12 ms·

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad

This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea. They’re asking for something to make their job easier... can’t blame them for trying, and of course who doesn’t want to catch people who harm children? But it’s not their responsibility to account for negative side effects. That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. And we have to remember that governments and police can hurt children too. Look at what the border police in the U.S. are doing right now. And when it comes to fighting that sort of thing, encrypted comms are essential for political organizing. This is on top of the obvious and many benefits of encryption in protecting us all from crime.

newguy1234 7y ago
Couldn't have said it better myself.
tfha 7y ago
I'm pretty sure part of the job of a bodyguard is to ensure the well being of their client. If they ask for something that improves safety but makes the client miserable, they are not doing their job.
tqi 7y ago
I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this. Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. It seems everyone is so eager to paint the other side as objectively wrong / motivated by bad intentions, when in reality I don't believe this is an objectively right answer. As a society we have to decide how much freedom and security we want at this moment in time.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  A nice example of the complexity in this space: the Ben Franklin quote "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" means something rather different when taken in context (1). (1) https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
  - apatters 7y ago
    Not really. While that specific quote wasn't about surveillance, Franklin was decidedly pro-encryption, as were most of the Founding Fathers. They all "encrypted" their letters regularly with elaborate codes and ciphers to thwart surveillance by colonial authorities. The Revolution probably would have been impossible without it. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/h3ll0-mr-pr3s1d3nt/521193/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/h3ll0-mr...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- tqi 7y ago
  Also I think "Security" was the wrong term to use - maybe "Societal Order" is better? What I mean is if companies are required to build in law enforcement backdoors, we could see X benefit (ie some % reduction in certain types of crime) and Y damage (some reduction in technical security, some reduction in govt accountability, etc). Personally, I place a lot of value on the Y damage, so I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. But those are just my values, and I think it's possible / reasonable to have different values that change the balance.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    > reply The problem isn't that it's algebraic though. There are no back doors, once governments have it then all your freedom to communicate against them is broken. I don't know why anyone would look at the likes of world leaders such as Xi, Putin, KJI and Trump and think this is a good idea in any way.
- sneak 7y ago
  Privacy is a human right. Encryption backdoors for governments are human rights abuses. It has nothing to do with safety; it is not a debate about “how much safety do we purchase with reduced privacy”. It’s just as firearms rights have nothing to do with hunting, or a militia.
  - ggzgd 7y ago
    Human rights are man-made and arbitrary. They aren't some kind of holy text that must be protected at all costs. They must be bent and ignored if necessary. You can't just say "this is a human right" to shut down any discussion.
    - hgoel 7y ago
      That's a hilariously bad take.
      - matz1 7y ago
        Can u elaborate? If human rights is not arbitrary nor man made then its come from god ?
    - Koshkin 7y ago
      Human rights were fought for an won in bloody struggles. We do not want to lose them again.
      - matz1 7y ago
        Thats true if we assume that every human want the same thing. But the reason there is bloody fight in the first place is not all human want the same thing. Is good for you if you are in the winning side, you certainly don't want to lose them but you can't say the same for the other side. They too want to be on the winning side.
    - stjohnswarts 7y ago
      Obviously since there is no God then yeah they are "made-up", but their value is obvious. Governments have a tendency to want more and more power, and by governments I mean the ones in charge like Xi, KJI, and Hitler. Those sorts do not like human rights and think they know better than everyone what is best, especially if it makes them richer and more powerful. This is why human rights are important and why they shouldn't be compromised for "safety" because you might get a little safety in the short term, but tomorrow brings genocide.
- flukus 7y ago
  > I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this It's also important to remember that not every nation will have the same set of values on this and that as the world becomes more international you're relationship with other world governments becomes more M * N. Imagine a world without encryption where the Saudi government had our access logs and decided to share what porn we were looking up. Or for something closer to the real world, imagine the CCP leveraging their influence to cut off services to anyone sharing Winnie the Pooh pictures.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    OTOH, it's the point of having nation states to allow different prioritizations of values and different legal systems to coexist. It's the same reason the US is proud of being a federation of states.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  But those citizens need to restrict the freedom and security of others. In Europe we have many examples of human trafficking where officials had problems to investigate because of political reasons and other problems, mainly understaffed law enforcement. Every police force asks for more powers, every interior ministry wants more surveillance. Even with decryption tools, I don't see how traffickers would suddenly not be able to obfuscate their communications. What becomes very easy is to crack down on dissent though. And being able to communicate with others without any listeners is a security requirement. So freedom and security aren't orthogonal at all.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    Exactly, it's not like they'll be using legal encryption versions lmao. This is just a way for governments to monitor their citizens in a wholesale fashion.
- balfirevic 7y ago
  > Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. That's fine, they can make the trade-off. I mean they can give up their own freedom for whatever security that gets them. What many people want is to make the same trade-off for others.
EGreg 7y ago
Many years of reading on HN, I used to just accept that encryption is the best thing. And from a point of view of what will happen, that’s what will happen. But should we as a society want this? I would argue these days that it is far better to be able to reconstruct a conversation and prove someone said something. In case things go wrong, we have to have a way to establish truth, and prove things, so we can have fairness in outcomes. Now, if we have governments that punish people for being dissidents or engaging in victimless crimes, the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and not to sneak around. That’s like making slavery better for those few people who happened to have nice masters (or encryption). So, what’s the upshot? We need more immutability and also work hard to make governments not punish people for victimless crimes. PS: freedom of speech should refer to actual speech of humans, not the unregulated ability of organizations to provide megaphones (whether Twitter or network TV). I think these are harmful for society, and I would be happier if every statement in science, news, politics, history etc. would be peer reviewed and battle it out in some wiki site before the general public sees it. Unless they want to press the Talk page to see the battle going on behind the scenes, regular people should see the article AFTER multiple sides have battled it out. I see the current megaphones controlled by Sinclair or Twitter or Newspapers or Network TV a lot more harmful and dividing our society.
- wruza 7y ago
  >the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and not to sneak around It would be nice if someone “fixed” some governments (and some crimes as a side quest), but 1) condemning privacy only makes this harder than de-facto almost impossible. 2) “prove someone said something” is not how our earth-wide culture works. We are basically based on the fact that conversations are private to some extent. Did you find yourself in a situation when your opponent knows your every step and thought and you don’t? Play any game that way and see where it goes. >We need more immutability and also work hard to make governments not punish people for victimless crimes. That’s cool, but something hints me you’re not living in one of these countries where hard work is required. Swap with one of its citizens, make a change, then we talk.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
BLKNSLVR 7y ago
Child protection should be treated much more as a "local" than "global" issue. If it's "scale" they want, to really protect children, then local boots on the ground is still the best defense. Rather than talking about encryption, Interpol should be espousing the benefits of local investigation and intervention based on mandatory reporting. Removing child abuse content from the Internet is a digital issue. Protecting children from harm is a meatspace issue, and exponentially more important (but also more difficult and fraught with subjectivity).
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > Child protection should be treated much more as a "local" than "global" issue. That, unfortunately, is no longer an option. Pedophile rings including the content producers have realized long ago that going international gives them an extra layer of protection.
  - BLKNSLVR 7y ago
    You can't physically abuse over the internet though, that's my point and that's why I separated the two concepts of "removing content from the Internet" and "Protecting children from harm". The digital is an after-effect of the physical.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      No, but you can order physical abuse over the internet. I really don't want to bother you with how dark some of the darker stuff on the internet is but you're going to have to trust me on this without having to become more explicit or you risk losing your breakfast and then some. The digital can definitely be a pre-cursor and active element in the physical.
      - Freak_NL 7y ago
        Sure, but then we're not talking about the vast majority of digital transgressions are we? That is, the simple (re)distribution of child pornography — ghastly enough as that is — not the few who actively seek out and order new abusive material from those who actually produce the stuff. This debate is about proportionality. How many children can live a marginally better live by giving up strong encryption and privacy worldwide? Because with the exception of the few cases in countries with a strong and well-functioning legal system, the abuse doesn't stop when the on-line orders stop coming in. How many activists and oppressed minorities will lose out (livelihoods and/or lives) by doing this? And even then, you're not addressing the real problem with this anti-encryption stance: how are you going to prevent the bad guys from using encryption? Encryption is here, right now, and it exists as a mathematical fact. Introduce a government (incidentally, which?) backdoor in WhatsApp or whichever major platform, and you catch some low-hanging fruit, until they wise up and use the vetted tools without a backdoor that already exist to hide their activities. This significantly impacts the proportionality balance. If you want to prevent child abuse, investing in education, welfare, economic equality, respect for basic human rights, and boots-on-the-ground police capacity will net you a vastly better return on investment.
alfiedotwtf 7y ago
Wouldn't it be easier if they just banned crime? /s
imafish 7y ago
> That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. An important point to make, is that it is not given that citizens are in charge of government. I might trust my current government to uphold democracy - but that does not mean I trust every future government to do the same and I need laws in place for restricting their rights, not mine.
outime 7y ago
> Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That’s what the govs always try to imply. The reality is, the minimally sophisticated “bad guys” will still use encrypted means and now we can imagine who’s really affected by this condemnation.
- matz1 7y ago
  This like saying, what good of having a law against murder if there is still going to be murder.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Murder itself is wrong and causes harm to society. Using encryption by itself is not wrong and does not cause harm to society.
    - matz1 7y ago
      Right or wrong is relative. Sure for you encryption by itself is not wrong, but not for Interpol. The same argument is used by Interpol, encryption cause harm for society, at least from their perspective.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    Direct wrongs vs indirect wrongs. Banning direct wrongs are done because the thing being banned is wrong. The effectiveness of the ban doesn't matter (unless maybe one can show that banning the wrong actually increases the rate at it happens, but that is different from failing to significantly enough decrease the rate). Indirect wrongs are things that aren't wrong but which we ban in order to stop something that is wrong. If there is no effect banning it, then it isn't justified to have a ban. If I want to ban cheese to reduce murder, is it justified? No, because banning cheese will no effect on the murder rate.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bboygravity 7y ago
> But it’s not their responsibility to account for negative side effects. That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. Wait, what? We have a saying in the actions and decisions of our governments (context: EU and US)? No we don't. We don't live in direct democracies. If Interpol or any police force wants to ban encryption and if that benefits who ever is in government, then that ban will come. Thus: that ban will come. (Western) governments have been eyeing bans and bypasses of encryption for decades. This is nothing new. What we as citizens think of that is completely irrelevant. Unless the majority of the population would really care about encryption and it would influence the 4-yearly vote-thing (elections). Which is not the case. Every Western country has had headlines in their news papers in the past months about their politicians -all of a sudden and all at the same time- wanting to pass laws to allow them to bypass encryption (pressured by the US?). Just in case it would influence the 4-yearly voting thing. The synchronized timing of the publications to me is shocking but not really surprising anymore. Manufacturing consent. the online kiddy porn and terrorism is really getting out of hand like right about now. Never been worse. Let's all ban encryption quickly and save the world from all child abuse
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  Maybe go outside, make some friends, join a community of individuals who are interested in claiming their place in the history of the world. Stop waiting for a champion to come and save you, and just be a champion. We're trying to form a voting bloc in my community to turn the local government upside down. If similar movements happened in other communities around the U.S. the legislature would be very different.
  - bboygravity 7y ago
    That's nice and I truly hope you'll succeed. My strategy is slightly different and more selfish: I'm planning to move to the only country in the world that has direct democracy. At the same time I try to convince people outside of that country of what should be their political number 1 priority (in my humble opinion); political decisions through popular vote.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
> This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. And let's not forget that both [should] work for the people.
_bspline 7y ago
> That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. As much as I want this statement to be true, I feel like it is less and less the case in todays society. Correct me if I am wrong.
commandlinefan 7y ago
> Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys A police officer's job is only easy in a police state.
snarf21 7y ago
Exactly. This is the standard fear-mongering. So children weren't harmed before 1995? Of course a police state makes it easier for them but who will watch the watchers? I want one of these people to give me 24/7 access to their unlocked phone. I promise to not share the information with anyone. It seems like we have better tools to fight some of these things. How about huge whistle blower rewards (millions) with lifetime witness relocation packages for people who come forward? There are lots of people who are adjacent to lots of these crimes but to come forward would mean threats, loss of income, loss of housing and more. If we made it easy and safe for them with the promise of a new life in a better situation, I think we'd see lots of these crimes go away.
Johnny555 7y ago
Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. Source? I'd like to know if that's even true, how could they possibly filter and follow up on every lead their software finds? The NSA and other agencies are facing problems with having too much data: https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whistleblower-overwhelmed-with-data-ineffective/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whistleblower-overwhelmed-...
xt00 7y ago
Regarding the question of who watches the watchers, I do wonder if any country has tried appointing a group of citizens who essentially get to watch everything the police do. It would seem like that primary complaints would be that the officers privacy is violated and secondly that people who are under investigation’s privacy would also be violated. But otherwise what kind of oversight or threat of oversight do these guys have? Maybe another approach is you have a group of pseudo officers that are like internal affairs people who’s job it is to investigate the police and maybe that could extend to “watching the watchers”?

newguy1234 7y ago

Couldn't have said it better myself.

tfha 7y ago

I'm pretty sure part of the job of a bodyguard is to ensure the well being of their client. If they ask for something that improves safety but makes the client miserable, they are not doing their job.

tqi 7y ago

I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this. Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. It seems everyone is so eager to paint the other side as objectively wrong / motivated by bad intentions, when in reality I don't believe this is an objectively right answer. As a society we have to decide how much freedom and security we want at this moment in time.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
killjoywashere 7y ago
A nice example of the complexity in this space: the Ben Franklin quote "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" means something rather different when taken in context (1). (1) https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
- apatters 7y ago
  Not really. While that specific quote wasn't about surveillance, Franklin was decidedly pro-encryption, as were most of the Founding Fathers. They all "encrypted" their letters regularly with elaborate codes and ciphers to thwart surveillance by colonial authorities. The Revolution probably would have been impossible without it. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/h3ll0-mr-pr3s1d3nt/521193/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/h3ll0-mr...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
tqi 7y ago
Also I think "Security" was the wrong term to use - maybe "Societal Order" is better? What I mean is if companies are required to build in law enforcement backdoors, we could see X benefit (ie some % reduction in certain types of crime) and Y damage (some reduction in technical security, some reduction in govt accountability, etc). Personally, I place a lot of value on the Y damage, so I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. But those are just my values, and I think it's possible / reasonable to have different values that change the balance.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  > reply The problem isn't that it's algebraic though. There are no back doors, once governments have it then all your freedom to communicate against them is broken. I don't know why anyone would look at the likes of world leaders such as Xi, Putin, KJI and Trump and think this is a good idea in any way.
sneak 7y ago
Privacy is a human right. Encryption backdoors for governments are human rights abuses. It has nothing to do with safety; it is not a debate about “how much safety do we purchase with reduced privacy”. It’s just as firearms rights have nothing to do with hunting, or a militia.
- ggzgd 7y ago
  Human rights are man-made and arbitrary. They aren't some kind of holy text that must be protected at all costs. They must be bent and ignored if necessary. You can't just say "this is a human right" to shut down any discussion.
  - hgoel 7y ago
    That's a hilariously bad take.
    - matz1 7y ago
      Can u elaborate? If human rights is not arbitrary nor man made then its come from god ?
  - Koshkin 7y ago
    Human rights were fought for an won in bloody struggles. We do not want to lose them again.
    - matz1 7y ago
      Thats true if we assume that every human want the same thing. But the reason there is bloody fight in the first place is not all human want the same thing. Is good for you if you are in the winning side, you certainly don't want to lose them but you can't say the same for the other side. They too want to be on the winning side.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    Obviously since there is no God then yeah they are "made-up", but their value is obvious. Governments have a tendency to want more and more power, and by governments I mean the ones in charge like Xi, KJI, and Hitler. Those sorts do not like human rights and think they know better than everyone what is best, especially if it makes them richer and more powerful. This is why human rights are important and why they shouldn't be compromised for "safety" because you might get a little safety in the short term, but tomorrow brings genocide.
flukus 7y ago
> I also this is a good time to remember that not every citizen has to have the same values on this It's also important to remember that not every nation will have the same set of values on this and that as the world becomes more international you're relationship with other world governments becomes more M * N. Imagine a world without encryption where the Saudi government had our access logs and decided to share what porn we were looking up. Or for something closer to the real world, imagine the CCP leveraging their influence to cut off services to anyone sharing Winnie the Pooh pictures.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  OTOH, it's the point of having nation states to allow different prioritizations of values and different legal systems to coexist. It's the same reason the US is proud of being a federation of states.
raxxorrax 7y ago
But those citizens need to restrict the freedom and security of others. In Europe we have many examples of human trafficking where officials had problems to investigate because of political reasons and other problems, mainly understaffed law enforcement. Every police force asks for more powers, every interior ministry wants more surveillance. Even with decryption tools, I don't see how traffickers would suddenly not be able to obfuscate their communications. What becomes very easy is to crack down on dissent though. And being able to communicate with others without any listeners is a security requirement. So freedom and security aren't orthogonal at all.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  Exactly, it's not like they'll be using legal encryption versions lmao. This is just a way for governments to monitor their citizens in a wholesale fashion.
balfirevic 7y ago
> Some people might think the tradeoff in terms of freedoms vs security is worth it. That's fine, they can make the trade-off. I mean they can give up their own freedom for whatever security that gets them. What many people want is to make the same trade-off for others.

EGreg 7y ago

Many years of reading on HN, I used to just accept that encryption is the best thing. And from a point of view of what will happen, that’s what will happen. But should we as a society want this? I would argue these days that it is far better to be able to reconstruct a conversation and prove someone said something. In case things go wrong, we have to have a way to establish truth, and prove things, so we can have fairness in outcomes. Now, if we have governments that punish people for being dissidents or engaging in victimless crimes, the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and not to sneak around. That’s like making slavery better for those few people who happened to have nice masters (or encryption). So, what’s the upshot? We need more immutability and also work hard to make governments not punish people for victimless crimes. PS: freedom of speech should refer to actual speech of humans, not the unregulated ability of organizations to provide megaphones (whether Twitter or network TV). I think these are harmful for society, and I would be happier if every statement in science, news, politics, history etc. would be peer reviewed and battle it out in some wiki site before the general public sees it. Unless they want to press the Talk page to see the battle going on behind the scenes, regular people should see the article AFTER multiple sides have battled it out. I see the current megaphones controlled by Sinclair or Twitter or Newspapers or Network TV a lot more harmful and dividing our society.

wruza 7y ago
>the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and not to sneak around It would be nice if someone “fixed” some governments (and some crimes as a side quest), but 1) condemning privacy only makes this harder than de-facto almost impossible. 2) “prove someone said something” is not how our earth-wide culture works. We are basically based on the fact that conversations are private to some extent. Did you find yourself in a situation when your opponent knows your every step and thought and you don’t? Play any game that way and see where it goes. >We need more immutability and also work hard to make governments not punish people for victimless crimes. That’s cool, but something hints me you’re not living in one of these countries where hard work is required. Swap with one of its citizens, make a change, then we talk.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago

BLKNSLVR 7y ago

Child protection should be treated much more as a "local" than "global" issue. If it's "scale" they want, to really protect children, then local boots on the ground is still the best defense. Rather than talking about encryption, Interpol should be espousing the benefits of local investigation and intervention based on mandatory reporting. Removing child abuse content from the Internet is a digital issue. Protecting children from harm is a meatspace issue, and exponentially more important (but also more difficult and fraught with subjectivity).

jacquesm 7y ago
> Child protection should be treated much more as a "local" than "global" issue. That, unfortunately, is no longer an option. Pedophile rings including the content producers have realized long ago that going international gives them an extra layer of protection.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  You can't physically abuse over the internet though, that's my point and that's why I separated the two concepts of "removing content from the Internet" and "Protecting children from harm". The digital is an after-effect of the physical.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    No, but you can order physical abuse over the internet. I really don't want to bother you with how dark some of the darker stuff on the internet is but you're going to have to trust me on this without having to become more explicit or you risk losing your breakfast and then some. The digital can definitely be a pre-cursor and active element in the physical.
    - Freak_NL 7y ago
      Sure, but then we're not talking about the vast majority of digital transgressions are we? That is, the simple (re)distribution of child pornography — ghastly enough as that is — not the few who actively seek out and order new abusive material from those who actually produce the stuff. This debate is about proportionality. How many children can live a marginally better live by giving up strong encryption and privacy worldwide? Because with the exception of the few cases in countries with a strong and well-functioning legal system, the abuse doesn't stop when the on-line orders stop coming in. How many activists and oppressed minorities will lose out (livelihoods and/or lives) by doing this? And even then, you're not addressing the real problem with this anti-encryption stance: how are you going to prevent the bad guys from using encryption? Encryption is here, right now, and it exists as a mathematical fact. Introduce a government (incidentally, which?) backdoor in WhatsApp or whichever major platform, and you catch some low-hanging fruit, until they wise up and use the vetted tools without a backdoor that already exist to hide their activities. This significantly impacts the proportionality balance. If you want to prevent child abuse, investing in education, welfare, economic equality, respect for basic human rights, and boots-on-the-ground police capacity will net you a vastly better return on investment.

alfiedotwtf 7y ago

Wouldn't it be easier if they just banned crime? /s

imafish 7y ago

> That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. An important point to make, is that it is not given that citizens are in charge of government. I might trust my current government to uphold democracy - but that does not mean I trust every future government to do the same and I need laws in place for restricting their rights, not mine.

outime 7y ago

> Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. That’s what the govs always try to imply. The reality is, the minimally sophisticated “bad guys” will still use encrypted means and now we can imagine who’s really affected by this condemnation.

matz1 7y ago
This like saying, what good of having a law against murder if there is still going to be murder.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Murder itself is wrong and causes harm to society. Using encryption by itself is not wrong and does not cause harm to society.
  - matz1 7y ago
    Right or wrong is relative. Sure for you encryption by itself is not wrong, but not for Interpol. The same argument is used by Interpol, encryption cause harm for society, at least from their perspective.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Direct wrongs vs indirect wrongs. Banning direct wrongs are done because the thing being banned is wrong. The effectiveness of the ban doesn't matter (unless maybe one can show that banning the wrong actually increases the rate at it happens, but that is different from failing to significantly enough decrease the rate). Indirect wrongs are things that aren't wrong but which we ban in order to stop something that is wrong. If there is no effect banning it, then it isn't justified to have a ban. If I want to ban cheese to reduce murder, is it justified? No, because banning cheese will no effect on the murder rate.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bboygravity 7y ago

> But it’s not their responsibility to account for negative side effects. That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. Wait, what? We have a saying in the actions and decisions of our governments (context: EU and US)? No we don't. We don't live in direct democracies. If Interpol or any police force wants to ban encryption and if that benefits who ever is in government, then that ban will come. Thus: that ban will come. (Western) governments have been eyeing bans and bypasses of encryption for decades. This is nothing new. What we as citizens think of that is completely irrelevant. Unless the majority of the population would really care about encryption and it would influence the 4-yearly vote-thing (elections). Which is not the case. Every Western country has had headlines in their news papers in the past months about their politicians -all of a sudden and all at the same time- wanting to pass laws to allow them to bypass encryption (pressured by the US?). Just in case it would influence the 4-yearly voting thing. The synchronized timing of the publications to me is shocking but not really surprising anymore. Manufacturing consent. the online kiddy porn and terrorism is really getting out of hand like right about now. Never been worse. Let's all ban encryption quickly and save the world from all child abuse

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
Maybe go outside, make some friends, join a community of individuals who are interested in claiming their place in the history of the world. Stop waiting for a champion to come and save you, and just be a champion. We're trying to form a voting bloc in my community to turn the local government upside down. If similar movements happened in other communities around the U.S. the legislature would be very different.
- bboygravity 7y ago
  That's nice and I truly hope you'll succeed. My strategy is slightly different and more selfish: I'm planning to move to the only country in the world that has direct democracy. At the same time I try to convince people outside of that country of what should be their political number 1 priority (in my humble opinion); political decisions through popular vote.

eeZah7Ux 7y ago

> This is a good time to remember that police forces work for governments and not the other way around. And let's not forget that both [should] work for the people.

_bspline 7y ago

> That’s our responsibility, as citizens who are in charge of our governments. As much as I want this statement to be true, I feel like it is less and less the case in todays society. Correct me if I am wrong.

commandlinefan 7y ago

> Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys A police officer's job is only easy in a police state.

snarf21 7y ago

Exactly. This is the standard fear-mongering. So children weren't harmed before 1995? Of course a police state makes it easier for them but who will watch the watchers? I want one of these people to give me 24/7 access to their unlocked phone. I promise to not share the information with anyone. It seems like we have better tools to fight some of these things. How about huge whistle blower rewards (millions) with lifetime witness relocation packages for people who come forward? There are lots of people who are adjacent to lots of these crimes but to come forward would mean threats, loss of income, loss of housing and more. If we made it easy and safe for them with the promise of a new life in a better situation, I think we'd see lots of these crimes go away.

Johnny555 7y ago

Of course it would be easier for the police to catch bad guys if they had full-text search access to all conversations and content, worldwide. Source? I'd like to know if that's even true, how could they possibly filter and follow up on every lead their software finds? The NSA and other agencies are facing problems with having too much data: https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whistleblower-overwhelmed-with-data-ineffective/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whistleblower-overwhelmed-...

xt00 7y ago

Regarding the question of who watches the watchers, I do wonder if any country has tried appointing a group of citizens who essentially get to watch everything the police do. It would seem like that primary complaints would be that the officers privacy is violated and secondly that people who are under investigation’s privacy would also be violated. But otherwise what kind of oversight or threat of oversight do these guys have? Maybe another approach is you have a group of pseudo officers that are like internal affairs people who’s job it is to investigate the police and maybe that could extend to “watching the watchers”?