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Scary that something so important will be determined by the perception of the vast majority of the public, who has no understanding of what's at stake. To most
by nske 11y ago
Scary that something so important will be determined by the perception of the vast majority of the public, who has no understanding of what's at stake.
To most people arguments like "it will help us find terrorists and pedophiles" and flawed analogies with doors and keys are much more appealing, only because they are easy to understand, while the opposite arguments sound philosophical, alien or carry less weight because they contradict what "the experts" (i.e. the FBI) claim.
But they shouldn't sound so: what's happening is wrong not just because of the practical fallacies of the pro-restrictions arguments -in which most discussions focus currently- it is wrong because the only way for government monitoring to be effective in the end, is to outright criminalise secure encryption by everyone. It should be blatantly obvious that the most dangerous of their claimed target group, wouldn't be dissuaded by the inconvenience of using custom/non-friendly software/hardware, so any lesser measure would be just useless.
And on that premise, how can many people not see how wrong it would be if one day we are called criminals for exchanging a truly private message with someone? In what words and with what simple examples can you make non-technical people see how bad this reality would be and how far it can stretch to things that they do care about? And that even if it didn't, it would still be fundamentally wrong...
Not a rhetorical question by the way, I've tried to participate in such discussions and failed miserably to be convincing -so any tips are appreciated.