ethical purpose is to serve us. Past that, it has lost it's way.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#19cool now just make my congressman agree so this stupid EARN-IT bill gets dropped
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#20The author advocates using encryption as an ethical duty, OK. But it would not be an effective form of civil disobedience. This is unrealistic: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros. This is not anything the general public, for whom today their mobile phone…
Author here. (Thank you for all the comments!)
Yes, I know SSH tunnelling and compiling your own Android are tall orders for the average user. Here I'm just hinting at some examples that are well-known among us geeks, but there are easier to use alternatives to all that. I suspect Protonmail is as easy to use as GMail. VPNs are so easy to use nowadays. The UX on Signal isn't particularly challenging to the average user of WhatsApp.
There is a lot we techies can do to educate normies and respectfully push them in the right direction, but we keep on neglecting that responsibility under the excuses of bad usability, lack of features, or convenience for users.
On an earlier draft I also had a sentence like: “a big effort in usability and outreach is needed”. Definitely so.
My point is not that we can get all EU citizens to switch to SSH tunnelling and Purism, but that we IT professionals should spend more time and effort educating a fraction of the population to move the deal in the right direction and avert catastrophe.