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1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? 2. What’s the endgame here? Open-source e

1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? 2. What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. The cat is out of the bag. Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it. Do the people behind these proposals not see that?

sorethescore 6y ago
There's no need to make them mandatory, most people already have cameras and microphones in their homes, schools and workplaces that the government can access. This is more about getting access to the social graph.
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
  I don’t think that is accurate. Just as with end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, they would have to use targeted 0-day exploits to access the cameras and microphones in people’s homes. End-to-end encryption doesn’t protect the social graph. They already know who is talking to who; they just don’t know what is being said.
  - mixologic 6y ago
    They are already subpoena'ing alexa and Google home recordings, Android and iPhone location data, cell tower pings etc. I don't think we're far away from court ordered wire taps to compel Google to enable the cameras and microphones.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      Any such court orders would be sealed indefinitely as well. In 5-10 or so years I predict we will have another Snowden, describing that the NSA has been running a ring -1 process on every single Intel Management Engine co-processor in the entire world.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    The vast majority of "smart home" devices automatically shovel all of their camera data to the manufacturer's servers, because most consumers don't want to deal with a NAS box and remote access. With this kind of architecture, law enforcement doesn't need 0-days, they only need a warrant/NSL, or to just ask the manufacturer nicely. Some manufacturers (e.g. Amazon/Ring) are a little too eager to essentially hand all of their data over to the police in real-time with almost no strings attached. Devices that don't already upload everything to the cloud (e.g. Apple and Google's pinky-promise that smart assistant audio is processed locally) automatically receive and apply software and firmware updates from the manufacturer / carrier that can arbitrarily change device behavior. The government can and probably does compel these companies to write and push custom firmware to targeted devices. "We encrypt your data so hard that we couldn't access it even if we wanted to" is almost always a lie, is never verifiable, and is ultimately subject to the same automatic firmware/software update problem. It will never be possible to secure systems like these from government snooping, and people largely don't seem to care.
    - tpxl 6y ago
      The vast majority of homes are not in any way smart.
      - ohazi 6y ago
        The vast majority of people in the US have a smartphone in their pocket.
        tpxl 6y ago
        True, however your argument was about smart homes specifically, and the phones don't "automatically shovel all of their camera data to the manufacturer's servers".
    - LocalH 6y ago
      Apple devices don’t force updates. They’re very pushy, yes, and there are a couple of dark patterns in their update notification UI, but my devices aren’t running the latest iOS
  - ShorsHammer 6y ago
    > targeted 0-day exploits "this app wants access to your microphone: YES/NO"
jakelazaroff 6y ago
Re: 2, just because other encrypted messaging software is widely available doesn’t mean all criminals will use it. We know this because it happens today — see for example ammo and weapons seized after someone posted about killing federal officers on Discord [1], which isn’t e2e encrypted at all! This isn’t a defense of backdoors, btw — just saying that we can still expect some criminals to use compromised messaging software even if secure alternatives are easily available. [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/ammo-guns-seized-from-teen-radicalized-on-ifunny https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/ammo-guns...
itisoptional 6y ago
Using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. is optional. Nobody has to use these platforms. So it's unlike having a government-mandated microphone and camera in your home or school, since you could not easily avoid those, and (in most democracies) you have a right to privacy in those places (well, in your home anyway). If you want your messages encrypted, do it yourself. Then you are in control, not some big corp.
- bmarquez 6y ago
  >Using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. is optional. Nobody has to use these platforms. Nobody has to use these platforms, unless everyone else is using these platforms. Have you ever been that one person who is being regularly invited to an event but you aren't in a Messenger or Whatsapp group to receive it? Pretty soon you stop receiving invitations. This is actually worse in the case of Whatsapp outside America, since it's used more often than it should for business, and if you don't make yourself accessible for business, you don't eat. >If you want your messages encrypted, do it yourself. I've been "that guy" trying to tell others about PGP. I still get jokes about acting like I'm hiding from the FBI occasionally, even in this age where privacy is mainstream enough where I can point them to a Joe Rogan podcast featuring Edward Snowden. People care, but it has to be frictionless.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > Nobody has to use these platforms, unless everyone else is using these platforms. No, even if everybody else is using those platforms, it does not force you in anyway to use them. It's still always up to you.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      Sure, in the way no one is "forcing" you to use email or a phone. You can opt out if you don't mind being unemployed and alone.
      - ekianjo 6y ago
vkou 6y ago
> 1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? It's different because you're voluntarily giving information to a third party (Facebook), which the government is asking to share with police. You may not agree with it, but that's the difference. It's a pretty substantial one.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  So if I rent my apartment, the government can compel a landlord to place recording devices in the residence without serving me a warrant?
  - vkou 6y ago
    It could, if there weren't a century or two of legal precedent for treating your home differently from your phone calls.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541163 suggests an alternative may be to arrange for your current neighbours to discover a deal on a (nicer/bigger/better located) apartment ... and then, when they move out, place recording devices there.
  - kebman 6y ago
    Depends under which jurisdiction. The Swedish ambassador to North Korea complained to his secretary that the driveway outside was still full of snow. He was about to order some of his own men out, but minutes later a bunch of North Korean labourers appeared and cleared all the snow away in front of his embassy, including the driveway. When he asked the secretary, she told him that she hadn't called anyone. Then they both stared suspiciously at the flower pot.
    - jmkjaer 6y ago
      Do you have a source for this? A quick Google search shows your comment as the top result.
mrtksn 6y ago
> How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? The difference is that the infrastructure is in place and can be turned on at will so it feels within the reach of the people who think they deserved to do that. They think that deserve it because they believe that the job they do is the most important thing in the world and they can suddenly gain access to an amazing tool that will make their job much more easier and potentially more effective. They believe that the risks are overblown, can be contained with proper measures and well worth it. If you are a pro-nuclear energy, you can draw an analogy with you desperately wanting nuclear power all over the place. “So what if a really bad accident can cause an irreparable damage? The new designs would not allow this to happen and the positive aspects are huge. Coal kills much more people. Yes we had chernobyl and fukushima but this time is different” is very similar to “So what if the surveillance can be used to create a dystopian state? The measures we put in place will prevent it from ever happening and the positives are huge. Terrorist and other criminals cause huge damages and not that many are killed by repressive government. Yes we had the stasi and kgb but this is different” After all, it is true that it would have been great to a have a power that watch us an protect us, right? The concept is the bedrock of many religions anyway. It’s something that a lot of people want.
- duncan_bayne 6y ago
  Nit pick - the best science at the moment suggests that radiation from Chernobyl killed just two hundred people, and Fukushima zero. Your point is a good one but the specific example turns out to be untrue.
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    I don't want to get into a death toll deal discussion but people killed by KGB and Stasi is just as low. A politician here a journalist there, people looking at death toll statistics must be wondering what was the big deal about Stasi, Chernobyl, KGB, Fukushima and so on.
    - martinko 6y ago
m3at 6y ago
> it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Maybe it's not about the criminals? Governments have a tendency to seek to increase control of citizens, surveillance being part of it. Saying it's about "tools for terrorists and child traffickers" is the traditional rethorical ploy no-one can argue against. You wouldn't want to protect child traffickers would you?
- psychoslave 6y ago
  Beware, government is not those who command it. If there was some real democracy out there where citizens all should be actively implicated in the government (as opposed to supposedly delegate it), then what would it mean to have citizen wanting to increase control on citizen?
  - Hendrikto 6y ago
    Very philosophical, but that’s not how it works in practice.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    It can still happen - there have been and still are many self-policing communities historically (at small scales), where any sort of deviation from the norm is seen as problematic, regardless of its actual effects.
  - thelastname 6y ago
    When it comes to secret services? Naive.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > what would it mean to have citizen wanting to increase control on citizen? The breakdown of the rule of law. It’s what happened in Athens and is why pure direct democracy doesn’t work: the tyranny of the majority [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
    - 6y ago
eternalban 6y ago
Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I, and the foundational mindset of "secret services" in Anglo-sphere ("5 eyes") explains everything. The modern secret services are based on British Empire's model, itself an outgrowth of Elizabethan intelligence services. The reason the "5+J eyes" -- btw, Israeli eyes don't count? -- insist on knowing everything about everyone in "the realm" is because Catholics and Protestants were having a very nasty, and very bloody, power struggle in England. The queen of england had reasons to fear her own subjects, and the "intelligence services" that supported her certainly viewed say 1/2 of the English population as potential enemies. This is their mindset. Nothing will change this state of affairs until the current ruling set is booted, once and for all. They've had a multi-century run. Time to take a bow.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Secret services also provide continuity in methods, if not personnel, across hostile administrative changes. For instance, the KGB inherited its methods (continuously) from the Cheka, which had inherited its methods (discontinously) from the Okhrana. "He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana Detim to tili du kombat wit inyalowda, to gonya du sheru du owta wit kowmang. (He who continually struggles against Inners will become divisive himself.)
  - haneefmubarak 6y ago
    "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." - Friedrich Nietzsche
actuator 6y ago
> What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. At least on phones with gatekeepers like Apple, they can get them to comply on apps. Thankfully, web is still free for now.
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
> Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Trivially easy but probably in practice too much of a bother. I imagine most traffic isn't between well trained members of international terrorist or crime organisations planning major heists, but people who are friends, family members and acquaintances. They're already using WhatsApp to talk with other friends about every day things so start planning and revealing criminal behaviour accidentally without taking the trouble to move to another platform.
- m12k 6y ago
  The thing is, by building backdoors into the widely used platforms, we gain maybe 10 years of arresting idiot criminals until they learn to use Signal, the same way they learned to use burner phones, but at the same time throw everybody's privacy out the window while opening a huge security hole in our infrastructure. It's just not a good trade-off, not even from a pragmatic, non-idealist perspective.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    A lot of crime is opportunistic. If people feel they are more likely to get caught then much of it will just go away.
    - jchw 6y ago
      This claim is weird. “A lot” — well wait, how much is a lot? I tried to look, but a couple cursory searches yielded little in the way of attempts to quantify the amount of “opportunistic crime” versus premeditated. And frankly, going by raw quantity might not be good enough. How much damage are they doing relative to premeditated crime? Shoplifting a candy bar versus a murder, you know. I also wonder if this has much to do with this article. If you are conversing about future criminal activity on Facebook or SMS, can you argue it was not premeditated in some fashion? And even if this makes sense... how much loss of our personal freedoms is it worth to eliminate xx% of crime? (And, is it possible that there are better ways, like perhaps looking at the causes rather than trying to curb the effects...)
bacon_waffle 6y ago
> 1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? Could you explain this question to someone who doesn't have a Facebook account? As far as I understand, US phone companies are required to provide law enforcement with the ability to tap phone calls going through their exchanges, yet it doesn't seem that is on the same level as a government mandated microphone. Does Facebook have constant access to a facebook user's ("provider's" maybe, given their business model) mic and camera?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nix23 6y ago
  I think he gets it totally wrong, the microphones (private assistants) the camera (your smart-tv) and the rest (IoT-Devices) all come from Private Company's and often from a completely different Country...what the Government missed is to protect us from them (private/~state company's) it would be really interesting how many "SmartTVs etc" recorded quite important company-meetings. Edit: With ~State-Company i mean stuff like Lockhead Huawei Tencent
lanevorockz 6y ago
1. Simple ... you are already giving all of this away to Facebook for free. If you are so worried with government, it is as bad to let a corporation have if not much worse.
aikinai 6y ago
The right-wing terrorists they just arrested in Michigan posted about their plans in private Facebook groups. This is probably much more common than criminals with any understanding of OPSEC. They’re not smart, but they’re still dangerous. Not that I’m arguing for these backdoors; just pointing out that “but criminals can still encrypt their messages” is mostly irrelevant.
- concordDance 6y ago
  Not sure "terrorist" is the right term here given the main objective isn't to spread fear or make a point, but to kidnap (and kill?) an elected politician. If Al-Qaeda had genuinely wanted to harm the US financial system as their main goal, flying into the twin towers wouldn't have been terrorism as it wouldn't be about terror. Though I'm unsure of a good term that encompasses violent action against the state...
lota-putty 6y ago
Placed in your hands the responsibility of protecting/securing lives of innocent citizens you would overlook the privacy of citizens. Paradoxes of technology-industrial complex. Nothing out there is better than face-2-face social meetings. Nothing private should have access to the internet let alone "going over secure links".
netcan 6y ago
>>"What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. The cat is out of the bag. Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it." There is no endgame, strictly. Like a "war on drugs" or terrorism, crime will never raises a white flag and surrender. So, no endgame. For insight on the point, I think it's useful to compare CCP strategy 1 to CCP strategy 2: soft power. I mean soft power broadly, rather than the strictly geopolitical play. Early on, China sought absolute goals, like the USSR and others. The literally tried to control knowledge itself. Strict bans on books or encyclopedias with a bad narrative. Overseas travel was considered dangerous, and vetting was required. These days, instruments like the great firewall don't work that way. People can work around the great firewall, travel and access information (eg foreign papers) if they want to. A short wave radio, a foreign magazine or a vpn are no longer serious contraband. But, most of the stuff that most people access is approved. They can't keep news of something big a secret, but they never really could. What they can do is monitor, manage and influence the conversation. High influence is the goal, not strict control. Same here. Sure, sophisticated criminals can avoid fb. But, most people do use fb. This "most people, most of the time" includes criminals, friends of criminals, etc. This is enough. Enough to be chilling. Enough to make secure systems feel sketchy. Enough to help with the the job, whether the job is investigating a string of robberies or monitoring separatist rebels.
- fsflover 6y ago
  > Enough to be chilling See also: https://www.socialcooling.com/ https://www.socialcooling.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363).
- ENGNR 6y ago
  And all the while the most serious avenues for crime get forgotten, if anything they become an even greater risk because we're lulled into a false sense of security
  - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
    Wage theft. I say we allow these backdoors but it has to come with a Civilian Unit uses it only on high profile targets. Lets have some CEO/politic heads roll for once please. Not Dimebag Dave.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
It's different because you can choose to use facebook, or not. That should have been blindingly obvious.
cik 6y ago
>>> How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? This is the cellphone you're already carrying.
7952 6y ago
It is interesting how some things are treated like an authoritarian imposition whilst others are just ignored. My guess is that the political opposition that does occur is often in response to minor inconvenience rather than the actual morality of the issue. That is why opposition to mask wearing can get so much traction. Or why people get angry about cyclists. The political justification comes after the fact. So if a plan doesn't inconvenience anyone and doesn't trigger identity politics it will probably be ignored by most people.
orbifold 6y ago
You don't have to mandate something that people have done voluntarily. Mobile phones are cameras and microphones in every house, school and workplace. All the mobile standards have "legal intercept" provisions, which basically allow law enforcement to listen to your conversations / read your text-messages. This is just a demand to go back to the status quo ante, where Government had unrestricted access to all your phone conversations and mail if they chose to. I would also wager that there is a non-zero chance that the baseband processor of all phones has a backdoor, which is why the US can't allow phones to predominantly use Chinese made baseband processors. The baseband has access to your microphone and camera and is mostly out of control of the application processor.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
The end game is computers that cannot run software that hasn't been signed by the government. The copyright industry invests a lot of money into creating hardware that obeys them instead of their actual users. They aren't actually that important in the long run. Governments are a far bigger threat to computing freedom. Governments think computers are too powerful and mere citizens should not be allowed to have free and unrestricted computers. Cryptography used to be a military tool but it has been democratized. Everyone has access to high quality, widely available cryptographic software. This means citizens are able to subvert the government by denying it access to information. Governments think they are always justified in everything they do and it's an affront to their power when they experience resistance. In order to safeguard our freedom, we need to be able to manufacture hardware just as easily as we can write software. Currently, computer hardware manufacturing costs billions and there are very few companies doing it. They are natural targets for regulation and legislation. We need to be able to make computer hardware at home.

sorethescore 6y ago

There's no need to make them mandatory, most people already have cameras and microphones in their homes, schools and workplaces that the government can access. This is more about getting access to the social graph.

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
I don’t think that is accurate. Just as with end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, they would have to use targeted 0-day exploits to access the cameras and microphones in people’s homes. End-to-end encryption doesn’t protect the social graph. They already know who is talking to who; they just don’t know what is being said.
- mixologic 6y ago
  They are already subpoena'ing alexa and Google home recordings, Android and iPhone location data, cell tower pings etc. I don't think we're far away from court ordered wire taps to compel Google to enable the cameras and microphones.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    Any such court orders would be sealed indefinitely as well. In 5-10 or so years I predict we will have another Snowden, describing that the NSA has been running a ring -1 process on every single Intel Management Engine co-processor in the entire world.
- ohazi 6y ago
  The vast majority of "smart home" devices automatically shovel all of their camera data to the manufacturer's servers, because most consumers don't want to deal with a NAS box and remote access. With this kind of architecture, law enforcement doesn't need 0-days, they only need a warrant/NSL, or to just ask the manufacturer nicely. Some manufacturers (e.g. Amazon/Ring) are a little too eager to essentially hand all of their data over to the police in real-time with almost no strings attached. Devices that don't already upload everything to the cloud (e.g. Apple and Google's pinky-promise that smart assistant audio is processed locally) automatically receive and apply software and firmware updates from the manufacturer / carrier that can arbitrarily change device behavior. The government can and probably does compel these companies to write and push custom firmware to targeted devices. "We encrypt your data so hard that we couldn't access it even if we wanted to" is almost always a lie, is never verifiable, and is ultimately subject to the same automatic firmware/software update problem. It will never be possible to secure systems like these from government snooping, and people largely don't seem to care.
  - tpxl 6y ago
    The vast majority of homes are not in any way smart.
    - ohazi 6y ago
      The vast majority of people in the US have a smartphone in their pocket.
      - tpxl 6y ago
        True, however your argument was about smart homes specifically, and the phones don't "automatically shovel all of their camera data to the manufacturer's servers".
  - LocalH 6y ago
    Apple devices don’t force updates. They’re very pushy, yes, and there are a couple of dark patterns in their update notification UI, but my devices aren’t running the latest iOS
- ShorsHammer 6y ago
  > targeted 0-day exploits "this app wants access to your microphone: YES/NO"

jakelazaroff 6y ago

Re: 2, just because other encrypted messaging software is widely available doesn’t mean all criminals will use it. We know this because it happens today — see for example ammo and weapons seized after someone posted about killing federal officers on Discord [1], which isn’t e2e encrypted at all! This isn’t a defense of backdoors, btw — just saying that we can still expect some criminals to use compromised messaging software even if secure alternatives are easily available. [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/ammo-guns-seized-from-teen-radicalized-on-ifunny https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/ammo-guns...

itisoptional 6y ago

Using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. is optional. Nobody has to use these platforms. So it's unlike having a government-mandated microphone and camera in your home or school, since you could not easily avoid those, and (in most democracies) you have a right to privacy in those places (well, in your home anyway). If you want your messages encrypted, do it yourself. Then you are in control, not some big corp.

bmarquez 6y ago
>Using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. is optional. Nobody has to use these platforms. Nobody has to use these platforms, unless everyone else is using these platforms. Have you ever been that one person who is being regularly invited to an event but you aren't in a Messenger or Whatsapp group to receive it? Pretty soon you stop receiving invitations. This is actually worse in the case of Whatsapp outside America, since it's used more often than it should for business, and if you don't make yourself accessible for business, you don't eat. >If you want your messages encrypted, do it yourself. I've been "that guy" trying to tell others about PGP. I still get jokes about acting like I'm hiding from the FBI occasionally, even in this age where privacy is mainstream enough where I can point them to a Joe Rogan podcast featuring Edward Snowden. People care, but it has to be frictionless.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Nobody has to use these platforms, unless everyone else is using these platforms. No, even if everybody else is using those platforms, it does not force you in anyway to use them. It's still always up to you.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    Sure, in the way no one is "forcing" you to use email or a phone. You can opt out if you don't mind being unemployed and alone.
    - ekianjo 6y ago

vkou 6y ago

> 1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? It's different because you're voluntarily giving information to a third party (Facebook), which the government is asking to share with police. You may not agree with it, but that's the difference. It's a pretty substantial one.

CameronNemo 6y ago
So if I rent my apartment, the government can compel a landlord to place recording devices in the residence without serving me a warrant?
- vkou 6y ago
  It could, if there weren't a century or two of legal precedent for treating your home differently from your phone calls.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541163 suggests an alternative may be to arrange for your current neighbours to discover a deal on a (nicer/bigger/better located) apartment ... and then, when they move out, place recording devices there.
- kebman 6y ago
  Depends under which jurisdiction. The Swedish ambassador to North Korea complained to his secretary that the driveway outside was still full of snow. He was about to order some of his own men out, but minutes later a bunch of North Korean labourers appeared and cleared all the snow away in front of his embassy, including the driveway. When he asked the secretary, she told him that she hadn't called anyone. Then they both stared suspiciously at the flower pot.
  - jmkjaer 6y ago
    Do you have a source for this? A quick Google search shows your comment as the top result.

mrtksn 6y ago

> How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? The difference is that the infrastructure is in place and can be turned on at will so it feels within the reach of the people who think they deserved to do that. They think that deserve it because they believe that the job they do is the most important thing in the world and they can suddenly gain access to an amazing tool that will make their job much more easier and potentially more effective. They believe that the risks are overblown, can be contained with proper measures and well worth it. If you are a pro-nuclear energy, you can draw an analogy with you desperately wanting nuclear power all over the place. “So what if a really bad accident can cause an irreparable damage? The new designs would not allow this to happen and the positive aspects are huge. Coal kills much more people. Yes we had chernobyl and fukushima but this time is different” is very similar to “So what if the surveillance can be used to create a dystopian state? The measures we put in place will prevent it from ever happening and the positives are huge. Terrorist and other criminals cause huge damages and not that many are killed by repressive government. Yes we had the stasi and kgb but this is different” After all, it is true that it would have been great to a have a power that watch us an protect us, right? The concept is the bedrock of many religions anyway. It’s something that a lot of people want.

duncan_bayne 6y ago
Nit pick - the best science at the moment suggests that radiation from Chernobyl killed just two hundred people, and Fukushima zero. Your point is a good one but the specific example turns out to be untrue.
- mrtksn 6y ago
  I don't want to get into a death toll deal discussion but people killed by KGB and Stasi is just as low. A politician here a journalist there, people looking at death toll statistics must be wondering what was the big deal about Stasi, Chernobyl, KGB, Fukushima and so on.
  - martinko 6y ago

m3at 6y ago

> it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Maybe it's not about the criminals? Governments have a tendency to seek to increase control of citizens, surveillance being part of it. Saying it's about "tools for terrorists and child traffickers" is the traditional rethorical ploy no-one can argue against. You wouldn't want to protect child traffickers would you?

psychoslave 6y ago
Beware, government is not those who command it. If there was some real democracy out there where citizens all should be actively implicated in the government (as opposed to supposedly delegate it), then what would it mean to have citizen wanting to increase control on citizen?
- Hendrikto 6y ago
  Very philosophical, but that’s not how it works in practice.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  It can still happen - there have been and still are many self-policing communities historically (at small scales), where any sort of deviation from the norm is seen as problematic, regardless of its actual effects.
- thelastname 6y ago
  When it comes to secret services? Naive.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > what would it mean to have citizen wanting to increase control on citizen? The breakdown of the rule of law. It’s what happened in Athens and is why pure direct democracy doesn’t work: the tyranny of the majority [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
  - 6y ago

eternalban 6y ago

Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I, and the foundational mindset of "secret services" in Anglo-sphere ("5 eyes") explains everything. The modern secret services are based on British Empire's model, itself an outgrowth of Elizabethan intelligence services. The reason the "5+J eyes" -- btw, Israeli eyes don't count? -- insist on knowing everything about everyone in "the realm" is because Catholics and Protestants were having a very nasty, and very bloody, power struggle in England. The queen of england had reasons to fear her own subjects, and the "intelligence services" that supported her certainly viewed say 1/2 of the English population as potential enemies. This is their mindset. Nothing will change this state of affairs until the current ruling set is booted, once and for all. They've had a multi-century run. Time to take a bow.

082349872349872 6y ago
Secret services also provide continuity in methods, if not personnel, across hostile administrative changes. For instance, the KGB inherited its methods (continuously) from the Cheka, which had inherited its methods (discontinously) from the Okhrana. "He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana Detim to tili du kombat wit inyalowda, to gonya du sheru du owta wit kowmang. (He who continually struggles against Inners will become divisive himself.)
- haneefmubarak 6y ago
  "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." - Friedrich Nietzsche

actuator 6y ago

> What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. At least on phones with gatekeepers like Apple, they can get them to comply on apps. Thankfully, web is still free for now.

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

> Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it Trivially easy but probably in practice too much of a bother. I imagine most traffic isn't between well trained members of international terrorist or crime organisations planning major heists, but people who are friends, family members and acquaintances. They're already using WhatsApp to talk with other friends about every day things so start planning and revealing criminal behaviour accidentally without taking the trouble to move to another platform.

m12k 6y ago
The thing is, by building backdoors into the widely used platforms, we gain maybe 10 years of arresting idiot criminals until they learn to use Signal, the same way they learned to use burner phones, but at the same time throw everybody's privacy out the window while opening a huge security hole in our infrastructure. It's just not a good trade-off, not even from a pragmatic, non-idealist perspective.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  A lot of crime is opportunistic. If people feel they are more likely to get caught then much of it will just go away.
  - jchw 6y ago
    This claim is weird. “A lot” — well wait, how much is a lot? I tried to look, but a couple cursory searches yielded little in the way of attempts to quantify the amount of “opportunistic crime” versus premeditated. And frankly, going by raw quantity might not be good enough. How much damage are they doing relative to premeditated crime? Shoplifting a candy bar versus a murder, you know. I also wonder if this has much to do with this article. If you are conversing about future criminal activity on Facebook or SMS, can you argue it was not premeditated in some fashion? And even if this makes sense... how much loss of our personal freedoms is it worth to eliminate xx% of crime? (And, is it possible that there are better ways, like perhaps looking at the causes rather than trying to curb the effects...)

bacon_waffle 6y ago

> 1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? Could you explain this question to someone who doesn't have a Facebook account? As far as I understand, US phone companies are required to provide law enforcement with the ability to tap phone calls going through their exchanges, yet it doesn't seem that is on the same level as a government mandated microphone. Does Facebook have constant access to a facebook user's ("provider's" maybe, given their business model) mic and camera?

deleted 6y ago
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nix23 6y ago
I think he gets it totally wrong, the microphones (private assistants) the camera (your smart-tv) and the rest (IoT-Devices) all come from Private Company's and often from a completely different Country...what the Government missed is to protect us from them (private/~state company's) it would be really interesting how many "SmartTVs etc" recorded quite important company-meetings. Edit: With ~State-Company i mean stuff like Lockhead Huawei Tencent

lanevorockz 6y ago

1. Simple ... you are already giving all of this away to Facebook for free. If you are so worried with government, it is as bad to let a corporation have if not much worse.

aikinai 6y ago

The right-wing terrorists they just arrested in Michigan posted about their plans in private Facebook groups. This is probably much more common than criminals with any understanding of OPSEC. They’re not smart, but they’re still dangerous. Not that I’m arguing for these backdoors; just pointing out that “but criminals can still encrypt their messages” is mostly irrelevant.

concordDance 6y ago
Not sure "terrorist" is the right term here given the main objective isn't to spread fear or make a point, but to kidnap (and kill?) an elected politician. If Al-Qaeda had genuinely wanted to harm the US financial system as their main goal, flying into the twin towers wouldn't have been terrorism as it wouldn't be about terror. Though I'm unsure of a good term that encompasses violent action against the state...

lota-putty 6y ago

Placed in your hands the responsibility of protecting/securing lives of innocent citizens you would overlook the privacy of citizens. Paradoxes of technology-industrial complex. Nothing out there is better than face-2-face social meetings. Nothing private should have access to the internet let alone "going over secure links".

netcan 6y ago

>>"What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. The cat is out of the bag. Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it." There is no endgame, strictly. Like a "war on drugs" or terrorism, crime will never raises a white flag and surrender. So, no endgame. For insight on the point, I think it's useful to compare CCP strategy 1 to CCP strategy 2: soft power. I mean soft power broadly, rather than the strictly geopolitical play. Early on, China sought absolute goals, like the USSR and others. The literally tried to control knowledge itself. Strict bans on books or encyclopedias with a bad narrative. Overseas travel was considered dangerous, and vetting was required. These days, instruments like the great firewall don't work that way. People can work around the great firewall, travel and access information (eg foreign papers) if they want to. A short wave radio, a foreign magazine or a vpn are no longer serious contraband. But, most of the stuff that most people access is approved. They can't keep news of something big a secret, but they never really could. What they can do is monitor, manage and influence the conversation. High influence is the goal, not strict control. Same here. Sure, sophisticated criminals can avoid fb. But, most people do use fb. This "most people, most of the time" includes criminals, friends of criminals, etc. This is enough. Enough to be chilling. Enough to make secure systems feel sketchy. Enough to help with the the job, whether the job is investigating a string of robberies or monitoring separatist rebels.

fsflover 6y ago
> Enough to be chilling See also: https://www.socialcooling.com/ https://www.socialcooling.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363).
ENGNR 6y ago
And all the while the most serious avenues for crime get forgotten, if anything they become an even greater risk because we're lulled into a false sense of security
- dontcarethrow2 6y ago
  Wage theft. I say we allow these backdoors but it has to come with a Civilian Unit uses it only on high profile targets. Lets have some CEO/politic heads roll for once please. Not Dimebag Dave.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

It's different because you can choose to use facebook, or not. That should have been blindingly obvious.

cik 6y ago

>>> How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? This is the cellphone you're already carrying.

7952 6y ago

It is interesting how some things are treated like an authoritarian imposition whilst others are just ignored. My guess is that the political opposition that does occur is often in response to minor inconvenience rather than the actual morality of the issue. That is why opposition to mask wearing can get so much traction. Or why people get angry about cyclists. The political justification comes after the fact. So if a plan doesn't inconvenience anyone and doesn't trigger identity politics it will probably be ignored by most people.

orbifold 6y ago

You don't have to mandate something that people have done voluntarily. Mobile phones are cameras and microphones in every house, school and workplace. All the mobile standards have "legal intercept" provisions, which basically allow law enforcement to listen to your conversations / read your text-messages. This is just a demand to go back to the status quo ante, where Government had unrestricted access to all your phone conversations and mail if they chose to. I would also wager that there is a non-zero chance that the baseband processor of all phones has a backdoor, which is why the US can't allow phones to predominantly use Chinese made baseband processors. The baseband has access to your microphone and camera and is mostly out of control of the application processor.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

The end game is computers that cannot run software that hasn't been signed by the government. The copyright industry invests a lot of money into creating hardware that obeys them instead of their actual users. They aren't actually that important in the long run. Governments are a far bigger threat to computing freedom. Governments think computers are too powerful and mere citizens should not be allowed to have free and unrestricted computers. Cryptography used to be a military tool but it has been democratized. Everyone has access to high quality, widely available cryptographic software. This means citizens are able to subvert the government by denying it access to information. Governments think they are always justified in everything they do and it's an affront to their power when they experience resistance. In order to safeguard our freedom, we need to be able to manufacture hardware just as easily as we can write software. Currently, computer hardware manufacturing costs billions and there are very few companies doing it. They are natural targets for regulation and legislation. We need to be able to make computer hardware at home.