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It is not that simple. Two potential unintended consequences of this no-encryption rule come to mind that might actually not just not help, but in fact make it

It is not that simple. Two potential unintended consequences of this no-encryption rule come to mind that might actually not just not help, but in fact make it worse for the victims. 1. They said that FB captures 99% of those illegal activities by themselves. What makes us think that government will be able to capture that last 1% on their own? 2. Encryption gets removed, potential perpetrators move to another platform that uses encryption and doesn't have the capability to catch those illegal activities that FB already catches using their internal systems. Congrats, now those perps that would have been caught (even if FB implemented the encryption) won't be caught at all. And with the uncertainty that comes to mind with both of those points, one thing that is definitely guaranteed to come is further erosion of personal privacy.

godelski 7y ago
> 1. They said that FB captures 99% of those illegal activities by themselves. What makes us think that government will be able to capture that last 1% on their own? To stress even more on this point (I have to also FULLY agree with the second), what evidence is there that lack of encryption will even make it easier to capture this 1% more. Pareto is a real thing. I'm not convinced there's an easy answer to capturing the last 1% and that it can be done with minimal resource allocation. That's where I start being suspicious. The back of the envelope math doesn't work out.
loup-vaillant 7y ago
I agree, but many will not. So I figured we should address the central problem: increasing privacy automatically means increasing the ability for people to do whatever they want (that's the whole point). We'd be stupid not to anticipate bad consequences. It's just that the benefits are much greater, and we should be able to argue as much, even on TV in front of a potentially hostile journalist.
sjy 7y ago
Facebook relies on the fact that most Facebook messages are not end-to-end encrypted to detect illegal activity. Forget the last 1% – how would Facebook continue to detect the 99% without access to decrypted message contents?
- filoleg 7y ago
  Client-side detection. You can probably argue that it can be evaded easily because it is client-side, but most people won't bother + it isn't like FB has an open API with a ton of third party FB clients. I spent less than a minute thinking about this, but there are probably tons of other strategies they can employ. People familiar with the domain, I would actually love to hear your takes on this, as the topic is fairly fascinating.
  - sjy 7y ago
    It's an interesting idea. Assuming it's feasible, I wonder whether people would actually want to use a messaging service that's private, except where it thinks it detects illegal activity, in which case messages are copied to the police (and end-to-end encrypted on the way there, of course). That seems practically and logically equivalent to a messaging service which is not end-to-end encrypted but run by a trusted operator.

godelski 7y ago

> 1. They said that FB captures 99% of those illegal activities by themselves. What makes us think that government will be able to capture that last 1% on their own? To stress even more on this point (I have to also FULLY agree with the second), what evidence is there that lack of encryption will even make it easier to capture this 1% more. Pareto is a real thing. I'm not convinced there's an easy answer to capturing the last 1% and that it can be done with minimal resource allocation. That's where I start being suspicious. The back of the envelope math doesn't work out.

loup-vaillant 7y ago

I agree, but many will not. So I figured we should address the central problem: increasing privacy automatically means increasing the ability for people to do whatever they want (that's the whole point). We'd be stupid not to anticipate bad consequences. It's just that the benefits are much greater, and we should be able to argue as much, even on TV in front of a potentially hostile journalist.

sjy 7y ago

Facebook relies on the fact that most Facebook messages are not end-to-end encrypted to detect illegal activity. Forget the last 1% – how would Facebook continue to detect the 99% without access to decrypted message contents?

filoleg 7y ago
Client-side detection. You can probably argue that it can be evaded easily because it is client-side, but most people won't bother + it isn't like FB has an open API with a ton of third party FB clients. I spent less than a minute thinking about this, but there are probably tons of other strategies they can employ. People familiar with the domain, I would actually love to hear your takes on this, as the topic is fairly fascinating.
- sjy 7y ago
  It's an interesting idea. Assuming it's feasible, I wonder whether people would actually want to use a messaging service that's private, except where it thinks it detects illegal activity, in which case messages are copied to the police (and end-to-end encrypted on the way there, of course). That seems practically and logically equivalent to a messaging service which is not end-to-end encrypted but run by a trusted operator.