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Open letter concerning Facebook's proposals to apply end-to-end encryption
- docdeek 7y agoIn other words, please make sure that the government can access any communication they might wish to by ensuring your encryption doesn't work. Here's hoping Zuck ignores it.
- m-p-3 7y agoAnd Apple does E2EE with iMessage but I don't see the government slamming them publicly. Maybe it's because they don't consider Apple to have a big enough marketshare, or Apple doesn't make the system as private as they claim it to be and secretly collaborate with the authorities.
- buboard 7y agoEasily explained: FB is the one who actually went the extra mile to start spying on its users and report thousands of cases to the police. Now the police have become lazy, they want more of that.
- truculent 7y agoThis is a government that deported it's own citizens asking to remove encryption for "user safety". Okay.
- sneak 7y agoLet’s also not forget the illegal imprisonment of Assange without trial for the last few years in London, and now his appalling treatment in Belmarsh.
- loriverkutya 7y agoYou mean in the Embassy of Ecuador in London? That’s hardly a prison.
- jonnypotty 7y agoAnywhere you are unable to leave is a prison.
- parent5446 7y agoQuite the generalization there. At this rate my own house is a prison because I'm too lazy to be able to leave it.
- mam2 7y agoI think you broke the record on how much one can both look so retarded, and sure of his own intelligence with a single sentence. I thought the concept of of freedom was learnt in primary school but if not you should check it out its a nice one.
- dang 7y agoPersonal attacks and name-calling like this will get you banned here. Please don't! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mam2 7y agoYeah no.. imo calling people out is part of life. You cant just be nice to everyone when one is a troll
- emayljames 7y agoBeing voluntarily able to leave and not being able to voluntarily leave are not the same thing, just like being too lazy to leave your house is not the same as having the western stasi threatening you to leave.
- ben_w 7y agoWould you prefer that the British police entered the Ecuadorean embassy without the permission of the Ecuadorean government in order to extradite him lawfully in accordance with a lawful court order to not America to face trial for not clearly political espionage claims, especially when he would not be facing the prospect of up to the death penalty and in fact would probably have been released by now anyway?
- dang 7y agoThis is the sort of adjacent controversy, a.k.a. flamewar tangent, that the site guidelines ask you not to introduce into a thread. The problem is that the topic has been gone over so often that there is no longer any curiosity in it. Curious readers move on, so only partisans—those who passionately identify with one side or the other—show up to comment. All they do is recite the same arguments that have been made countless times before, using stronger and nastier language against each other. We end up with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21864054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21864054. Since HN's guiding principle is intellectual curiosity, it follows that once an ongoing story has reached a saturation level of repetition, it's off topic for Hacker News until significant new information emerges. Once that happens, discussion has a chance to attract the curious again because there's something new for the mind to sink its teeth into. Actually, one can drop the word "controversial" from the above: any story is off topic once it has been repeated to saturation level. But it's only the controversial stories that people feel compelled to keep bringing up past that point. The saturation threshold for repetition is far lower than people who feel strongly about a story think it is. That is, curious readers get bored and tune out far sooner than partisans imagine. It's not that such topics are unimportant. Usually they have large importance, which is why people feel strongly about them. Rather, this rule has to do with the HN community's limited ability to function within its values. Once we get out of the functional range of curiosity, the needle goes into the red, and discussion reduces to two sides firing at each other from fixed positions. It's not in anyone's interest for HN to host such degenerate discussions, because the more we do that here, the more we condition the site to have more of this, instead of the curious conversation it actually exists for. Keep in mind that flamewars are the default end state of an internet forum; curious conversation is not. So they aren't sideshows that have no effect on the main attraction—they are actively poisoning it and hastening its decline. Each of us has at least one topic that activates us and throws us out of the curiosity range, so the only long-term solution is to learn as a community to manage these reactions consciously in ourselves, and not let activation energy propel us mechanically into posting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sneak 7y agoI apologize for accidentally breaking the rules, and I will endeavor to follow them more closely. I hadn’t realized how deeply effective the intelligence efforts to re-polarize people on this topic had been, and walked into a minefield entirely on accident. I thought my comment was uncontroversial, but I was mistaken. Sorry for the inconvenience.
- vixen99 7y agoPlease, it's its own citizens.
- truculent 7y agoDeported it is own citizens ️ Is there an edit button?
- dredmorbius 7y agoEdit window is 2 hours. Live with the scars.
- FpUser 7y agoIt is/was never about safety. It is beyond me why would anyone ever swallow such BS. Every government be it democratic or not wants control, plain and simple. The more the better (for them).
- sneak 7y agoImplicit in this is that they already have all the access they wish, via Facebook, today.
- deith 7y agoWhy is this an "open letter" instead of being passed as law? I understand that you might write an open letter when you are powerless to change something, but this is a government...
- LatteLazy 7y agoBecause our "leaders" are not smart enough to understand this, they've just been told it's bad. Because they want to pretend it's ok to have zero encryption and that's much harder if facebook and others say it's not. Because passing an actual law to actually ban it would take effort and they're lazy Because there is a non-zero chance they can't really ban it, at least not without banning a lot of other things like e-commerce and online banking, so a gentlemans' agreement to keep 95% vulnerable is much more manageable. Because in at least some of the jurisdictions it might not be legal ("constitutional" in the US, "in accordance with the European convention on human rights" in the UK etc) to force these things by law.
- johnnycab 7y ago>Because our "leaders" are not smart enough to understand this, they've just been told it's bad. Your comment is partially correct, it is the Home Secretaries, past and present, who have been routinely told by the civil servants to tow the anti-encryption line, which goes back to RIPA 2000 and even further back. In essence it is GCHQ who are asking and they understand encryption perfectly well; since they can't ask directly, hence the role falls upon the relevant minister in government to do it. This will once again become a hot-button issue as outlined in the Queen's speech. The Tory Party is also switching from Whatsapp to Signal ─ make of that, what you will. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/former_gchq_wades_into_encryption_debate/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/former_gchq_wades_i... https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-switch-to-messaging-app-signal-to-curb-whatsapp-leaks?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_reddit_is_fun https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-swit...
- achamayou 7y agoNot the government, who was never using WhatsApp, the Tory Party.
- badrabbit 7y agoLike it or not,outside of tech circles the majority of people think lawful interception should be in place. E2E is fairly new so I doubt it would remain legal for a commercial service to offer it. I personally am a fanboy for E2EE. But in democratic countries the majority rule so what could be done aside from educating the majority? The message from the tech industry needs to be very simple and digestable. No going on and on about how you can't backdoor E2EE because that's bad design or implications of letting them have backdoor access,etc.... If it was up to me the counterpoint message would be "Yes, Lawful intercept should be a thing since the people want it but there have been severe violations both by governments and criminals alike where they used existing weakness that allowed lawful intercept for unlawful dragnet surveillance with absolutely no repercussions. Therefore, even if a lawful intercept backdoor was in place, history has shown it will be used for unlawful ends and as such E2EE is merely preventing illegal interception. If the people's will is truly to allow access to their communication then individuals should be forced to install software on endpoints that facilitate interception,much like e911 related software is by law mandated to be installed in a way that is very hard to remove." That said, I hope FB burns!!! (the company,not their people).
- chrisseaton 7y ago> outside of tech circles the majority of people think lawful interception should be in place This is absolutely the case. You're going to have to do a hell of a lot of work to begin to explain to most normal people why end-to-end encryption is even possible, let alone why you may think the Government should not have a right to decrypt. It's going to seem completely reasonable to almost everyone except your friends.
- pjc50 7y agoCompare with the "Totok" (not tiktok) discussion also on the front page. Suddenly people aren't so keen when it's a foreign intelligence agency doing the snooping.
- buran77 7y agoPretty sure many of the people are equally keen on the principle just can't comment publicly without sounding hypocritical.
- McDev 7y agoA bit strange after reading this headline: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/20/uk_conservatives_brexit_from_whatsapp_to_signal/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/20/uk_conservatives_br...
- chaz6 7y agoThis is not new, but has been updated with a letter from "Director National Security". The last line reads:- "If we do not get this right then the impact on the safety of our citizens, and our children, will be stark." If only they were that worried about the environment and global warming.
- GordonS 7y agoI think it's plain to many that they are not in fact worried about "our children" - it's a lazy argument that's easily seen through, yet appeals to outraged tabloid readers. It also makes it easy to retort to those who would oppose it: "then you don't care about our children, you must be a monster!" In reality, anyone who truly cared about our children, and indeed future generations, would see the dangers of mass surveillance and strongly oppose it on those grounds.
- dnpp123 7y agoI skipped this link believing they were going to complain about data ownership and privacy issues. A bit astounted they try to stop one of the only decent thing FB is trying to push for instead. What a world we live in.
- marcus_holmes 7y agoI'm writing a communication product that uses encryption to store the communications. A couple of things spring to mind when reading this: 1. It's trivially easy to write a communication service that end-to-end encrypts using modern libraries (in my case, Go). The encryption part took about a day to build, without me needing to understand any of the maths I was using. I haven't had any penetration tests on it, yet, but I understand that Go's encryption libraries are all tested and the implementation (plumbing them together) is pretty simple and hard to get wrong. So even if FB gives the security services some way of reading messages, then the bad people can have their own tool within a few days. 1b. There are other services, not as popular, that provide solid end-to-end encryption already (hello Keybase), that the bad people can use immediately. This is not about stopping the bad people from encrypting their messages, this is about getting access to what everyone else is saying. 2. It's already practically infeasible for a communications company to implement end-to-end encryption without breaking existing laws (mostly about copyright). Facebook's "end-to-end encryption" on message content will have to include a copyright content filter in order to not be targeted by the copyright legal industry, and the incoming EU legislation on implementing content filters on any service that can share content. All this points at this not being about terrorists and protecting children, but at it being about mass surveillance of civilian populations. It's notable that of the "five eyes" participants, it's only the US, UK and Australia who have contributed to the open letter. These three countries are the most keen on mass domestic surveillance (in the West anyway).
- thunderrabbit 7y ago> This is not about stopping the bad people from encrypting their messages, this is about getting access to what everyone else is saying. Thank you.
- SheinhardtWigCo 7y ago“Trivially easy” causes me to raise an eyebrow. Hubris and cryptography don’t mix well. Which libraries are you using?
- johannes1234321 7y ago
- teddyuk 7y agoPriti Patel pleading for everyone to give them what they want “can’t you just think of the children”
- gnufx 7y agoC.f. use of Signal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844303
- baby 7y agoDoes the UK realizes that if their plan is implemented then any authoritarian government can now ask to have access as well.
- ben_w 7y agoThe UK government does not understand how the UK government functions, never mind the international implications of what they’re asking for.
- jpswade 7y agoWhy, in a time where Facebook is getting so much flack for privacy issues, would they want to build a backdoor into their platform for the UK Government? Why would their targets use Facebook for communication when there's many other existing platforms that provide this service. Privacy isn’t about having “nothing to hide” it's about freedom. As soon as your privacy is taken away, so is your freedom.
- choward 7y agoPeople don't seem to understand this. If you have nothing to hide would you mind if the government went through your house whenever they felt like it? It can be done in a way that doesn't inconvenience you like only when you're not home. Think of all the criminals we would catch. Is that the world you want to live in?
- koningrobot 7y agoIt doesn't sound so bad when you put it like that.
- peteretep 7y agoI’m not sure this is a strong example, as the government can already go through your home whenever it wants, assuming it follows its own internal judicial checks and balances.
- div 7y agoI quite like the following analogy: Saying privacy is unnecessary because you have nothing to hide is like saying free speech is unnecessary because you have nothing to say.
- Terretta 7y agoThat only works if you think free speech is always good. Should we let people yell fire in a crowded theater? Is freedom from fear a fundamental right? How fundamental? Privacy yields to safety as free speech yields to safety... For some time now, we’re no longer designing protections from probable harm, but theater abating improbable fears.
- Jabbles 7y agoConcentrating on the child abuse aspect: Surely the hard part of eliminating child abuse is the acting on information about the whereabouts of pedophiles? That is hard part, the non-scaling part, the bit where real people have to go and make arrests and free the children and find a safe place for them to stay for the rest of their childhood. Compared to that, finding the people swapping child abuse imagery online sounds rather easy, even when you can no longer look at individuals' messages.
- sys_64738 7y agoWestern countries condemn the Russian software rules and the Communist Firewall of China and VPN restrictions. Yet here we are with the UK trying the such things in a similar vain.
- libeclipse 7y agoMaybe we should get rid of the NHS, and oxygen as well, as those things have the potential to benefit bad people. Absolute idots. Cryptography benefits _everyone_, and this bullshit is at the expense of everyone.
- pnako 7y agoBritish government: "Please think of the children!" Also British government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit... Pardon me for not trusting them too much.
- IshKebab 7y agoFor anyone not following UK politics, the Home Secretary is basically the Evil Secretary. We've had a string of heartless authoritarian Home Secretaries (mostly women incidentally - for all the "if women were in power the world would be a friendly place" crew). Priti Patel is probably the worst so far. There's a pretty shocking video of her arguing with Ian Hislop (editor of Private Eye) that we should reinstate capital punishment. So this isn't exactly surprising.
- erostrate 7y agoSome people, including in these comments, make the argument that preventing E2EE on Facebook is pointless because offenders can simply move to another service. That's not a very good argument for two reasons. First, Facebook is already used by pedophiles despite the lack of E2EE. 2500 arrests for child abuse last year according to the letter. An example is given of a pedophile identified through his messages with an 11 year old girl. With E2EE enabled he would not have been identified at that time. Secondly, the letter highlights that a major problem is the combination of open profiles of children with E2EE messaging. This does not apply to any service, mainly Facebook and similar platforms. Don't get me wrong, I am overall in favour of E2EE, and I share the usual cynicism about the government's intentions. You can make the argument that although absence of E2EE does help identify pedophiles more easily, in the balance it is more important to enable E2EE to protect privacy. But you should not make the argument that absence of E2EE on FB would not help identify pedophiles more easily, because this letter provides evidence that it actually does.
- thrwaway69 7y agoisn't Facebook for 13+ teens? Did they change the terms recently? And where are the parents? Do you just hand your kid phone without any parental controls? Why should we not focus educating parents about raising kids than fucking over with everyone?
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoMonday parents are not capable od seeing up parental controls, and I don't think we will see that change in the next 10 years even if we direct quite a lot of effort to the matter
- thrwaway69 7y agoso by putting everyone at risk with really minimal security looking at conviction rate and who really are sexually abusing the kids (hint, it's not a rando on the internet) is a better alternative to a long term advantage of having better highly educated parents that will stop cycle of mismanagement across generation like how abuse spreads from one generation to another. Principles and behavior do too. Why not ask politicians to put forward regulations that makes it mandatory for companies to make parental control accessible and usable? But of course that won't do. Parents should have no responsibility beyond giving the kid an iPad or a smart surveillance device.
- HacklesRaised 7y agoPatel's signature alone should be sufficent to file this away in the bin.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoOpen Letter to UK Gov: Suck my balls, thanks.
- bluesign 7y agoThey say: "Our technical experts are confident that we can do so while defending cyber security and supporting technological innovation. We will take an open and balanced approach in line with the joint statement of principles signed by the governments of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada in August 2018 and the subsequent communique agreed in July this year." on the other hand, second link on this paragraph is not found (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/five-country-ministerial-communique/joint-meeting-offive-country-ministerial-and-quintet-of-attorneys-general-communique-london-2019 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/five-country-mini...)
- AaronFriel 7y agoWhy not make end-to-end encryption available only for adults? This preserves the ability to track the most serious abuses of children and the millions of reports the governments describe in their open letter, while preserving the right to privacy that adults should expect. This would take the wind out of the government's argument and would have a reasonable basis in common law's differential treatment of adults and minors.
- effnorwood 7y agoThe ends aren’t encrypted
- user840148 7y agoPatriot Act is the proof that facing fear society will trade privacy for security. And it is also the proof that gov will abuse their power and society will never get that traded privacy back.