[HN Gopher] No Place to Hide - U.K. campaign against end-to-encr...
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No Place to Hide - U.K. campaign against end-to-encryption
encryption
Author : intunderflow
Score : 440 points
Date : 2022-01-18 13:47 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (noplacetohide.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (noplacetohide.org.uk)
| agilob wrote:
| The website does NOT even offer HTTP, it has 301 redirect to
| ENCRYPTED HTTPS. Do not click it, it's obviously a scam from
| hypocrites!
| brandoncoburnss wrote:
| AshleysBrain wrote:
| There doesn't appear to be any clear proposals put forward. The
| goals under "Our campaign" are vague and high-level. How exactly
| can E2E encryption be done without putting children at risk, as
| they put it? This page at least appears to be silent on the
| matter. So it's hard not to come away thinking that this is just
| a "think of the children" attack on E2E encryption as a whole.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| I'm not getting into the rights or wrongs of child abuse because
| there are many legal forms of child abuse which religions and
| govts have normalised over the centuries as acceptable behaviour,
| but considering it is currently portrayed as the worst act
| someone can do, this is a campaign that has high knee jerking
| manipulation potential against the uneducated.
|
| Why doesn't the Govt produce an app, which lets people
| voluntarily offer up information to authorities that can run on
| all their devices?
|
| This way a subsection of the population will be automatically
| sidelined and the authorities can concentrate on the data from
| those not using their app. But this only targets devices, it
| doesnt target offline situations like people meeting in a pub
| arranging things, where the consumption of alcohol provides an
| automatic defence to the prosecution!
| azalemeth wrote:
| I feel a bit odd posting this. My HN news identity is tied to
| that of mine in real life - something that I am proud of, but
| something I might change shortly. Apologies in advance for the
| very long sentences.
|
| In many ways, my childhood was horrific. Bullied from a young age
| for being very different to my peers, I had my bones broken by
| older children aged 8, 9, and 13; scratches and bite marks from
| the age of about 5. Older children did "things" to me that
| _definitely_ count as sexual assault with adult eyes; I 'd rather
| not get into all of it as I was never groomed, but I was
| certainly abused. One memory I have is of sitting on the sofa
| with my arm in plaster, freshly broken, and playing the Legend of
| Zelda: Ocarina of Time on my N64. A teacher visited, out of the
| blue, and asked my mum not to sue the school I was at. Several of
| the teachers I had as a teenager are now convicted paedophiles --
| convicted because they had sex with students (of my gender). I
| remember one talking about getting large erections in class.
|
| When I went to Oxford, to read physics, after years of being
| beaten, bullied, spat at, stamped on, urinated upon; after having
| to battle my school to pay for someone to invigilate my entrance
| exam paper (they refused -- I did it in the head of the sixth
| form's office); after being threatened with expulsion for
| cracking their WEP key to read wikipedia in class; after having
| faeces thrown at me, a firework placed in my locker, stolen
| property put in my coat pocket to frame me, and other boys
| putting what would now be considered "extreme pornography" in the
| UK in my coat pocket, or changing my unlocked computer's desktop
| picture to horse porn; or being shown videos of pigs being
| decapitated with a chainsaw because I was vegetarian -- after all
| _that_ , when _finally_ , I was welcomed into a place where
| learning was encouraged, and the others were _like me_ , I
| frankly thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I've hung onto it,
| tooth and nail, trying to do good in the world (and let others
| like me have their chance).
|
| I therefore feel that I'm uniquely qualified to comment this
| government's attempt at disrupting E2E encryption. I understand
| the maths (but I am not a cryptographer) and I very much feel
| like I would be in the target demographic.
|
| Banning or breaking end to end encryption won't help.
|
| Targetted abuse is, I believe on the part of the abuser(s),
| entirely psychological, and that process leads to physical
| violence. The medium is a lesser concern. I had seven shades of
| shit beaten out of me in the era before 2004 -- at AIM and
| Jabber's height -- and snooping my messages would not have
| helped.
|
| People who are sexually attracted to children are very rare, and
| the allegations take a long time to come out because your state
| of mind only really develops fully about the whole process years
| later. The medium of communication matters -- and having some
| sort of post facto evidence chain is undoubtedly helpful -- but
| breaking disappearing messages is not what this PR campaign is
| about. It's about increasing the ability of the security services
| to snoop.
|
| The proposals are something I vehemently disagree with - there is
| a very large difference between a complaint being raised, that
| complaint being investigated, and _as part of that_ evidence
| gathered (and message databases recovered); and _proactive,
| untargetted_ investigation of crime. The UK 's town of
| "Scunthorpe" famously fails most "bad language" filters and it
| blights the lives of its residents. Having _the police_
| investigate children _proactively_ without talking to them
| is...immoral. I very much believe that, complete with the five-
| years-non-negotiable key disclosure law in the UK, encryption
| moves the burden of duty appropriately onto the police: they can
| investigate matters when a complaint is raised, _but not before_.
|
| Any further goes too far towards the surveillance (Stazi-style)
| police state, in my opinion, with children being _investigated by
| the empowered, frightening apparatus of the state_ because they
| said something naughty. We already know what happens to children
| who look like they might happen to be carrying drugs on their way
| to school, when the police have the powers to stop and search. It
| hasn 't ended well, either for the police (wherein trust is
| rapidly falling), or for the children in question. Let's _not_
| make the same mistake again with what is, fundamentally, _maths_.
| fnord77 wrote:
| seems the UK wants to become (another) cautionary tale.
| [deleted]
| regularjack wrote:
| The title is inaccurate, the site explicitly says:
|
| > We are not opposed to end-to-end encryption.
|
| I'm not commenting on the merits of this campaign, simply on the
| fact that the title is inaccurate.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I don't believe it's inaccurate. That sentence is put out there
| early but the rest of the paragraphs go on to beg businesses
| not to turn it on. It plays as a way to get ahead of the
| argument but ends up countering itself at every turn.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| They say:
|
| > We are not opposed to end-to-end encryption, as long as it is
| implemented in a way that does not put children at risk. We are
| in favour of both strong privacy and children's safety and urge
| social media companies to protect both.
|
| Which basically means "we are not opposed to end-to-end
| encryption as long as the encryption is not end-to-end".
| bo1024 wrote:
| The site also says right above that
|
| > We want social media companies to confirm they will not
| implement end-to-end encryption
|
| (our two quotes both omit similar amounts of context.)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Its odd that they are framing it as social media companies are
| now "starting to roll out e2ee"
|
| All the main messaging platforms have some sort of e2ee, apart
| from gchat and FB messenger (that I know of, I'm not considering
| snap/insta/twitter/tiktok DMs)
|
| Given that Facebook are going to outspend the government
| significantly to prove that they are encrypting and making your
| messages private, its going to be an interesting fight.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Ever wondered what modern day propaganda would look like?
|
| This is the kind of stuff that will be in the history books in 2
| decades time.
| RansomStark wrote:
| >This is the kind of stuff that will be in the history books in
| 2 decades time.
|
| Do you think so? I don't, history is written by the winners,
| and all western governments play the propaganda game.
|
| Doesn't matter if it's the democrats or republicans, labour or
| Tories. No politician is going to call this out, the
| behavioural psychologists are in on it, and so are the media
| companies.
|
| Unless there is some major disruption in the next 2 decades,
| think revolution, invasion. You won't see a thing in the
| history books.
|
| Maybe we need to get ahead of the game. I propose we add a new
| http error code: 452: this history does not exist
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > I propose we add a new http error code: 452: this history
| does not exist
|
| It's 451.
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7725
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I actually thought it was really _bad_ propaganda, and quite
| transparent. The arguments are incoherent, and they don 't have
| any proposal.
|
| They say "we aren't against e2e, we just want big tech to
| deploy it in a way that is safe". Well, either you have e2e or
| you don't; it's not surprising they have no proposal.
| deadbunny wrote:
| 99% of the population don't understand that distinction.
| Which is exactly why they're running this campaign. It'll
| connect e2ee with criminals in the populations minds.
| dogleash wrote:
| >I actually thought it was really bad propaganda, and quite
| transparent. The arguments are incoherent, and they don't
| have any proposal.
|
| There's a saying that you only notice propaganda that doesn't
| work on you. That's not quite true, but roughly speaking,
| that's why you think this is so dumb. I could list off around
| a dozen other incoherent positions with no underlying policy
| proposals, _if it wasn 't for the fact they're actually quite
| popular right now and I know well enough to bite my tongue_.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| So the reality of this is that this is the UK government not
| being able to spy on platforms like whatsapp. Remove the E2E
| encryption and five eyes gets it's eyes on whatever you're
| saying.
|
| It's really scummy to use children as a weapon here e.g.
| Encryption allows child abuse.
| balabaster wrote:
| Having children allows child abuse - do we ban people from
| having children? Of course we don't...
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Why the focus on child sex abuse? End-to-end encryption makes it
| easier to have all sorts of conversations privately, criminal or
| not.
| arpa wrote:
| Paging Paedofinder General[0]!
|
| 0. https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Paedofinder_General
| balabaster wrote:
| What if we look at ideas such as encryption requiring licensing
| such that there are valid use cases for it and invalid use cases
| for it. Things that automatically qualify as valid use cases
| would be things like login systems, payment systems,
| communication between certain parties deemed essentially private
| - for example client attorney communications, patient and medical
| team communications, reporters, whistleblowers, and other
| similarly essential services that require protection. I'm sure
| there are many valid use cases.
|
| Invalid use cases would be things like social media platforms
| where children are able to communicate with unknown parties.
|
| Could something like that work? How could a system like that be
| protected from abuse? Obviously pedophillic doctors and reporters
| would have an immediate loophole that would need to be
| considered...
|
| There has to be a way where we can have legitimately end to end
| encrypted systems while preventing illegitimate ones. There's a
| massive grey area in between "ban encryption" and "let pedophiles
| do what they want without any oversight." There must be a
| solution that falls somewhere in the middle of those two things.
| NazakiAid wrote:
| Well guess I won't be supporting Barnardos again. Disappointed to
| see them supporting this cause.
| zohch wrote:
| intricatedetail wrote:
| This smells of Nudge all over it. Government is using psyops
| against public interest for quite some time now.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Wow, a fake grass roots campaign. That's original.
| gpmcadam wrote:
| the irony of the active SSL certificate on this page.
| stayfrosty420 wrote:
| I hope that is the developer of this site having a sense of
| humour.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| Even better, the certificate has no Owner information supplied.
| The YouTube video is unlisted. The YouTube channel supplies no
| About information. It's fine for them to be anonymous and load
| a bunch of tracking resources over https.
|
| Naming the campaign a title shared by Greenwald's Snowden book
| is an amazing touch. The same hashtag was even used extensively
| to discuss/promote the book. Would almost be funny if it wasn't
| so depressing.
| barrkel wrote:
| ISTM that ending E2E encryption can only be the starting point.
| As long as kids are getting internet connected cameras - which is
| pretty much all kids these days - and using them to talk to
| people online, there will be people trying to convince them to
| broadcast activities which should stay private. How does ending
| E2E encryption fix that, without additionally implementing total
| surveillance? How does it work across borders?
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Relevant from Australia.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW-OMR-iWOE
| gtsop wrote:
| When technologically impared people make decisions.
|
| Here is a possible solution to your problem: Release an open
| source library that locally has a trained model to detect child
| abuse texting. Allow messaging platforms to integrate this
| library on the user end (you know, after the second "end" in the
| end-2-end). Implement parental control tools that enable this
| library to look st messages and report when something is fishy.
|
| Op-in, privacy respecting, user controlled.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > (you know, after the second "end" in the end-2-end)
|
| The "end" in E2EE is the end _user_ , or software acting on
| that user's behalf as their agent--not software acting for some
| third party such as the service provider against the end user's
| will.
|
| Integrating digital spies into peoples' devices is not the
| answer.
| webdelv wrote:
| > "We want social media companies to confirm they will not
| implement end-to-end encryption until they have the technology in
| place to ensure children will not be put at greater risk as a
| result."
|
| Most of these companies already know the users birthday, if this
| is only about child abuse then instead of adding backdoors for
| everyone, why not just disable end to end encryption
| conversations for users under 16?
| easrng wrote:
| Almost everyone <18 lies about their age on the internet. I
| have clicked through uncountably many age gates.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| They already reject users who say they are under 13. How well
| has that been working out?
| jMyles wrote:
| > why not just disable end to end encryption conversations for
| users under 16
|
| That is the cohort that _most_ needs end-to-end encryption.
|
| https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryp...
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| Doesn't that open up a whole new can of worms, though, because
| it would require the operator of every service to check the age
| (and by extension, identity) of every user of their service, so
| as not to inadvertently E2EE the communications of a child?
| Passing off this verification to a Trusted Third Party (wink
| wink) is just as bad (probably worse), because you would be
| make it even easier for the government to tie it into a social
| credit system whatever they have planned for the next stage.
| webdelv wrote:
| If a child wants to be "protected" online then it would be up
| to them to enter their actual age. But you are right, the
| government will take any excuse to get users verifying their
| age.
| bradvl wrote:
| They're lobbying against encryption, but using HTTPS?
| bArray wrote:
| > But some are planning to introduce end-to-end-encryption, which
| scrambles messages so that only the sender and receiver can see
| what is being shared.
|
| One could also argue this could further _protect_ children. Now,
| criminal material cannot be viewed by an unintended third party.
| For example, it is well known that an iCloud hack leaked the
| photos of many celebrity women and was dubbed "the fappening",
| only possible because they were stored in a viewable format
| without e2e.
|
| We should be maximizing the control an individual has over their
| own data, not minimizing control. Anything the police can easily
| access is also something tonnes of other people can easily
| access. Given how common data breaches are, we should simply not
| trust that the transit/storage process is secure at all.
| cakoose wrote:
| > For example, it is well known that an iCloud hack leaked the
| photos of many celebrity women and was dubbed "the fappening",
| only possible because they were stored in a viewable format
| without e2e.
|
| I thought the 2014 iCloud hack was because attackers tricked
| users into revealing their passwords, not because Apple's
| iCloud service itself was compromised. If that's true, e2e
| would not have made a difference.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak
|
| (Of course it's definitely possible for a service itself to be
| hacked wholesale, in which case e2e would help.)
| philistine wrote:
| It was the lack of two-factor that was the vector of attack
| for the hack. It's why so many iCloud features these days are
| not available at all if your Apple ID doesn't have two-factor
| enabled; Apple justifiably got shamed into improving
| security.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Its always supposedly about the children
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Im a bit confused what exactly means by banning end to end
| encryption. What would stop two parties from sending encrypted
| data across the wire and decrypt it on the other end of it? How
| would they ban that? If one posts some gobbledygook encrypted
| text on a forum that only a specific recipient would have the key
| how would that be stopped?
| mimsee wrote:
| There's this gem in the source:
|
| console.log("you are being tracked");
| grumpymouse wrote:
| I live in the UK here and I have no problem with the police or
| government being able to read my WhatsApp messages - provided
| there is sufficient judicial oversight (i.e. they can convince a
| judge there's sufficient evidence I'm doing something criminal).
|
| They can already get a warrant to go through my underwear drawer,
| tap my phone or read my snail mail.
|
| Why would chat messages be different?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Do you think that you should have the right to talk to someone
| in person without the government tapping into that? If so why
| chat messages should be different?
| grumpymouse wrote:
| If the police can prove to a court that there's evidence
| somebody's committing a serious crime I'm fine with them
| listening to people talk in person.
|
| For example, if it really looked like I were trafficking
| drugs it would be fine to send somebody to follow me and
| listen to me talk to people
| harryvederci wrote:
| "OMG, knifes can hurt children, yet evil store owners continue to
| sell knifes anyway!"
|
| Here's a controversial thought: maybe you should _educate your
| children_?
|
| And if that doesn't work, maybe children shouldn't be allowed to
| be on social media, since (if I recall correctly) it's proven to
| be bad for them anyway? (By the facebook/instagram leak?)
| drcongo wrote:
| The irony of this being served over TLS appears lost on them.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Yeah, that's just the thing though. They aren't against E2E
| encryption, actually! They're very much for it.
|
| Just so long as they get to use it, and you don't.
| blunte wrote:
| One solution is for black and gray hats to make a coordinated
| effort to regularly publish conversations between officials and
| promoters of these policies.
|
| When their conversations with their mistresses become frequently
| public, they will change their attitudes.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| I have ( a completely unverified ) view of this trash.
|
| Every foundation/organization initially to influence politicians
| (i.e. what happened here through government funding) wrt end-to-
| end encryption is at most two bank transactions away from getting
| funding from either Hollywood or the military.
|
| "Save the children" (c) , because some organization is controlled
| by a power mad narcissist, for whom privacy is a luxury you
| shouldn't be able to afford.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| But to be honest all these attacks on the e2e encryption in order
| to prevent child abuse or security are a bit busting balls, like
| there has been for years pedo content in light on youtube, and no
| police saw that, other than VIPs and princes going to islands to
| see kids, I think this has nothing to do with kids and security,
| it's just another way to shrink individual liberties
| jowsie wrote:
| Here's one of the ads for this campaign.
|
| https://youtu.be/1wKSDv77FBs
| hd4 wrote:
| This is all part of Operation Save Big Dog aka saving Boris
| Johnson's ass from being forced out as PM. Yesterday it was the
| TV licence fee ending. Tomorrow it will be some other populist
| nonsense.
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson...
| zohch wrote:
| truculent wrote:
| It is opportunistic timing, but the Home Office have been
| pushing for this for years.
| hd4 wrote:
| They were also talking about ending the TV licence for years.
| The timing couldn't be more obvious.
| _joel wrote:
| Don't forget the Navy being brought in to do something with
| the same legal standing as Border Force could do, but duly
| reducing our available Navy resources. The people who buy
| into these stupid red meat policies don't realise they
| can't blow up ships crossing, if anything they'll have a
| larger capacity to help them, therefore trafikers.
| pydry wrote:
| The license fee thing may have been less of a populist thing
| and more of an A) shot across the bows at the BBC for its
| coverage of partygate. B) a sop to murdoch who has been wanting
| to kill the BBC/license fee since forever.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The licence fee thing has been in development for years. It
| was brought forward to distract attention away from the PM's
| blatant lying. I imagine they'll have a new policy
| announcement each day for the next week - anything to keep
| discussion of ministerial hypocrisy out of the morning news
| shows.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| You can gauge the honesty of any proposed computing law by
| measuring how soon and how loudly they mention child pornography.
| And this one has it in huge letters at the top of the page.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| I'm sure our politicians have been discussing this on their E2E
| encrypted Whatsapp group chats
| motohagiography wrote:
| We should be a bit less naive about what this play really is.
| There is a talking point I've observed in some of my more
| progressive circles that "nerds aren't the good guys anymore," as
| managerialists see principled people who demand facts, evidence,
| logic, and reason as an obstacle to their maintaining control of
| "The Narrative," which is whatever absurdity authorities and
| their toadies use to demonstrate their alignment.
|
| This campaign has nothing to do with protecting children -
| especially given the UK establishment's veritable tradition of
| both organizing and covering up industrial scale sexual abuse -
| and it is nothing more than hate speech designed to cast
| aspersions upon and isolate technologists as part of a broader
| political effort.
|
| The Rolling Stone article from earler this week said, "The Home
| Office has hired the M&C Saatchi advertising agency -- a spin-off
| of Saatchi and Saatchi, which made the "Labour Isn't Working"
| election posters, among the most famous in UK political history
| -- to plan the campaign, using public funds."
|
| I would encourage HN readers to recognize this campaign is only
| nominally about encryption, and mainly it is about politically
| attacking the credibility and reputations of civilian
| technologists, and by conflating your expertise with abusers this
| M&C Saatchi agency has produced literal hate propaganda against
| you. (just following orders, surely!) I'd recommend people to not
| underestimate what this is.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| >it is about politically attacking the credibility and
| reputations of civilian technologist
|
| No question about it, this is accurate - especially given the
| way the UK has treated those who have a _legitimate_ reason to
| use encryption for political reasons.
|
| This is cynical authoritarianism being used to confer a
| totality over protective technology.
| api wrote:
| I've seen this "nerds are the bad guys" pro legacy media
| narrative too, and in the same places. In the US it's usually
| built around January 6th and Trumpism and the role of social
| media in that.
|
| I'm alarmed by the rise of right-wing populist totalitarianism
| too, but I also feel like we need to remind people to keep
| their eye on the other players. I heard a funny saying once:
| the march of tyranny goes "left, right, left, right..." You
| don't need to posit a conspiracy to explain that pattern, just
| reaction and opportunism.
|
| I'm hearing rumblings in the USA about a "domestic war on
| terror" which is every bit as scary as another borderline coup
| attempt if not more. We'll see that get pushed hard if there is
| an Oklahoma City scale attack that comes out of the fringe of
| the militia, right-populist, or Qanon-type circles. That push
| will include our own version of this UK campaign but framed
| around surveilling domestic extremism.
|
| I don't think the cryptography wars are over. I think we'll see
| renewed pushes for more spying and crypto restrictions as we
| (perhaps) enter a period of increasing domestic and global
| political instability. I also expect to see pushes to lock down
| all devices to only run approved code, an open and general war
| on universal computation, or a push to require all devices to
| have remote backdoors.
|
| Edit:
|
| Anyone who entertains these arguments needs to remember that
| "their side" may not necessarily be the ones wielding them.
| Always picture any increased invasive powers or reduced
| individual liberties in the hands of your worst political
| opponents. Political winds can shift quickly, especially in
| these times.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The irony is most domestic extremism and violence (right and
| left) is unofficially tolerated because it's useful to be
| able to direct it at your opponents and just not enforce laws
| against it, so in many cases it's completely manufactured. I
| stopped being outraged years ago because that's how they know
| it's working.
|
| The domestic extremism thing in north america is going to use
| the same absurdist playbook, which is filling the message
| with inconsistency and nonsense so that people are so
| disgusted by it we treat it as too stupid to do anything
| about - and that in effect neutralizes us so we do nothing,
| and that is the sufficient condition for evil to prevail.
|
| I'm not a conspiracy theorist so much as a conspiracy
| arbitrageur, and as long as we think the cadre of people
| behind these authoritarian plays are stupid and incompetent,
| the longer we will do nothing to stop them, and the more
| extreme it will ultimately need to be to dislodge them. There
| was a time when I would leave these things unsaid, but I
| think it's important to recognize the time where that was
| strategic has passed.
|
| If you are among those who can see what's going on, now is
| the time to articulate it, imo.
| zohch wrote:
| bogle wrote:
| This is from a government that has consistently waged war on
| expert opinion, "I think the people in this country have had
| enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that
| they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong." -
| Gove
|
| This is, quite frankly, from a government that has waged a war
| on truth.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > "nerds aren't the good guys anymore,"
|
| Why would anyone assume this was ever true?
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Is it odd that the website is encrypted? Why would they need
| that?
| aethertron wrote:
| Online-initiated grooming presumably begins outside of e2e'd
| 1-on-1 communications. Seems social media platforms have a bunch
| of options to help prevent that, and keeping e2e. (CSAM is a
| different sort of crime and must have a different solution).
| Facebook knows the age of its users, right? There's no good
| reason a regular strange adult's account should be privately
| communicating with a teenager (aside from special services like a
| suicide or domestic violence hotline).
|
| Twitter/Reddit? Kids shouldn't be on those. They're full of porn.
| bmh100 wrote:
| Consider the manager of a fast-food restaurant.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Who is fighting this and where do I send money?
| totetsu wrote:
| No place to hide is such a terrifyingly direct phrase given the
| real effects/intentions of this
| idontwantthis wrote:
| The thing I never understand is that anyone can make an e2e chat
| app in an hour. It can exchange files in an afternoon.
|
| It's like banning hand signals. How do you ban a way of
| communicating that anyone can do for free?
| gampleman wrote:
| You don't. You just give yourself the ability to send eye-
| watering fines to any of these apps.
|
| If the fine is PS100,000,000, but you have only an estimated
| 0.01% of being prosecuted for it, would you write such an app
| in an hour? Or would you think twice about it?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| It doesn't matter how big the penalties are, if your chance
| of getting caught is approximately zero. They keep jacking up
| the penalties for using a mobile phone behind the wheel, but
| everyone is still doing it. Big penalties without enforcement
| is just political theatre.
| networkid wrote:
| Seriously? Maybe they just should not give their children
| devices?
| boppo1 wrote:
| The only thing I see ending this push is a "fappening" style leak
| involving CEOs, celebrities, and government figures. Not
| necessarily just intimate sexual content, but as much 'personal'
| information as possible.
|
| I really think we're heading straight into the panopticon. We'll
| probably happily vote for it, to "protect" ourselves. I'll buy
| some more PLTR and the bags under my eyes will grow darker.
| Mystlix wrote:
| If you don't want your children to be molested via the internet
| don't give your children access to the internet, end of story.
| You'd never let your 10yo child hang out at the skater park
| because the moment you are not there present someone might abduct
| him, but letting your child create accounts on every social media
| imaginable and giving him unfiltered access to the network is
| somehow acceptable and the rest of the world should suffer
| because of it? Children don't need to own smartphones, computers
| or internet access, just like they don't need to listen to death
| metal or watch gore movies. Those things will come with time and
| maturity and your lack of parenting is never going to excuse the
| government snooping on everything I do
| jkepler wrote:
| Teach them to read real books, on paper, by real authors. Given
| them lots of unstructured time in nature with other children,
| with a watchful parent nearby (this requires investment of a
| parents' time, but I can't think of a better investment).
| Mystlix wrote:
| Sorry, mine wasn't a plain boomer rant, there are plenty of
| "real" books I would never let my child read. Most classics
| are very mature and talk very vividly about violence, death,
| sex and atrocities. Children should be exposed to nuanced
| stuff that isn't dumbed down, it's just that these nuanced
| things should be in the realm of a child, leaving the more
| mature stuff to older people. A book talking about the
| friendship between two children in a complex way is cool and
| good, a book talking about the friendship between two drug
| addicts might be more suitable to someone who knows a bit
| more about life.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| I agree with this, but this is something that needs to be done
| on the societal level. Doing this individually will be nearly
| impossible without impacting the social life of the child
| involved, which no parent wants to do.
|
| I think the vast majority of people agree that unrestricted
| screens and online communication are bad for kids, so I think
| this idea could get pretty widespread support. It shouldn't be
| the norm that a 10yo has an iPhone.
|
| It's like giving them a Land Rover instead of a Hot Wheels. But
| of course, the Hot Wheels of phones doesn't exist right now.
| Maybe it should. A smartphone dedicated for children, which can
| only install a small number of safe apps?
| kmlx wrote:
| > End-to-end encryption is valuable technology designed to keep
| our data and conversations safe. We are not opposed to end-to-
| encryption in principle and fully support the importance of
| strong user privacy. Instead, our campaign is calling for social
| media companies to work with us to find a solution that protects
| privacy, without putting children at even greater risk.
|
| wouldn't apple's solution from last year be a pretty good
| solution for the way they're framing this?
| nybble41 wrote:
| Apple's "solution" is not end-to-end encryption. They place
| their software agent in the communication path (as a man-in-
| the-middle) to report back on the content of the messages,
| circumventing the encryption. It's not enough to encrypt only
| _part_ of the path; E2EE means _only_ the sender and intended
| recipient(s) have access to the messages. Apple is neither, and
| yet they give themselves access to the messages; ergo their
| system is not encrypted from end to end.
| prohobo wrote:
| Everyone is rightly criticizing the clear manipulation here.
|
| That said, "60-90% of abuse takes place within the home or family
| circle," - a quote from Mick Moran, co-ordinator of the crimes
| against children unit at Interpol.
|
| That leaves up to 40% happening online and elsewhere. Is it
| actually possible to prevent this online without compromising
| privacy? I think that's a legitimate problem to try to work on.
| api wrote:
| The remaining up to 40% is also mostly IRL: school, church,
| camp, neighbors' houses, and so on.
|
| Going after online sex abuse while 90%+ of it happens IRL is
| like trying to solve climate change by targeting marginal uses
| of fossil fuel like motorboats while ignoring coal fired
| power... which... is something we also do.
|
| You target the biggest things first. That's how you solve
| problems. For child abuse that means targeting home and
| institutional IRL abuse.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| croes wrote:
| >That leaves up to 40% happening online and elsewhere
|
| Mainly elsewhere and mainly IRL not online.
| prohobo wrote:
| Sure, I'm just saying: it's still a legitimate problem and
| shouldn't be ignored.
| croes wrote:
| The problem is legitimate but the proposed solution is
| useless
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| > Is it actually possible to prevent this online without
| compromising privacy?
|
| It's trivial, take kids out of social media.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| I don't see this said enough and I cannot state enough.
|
| You should stop your children from having unrestricted access
| to the internet.
|
| I personalty don't see it as anyone else's job to protect my
| children but me and their mother.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That leaves up to 40% happening online and elsewhere
|
| "Online" isn't just a place abuse happens in a way that is
| exclusive with abuse being "at home or in the family circle",
| it's a place preparation for abuse happens and products of
| abuse are distributed. A lot of the online abuse material is
| from abuse that happens at home or in the family circle.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| The UK under its current government is unfortunately a failed
| state..
| spamizbad wrote:
| An ironic initiative from the UK, considering the conduct of
| Prince Andrew, the BBC covering for Jimmy Savile for decades, and
| of course the British tabloid press defense of convicted sex
| abuser Ghislaine Maxwell.
|
| Would eliminating E2E encryption helped Savile's, Maxwell's, or
| Prince Andrew's victims? Nope.
| bidirectional wrote:
| > the British tabloid press defense of convicted sex abuser
| Ghislaine Maxwell.
|
| I haven't seen a single article that could reasonably be called
| a defense of Maxwell.
| spamizbad wrote:
| https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/it-s-hard-not-to-pity-
| gh...
|
| > It's hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine
| Maxwell -- 500 days and counting in solitary confinement. I
| intersected briefly with her at Oxford. As a fresher I
| wandered into Balliol JCR one day in search of its subsidised
| breakfast granola-and-Nescafe offering and found a shiny
| glamazon with naughty eyes holding court astride a table, a
| high-heeled boot resting on my brother Boris's thigh. She
| gave me a pitying glance but I did manage to snag an invite
| to her party in Headington Hill Hall -- even though I wasn't
| in the same college as her and Boris. I have a memory of her
| father, Bob, coming out in a towelling robe and telling us
| all to go home. I'm sure fairweather friends would not reveal
| they went to a Ghislaine Maxwell party: as Barbara Amiel's
| brilliant memoir Friends and Enemies proves, you only know
| who your real chums are when you're in the gutter.
| bar8uyr wrote:
| Written by Boris Johnson's sister too..
| blackhaz wrote:
| I understand the criticisms. But hear me out as a parent:
|
| 1) There is no way to monitor/prevent abuse for kid to get
| exposed to extreme (literally, potentially mentally damaging)
| pornography and perversion that percolates into the mainstream
| life via innocent channels - manga, anime, Reddit, and so on.
| When I grew up the content of that sort was significantly more
| limited, i.e. occasional porn GIFs, most fine erotic material,
| but nothing of the extreme sort you could easily stumble upon by
| just being online today, etc).
|
| 2) Qustodio can partially filter out some content as it's
| installed on the PC and the smartphone, but due to the all-
| pervading encryption it has no visibility into Discord and other
| social networks.
|
| 3) Disastrous breaches in IT school policies. School has given
| mandatory Chromebooks to all kids which they use probably half of
| the time in the class and for homework, and there is no way to
| bind the school account to Google Family Links - this is
| forbidden by the school admin. There is some filtering on the
| school Wi-Fi which school kids circumvent by joining their
| phone's shared Wi-Fi. Complained, received boilerplate "we are
| doing our best" reply. This is an independent school in London.
|
| 4) The only option I have is to begin breaking SSL in the middle
| via, say, FortiGate and hope it will catch some of the sites.
| This would also be applicable only to home Wi-Fi, rather
| ineffective.
|
| As a parent, the only solution I have is to prohibit access to
| screen, i.e. take all devices away, completely. Which I have
| failed, as there are very little communal spaces for the kids to
| hang out and interact where I live, and those who do hang out
| tend to be vaping, drinking alcohol, etc. All the kids are online
| in the evenings - chatting, sharing memes, laughing together, or
| they have pre-arranged playdates.
|
| So, my choice here is to completely take away all devices and,
| hence, completely remove the social component. Or just pray he
| won't get abused online. I, honestly, don't know what to do. I
| have been living with computers since 80s, started out with ZX
| Spectrum and PC/XT, and I am horrified by what allowing the kid
| to roam Internet without filters may lead to now.
| easrng wrote:
| Blocking content is not the way. I ran into Encyclopedia
| Dramatica and similar when I was like 12, and I wish that
| didn't happen, but there are no technical filters that would've
| stopped it. In my experience, kids will find a way around
| anything you could do, and they will want to fight what they
| perceive as unjust restrictions. Talk to them and communicate,
| you can't solve this with a technical solution.
|
| Also, Discord is not end-to-end encrypted. (Messages are sent
| and scrollback is loaded over HTTPS, realtime messages are
| received over an HTTPS WebSocket. (They are compressed, but not
| encrypted any more than normal HTTPS.))
|
| School devices are generally monitored/filtered way too much
| already. Fortunately until highschool I'd always been able to
| bypass blocking by changing my DNS or using HTTPS. My
| highschool has Fortinet though which seems to do SNI filtering
| so whenever I need to visit blocked things I have to use Tor.
| (There's probably a more efficient way but Tor works fine.)
| morbia wrote:
| The thing is there are counter examples where, in my opinion on
| moral grounds, a child is entitled to privacy. Some examples on
| off the top of my head:-
|
| * An LGBT child using LGBT safe spaces online. Being outed
| before a child has come to terms with their feelings themselves
| can be horrendous for their mental wellbeing, even in an
| understanding household. In less LGBT friendly households it
| could be extremely dangerous.
|
| * An abuser is part of their family and trying to communicate
| that to teachers, authorities or whoever else.
|
| Of course you are right to be concerned for your child, and
| age/maturity is really critical in this discussion. A 4 year
| old clearly shouldn't have unfettered access to the internet.
| Should a 15 year old who has shown they can be trusted be
| forced to have their parent view everything they do? I'm not
| sure.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > When I grew up the content of that sort was significantly
| more limited, i.e. occasional porn GIFs, most fine erotic
| material, but nothing of the extreme sort you could easily
| stumble upon by just being online today
|
| You must have lived a sheltered life as a child. As soon an VHS
| tapes came around in the late 70's and my family got a player,
| I was exposed to all kinds of crap- rape porn, bestiality,
| snuff films, white power propaganda, etc. You name it, and we'd
| trade the tapes as kids. Sure it's a lot more convenient now,
| but it was all around back then.
|
| I've taken the approach that I'd never be able to stop my
| curious child from seeing nasty stuff online, no matter how
| hard I try. The best thing I can do is educate and provide
| context. I explained pretty early on to my son that he has to
| be careful what he looks for online, because he'll find it. Now
| at 15 years old, he tells me, "you wouldn't believe the shit
| out there, it's disgusting." Exactly.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > You must have lived a sheltered life as a child. As soon an
| VHS tapes came around in the late 70's and my family got a
| player, I was exposed to all kinds of crap- rape porn,
| bestiality, snuff films, white power propaganda, etc. You
| name it, and we'd trade the tapes as kids. Sure it's a lot
| more convenient now, but it was all around back then.
|
| It was, but wasn't. I never saw porn on VHS, nor did I have a
| sheltered life. It wasn't until I was 15, last year of
| secondary school was when I saw porn round a pals house.
|
| My parent's were not the parents who were in to such content
| so there was never any of that in possession. True, it has
| always existed but regardless it can be damaging to a child.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > I am horrified by what allowing the kid to roam Internet
| without filters may lead to now.
|
| I worry too, my nephew is only three and is happily running
| around playing with dinosaurs.
|
| With social media the way it is, young teens selling themselves
| on OnlyFans, different types of pornography/hentai imagery
| traded on Discord. It's all horrifying.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Downvoted why? That teenagers are not selling themselves on
| OnlyFans? No one should be selling "pics" of themselves for
| cash.
|
| Hentai isn't traded on Discord? look around, because it's all
| there. Join a NSFW "lewd" discord and see for yourself.
|
| Discord welcomes 13-year olds to join the platform. That
| someone that young can see that content is horrific.
| easrng wrote:
| Discord allows you to mark channels as NSFW and only allows
| users who are over 18 to view them.
|
| Not that that ever stopped anyone though lmao.
| aethertron wrote:
| The problem with porn doesn't really come from accidental
| exposure to particularly 'extreme' material, I think. That
| might just be a start. The core problem is, for young people
| (adolescents) and adults alike, the deliberate search for porn
| (with hormone-fueled determination, it'll get around technical
| hurdles) as part of an addictive pattern of behaviour. To
| counter that, there's no substitute for voluntarily and
| consciously avoiding it. This may be helped by education:
| knowing why it's bad, and also knowing why it seems appealing,
| i.e. sex education and basic addiction psychology, as well as
| knowledge of the other porn-associated problems as informed by
| one's broader moral framework. Good luck.
| patrakov wrote:
| Well, the keyword here is "responsible parenting". The child
| has to understand that the restrictions come from you, and not
| from the computer. This means watching the screen together, and
| not relying on a fallible automated system.
|
| Breaking SSL is not the answer for one more reason: with more
| and more web apps (cannot say "websites") relying on
| JavaScript-only content delivery, long polling, websockets,
| server-sent events, and who knows what else, there are less and
| less standards. Earlier, such nanny software worked because
| everything was text and HTML, and it is known how to stop bad
| things in these content types. Nowadays, we can't just block
| replies, because we have to substitute some dummy JSON (or
| whatever) instead, so that the app doesn't crash or hang - and
| such dummy replacement of the blocked content is application-
| specific.
|
| Also, think about today's children, they are tomorrow's
| politicians: now you deploy an automated system that breaks the
| internet for them, tomorrow they will deploy an automated
| system that will deny access for you to anything published by
| the opposition.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I think that you are looking for a technological solution to a
| non technological problem, even if there was no encryption at
| all there is no way to 100% inspect all of your kids
| communications. The same way there is no way to follow them and
| watch them 100% of the time in the real world. The only thing
| you can do is educate your kid about these issues and trust
| them.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > but nothing of the extreme sort you could easily stumble upon
| by just being online today, etc).
|
| As an adult I don't "stumble" onto the type of content you're
| talking about and I browse the web _a lot_. So if children are
| "stumbling" onto this content, maybe just maybe, they don't
| need unfettered Internet access and their own private devices.
| pasloc wrote:
| Your problem is not that the kids can't be protected with
| encryption, but rather that you want way too much control over
| these kids' lives. I know you think you are protecting them,
| but it is much better for a child's development to simply be
| told and explained how the world works. Also porn. Anyone who
| believes that they can hide everything from a child until they
| are of age and that they will always act in a wise manner after
| they are of age is naive.
| npteljes wrote:
| Childen watching gore on liveleak, girls looking at anorexia
| inspiration and boys getting into extremist ideals are not
| really good for their development, and these resources don't
| "simply tell" how the world works. In fact, it's the
| opposite: they construct a desirable narrative that supplants
| interacting with the real world, they enclose someone instead
| of opening them up. It's a parent's job to ward off bad
| influence from their children, whom are not equipped with
| dealing with such stimuli. Maybe not even the parent is
| equipped. It's not a matter of hiding and controlling
| children, it's about not letting other abusive people raise
| your children instead of you.
| literallycancer wrote:
| Facebook seems to be doing all the heavy lifting on the
| extremism front. Overweight/underweight problems are just
| stupid and it takes like 1 hour to explain how to eat
| properly and then you never have to deal with that again.
| Videos of people dying at least serve as a counterpoint to
| movies where nothing ever happens to people doing dangerous
| stuff.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Overweight/underweight problems are just stupid and it
| takes like 1 hour to explain how to eat properly and then
| you never have to deal with that again.
|
| I do not think you have a firm grasp of how peer pressure
| works and how powerful it is. That's like saying "we told
| people that drugs are bad, so clearly nobody will do
| drugs anymore".
| npteljes wrote:
| Facebook's and other providers' moderation policies could
| differ a lot from yours. But these are the platforms
| where you can usually enable a form of parental control
| at least. Videos of people dying, like in an accident or
| war, might be at least real, but potentially still very
| damaging because of the lack of narrative. Another issue
| comes when the video also contains narrative: for example
| when they distance you from what you just saw, by saying
| how the people deserved death, were a lesser kind of
| people, and so on.
|
| Regarding the overweight / underweight problems, do you
| think that all the over and underweight people, and
| proper weight people who still battle some eating
| disorder, just missed a good hour of talking to? I wonder
| what you'd say to them.
| aethertron wrote:
| When that 1 hour of food education is pitted against 10s
| of hours of immersion in an online dysfunctional-eating
| subculture, what prevails?
|
| Perhaps children need 1 hour, or more, "don't fall in
| with the wrong internet crowd and let weirdos claim
| possession of your identity" education. I am not sure
| what form that would take.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >pornography and perversion that percolates into the mainstream
| life via innocent channels - manga, anime, Reddit, and so on
|
| I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but it's interesting
| how manga/anime is invoked in these discussions, often
| unintentionally or even unknowingly recalling the image of
| 'weird Japan', a supposed hotbed of child abuse and perversion,
| where no material, much less anime and manga are safe for
| Western eyes, supposedly more moral and discerning.
|
| I recently read a paper about this kind of discourse, in which
| the authors pointed out, quite rightly in my judgement, that
| the popularity of such readings in the mainstream Western press
| projects a certain idea of fiction and its relationship with
| reality which is not shared by many in Japan, and certainly not
| by the consumers of this 'pornography and perversion' according
| to ethnographic research on their opinions and perceptions.
|
| Second is the idea of 'stumbling' upon porn. Some people even
| class Neon Genesis Evangelion as 'perversion' in its own right,
| and recently in the US, portrayals of adolescent sexuality in
| stories and books, which some lawmakers are trying to remove
| from libraries. I'm of the opinion that the sparation isn't
| nearly that easy. Teenagers writing Harry Potter slash
| fanfiction is a far cry away from Blender animated monster
| porn, and a fannish teenager or younger will have a greater
| interest in the former.
|
| Consider just how well moderated most Internet communities are.
| The chance of seeing porn (as opposed to the anime equivalent
| of a very softcore porn gif) on r/all, or even r/anime is slim.
| A child is much more likely to 'stumble' accross it if a friend
| they know in real life sent it to them through Discord. The
| only other place I can really think of a child 'stumbling' in a
| zone meant for children would be Twitter, but then we're
| talking about Twitter, not 'reddit', 'anime', or 'manga'. In
| other words, I'm saying that just because the material exists,
| it doesn't mean it's innocently 'stumbled' upon by a wide-eyed
| child. Children get curious, especially when you tell them not
| to do something, or society provides that narrative.
| npteljes wrote:
| I'm afraid banning encryption doesn't alleviate this very real
| issue. In the current ecosystem, nothing is stopping people to
| install whatever they want on their phones / computers (well,
| Apple does stop them, but aside from that), and so, it's just
| an install away that the child rejoins the encrypted network
| where everything is possible.
| literallycancer wrote:
| Ah the horror. Ever tried actually talking to the kid? You guys
| didn't run around the neighborhood doing random shit when you
| were young? Were your parents horrified by what allowing you to
| roam without supervision may lead to?
|
| If watching some weirdo porn was enough to mentally damage
| people, the world would look quite different.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > nothing of the extreme sort you could easily stumble upon
|
| From your post, I divine that you don't really like porn much.
| I actually seek it out; but I've never "stumbled upon" anything
| more extreme than a model who looks as if she's 17. You don't
| find kiddieporn by stumbling around pornhub.
| lbriner wrote:
| There is a massive issue here of which this is merely a symptom.
| The _amount_ of harmful content available today is orders of
| magnitude more than it was 30 years ago.
|
| Sure, there has always been porn and abuse etc. but the scale
| that is permitted now due to the internet is massive. There are
| questions around how to reduce demand for content that feeds
| illegal activity including child abuse but also drugs, terrorist
| materials, human trafficking from certain porn etc.
|
| It isn't just how do we protect children but how do we protect
| society from becoming so numb to this that it just continues? How
| do we teach children that some snuff movies are real? That you
| cannot unsee an execution? That most porn content is either fake
| or coerced? How can you teach people that just because someone is
| called Doctor, doesn't mean their anti-vax conspiracy is true.
| Sure, you cannot stop them seeing it but we definitely have to
| think of some way of deciding what is and isn't acceptable and
| having much better cross-border enforcement for people who peddle
| this stuff.
|
| I think removing E2E encryption is a piss poor tool unless you
| fix the bigger problem.
| herio wrote:
| From this day on, letters are banned. All posted material must be
| on post cards so that any and all can inspect them in case you
| are being naughty.
|
| Funny how we've gone from court order to intercept somebodies
| mail to this...
| Paul_S wrote:
| "The campaign is funded by the UK Government"
|
| What is this nonsense? They are a majority government, they can
| pass any laws they want, why are they wasting my money on this
| insulting propaganda.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| The ability to pass any law you want is in itself pretty
| useless, because if the population thinks you did pass the
| wrong laws, you lose the power to pass future laws you might
| want, either due to getting thrown out during the next
| election, or because of loss of cranium, French Revolution
| style.
|
| What is important is lying about your true intention
| convincingly enough.
| fguerraz wrote:
| I wonder if we could make it backfire by setting up a similar
| campaign "No Place to Hide for MPs" for them to stop using
| WhatsApp and other end-to-end encrypted systems[1]. Demanding
| total transparency in their communications, in an effort to avoid
| them dodging their own rules.
|
| If done quickly and sent to the newspapers this could maybe
| discredit that campaign?
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-
| swit...
| 19870213 wrote:
| Especially needed, because "who knows what they will do to harm
| the children, maybe not this cabinet, but what about the next
| one?"
| aftergibson wrote:
| Agreed, lead by example to save the children. Right?
| sixhobbits wrote:
| I wonder if they intentionally overlapped with Greenwald's book
| on Govt surveillance [0]
|
| > No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S.
| Surveillance State is a 2014 non-fiction book by American
| investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. It was first published
| on May 13, 2014 through Metropolitan Books and details
| Greenwald's role in the global surveillance disclosures as
| revealed by the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor
| Edward Snowden.[2] The documents from the Snowden archive cited
| in the book are freely available online.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Place_to_Hide_(Greenwald_bo...
| shaftway wrote:
| I think the most telling part is the typo in the first paragraph
| (and in the HN title): "End-To-Encryption"
| Veen wrote:
| > We want social media companies to confirm they will not
| implement end-to-end encryption until they have the technology in
| place to ensure children will not be put at greater risk as a
| result.
|
| This seems disengenuous. Is there any way to implement E2E
| encryption that wouldn't "put children at greater risk" if we
| accept that framing?
|
| I understand why the Government and child welfare organizations
| don't like the idea of E2E. It would, in fact, make it more
| difficult to identify child abuse on social media, all else being
| equal. But the attempt to balance privacy with child welfare
| doesn't have to mean abandoning privacy altogether.
|
| An alternative would be to require social media companies to
| allow parents to monitor their children's social media activity.
| Or to have "child-friendly" accounts without E2E. It doesn't seem
| necessary to impose a blanket ban on E2E, which would almost
| certainly be abused.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Exactly. "Can we have homes that don't have cameras in every
| room streaming to law enforcement, without ensuring children
| will not be put at greater risk?"
| aunty_helen wrote:
| You're letting them control the narrative.
|
| If child's messages don't have encryption, the first thing a
| predator does is move them to an encrypted messaging platform.
|
| This is about the massive open door that is messenger and the
| full sweep the five eyes get from this.
| Veen wrote:
| I was more or less of your view until my 11-year-old niece
| was groomed and ended up sending naked pictures of herself to
| a 25-year-old man. Now, that incident was discovered because
| my niece's friend told her parents, but I do wonder whether,
| that aside, her parents would have found out at all. I am not
| in favour of banning E2E, but I do think it's foolhardy to
| deprive parents and law enforcement of any means to monitor
| children's social media activity.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| No body is depriving parents access to their children's
| phones with this. Parents guiding and supervising
| technology use is about as old as the internet itself.
|
| Think of my children is just another step along the line of
| pearl clutching. But I'll do you one better, I had a covert
| video taken of me and circulated around the internet and
| school that I went to. Would e2e encryption made any
| difference to that? No.
| Veen wrote:
| "Think of the children" is often abused, but that doesn't
| mean everyone claiming to want to protect child welfare
| is acting in bad faith, regardless of thought-terminating
| cliches like "think of the children" and "pearl
| clutching". It's entirely likely many of the politicans
| who support this move have genuine concerns. They are
| probably misguided, but not, I think, malicious.
| d883kd8 wrote:
| Parents control their children's devices, they don't need
| to intercept messages on the network and decrypt them
| bogle wrote:
| Children must be educated to understand these things can
| happen. It happens in Primary School here in Scotland (ages
| 4 - 11 approx.). If you are technically literate you will
| also be informing your children when you allow them on
| devices. After that you should respect their right to
| privacy. No need to ban e2ee, that's a canard.
| Veen wrote:
| Well, to be blunt, my sister in law definitely explained
| to her 11-year-old daughter that sending pictures of her
| vagina to strangers wasn't a good idea. Kids don't
| listen.
| bogle wrote:
| Probably not appropriate but the Reddit channel
| r/kidsarefuckingstupid is proof positive. Also the lived
| experience of everyone who remembers being a child. Or
| has children. Or knows any. Yup.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It's unfortunate what happened to your niece but the
| situation has clouded your rationality.
|
| A parent wouldn't let an 11 year old go to a frat party.
| They wouldn't let them go unsupervised to a concert. Most
| probably wouldn't leave their children home alone for a
| week. So why in the fuck do their kids have unfettered
| Internet access? Do they also let the kid just go to
| anyone's house without at least knowing who that friend is?
|
| How would unencrypted messages preventing grooming of your
| niece? Her parents should be checking on her devices the
| same as they'd want to know who her friends were and where
| she was when not at home. A phone or Facebook is not a
| babysitter and certainly not a parent.
|
| If E2EE was banned or restricted what at all would have
| changed with your niece? If she was groomed on completely
| unencrypted IRC what would be different? If she was groomed
| by some friend's older relative what would be different?
| Her parents failed at several occasions to actually parent
| her. Restrictions or banning E2EE wouldn't make them more
| capable parents.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| > If E2EE was banned or restricted what at all would have
| changed with your niece?
|
| What changed is the message she send will be unencrypted
| and not E2E, so now more people have access to them and
| maybe save or send them to their own closed messaging
| platform.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| I think the biggest problem is that parents have less and
| less right - or indeed, _ability_ - to monitor their
| childrens communications and function as decent and
| responsible parents. Inevitably, were this implemented,
| someone would find a way to turn it against parents '
| rights to monitor their children.
|
| And confounding this issue is the fact that the major
| platforms (Facebook, et al.) simply _don 't want parents to
| have this kind of control over their children, because it
| will effect their bottom line_. Children with less adult
| supervision tend to be far more easily manipulated.
|
| Its not just child diddlers who want this manipulation to
| proceed un-impeded by parental oversight - its Facebook, et
| al. too!
|
| So this evil campaign is going to get a lot of corporate
| support, I fear. For the wrong damn reasons.
|
| (Disclaimer: am an angry parent who is sick of the shit my
| kids have to deal with online... but who will also NEVER
| give up personal encryption as a right.)
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Is there any way to implement E2E encryption that wouldn't
| "put children at greater risk" if we accept that framing?
|
| Given that a lack of E2E encryption means that it is impossible
| for children to have private conversations with each other, it
| also means that predators have an easier time watching those
| conversations and using them to do harm. As such, the mere act
| of enabling E2E encryption reduces the risk to children.
| Miner49er wrote:
| > Is there any way to implement E2E encryption that wouldn't
| "put children at greater risk" if we accept that framing?
|
| Yeah, that's what Apple's CSAM detection system is basically.
| They scan the content before encrypting.
| Veen wrote:
| True, but that wasn't exactly welcomed either.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Arguably, that's not E2E encrypted, since there is a
| potential vulnerability placed between the user and the start
| of the encryption.
| simion314 wrote:
| >an alternative would be to require social media companies to
| allow parents to monitor their children's social media
| activity. Or to have "child-friendly" accounts without E2E. It
| doesn't seem necessary to impose a blanket ban on E2E, which
| would almost certainly be abused.
|
| Exactly , make this giant companies have 2 apps Facebook
| Messager and FB messanger for Kids iMessage and iMessage for
| Kids then is you responsability as a parent to setup your child
| device to enter the correc tbirth date of the user, then the
| App Store could only allow the "kids" version of the
| application.
|
| But now what? you have shit AI flagging pictures and badly paid
| people around the world attempting to classify is the picture
| is "bad" ?
|
| The problem seems to me to have a much more effective solution,
| hire some real cops or social workers to answer reports from
| children and parents, when some creep asks for such material
| you could easily report them, then FB,Apple or whoever will
| have to help the authorities and stop this illegal activity.
| Make an educational compaign to educate the children and
| parents and let them know where to report the issue, explain
| also the punishment and make some public examples.
| James-Livesey wrote:
| > ... is you responsability as a parent to setup your child
| device to enter the correc tbirth date of the user, then the
| App Store could only allow the "kids" version of the
| application.
|
| The problem is is that there is still a large portion of
| parents who will give their children devices despite being
| less educated on the dangers of online safety regarding
| children.
|
| I think that tech companies should ask parents whether they
| are buying a device for a child at the point of sale (since
| children are unlikely to purchase a device for themselves;
| instead they wish for a device for birthday/Christmas), and
| at that point, those companies should in some way inform
| those parents about the dangers of online use. Better yet
| (though could further complicate the process of distributing
| devices) is to give the option for parents to set up parental
| controls while they are in the process of purchasing a
| device.
|
| Implementing parental controls (which tech companies have
| largely done) that allows for parents to monitor their
| childrens' devices seems to be the only viable way to allow
| for both CSAM mitigation and end-to-end encryption to
| coexist, in my opinion.
| rasengan wrote:
| Ending encryption to protect children is a fallacy.
|
| Further, I don't understand how they can actually manage to do
| this without weakening all encryption on the internet.
|
| Very strange moves that aren't well thought out at all with a
| single focus to reduce the power of the people.
| drcongo wrote:
| _" Very strange moves that aren't well thought out at all with
| a single focus to reduce the power of the people"_ is a pretty
| good summary of everything the tory party does.
| Veen wrote:
| This is likely to be a better conversation if it doesn't
| degenerate into "Tories are evil". The Joint Committee on the
| Online Safety Bill, which highlighted the potential danger of
| E2E encryption, includes MPs and Peers from Labour and the
| LibDems too, all of whom supported it. It's not a party
| political issue and has broad cross-party support (probably
| because most MPs don't really understand it).
| hkt wrote:
| This actually sounds like a campaign for the client side content
| detection thing Apple cooked up recently. But still grim.
| FerretFred wrote:
| Interestingly, that site has been blocked by my employer's
| Corporate Overlord Content Filter. Had to use another computer to
| view the content, and now I can see why.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| They say up to 14 million reports of suspected child sex abuse
| could be lost each year. I couldn't easily verify that number
| from the linked NCMEC web site (seems high from the reports I
| read), but let's assume it's accurate.
|
| However... What can even be done with 14,000,000 annual reports
| of suspected child sex abuse?
|
| I'm just intrigued to know how that volume of data supports
| actual investigations, and to what extent it has helped bring
| perpetrators to justice or helped children suffering abuse.
| 15characterslon wrote:
| According to statista, the UK has about 14 million residents
| younger than 20 years, so they're just counting everyone as a
| potential victim.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/281208/population-of-the...
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| But NCMEC is a US organisation, not a UK one.
|
| Edit: I assume they use that since they are focused on social
| media companies, which are almost entirely US based.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| They don't say how many of those were found by people snooping
| comms and how many were logged by users. E.g. if someone sees
| someone talking creepy on a forum like Reddit, that still gets
| reported. If a neighbor does something creepy that still gets
| reported. Those millions over reports don't go away. This is
| classic fear-mongering from governments not skilled enough to
| protect their citizens without violating their rights.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yes, it's the classic "up to some max figure" weasel words.
| Could also be zero!
| alecmuffett wrote:
| Confusingly, perhaps intentionally so, it's a global number,
| not a UK one.
|
| Details here. https://alecmuffett.com/article/15902
|
| Disclosure: I wrote the blogpost.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Great analysis, thanks for posting it.
|
| I only got as far as realising the stats were from the US and
| were probably global.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I'm sure they liked a large headline figure. They should have
| disclosed that the figures were global at the very least.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Also, interesting that the majority of them are duplicates.
| easrng wrote:
| Besides, report features could include the keys for the
| reported message.
| kingosticks wrote:
| > let's assume it's accurate.
|
| This article tries to understand where that number comes from
| (and fails to do so): https://alecmuffett.com/article/15902
| jMyles wrote:
| Protecting kids by eliminating or breaking end-to-end encryption
| is a contradiction in terms.
|
| End-to-end encryption is crucial to protect today's kids.
|
| https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryp...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Do they just not know about deniable encryption? Even something
| like DNS can be self-hosted to circumvent DNS-over-HTTPS bans.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Should something like this come to pass I would expect quite an
| amusing arms race. One could create add-ons that use code similar
| to txtmode [1] _not my project_ to encode anything into words
| from a word list that anyone could create. Encoded in those words
| could be a compressed and /or encrypted string. There are
| probably even more clever and efficient ways to do E2EE without
| it looking like encryption at all.
|
| Would it be worthwhile to have a competition to create something
| along this line? Something in the same spirit as the js13kGames
| [2] but in this case who can create the most human looking and
| most efficient communication that is actually E2EE encrypted
| messages using customizable word-lists?
|
| [1] - https://github.com/c9fe/txtmode.git
|
| [2] - https://js13kgames.com/
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Even better, use GPT-3 to generate grammatically correct text
| which steganographically encodes an encrypted message.
| Maxburn wrote:
| Precisely; as soon as E2EE is outlawed it starts to look just
| like gun laws, only the criminals have it. Worse the software
| and methods are out there, all that happens next is you are
| raising the bar on being able to use it as it won't be commonly
| available.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Steganography is the broader topic. Recently, I think it has
| been assumed that anybody basically has a right to talk to
| anybody else without any real justification, so messages were
| encrypted instead. But steganography was popular in, for
| example, ancient times when the local king or church officials
| might demand to see your letters. If it is due for a comeback
| that says something pretty sad about our society I think.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
| londons_explore wrote:
| Watched the video. I actually think it's a decent ad for their
| cause. It's technically accurate, and doesn't make unfounded
| claims.
|
| Now, the e2e encryption crowd needs to make a similar ad
| explaining why encryption is important.
|
| And the public can make their minds up when they vote.
| jkbbwr wrote:
| The only problem is the public is fucking stupid.
| MadeThisToReply wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1386/
| callahad wrote:
| Worth noting that the majority party in Parliament, the one
| pushing this nonsense, switched en masse to Signal two years ago:
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-swit...
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| Do you guys think this is security apparatus backed, or
| politically backed?
|
| I mean do you think that this is the government being "convinced"
| by law enforcement and the rest of the security apparatus in
| order to maintain the state of easy interception, and mass
| intelligence gathering?
|
| Or do you think this is purely politicians thinking about how to
| keep their analytics algorithms and propaganda machines fed with
| data collected from social media on private chats?
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I think it's both but I wonder what everyone else is thinking.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I think it's neither; this is just pure politics - it's meant
| to distract the attention of authoritarian backbench
| conservative MPs away from the manifest deficiencies of their
| leader.
| unwind wrote:
| Meta: there's a funny typo in the title, it should be "end-to-end
| encryption". Now it's quite confusing, since "end to encryption"
| means something else.
| bacan wrote:
| Fine. Lets abolish the govt secrets act & all the secret courts
| and what not too.
|
| No secrets for us, none for the govt too
| gidorah wrote:
| I like that there is a share to Whatsapp button there
| jonplackett wrote:
| A very literal example of "Won't somebody think of the children!"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
|
| The use of the phrase "Think of the children" in debate a type of
| logical fallacy and an appeal to emotion.
|
| A debater may use the phrase to emotionally sway members of the
| audience and avoid logical discussion. EG "I know this national
| missile defense plan has its detractors, but won't someone please
| think of the children?"
|
| Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jFqhjaGh30
| tzs wrote:
| That's only half of it.
|
| Someone will propose addressing an actual real thing that
| actually is a serious threat to children and someone else will
| mockingly and with a Calculon level of overacting say "Won't
| someone think of the children!", using it as a kind of ad
| hominem.
| foldr wrote:
| There's no logical fallacy here, just a factual disagreement
| over the extent to which E2E encryption actually puts children
| at risk. Supposing that it does, that would be reasonable
| grounds for opposing it (so long as countervailing
| considerations were also take into account).
|
| This particular Simpsons joke is pretty tired at this point,
| and it's often just used to short circuit any discussion of
| potential harms to children.
|
| I am not in favor of banning E2EE, by the way. It's just that
| the claim that E2EE puts children at risk should be met with a
| carefully considered factual response that respects the
| intelligence of people who are genuinely concerned about child
| sex abuse, rather than this reflexive ironic cry of "think of
| the children!".
| krageon wrote:
| > should be met with a carefully considered factual response
|
| Engaging with baseless propaganda preying on the unthinking
| parts of everyone by "carefully considered factual response"
| means you lose. Every single time. For this reason it is a
| naive strategy.
| foldr wrote:
| The point is not to engage with propaganda, but with the
| ordinary people who are genuinely concerned about child sex
| abuse enabled by social media. This is a real problem, so I
| don't think it's fair to talk about 'preying on [people's]
| unthinking parts'.
|
| I should think that there must be even less to be gained by
| responding smugly with rote slogans and links to clips from
| the Simpsons. Who is going to be persuaded of anything by
| that?
|
| What you need to show is either that (i) kids are already
| pretty safe online, or (ii) that the situation can be
| significantly improved without increased surveillance, or
| (iii) that the current level of child sexual abuse is a
| price worth paying to preserve important freedoms. But
| making one of those arguments would require actual thought
| and effort.
| stephen_g wrote:
| I would say that the implication that enabling more
| surveillance == safety is a fallacy. It's assumed by the
| people pushing these kind of things, but is not necessarily
| true.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Surely it would be quite easy for them to provide statistics
| of how many cases of $crimes were solved/stopped because of
| unencrypted messaging.
|
| My impression seems to be that it's almost always reported
| long after the fact or some vigilante posing as a child.
|
| Neither of which would be prevented by e2ee.
| sbuk wrote:
| The issue is that it looks as though the very real issue of
| children being exploited is being used by the UK government
| to undermine E2EE. This is frankly vile, but given the
| vileness of this government, not at all surprising. Of
| course, the Murdock media will label anyone challenging this
| stance as an apologist.
| foldr wrote:
| To a lot of people on HN, it's obvious that the freedom is
| to use E2EE is fundamental, and that hardly any other
| consideration could override that.
|
| To a lot of people who aren't on HN, it's obvious that more
| needs to be done to combat child sexual abuse online.
|
| Rather than fuming at the government, it would be more
| useful in the long run if people could come up with actual
| ideas for combating child sexual abuse that don't require
| increased surveillance. Otherwise we are left with the
| unattractive (to most people) alternative to just ignoring
| the problem.
|
| I mean sure, the government might have bad motivations in
| this instance. But there is a real problem that a lot of
| regular people are sincerely concerned about, without
| sinister ulterior motivates.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| > I am not in favor of banning E2E, by the way. It's just
| that the claim that E2E puts children at risk should be met
| with a carefully considered factual response that respects
| the intelligence of people who are genuinely concerned about
| child sex abuse, rather than this reflexive ironic cry of
| "think of the children!".
|
| Yes, we should all argue properly ... If only politicians
| were educated enough about the things they try to push or
| prevent, they could actually do that. Anyway, even if we
| discussed this properly, it would only answer half the
| question. The other half is: "Are children safer without that
| E2E encryption?" Most likely not, as they themselves send
| each other pictures and stuff, which can then be intercepted
| by some people. Everything they communicate using their spy
| phones, ah sorry, I meant "smart phones" of course, at their
| young age of -- well, what age? maybe 6 or 7? Or even
| younger? -- will be potentially up for grabs.
|
| And then that is only the question about children. That is
| one tiny speck of the whole picture, which is not discussed.
|
| So yes, we should argue this properly, but also we should
| then open up the whole debate about society as a whole. There
| is a huge debate to be had there, before anyone should even
| consider making any decisions.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Art student politicians that don't understand tech, plus Hanlon's
| razor, and MI5, MI6 and the Met whispering in the cabinet's ears
| and we get this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
| kypro wrote:
| > We are not opposed to end-to-encryption in principle and fully
| support the importance of strong user privacy.
|
| So they're not opposed to an end-to-encryption in principle? I'm
| sure that was an honest mistake.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Obligatory cartoon:
|
| https://i.redd.it/ifb8agngc7dy.jpg
|
| Anyone willing to make a UK version?
| stusherwin wrote:
| In the footer: "This campaign is funded by the UK government"
| intunderflow wrote:
| Someone has sniped http://noplacetohide.uk and put a post in
| support of E2E encryption on it
| jkepler wrote:
| Brilliant !
| FledNanders wrote:
| Wonderful initiative! Thank you, Mr. Muffett!
| nurumaik wrote:
| The domain name speaks about their end goal much clearer than the
| title
| dsign wrote:
| It's pretty clear they think child safety is more important than
| E2E:
|
| > We are not opposed to end-to-end encryption, as long as it is
| implemented in a way that does not put children at risk.
|
| The rest is fluff.
| coldcode wrote:
| Won't someone please think of the children syndrome.
|
| The real answer is we want to read all of your internet
| interactions any time we want; the children thing is just a way
| to convince people that letting the government (and everyone
| else) to spy on you is ok.
| stevespang wrote:
| grishka wrote:
| Russian laws that granted the government the ability to block
| websites were also initially aimed at protecting children
| from drugs and suicide. Though somehow, they didn't have any
| provisions to allow _adults_ access this "forbidden
| information".
|
| After the technical capability was in place, they've expanded
| the possible grounds to block websites on multiple times. It
| now includes piracy, refusal of cooperation with FSB, being a
| public VPN, being related to Navalny, etc.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| In Australia, we had a plan for a massive web filter in the
| late 2000s. Their databases were broken into and the
| blacklist leaked, and inbetween the genuinely illegal sites
| were sites that had been deemed to be politically immoral,
| like supporting decriminalization of drugs or spreading
| information on abortion.
|
| There were many things that were perfectly legal but had
| personally offended the people presiding over the filter,
| including random Wikipedia pages and certain personal
| websites, including a dentist's site. This filter, of
| course, was sold to people with the idea of protecting
| children against predators.
|
| Anything not directly relating to children that is sold to
| you with "B-BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" is done with the
| intent to manipulate you and provide you with the false
| dichotomy of "unconditional acceptance, or child abuse",
| which is nonsense and should be viewed with extreme
| suspicion.
| grishka wrote:
| Oh, it _was_ viewed with extreme suspicion and opposed by
| many, especially those working in IT. Just don 't forget
| that Russia is a dictatorship with a dysfunctional
| parliament (Edinaia Rossiia, Putin's party, has more than
| 50% of seats) and so doesn't care much about people's
| opinion. I don't know much about Australian government,
| but it's probably more democratic than that.
| schleck8 wrote:
| Fair enough. I support E2E encryption but I think people should
| be allowed to rally for the opposite
| IshKebab wrote:
| Do you think the government should fund campaigns against it?
| pfortuny wrote:
| Yes but as the matter is still just political in the UK,
| there is no reason for the government to pay for a side and
| not others,
| croes wrote:
| Even worse, they think without E2E children would be any safer.
| stephen_g wrote:
| This shows that the articles by those who uncovered the plans
| were right [e.g. 1] - even though this is a political campaign
| paid for by the UK public (via the Government), and developed and
| coordinated by the Government, they have big logos of community
| groups and charities at the bottom and minimises the Government's
| involvement -
|
| > "According to the [M&C Saatchi] presentation, the push will
| _appear_ to be the result of grassroots action and children's
| charities, while downplaying any government role. "
|
| The whole thing is just a pile of emotional manipulation, while
| compeletly ignoring the far, far greater number of legitimate
| uses of end to end encryption, and the actual dangers to everyday
| people of personal information being stolen, accessed, leaked,
| etc. if it's banned! Extremely dirty tactics.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29955893
| tomxor wrote:
| > dangers to everyday people of personal information being
| stolen, accessed, leaked, etc
|
| This campaign is ripe for hijacking and inverting like the "you
| wouldn't steal a car" campaign.
|
| "NO WHERE TO HIDE: (from criminals)... thought you were safe
| when writing innocuous private messages on Facebook? think
| again, criminals intercept the plaintext to commit identity
| fraud in your name. Thought you only had to worry about
| corporate surveillance of your location data? think again, now
| criminals can easily track you to break into your house while
| you are out. Thought your job was secure? think again, now
| criminals can build a comprehensive profile of your social and
| work activities to easily and effectively social engineer their
| way into your organisation, risking your livelihood."
|
| [edit]
|
| The other approach is to apply the same thinking to something
| non technical to more tangibly demonstrate how this is a bad
| idea. e.g:
|
| "NO WAY TO RUN: we are banning wheels, because they help
| paedophiles make for a quick getaway after abducting their
| target. In future we plan on banning legs too."
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| NO WHERE TO HIDE: From the press... thought you were safe
| organising that lock down busting party at no. 10 over
| WhatsApp? Think again, journalists can intercept the plain
| text of your messages where you laugh at the deaths of proles
| and ask your old school mate Rupert to bring 10 bottles of
| bolly.
|
| Not sure if they've thought this through.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Given the emails were leaked to journalists e2e encryption
| wouldn't have helped there.
| addicted wrote:
| Considering the UK press (and the MET) sat on that story
| for months, and it would probably never have gotten out if
| Cummings wasn't so pissed about the way he was treated, the
| UK pols have little to worry about from the press or the
| police.
| dijit wrote:
| The more fun thing to do is to manipulate messages in
| transport.
|
| There was a really fun game where you could join public wifi
| and change every image request response to be images of cats
| instead. (by changing the requesting URL and/or response).
|
| This idea was borne from the 'upside-down-ternet' which
| people ran on their Guest Networks. (https://www.ex-
| parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html)
|
| Would be fun to have a word replace running for "Thank You"
| to "Fuck You", it's not at all impossible to do.
| chewxy wrote:
| Oh wow this brings back memories. More than a decade ago I
| lived in shared housing where each room has its own
| telephone port. The idea was every person was supposed to
| get their own internet. But after a few months of
| troubleshooting my housemates' internet issues I decided to
| open up my wifi to everyone else. I used Chillidog, a
| captive portal software that runs on ddwrt. I had a 3 hour
| continuous-use limit, after which weird stuff would happen
| to their images like being turned upsidedown or blurred. I
| used this very site to make it happen!
|
| Eventually, my housemates just contributed to my internet
| bill and dropped their own subscriptions. I got rid of the
| captive portal and went with something more traditional
| IshKebab wrote:
| The idea that criminals will break into Facebook's servers
| and steal your messages is was less likely than the
| government using Facebook messages to catch child abusers,
| and that's already a little dubious.
|
| A better counter-argument is foreign governments (China,
| Russia, etc.) requiring data to be held on their soil and
| then using it to hunt and impression political enemies.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Without end-to-end encryption, one doesn't need to break
| into anyones servers. Thats _sort of the point_. Without
| encryption, you are weak at every packet, which can be
| intercepted _anywhere_ between you and Facebooks servers.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| I don't think they argue against all encryption (Do
| they?).
|
| Basically everything would become an encrypted group chat
| (Double Ratchet etc) where the 3rd party is the provider
| which can optionally encrypt/secure access. That would
| ensure the provider is the only one with a backdoor for
| some time until access to previous messages are lost.
| Similar to loosing decryption keys for GDPR compliance.
| Access to the keys would require a court order.
|
| Nonetheless authoritarian governments could and would
| misuse this. It should at least be required to have an
| international court order. Still very difficult.
| rocqua wrote:
| The result of these campaigns if successful, would likely
| be key-escrow rather than banning encryption. With that
| the risk of criminal abuse is negligible.
|
| Instead the risks are added complexity creating
| opportunities for bugs, and having to trust everyone with
| decryption access to not abuse that. It is possible to
| control that access technologically. For example, by
| requiring two separate keyholders (or in general N ot of
| M) keyholders before being able to decrypt any messages.
|
| Those downsides matter, but they are scary for abuse by
| governments, nation state adversaries, and NSA type
| hackers. The downsides do not make criminals more scary.
| danShumway wrote:
| > The downsides do not make criminals more scary.
|
| Eh, I'm not sure. Assuming that the government keys never
| get leaked (which is possible even with the key-split
| method you propose). And assuming that the local
| municipal police departments and groups given access to
| those keys never get hacked. And assuming that products
| never get restricted to less-secure schemes as the
| technical world evolves around them.
|
| Maybe the UK has a better track record on this, but off
| the top of my head a lot of the key-escrow systems I've
| seen in the US are quite bad. We have systems for TSA
| locks, fireperson access to locked buildings, etc... many
| of those systems are not secure, they just don't get
| abused very often because the prizes for doing so aren't
| large enough.
|
| Key-escrow systems are _less_ risky in terms of criminal
| activity than just banning full E2E encryption entirely,
| but I don 't think I agree that 'less risky' is the same
| as 'safe'.
| owlbite wrote:
| End-to-end encryption != no encryption. It's seems
| they're quite happy as long as authorized parties
| (adtech, intelligence agencies, etc) can man-in-the-
| middle the thing. Of course, tech companies never get
| breached and are exceptionally good at protecting our
| emails, passwords, credit reference data, and sensitive
| internal emails of political parties and campaigns, so
| there's clearly no risk whatsoever of your messages
| getting published on the internet in the future.
| socksy wrote:
| No end-to-end encryption does not mean no encryption. For
| example, Telegram does not use end-to-end encryption by
| default, however they encrypt all the messages with keys
| distributed across their servers. Anyone inspecting the
| packets won't be able to understand what's going on, but
| Telegram are able to read all your messages.
| tomxor wrote:
| This is a good point.
|
| Actually on closer inspection they don't even
| particularly care about E2E encryption, and here I was
| thinking this was snooper's charter v2:
|
| > We are not opposed to end-to-encryption in principle
| and fully support the importance of strong user privacy.
| Instead, our campaign is calling for social media
| companies to work with us to find a solution that
| protects privacy, without putting children at even
| greater risk.
|
| So we missed the point. This is a campaign to protect
| kids from shitty parenting, aa, I mean the social
| networks... so that they can be _safely_ indoctrinated by
| social media without needing to encourage a responsible
| society.
|
| In all seriousness, the larger risk here then is not
| necessarily criminal activity from data leaks (though
| that's still a real possibility with a gov backdoor) -
| the greater risk is deeper government mass surveillance
| built directly into the most popular social media
| networks.
| zimbatm wrote:
| NO WHERE TO HIDE: Bathrooms are used for illegal activities.
| Let's put cameras in each of them.
| Borating wrote:
| Snoopers Charter - Very public toilet
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-RSravgi_Y
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| No Where To Hide for people under police protection,
| eccentric people people with unconventional opinions, women
| or children.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The Open Rights Group is a step ahead:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVVhFrBsQXk
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > big logos of community groups and charities at the bottom
|
| Are those actually legit charities? I've never heard of them
| before, and at least the rightmost one ("SafeToNet -
| incorporating NetNanny") sounds like it's just a lobby group of
| some internet filter company, or an Internet filtering company
| itself.
|
| If those are legit charities: Remember the names and make it
| known among friends what those charities are supporting.
|
| https://www.mariecollinsfoundation.org.uk/ proudly sports the
| logos of Microsoft, Google and Facebook at the bottom of the
| page. Maybe those companies should be made aware of what
| they're indirectly supporting with their logo.
| pydry wrote:
| vl5jn wrote:
| bitexploder wrote:
| That is wild and I never knee about it, but how is that
| related to the current story?
| mojzu wrote:
| The only actual number on the site also doesn't seem to be
| sourced properly, it just sends you to the NCMEC data page, or
| are they just assuming that they'll lose all of Facebook's
| submissions if they turn on E2E?
| miohtama wrote:
| Here is the Twitter account of M&C Saatchi Group if you want to
| leave public feedback:
|
| https://twitter.com/mcsaatchigroup
|
| Their slogan is to deliver Meaningful Change.
| rob_c wrote:
| Given our (UK) present govts history and tragging on anti
| BLM/eco pretesting things onto a needed bill in the commons I'm
| not surprised they're taking this route. It might even appear
| on the BBC before the year is out of it would save Boris'
| skin...
| belter wrote:
| The only thing you need to know is at the bottom of the page:
|
| "The campaign is funded by the UK Government and..."
| zohch wrote:
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| They're framing it as a choice between child safety and
| encryption. I think everyone on HN knows how utterly stupid that
| is, so I won't belabour the point.
|
| However, what offends me, and I don't see mentioned enough, is
| that the UK government is exploiting the real suffering of
| children to destroy something that protects us all, children and
| adults alike. They do not speak for those children or their
| families. They're exploiting them and their trauma for political
| gain.
|
| If I was in the U.K., this would be enough to forever turn me off
| the ruling Conservative party. It's disgusting. They have no
| morals. It's not just that they're lying -- every political side
| lies all the time, sometimes out of necessity. It's that they're
| re-victimizing the very kids they claim to be protecting. And
| they appear to be proud enough of that fact to promote it in this
| way.
|
| I will never vote for a politician or party that's OK with that,
| no matter what their other policies may be.
| ljm wrote:
| > If I was in the U.K., this would be enough to forever turn me
| off the ruling Conservative party. It's disgusting.
|
| Unfortunately this isn't unique to the Tories. Politicians
| across the whole political spectrum have fought to introduce
| increasingly authoritarian controls over the internet and
| technology over the past 30 years.
|
| UK culture as a whole is more authoritarian than you'd expect.
| Labour would gladly implement their own version of the same if
| they had the opportunity. To that point, any UK millennial will
| likely not be able to remember a time where there _wasn 't_
| some hand wringing campaign about online privacy or porn.
| andysomniac wrote:
| The problem is that Blairite/Starmer Labour are just Tories
| wearing a red rosette, they do not differ on policy in any
| meaningful manner.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| You think Corbynites would be less keen on
| authoritarianism?
| hkt wrote:
| In all likelihood, yes: they are from a faction of the
| Labour party that was routinely surveilled by police
| throughout the 20th century (and more recently, in all
| likelihood).
|
| The election manifesto for Labour in 1983 contained
| pledges to abolish the secret services, too.
|
| Not to mention the fact that this same part of the Labour
| party is often engaged in protests that will have left
| wingers as attendees and speakers. They're very often on
| the sharp end of both surveillance and crackdowns on
| protest.
|
| That combined with their belief that the police are
| racist (eg the Met) and that prison is generally harmful
| is not likely to produce an authoritarian programme.
|
| They'd have dealt with large scale tax dodgers too,
| unlike the current leadership.
| dijit wrote:
| Unsure. His voting record indicates that he is anti-
| authoritarian, but the telegraf tells me he is pro-
| authoritarian.
|
| He has publicly clashed with the powers that be about
| increasing police powers.
|
| But I don't have a clear answer for your question,
| especially as he has many supporters who might not vote
| along his own lines.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40154361
| zohch wrote:
| chriswarbo wrote:
| The Liberal Democrats are anti-authoritarian, but our first-
| past-the-post elections don't give them a proportional number
| of seats :(
|
| For example, they blocked the "snoopers charter" (digital
| economy bill) when they were in coalition; although the
| Conservatives, predictably, passed it after they won the
| following election on their own.
| tobz1000 wrote:
| The Lib Dems managed to mitigate a lot of damage done by
| the Conservatives during their time in the coalition. And
| they were rewarded with blame for everything they couldn't
| stop, and a hugely reduced voter base ever since.
| ljm wrote:
| Unfortunately for them they sold out their student voters
| in order to do that, all but guaranteeing that those
| people would not trust the LibDems again.
|
| Was it a good trade in hindsight? I'm not so sure. I gave
| them the benefit of the doubt, and my vote, a couple more
| times.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I'll be the first to admit my bias against the lib dems (I
| cant say I like any of the parties but I do have a
| particular dislike for them), but putting that aside as
| much as I can I doubt they'd be any different outside a
| coalition. At best, I can see them being apathetic, which
| when combined with pressure applied from their opposition
| could well turn into support.
|
| Not on the level of the tories, and perhaps labour, but I
| doubt they'd be anything special in that regard
| kurthr wrote:
| It's classic, fighting the last war, for the "security"
| agencies. They think that by surveilling their own people they
| can protect the politicians. What they have in fact done is
| collected huge dossiers on their public (and gov employees),
| which can be compromised and used by foreign powers for
| targeted misinformation, agitprop, and blackmail. They are the
| weakest link.
|
| Since the rise of PGP and fall of key-escrow it has become more
| and more clear that spreading free (ussurveilled) communication
| between individuals and businesses was necessary to the
| operation of capitalist democracies. However, they can't give
| up their dreams of controlling their own populations so they
| will cede them to competing totalitarian states, which already
| know how to control their populations and can well afford to
| breach such "security".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > They think that by surveilling their own people they can
| protect the politicians.
|
| That idea is so outrageously stupid that no, I don't believe
| they think that.
|
| Every one of those intelligence agencies are perfectly aware
| they are collecting dossiers on their public (with emphasis
| to gov employees) that can be used to compromise the
| administration and coerce people into doing illegal or
| immoral acts. You just got the wrong adversary in mind.
| kurthr wrote:
| Wow, you really think they are either completely treasonous
| or utterly incompetent? If they wanted to surveil their own
| (as presumably some do), they wouldn't need to compromise
| standard coms protocols.
|
| It's not collecting the dossiers... it's that they are the
| weak link, whether they like it or not.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Wow, you really think they are either completely
| treasonous or utterly incompetent?
|
| Well, any other one would require that people on the
| intelligence community, whose work consists mostly on
| either using dossiers to compromise people or avoiding
| the creation of dossiers so people aren't compromised to
| not noticing that they are collecting a dossier on every
| citizen or not being aware that will lead to people being
| compromised... and incompetence or dishonesty not being
| involved.
| [deleted]
| starkd wrote:
| hkt wrote:
| They're _definitely_ inconsistent.
| toyg wrote:
| This is the worst generation of Tory politicians in living
| memory, although sadly the authoritarian streak is not absent
| from the Labour party either.
| pydry wrote:
| There's a much narrower range of debate these days. Labour's
| response to the "concentration camp ships" plan was that it
| was an inefficient use of funds.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/03/uk-
| ministers-w...
| Aromasin wrote:
| I've been working within the Liberal Democrats to try and
| push policies that are pro-privacy for the past few years,
| revoking some of the acts put in by the current Conservative
| government and pushing new ones to protect against future
| government breaches like this. Unfortunately, it simply
| doesn't stick when polled to the general public. The average
| person simply doesn't care it seems, no matter how you frame
| it, and as such it's almost impossible to break ground into
| updates to the party manifesto. I tried the same thing within
| Labour a few years before and the same barriers existed, with
| the added fact that many of the MPs seemed to be cut from the
| same cloth as the Tories, and that they were incredibly
| resistant to change outside of their traditional focuses
| (NHS, Unions, Immigration, Education, blah, blah).
|
| To be frank, it seems like most politicians would rather be
| at war with the technologically apt than to work with them.
| All we can hope is that technologies adapt at a faster rate
| than authoritarian governments can, and the witty can outwit
| the witless.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| > They're framing it as a choice between child safety and
| encryption
|
| Its worse than that by the looks. They're trying to convince
| people you can still have end to end encryption whilst having a
| man in the middle scan it to make sure its all A-Okay. Again, I
| think everyone knows how stupid this is.
|
| I seem to remember Theresa May talking about this a few years
| ago and the idea was quickly shot down, and here I was hoping
| that was the end of it.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| > this would be enough to forever turn me off the ruling
| Conservative party
|
| Welcome to every conservative party in every country. They're
| all terrible humans
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _They 're framing it as a choice between child safety and
| encryption_
|
| Politicians can always rely on any part of the holy trinity of
| terrorism, piracy or child to either justify or manipulate
| their constituency to support a measure that infringes on their
| security/privacy. The media plays along too easily.
|
| Interestingly, conservatives in the US made anti end to end
| encryption legislation part of the EARN IT act, which also
| claims to deal with child abuse:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020#Legislatio...
| marto1 wrote:
| > holy trinity of terrorism, piracy or child
|
| you forgot to add the mandatory element of ignorance on a
| particular subject matter to make the mix truly explosive,
| but fair point.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp.
| ..
| ben_w wrote:
| Do _politicians_ actually care about _piracy_?
|
| I get how IP holders care about piracy, but I don't think it
| resonates enough with the general public for it to really
| matter to politicians... Unless the politicians are literally
| just being paid by IP holders to care about it, which could
| be a thing.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| NEWS from California / Hollywood :
|
| "politicians are literally just being paid by IP holders to
| care about it"
| rusk wrote:
| > NEWS from California / Hollywood
|
| Reports are also coming in from certain parts of Central
| Europe ...
| kmlx wrote:
| > They're framing it as a choice between child safety and
| encryption.
|
| doesn't seem so:
|
| > End-to-end encryption is valuable technology designed to keep
| our data and conversations safe. We are not opposed to end-to-
| encryption in principle and fully support the importance of
| strong user privacy. Instead, our campaign is calling for
| social media companies to work with us to find a solution that
| protects privacy, without putting children at even greater
| risk.
|
| they apparently claim to be looking for a third way.
| nybble41 wrote:
| There is no "third way". End-to-end encryption means no one
| other than the sender and the intended receiver(s) can access
| the decrypted messages; full stop. That includes the social
| media companies and the government. This obviously also
| precludes hacks like subverting the client software on either
| side to report back on the content of the messages (i.e.
| Apple's implementation)--if the user can't trust their client
| not to deliberately leak details about the message then they
| don't have E2EE, since someone else's agent has been placed
| in the communication path.
| bmh100 wrote:
| A third way would be to use a neural network to analyze a
| message before encryption, or to duplicate the message for
| receipt by the service provider.
| nybble41 wrote:
| I specifically covered that. If anyone other than the
| original sender (one end of the communication channel)
| and the intended recipient(s) (the other end of the
| channel) is granted access to any information about the
| content of the messages (including not just the full
| plaintext but also e.g. a digest created by a neural
| network on behalf of the service provider) then the
| system does not have the characteristics of _end-to-end_
| encryption. You 've only encrypted _part_ of the
| communications channel.
|
| In any case, advocating for mandatory digital spies on
| end-users' devices is arguably worse than attempting to
| undermine E2EE.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Yes, although keep in mind that these efforts have strong
| cross-party support. This isn't only an issue with the
| Conservative party.
| satronaut wrote:
| You can't do anything wrong if there's a D next to your name
| - every college student these days
| rkachowski wrote:
| You're conflating the American Conservative party with the
| UK Conservative / Tory party.
| mtoner23 wrote:
| Most college students hate both parties, just like they
| always have
| satronaut wrote:
| not really. they were fawning over bernie then hillary in
| 2016 and bernie then biden in 2020.
| gurleen_s wrote:
| With all due respect I don't believe you're in tune with
| what college students are feeling.
|
| --- a college student
| satronaut wrote:
| maybe you're the exception to the norm, or maybe I am out
| of touch. When I was in college (in the last decade),
| everyone gave democrats a free pass to do whatever they
| wanted. I have heard that gen-z leans more libertarian
| though
| hcrean wrote:
| A saying normally attributed to Churchill: "If you are
| not a liberal in your twenties you have no heart, if you
| are not a conservative in your thirties you have no
| brain".
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is older than Churchill and the parties are switched
| up according to current events.
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/
|
| Nowadays, in the US at least, given the significant
| correlation between education level and Democratic party
| alignment, it is probably due for another change. Sadly
| "If you are not a socialist in your twenties you have no
| heart, if you are not a centrist Democrat in your
| thirties you have no brain" does not roll off the tongue.
| satronaut wrote:
| *correction, if you're not right of center in your
| twenties you have no heart, if you're not conservative in
| your 30's, you have no brain. The socialists are pushing
| for dangerous governance methods that have caused
| genocide and economic collapse over the 20th century and
| actively discriminate based on people's gender,
| ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The "centrist
| Democrats" stick their heads in the sand ignoring the
| crimes of the leaders they elect and the influence of the
| far left progressive wing of the Democratic party.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think you'd have to shift the age groups up
| significantly to say anything useful about conservative
| leaning people, maybe do mid 40's and 60's or something
| like that.
| satronaut wrote:
| I think we'd all be surprised at how many people actually
| lean conservative in the 20-40 age group. My hunch is
| that 9/10 people who lean that way stay silent for fear
| of professional/personal repercussions. Voicing
| conservative view points in the monolithic tech industry
| will get you fired and excommunicated
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't really see any reason that they'd lie to, for
| example, Pew polls.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Both major political parties in U.S. did the same thing with
| SESTA/FOSTA. Every smart politician will exploit anyone they
| can to get what they want (in that case, scoring cheap
| political points with their base) as long as their base do not
| complain loudly.
|
| UK peeps: complain loudly!
| zohch wrote:
| lbriner wrote:
| > It's disgusting. They have no morals.
|
| You've gone pretty extreme there. There is a much more
| plausible explanation, which is that they genuinely believe
| that more people would be saved if the security services could
| access messaging apps and they don't think the level of
| potential abuse is worth worrying about.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think they have made bad decisions etc.
| but in this case, I think it is simply naive "if you haven't
| done anything wrong..."
| onion2k wrote:
| _There is a much more plausible explanation, which is that
| they genuinely believe that more people would be saved if the
| security services could access messaging apps and they don 't
| think the level of potential abuse is worth worrying about._
|
| There's an _even more_ plausible explanation, which is that
| both are true. They 're aware that stopping encryption might
| save a few children, but they're _also_ aware that it enables
| the mechanisms of the surveillance state that give them
| extraordinary power over the public. They want to stop child
| sex trafficking _and_ they want to abuse people 's privacy.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I regularly support Big Brother Watch, an anti-surveillance
| and pro-privacy campaign group in the UK. They send every MP
| lengthly reports that detail the follies and costs associated
| with these measures.
|
| I've also heard Conservative MPs say that "lockdown measures
| were against our freedom-loving sensitivities" or something
| similar, so they at least acknowledge the value of freedom to
| the population.
|
| Our ruling class cannot plead ignorance as an excuse.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > You've gone pretty extreme there. There is a much more
| plausible explanation, which is that they genuinely believe
| that more people would be saved if the security services
| could access messaging apps and they don't think the level of
| potential abuse is worth worrying about.
|
| I think both can be true: the government believes it can
| increase security in general by expanding the state's
| surveillance powers--the state _always_ wants to trade
| privacy for security. However, they 're not framing it as a
| general "give us more surveillance powers and we'll increase
| security"; they're framing it narrowly as about protecting
| children ("give us more surveillance powers and we promise
| we'll only use them to protect sexually exploited children")
| which is exploiting victimized children in my book.
| outime wrote:
| I don't believe the UK government for this matter is naive.
| They know very well what and why they are doing this and it's
| the same strategy used in different parts of the world. It's
| not new and there's no need to come up with anything new
| because it works so well and you can justify trading privacy
| (or even more important things) for security this way no
| matter how little sense this makes.
|
| I do think that it's naive to think that one of the most
| important countries in the world with a rather effective
| intelligence service and a lot of smart people everywhere in
| the state is naive. I really don't think the UK government
| believes that if they remove encryption from popular chat
| apps the tiny percentage of population that might use it for
| evil purposes will be caught instead of, you know, moving to
| a different mechanism.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The UK government is currently facing demands _from within
| his own party_ that the Prime Minister resign. There is talk
| of a campaign of policy proposals ( "Red Meat") aimed at
| Conservative backbenchers, to distract attention from the
| hypocrisy and lies of the Prime Minister.
|
| I think the more-plausible thing is that this part of that
| Red Meat programme, which is going to consist of a train of
| announcements designed to appeal to rightwing Conservatives,
| _none_ of which will have anything at all to do with the
| Prime Minister.
|
| This Red Meat programme will also distract the opposition
| away from the Prime Minister's moral emptiness and
| deceitfulness; the government hopes that by making
| sufficiently-nasty policy proposals, they can force the
| opposition to devote their time and attention away from the
| weaknesses of the Prime Minister and his coterie, and towards
| opposing these proposals. It's very cynical.
|
| Forecast: I have a long record of wrong political prophesies!
| But I think Boris will have gone within a week. I have no
| idea who they will replace him with; none of his colleagues
| has electoral appeal, as far as I can see, and they're facing
| a General Election in two years. I wouldn't offer odds on the
| outcome of that election, either; the leader of the
| opposition isn't particularly appealing, is not loved by his
| party, and seems to have no policies.
| alibarber wrote:
| It very much does seem to be a week of 'throw it all at the
| wall and see what sticks'.
|
| I have to admit - I was expecting Brexit, Trump, and a
| massive Tory majority at the last GE (not rubbing it in -
| good lord I wish I had been wrong about all of these), but
| I really don't know how much road Johnson has left to run.
| I really think it's getting shorter now every day. The
| (liberal) press have made a big deal about everything else
| so far, but the lockdown parties (sorry, meetings) I think
| are the first 'real' big hits to him that people will
| actually care about. It's genuinely going to get bumpy for
| him, but he was smart and filled his cabinet mostly with
| people who just aren't that clever and are dedicated to him
| - I don't think there's anyone who knows when to make the
| first move. I think he can only really be removed when
| there's someone ready to replace him.
| zohch wrote:
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| dataduck wrote:
| Does anyone know of an organised resistance to this?
| kiryin wrote:
| You'd think the "think of the children" gag has already more than
| served it's purpose in this world, but then stuff like this pops
| up...
| miracle2k wrote:
| The right against e2e encryption will ultimately be lost, IMO.
|
| There is just no concrete, tangible reason why sex predators and
| terrorists do need to have this protection from law enforcement.
| Meanwhile, there is no concrete, tangible need for the average
| citizen to be able to foil lawful access by police (say after a
| warrant was issued - you do have protections!).
|
| I say concrete and tangible, because while I strongly support
| e2e, it is impossible to justify on purely objective, let's weigh
| specific pros and cons grounds. It's essentially an ideological
| position, where you are willing to accept a lot of concrete
| downsides for the idea that the right to privacy is a tool in the
| balance between the individual and the state.
|
| I'd venture to say that very few people here actually deeply
| believe this though. Rather, it has been adopted as commonly
| accepted wisdom within our community. Your supposed to support
| encryption. Within the larger culture wars and the techslash, I
| have serious doubts as to how many people are willing to defend
| e2e encryption once the wider public turns against it. This just
| needs persistence and the right political trigger.
|
| By the way - the argument for cryptocurrency, or for Tor, is
| exactly the same as the argument for e2e encryption. You are
| supposed to accept all the bad stuff (crime), not because the
| average Joe needs the tech, but because it serves as a
| counterweight against the tyranny of the majority. You don't need
| to be a libertarian to believe that.
| AitchEmArsey wrote:
| "Won't somebody please think of the children"
|
| It is horrifying to me that this approach of using pedophelia as
| a scapegoat to permanently degrade civil liberties goes largely
| unchallenged in the media.
| pfortuny wrote:
| @dang:
|
| just realized the title is wrong (end-to-ENCRYPTION encryption).
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