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Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

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Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#41

Post by ben_w »

vaylian wrote: post #37
newswasboring wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educate them and their parents. Children need to learn how to manage trust with strangers in the offline and online world anyway and the internet doesn't change that. I'm not sure this is even possible. I understand children are smart but I don't think they are this smart. We can educate children to be cautious but i don't think we should expect them not to get out witted by an adult.

Children are smart enough to understand that no stranger except for a doctor should request to see their private parts. Children are smart enough to learn that they should not respond to sharing names, ages and locations when asked about it on the internet. Also: Children are a lot smarter than AI, which is allegedly the super-magical protection against child grooming.

> Children are smart enough to learn that they should not share names, ages and locations with strangers on the internet.

I'm old enough to remember when that was the norm.

But it's been along time now since Facebook etc. came along, and they spent the entire time since then insisting on a real-name policy and asking us to give details of our age, our location, which school we go to, and post a continuous stream of photos of ourselves.

> Also: Children are a lot smarter than AI, which is allegedly the super-magical protection against child grooming.

By what measure are children smarter?

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#42

Post by deletein72h »

CJefferson wrote: post #2

I'm happy to have a discussion about this, but I don't buy that end-to-end encryption will, overall, increase children's safety. I'm happy to see strong evidence one way of the other, but this article is very one-sided. Child grooming on the internet is a huge problem, and I suspect (again, happy to see evidence against it) it's better to allow scanning of children's communications, rather than ensuring their communi…

> who dedicate huge teams of highly paid people to ensuring children get addicted to their platforms

one word: corruption. there's no solution for it because it's a matter of character. now I've spent quite some time in school and university with people who now work for criminal police, police, governments, media, and I know that some of them, if not most, shouldn't be trusted withe safety of other peoples' children. and i also know that some of them absolutely will sell data collected through scanning children's messages and I also know that there's plenty of people in psychology, again, I know some, who would absolutely use said data for therapeutic experiments, marketing campaigns, and so on just to see what can be done with people. this shit has been going for decades in different segments of the population. so we absolutely must establish strong encryption practices wherever we can, especially for children, who's future is still in development, who are learning to be productive and constructive, however long it may take. even more data points for those who already fucked up with what they collected in the past is a bad idea and it's not a matter of competence, these guys are good, it's a matter of character, these guys need to tend to different desires, but they have been "set up" to be what they are now and they are spreading and applying that shit more and more systematically now.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#43

Post by CJefferson »

vaylian wrote: post #37
newswasboring wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educate them and their parents. Children need to learn how to manage trust with strangers in the offline and online world anyway and the internet doesn't change that. I'm not sure this is even possible. I understand children are smart but I don't think they are this smart. We can educate children to be cautious but i don't think we should expect them not to get out witted by an adult.

Children are smart enough to understand that no stranger except for a doctor should request to see their private parts. Children are smart enough to learn that they should not respond to sharing names, ages and locations when asked about it on the internet. Also: Children are a lot smarter than AI, which is allegedly the super-magical protection against child grooming.

I'm sure you don't mean this, but it sounds a lot like you are saying that it is a child's fault when they get sexually abused and don't tell anyone about it.

That happens all the time to children, they are groomed both offline and online. It's a real problem, and it isn't going to be solved by saying we just need smarter children.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#44

Post by ben_w »

abofh wrote: post #39
ben_w wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire point of being a teenager is to get away from your parents and find new peer groups. Unfortunately, what we evolved for is 160 people in a village with a peer group of about a dozen within a few years of us, not even a school with hundreds to thousands, let alone the internet with two people for every heartbeat in a human lifetime of which 440 million (~= the population of the EU) is within a few years of…

Once we're at teenagers, then it's still - did you raise them to be aware of the world around them? Did you give them the tools to evaluate safe and unsafe online activity? A kid doesn't accidentally end up addicted heroin unless they have exposure to heroin. Child grooming predates encryption and the internet and relied primarily on trusted people convincing children not to talk. No amount of decrypted internet traf…

I'm not suggesting that we should break crypto to keep kids safe, I'm suggesting that we shouldn't let kids be on the internet at all. Society doesn't let kids vote, doesn't let kids buy alcohol or tobacco, doesn't let them drive or join the army, and doesn't let them watch 18-rated films.

I remember being a teenager.

I remember the valuable life-lesson we got about not trusting strangers in the form of the police creating a (safe) demonstration with one of their own plain-clothed officers pretending to be a villain, I remember subsequently making huge errors of judgement, and I remember others being far more trusting than me.

I remember the school anti-drugs campaign centred on Leah Betts, and that the way the teachers talked to us felt so patronising that I wanted to do drugs just to spite them. (Never acted on it, just wanted to).

I remember the art department computer, some very old attempt at security to stop kids messing with it, which I could trivially circumvent.

I remember when we got ISDN at school, and that I immediately started heavily using the internet whenever possible. They had content filters of course, but they were mediocre at best.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#45

Post by ben_w »

derefr wrote: post #38
Arainach wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting aside that children as a group are brilliant and constantly jailbreaking every kind of device management they are subjected to, the vast majority of parents aren't technical enough to understand this problem much less set themselves up as "admins" and the vast majority of those who are technical enough to understand do not have the time. They're already trying to ensure their children are fed, educated, socia…

Who said anything about a technical problem? Being an “admin on their phone” just means knowing their PIN code and passwords and grabbing their phone whenever you want. No technical know-how required. Also, I object to this: > They're already trying to ensure their children are fed, educated, socialized, emotionally supported, and so on. In 2024, all of the above except “fed” occur at least partially over the Interne…

This:

> The parents can just be the admins of their children's devices and tell those devices to capture and report communications before they're encrypted.

requires more technical skill than:

> Who said anything about a technical problem? Being an “admin on their phone” just means knowing their PIN code and passwords and grabbing their phone whenever you want. No technical know-how required.

I don't even know how to get them to "capture and report communications before they're encrypted" (generically over all apps and websites), and I've been writing iPhone apps since iOS 4 and the first retina iPod touch.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#46

Post by thefz »

CJefferson wrote: post #2

I'm happy to have a discussion about this, but I don't buy that end-to-end encryption will, overall, increase children's safety. I'm happy to see strong evidence one way of the other, but this article is very one-sided. Child grooming on the internet is a huge problem, and I suspect (again, happy to see evidence against it) it's better to allow scanning of children's communications, rather than ensuring their communi…

> Child grooming on the internet is a huge problem, and I suspect (again, happy to see evidence against it) it's better to allow scanning of children's communications

Assuming the scan always happen by a well-intentioned actor, and that no data is ever leaked, and that the children consent to the scanning... lots of assumptions here.

ANY human communication has the right to be private.

Imagine a proposal to install microphones on kids to record anything they say just in case. It would be outrageous, right? We focus on electronic communications just because if we want, we can break their privacy.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#47

Post by CJefferson »

vaylian wrote: post #16
CJefferson wrote: post #2

I'm happy to have a discussion about this, but I don't buy that end-to-end encryption will, overall, increase children's safety. I'm happy to see strong evidence one way of the other, but this article is very one-sided. Child grooming on the internet is a huge problem, and I suspect (again, happy to see evidence against it) it's better to allow scanning of children's communications, rather than ensuring their communi…

> it's better to allow scanning of children's communications, rather than ensuring their communication with whoever they are talking to is end-to-end encrypted. This is not purely a technical matter. Children and adolescents want confidential communication just like older people. You might argue, that it is in the best interest of minors to have someone/something look at their private communication to intervene if ne…

There are many ways we don't give children the same rights as adults. They might want confidential communication, but I'm not sure they should have it.

Why are you so sure that it is better and more versatile to educate them and their parents? We've been educating children, and parents, basically forever (and I've done a lot of educating of children myself). While they are young and still learning, I really believe they do need a mixture of freedom and guard-rails, to ensure they can't do themselves too much harm while still developing.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#48

Post by newswasboring »

vaylian wrote: post #37
newswasboring wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educate them and their parents. Children need to learn how to manage trust with strangers in the offline and online world anyway and the internet doesn't change that. I'm not sure this is even possible. I understand children are smart but I don't think they are this smart. We can educate children to be cautious but i don't think we should expect them not to get out witted by an adult.

Children are smart enough to understand that no stranger except for a doctor should request to see their private parts. Children are smart enough to learn that they should not respond to sharing names, ages and locations when asked about it on the internet. Also: Children are a lot smarter than AI, which is allegedly the super-magical protection against child grooming.

I feel like you are just asserting things because it feels right. I don't have children myself but I have a gaggle of nieces and nephews and I just can't bring myself to be convinced that they can be trained to thwart the plans of an adult. Add to that all the cases I've heard about, no parent said they didn't try to train their child not to talk to strangers. The predators are using tools designed by billion dollar companies and very refined grooming tactics. It will take some evidence before I'm convinced children can combat all that with training from over worked and underpayed parents.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#49

Post by Arainach »

derefr wrote: post #38
Arainach wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting aside that children as a group are brilliant and constantly jailbreaking every kind of device management they are subjected to, the vast majority of parents aren't technical enough to understand this problem much less set themselves up as "admins" and the vast majority of those who are technical enough to understand do not have the time. They're already trying to ensure their children are fed, educated, socia…

Who said anything about a technical problem? Being an “admin on their phone” just means knowing their PIN code and passwords and grabbing their phone whenever you want. No technical know-how required. Also, I object to this: > They're already trying to ensure their children are fed, educated, socialized, emotionally supported, and so on. In 2024, all of the above except “fed” occur at least partially over the Interne…

In addition to ben_w's point, your proposal requires parent to understand every app that could possibly be used to communicate with others, how they can be used, how chats can be hidden, to audit all of the above on a regular basis, and still won't catch fairly basic things like a kid who deleted their messages as soon as they're read.

Re: Protecting Children's Safety Requires End-to-End Encryption

#50

Post by kaba0 »

CJefferson wrote: post #47
vaylian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's better to allow scanning of children's communications, rather than ensuring their communication with whoever they are talking to is end-to-end encrypted. This is not purely a technical matter. Children and adolescents want confidential communication just like older people. You might argue, that it is in the best interest of minors to have someone/something look at their private communication to intervene if ne…

There are many ways we don't give children the same rights as adults. They might want confidential communication, but I'm not sure they should have it. Why are you so sure that it is better and more versatile to educate them and their parents? We've been educating children, and parents, basically forever (and I've done a lot of educating of children myself). While they are young and still learning, I really believe t…

And who exactly is a children? Because teenagers infantilization is a grave issue in the US, where they can in several states buy guns and die for their country, but can’t drink a beer, and they having sex with their peers is somehow viewed as wrong.

A ~15 years old absolutely should have every right to private communication.

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