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https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix-without-backdoors https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix... is our attempt at

https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix-without-backdoors https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix... is our attempt at Matrix to spell out what a catastrophic idea it is to backdoor end-to-end encryption (and to provide an alternative proposal in the form of using decentralised reputation to mitigate abuse. We're kicking decentralised reputation work off in earnest tomorrow, so watch this space to see how it goes). I guess we'll be weighing in on the EU proposal as well as the 7-eyes one.

resynth1943 6y ago
You have my full support, Matthew :-) I'll be keeping an eye on it, too.
part1of2 6y ago
What about proposing encryption as an EU human right? Has that been attempted?
- feanaro 6y ago
  I don't know whether this has been tried before, but it is definitely the right move. The governments should be busy fighting and trying to shut down our proposals and not the other way around.
  - gcpwnd 6y ago
    Without public pressure it is not going to happen. German politicians have been positive towards this move recently (althought without mentioning it is already in progress). Sadly politics think it is the easiest solution to counter torrorism.
    - feanaro 6y ago
      Public pressure rarely materialises spontaneously, out of a vacuum. For it to materialize, someone has to rally for it. A manifesto needs to be written, the goals written down and elaborated. It has to be pushed into the media. It's not easy, but it's the only thing that will work.
    - harha 6y ago
      While at the same time these governments fail to properly use the information they have and are able to gather through traditional intelligence work properly to avoid the type of attacks they claim putting up backdoors will prevent. Most recently last weeks attack in Austria could have been avoided if the information the authorities received from a neighboring country of an attempt to purchase weapons by the attacker would have lead to actions. (I’ll try to find a link, apparently they had months to process and act) So I think this makes the situation more unsafe in two ways - back doors will lead to all sorts of issues from leaking private communication to impersonation and authorities still don’t take responsibility and fix their processes so they can do their jobs.
      - harha 6y ago
        Too late to edit my previous post, but here is the article: "Fejzulai is also believed to have travelled to neighbouring Slovakia in July accompanied by another man, where he attempted to buy ammunition suited to the weapons he used in the attack, but the sale reportedly fell through after he failed to produce a firearms licence. Slovakian authorities are said to have informed their Austrian counterparts at the time. The men travelled in a car registered in the name of the mother of an Islamist known to police." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/04/police-investigate-if-vienna-attacker-was-part-of-wider-network https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/04/police-investi...
        daniellarusso 6y ago
        In the US, most states allow you to order ammo online or via mail order without any license, and shipped to your home.
        harha 6y ago
        In Europe this is highly irregular, and it did raise a bunch of red flags, as it should. Unfortunately no actions were taken, there seem to be communication issues within and across the ministries involved. As long as this isn’t fixed, more data won’t help, quite to the contrary it might tie up resources even further.
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      They are either stupid or they don't care about terrorism. It's very easy to develop simple encryption scheme. It could be implemented by any half-competent developer. And I'm sure that global terrorists have enough money and people to make it happen. So terrorists won't care about this law. They'll switch from Telegram to Terrorgram and that's about it. But global spying over citizens will be achieved. I'm sure that politicians are just envy over China and want to replicate their measures. Many countries already replicate Great Firewall to some extent. Now they want to implement a global surveillance to strengthen their powers and prevent any kind of riots. That's terrorists they care about.
      - brabel 6y ago
        > I'm sure that politicians are just envy over China and want to replicate their measures. China has the same goal as the Western powers have: to be able to keep spying on anyone they deem enemy of the state. The difference is who they define as enemy of the state. In China, that includes pretty much anyone that criticises the Government, as well as what they see as hostile nations (probably the USA, maybe UK, which openly call China their enemies mostly without real provocation, and perhaps Japan due to its closeness to the US and its past of barbarities committed during the occupation of nearly half of the Chinese territory). In most western democracies, the enemy would be terrorists (they claim) and, as we now know, pretty much any other Government, ally or not... and that's what we currently know, there is probably a much wider reach still that we may never know for sure... the Snowden leaks show that they will collect mass surveillance not only on foreign heads of state, but on their own populations without any restrictions, just in case they need it later. Given that, I am not even sure China actually has more surveillance in place than the USA and the UK, for example. It's a huge disappointment for anyone thinking the western world holds the moral ground, we who live here need to get our Governments understand we will not accept this! Europe and some developing countries did not really react when it was revealed the US was mass-spying on its Government officials because they obviously are doing the same, they just didn't get caught in the same way yet. The people behind all this spying believe they are doing good as they're keeping world peace. I think they do the opposite: because other governments' counter-intelligence probably know more or less who is doing what against them, they're kept in a constant state of readiness for conflict. True world peace can only come when there's mutual trust between countries... While everyone spies on everyone else, we'll continue to live in a world on the brink of WW3. You think WW3 is impossible? Well, read about WW1 and how basically no one expected it at all. Circumstances today are even more heated than at the time WW1 broke out. Funnily enough, the only thing that's holding WW3 back is the nukes behind the big armies which make full-on conflict a very uncomfortable prospect indeed.
- Zenst 6y ago
  I'd of thought that Article 8 of human rights would encompass this. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-8-respect-your-private-and-family-life https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/arti...
  - int_19h 6y ago
    That's right to privacy, not right to encryption specifically. And governments cracking down on encryption will, of course, claim that it is a matter of national security, and is a proportionate action to fight terrorism, child pornography, and other crimes.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      Just like phone taps and listening devices. That said, those should only be employed if there is reasonable suspicion; iirc they still need a judge to approve employing these tools. The fear with this is that they will try and catch all messages and retroactively look for bad actors. And of course that the backdoors will be discovered and abused by bad actors.
      - posterboy 6y ago
        > iirc they still need a judge to approve employing these tools. that's a weak point, not a strength, in various scenarious a) Agency XYZ files a motion to have a member of their legal team promoted to judge at the respective courts. Motion accepted, judge signs off on all requests b) judge simply doesn't care for privacy, if it hinders the boys at work, signs off on it, gets appealed later, slap on the wrist, no consequences, learn from mistakes, rinse and repeat, obey formal obligations this time c) Police and Attorneys construct evidence to construe threats, judge Joe Shmoe believes it, signs off on it Besides, the whole system has been found to hinder investigation. The need for a warrant in night time emergencies is already relaxed in some countries, far as I know. d) More over, the judge is bound by law, so you can trust as much confidence in the judge as you want. Once precedent is established at federal court level, because of your we can trust the judges, it will be a slippery sloapy down-wards spiral for more invasive access for less serious matters -- if it isn't already. This is effectively the federal judge signing off on all warrants, subject to veto by a lower judge, what can be escalated back up the chain due to the power of attorney. Vice-versa, the state attorney is bound by executive orders from the ministry -- as was surely the case after Snowden ("no evidence") -- which has been repeatedly red flagged by EU reports (that are otherwise quite benign). The defense is the defense attorney. The precedent is frequently established because a single lawyer fails to make a case. Subsequent cases are only accepted on special occasion, otherwise declined due to precedent. Subsequently there is only limited control over a lower court's decision. The guideline cited in all commentaries on German constitutional law is, when the decision looks plain wrong. It is of course a little bit more involved in detail, but the principle is not a judge but one single judge gets to decide. Which lays a whole lot of preassure on them. Of course you get a second chance pretty much unconditionally, but that's a concern for later only if something was found, in which case the chances for an appeal on principle grounds are obviously against you. Eitherway a due notice remains at the secretion of the court (§101b (6) StPO), which may mean the judge presiding over the chamber, or the court, I'm not sure. An ironic corralary is that, of course they will at least take a look, which has to sound but cynic in this scenario. Wikipedia lists several points of criticizm against the new president of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (SCoG) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Harbarth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Harbarth > The fear with this is that they will try and catch all messages and retroactively look for bad actors. Said Stephan Harbarth was in parliament and worked on a law for collective mass surveillance, which was subsequently called by the supreme court, in which he later went on to lead. Which is incomprehensible, because I was under the impression chief justices needed to climb the ladder first (ref, probably: BVerfGG). Very similar, good ol' Mr. Biden signed responsible in 1991 on the American bill that is equivalent to the act under discussion here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 (see Title II, SubSection B: Electronic communication) not saying much at all. This is entirely dystopic. The Bad Actors I have in mind are the good guys, I don't want to see the bad guys.
- josho 6y ago
  Maybe generalize that further, a right to privacy.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    Perhaps, but see Article 8 which is cited in your sibling comment. It already contains a right to privacy. But the term privacy is not very rigid. It can be taken and interpreted in various ways. It's certainly a good thing to mention it, but encryption needs to be mentioned explicitly, spelled out even. There cannot be any room for interpretation: citizens have a right to encrypt their communication, end-to-end with their intended party.
    - JoshTriplett 6y ago
      That still leaves too much room for interpretation (namely, quibbling over the definitions of "encrypt" or "end-to-end"). People have a right to encrypt their communication, end-to-end with their intended participants, such that no one other than their intended participants can decrypt any aspect of their communication.
      - feanaro 6y ago
        I agree. Your expanded definition is better. Now let's flesh it out into a full-fledged proposal, put it up on a website and disseminate it among the people. Let's get it into the parliaments as something that the parliament members have to discuss and finally either accept or reject. Let's give them a good fight.
        justinclift 6y ago
        > Let's give them a good fight. Possibly the wrong goal. How about "Let's win." instead? :)
        feanaro 6y ago
        You're right. You can tell this topic makes my blood boil, unfortunately.
- andor 6y ago
  I don't think that would help. Most rights are not absolute and can be restricted by other laws. For instance: * Freedom of movement is clearly restricted for people on a jail sentence. * We have secrecy of communication but also lawful interception.
  - neolog 6y ago
    Sure but it could still help.
  - Uke 6y ago
    perhaps even "lawful" interception shouldn't be lawful after all?
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    We also have unlawful state interception as evidenced by leaks from Snowden and multiple others. I think states currently should not get any concessions from secure communication platforms.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > What about proposing encryption as an EU human right? Has that been attempted? Rights conflict. Every new right influences the others. It is easy to shorthand every problem to a human rights declaration. But just like the right to bear arms, that can have unintended consequences.
  - part1of2 6y ago
    You did not define a conflict or the unintended consequence here
    - tempestn 6y ago
      The unwanted consequence of the US second amendment is that the US has one of the highest gun death rates in the developed world.
      - KMag 6y ago
        The U.S. certainly has a problem with gun violence, but I fear gun access is the proximal problem while our cultural relationship with violence and revenge is the root of the problem. (See also death penalty support, recent violent protests in Oregon and Washington, etc.) Note that the areas with very high rates of legal gun ownership aren't the hotspots of gun violence [0]. Switzerland and several other Eurpean countries have very high rates of gun ownership, but low rates of gun violence. Certainly, fixing a sick culture is more difficult than reducing gun access, but I think long-term, we need to figure out how to be a more peaceful and forgiving society, or much of the gun violence will just shift to (granted, much less efficient) knife violence. I think improving America's culture of violence and revenge will also pay mental health dividends. Sometimes you really need a crutch or a bandaid, but it's important not to mistake it for an end-goal solution. Do any of you have any insights into ways individuals can ensure they at least leave the culture less violent than they found it? [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/us/gun-ownership-violence-statistics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/us/gun-ownership-violence...
        6y ago
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  So really it wouldn’t be encryption so much as right to have secrets. Because whether I use EDCA or a really strongly in crackable safe, my right to privacy should be a thing? It sounds like somewhat of a stronger version than the US’s fifth amendment which says that you have a right to privacy unless it has to do with the crime currently being investigated. And come to think of it, encryption is unconstitutional as in because the government can subpoena or obtain a warrant to your information it may not be able to enforce it because of the encryption. So either the government has no right to subpoena or encryption is illegal.
  - part1of2 6y ago
    Wouldn't you want the word 'encryption' to be in the description, so there is no evil solicitor trying to argue about what 'secrets' meant. Or 'the right to confidentiality whenever, where-ever, and with whomever the person pleases'
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      But I would also not want the method of storage of secrets to become obsolete. The important thing is that I’m able to keep a secret, not how the secret is stored. For example, say quantum encryption comes to be known as “q-store” and is always said to be different from encryption. Now, what does that do to my rights if I move from traditional encryption to quantum algorithms?
      - tripzilch 6y ago
        Well it worked for copyright, we're kinda stuck with it, regardless of how much the we ways we store things have changed.
  - thayne 6y ago
    > encryption is unconstitutional as in because the government can subpoena or obtain a warrant to your information it may not be able to enforce it because of the encryption No, you can't subpoena information from someone that doesn't have it. So the government can subpoena the cyphertext, but can't ask for the plaintext if the provider never had access to it.
- freeflight 6y ago
  Privacy is already a UHR according to UDHR article 12 [0] The problem with applying this is that the violation of privacy is not arbitrary, from the draft: > Law enforcement and judicial authorities must be able to access data in a lawful and targeted manner So this is framed as an matter of lawful and targeted intercept, not blanket bulk access, like pretty much all of the mass surveillance creep. [0] https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    As it should, but who will verify it's only used in that way? Who watches the watchmen? Snowden revealed that the watchmen (NSA) are scooping up all data they can find, and that they have easy access to big internet companies' data (and they're not allowed to mention your data was accessed, even if no charges were made).
    - Shivetya 6y ago
      Well that is the crux of the issue, how much do you trust your government and what are your options in supporting change. This may require a level of involvement in politics that is more time consuming than most want to expend or can. This means if not actively supporting a candidate or current representative who shares your views that you instead convince them your view is worthwhile. If not actively finding one who does. Then even once that is accomplished you likely will need to be involved in writing to other representatives as well and coordinating with similarly minded groups across your country. Politics is all about the networking to get enough voices to be heard and for something as arcane as encryption; and yes it is arcane for most; will not have as many groups focused on it. So your work is cut out for yourself in finding such groups or forming one. in the US we have EFF and others; I am found of cato but many here do not understand libertarians. the truly sad part is most people really would be happy living in a police state as long as you don't call it one. they don't recognize how they could be in one because their view of what a police state is very heavily influenced by the media and even hollywood. most of what hollywood presents is truly exaggerated dystopian types that are borderline absurd but in truth it is the slow chipping away if not giving away of rights that does the same
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  Privacy isn't secrecy. That's the argument. I prefer my conversations to be secret, not just private
markvdb 6y ago
Thank you Matthew!
TechBro8615 6y ago
Matrix is awesome. Also, doesn’t the French government use Matrix? Are they trying to outlaw their own policies?
- Arathorn 6y ago
  Several EU governments use Matrix - so yeah, there's a paradox here. On one hand Element (the company set up by the core Matrix team) depends on government work to keep the lights on for Matrix work, but on the other hand we feel a clear responsibility to push back on backdoors, given backdoors are intrinsically flawed and dangerous. This is why we're proposing a (hopefully) better alternative instead (and this is also why we're soliciting funding to support reputation work via the Matrix.org Foundation at funding@matrix.org, just in case any YC billionaires happen to be reading this...)
  - novok 6y ago
    It's probably something along the lines of 'guns for me but not for thee'. But they don't even have the excuse of encryption actively hurting anyone, so it's more like 'strong walls for me but not for thee'
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      It does hinder police investigations, so it comes down to how much harm you think obstructing the police causes.
      - novok 6y ago
        So does the right to a trial, habeas corpus, the need for a warrant, juries, the right to remain silent and many other protections...
    - magnusmundus 6y ago
      > strong walls for me but not for thee Good analogy, especially because governments themselves are living in the same walls (i.e. using the same apps) and this effort will hurt their own security.
Daniel_sk 6y ago
Do you take donations?
- Arathorn 6y ago
  Yup, the "Support Matrix" section at the bottom of https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/ has the details. (thanks!)
SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
Thanks for Matrix. This proposal seems to address general abuse, spam, propaganda, filter bubbles, and so on. While these are worthy issues to tackle, the authors of the 7-eyes statement are not really interested in them. What they say they want is for terrorism and child pornography to be detectable or meaningfully reduced. Do you think a relative reputation system will solve that problem?
- Arathorn 6y ago
  Yes, we think it will help meaningfully help detect and reduce abuse - mainly because it's shamelessly mimicking the way society works in real life. Many (most?) abusive communities are at least adjacent if not overlapping with publicly visible communities. Simply put, they need a way to advertise and recruit. So, just as in person you might stay away from a given political party / religious institute / youth club because your social graph has warned you that it might actually be a front for whatever obnoxiousness, the same approach can work online (or, conversely, could also be used to help hunt down abuse in the first place). It's then up to the authorities to investigate what's going on - which is quite possible through infiltration etc without having to go and blanket break encryption for the whole of society. To be clear: this is still largely sci-fi, and we don't think this is a perfect solution, especially given this is a fundamental problem of the human species which nobody has yet solved. Our proposal doesn't solve lone wolf situations, for instance. So perhaps for that you need the ability to gather evidence from endpoints post hoc. Unrelated: one particularly dark dystopian outcome we've been wargaming is: what if someone (not us!) used decentralised rep to seed a GPT-3 style bot to locate abusive communities, and then automated the process of infiltrating & investigating them... only to then end up ascending the ranks while preserving its cover and accidentally triggered some atrocity. So, um, let's not do that.)
  - skissane 6y ago
    > Unrelated: one particularly dark dystopian outcome we've been wargaming is: what if someone (not us!) used decentralised rep to seed a GPT-3 style bot to locate abusive communities, and then automated the process of infiltrating & investigating them... only to then end up ascending the ranks while preserving its cover and accidentally triggered some atrocity. So, um, let's not do that.) I think you greatly overestimate the abilities of GPT-3. GPT-3's writable memory is short-term only – its long-term memory is read-only – so by the end of a conversation, it has permanently forgotten what the topic was at the beginning. Given its lack of writable long-term memory, it is completely incapable of succeeding at any tasks involving long-term planning, such as the infiltration and investigation of a social group. Of course, you said "GPT 3 style bot", not GPT-3, but the AI you have in mind has significantly greater capabilities than GPT-3 has, so isn't fairly said to be "GPT 3 style" at all.
rkagerer 6y ago
Interesting read, though it sounds more like decentralized censorship. It's a little unclear where you're talking about reputation of individuals vs. reputation of content.
- Arathorn 6y ago
  Censorship implies that information has been invisibly removed by some absolute authority. Whereas here we're talking about empowering users to filter out the stuff on their terms - i.e. subjective/relative reputation. It's possible that a server admin might apply unilateral filters, but a) the user would be able to visualise those (assuming the server admin doesn't maliciously withhold that info), b) the user can switch to another server with different filtering rules. So, I definitely wouldn't characterise it censorship (although I can see why many have a kneejerk reaction of "ooh, this sounds a lot like censorship").
orbifold 6y ago
I was under the impression that all the mobile communications standards had provisions for lawful intercept, is it such a leap to think that the baseband processor is compromised aswell? Maybe the EU is just salty that they don't have the same kind of access the NSA has.
- ppafin 6y ago
  Yep, it's not about encryption. It's about monopoly for information feed access.
infogulch 6y ago
Does the idea you're proposing enable recording reputation scoring on the scope of a single post/message?
- Arathorn 6y ago
  Yes. The idea is to build it to be agnostic to the objects whose trust is being tracked, but for Matrix at least the main building blocks are rooms, users, communities, servers, messages & attachments. However you could use it for other things too if you so wanted (eg client IPs, server IPs, netblocks, ASes, E.164 numbers, URLs etc)
gfxgirl 6y ago
While adding backdoors to encryption is a bad idea my gut sys decentralized reputation is just a bad. Most here know the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive". But it's worse than that, people on different sides of the political spectrum will work to "cancel" people of the other side by working to lower their rep via crowdsourcing. 4chan type groups will do the same for "the lulz", I can even imagine the ransomware people trying to find a way to make bots and "pay us or we destroy your rep"
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Gives a new meaning to the term "character assassination".
- Arathorn 6y ago
  Totally agreed that badly designed rep systems can rapidly descend into Black Mirror territory. In Nosedive for instance the score you get is absolute, while the thing we’re proposing here is entirely relative and subjective. The idea is to empower users to maintain their own view of the world. If a voting ring of idiots conspire to try to trash someone’s reputation... you’d filter out the voting ring from your reputation feeds; it should stand out very clearly. That goes whether it’s bots or humans behaving like bots. Alternatively, you could choose to hang out with that tribe and believe their rep data if you so desired. We’ve been wargaming through all the various ways this could go horribly wrong (and have a few fun scenarii off the back of it - look for the GPT-3 example below), but on balance it feels a lot better than the Black Mirror episode where encryption is fatally weakened...
  - contravariant 6y ago
    Maybe you've answered this point already somewhere but how exactly are you planning to make censorship (for lack of a better word) stand out?
    - Arathorn 6y ago
      Overloading the word 'censorship' is going to get a bit confusing here ;) "Censorship", meaning: "malicious server or ISP silently blocks or withholds traffic from you" is a risk in Matrix today, completely independently of the reputation stuff being discussed here. The mitigation is to get rid of servers (and even ISPs), as per https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/ "Censorship", meaning: "your server admin subscribed to a blocklist of child abuse content published by someone like iwf.org.uk" would stand out to users by the server publishing the names of the blocklists that their server admin has deployed. I'd call this server-side filtering or something instead, given the filters are visible. If the server admin withholds info about their filters, then you're back in the traditional sense of censorship from the prior paragraph.
Veedrac 6y ago
While I know I'm just attracting downvotes, your points, in order: 1) a: It's really not that hard to think of ways to solve backdoor problems with a mix of technical and social approaches. For example, having shared keys burned onto silicon, making physical access mandatory, and split between both the law enforcement and the company, so that both parties must knowingly engage. b: Most software already practically backdoored already, and it's really not that big a deal. Microsoft can push whatever updates they want whenever they want. They already have the keys to the kingdom! Google doesn't store everything E2E encrypted. They also already have the keys to the kingdom! Things have mostly worked out regardless. 2) That a measure will be imperfect is not an argument that it will be ineffectual. In fact it's pretty obviously false; making abuse harder on mainstream platforms will make abuse less mainstream. 3) This is like arguing governments shouldn't be allowed to regulate weapons, because it would be hypocritical, given they own weapons themselves, and it might normalize other countries taking away their citizens' weapons, which might prevent them fighting back. That seems like an obviously bad argument. 4) Yes, your platform that makes oversight impossible is not compatible with regulations requiring oversight. That's not an accident, in either direction. The idea later in the post seems not really honestly engaging with the topic, that it's not about ‘someone who believes birthday cake is undesirable’, but about networks which are systematically and in actuality doing things like trafficking children for sexual abuse, and that there is a moral imperative for governments to deal with this beyond just letting people choose not to engage.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  1a - Because that worked out so well for HDMI? It'll be what, maybe 90 days before those "law enforcement keys" are public? 1b - If it's already backdoored then there is no need for such an act, the problem is already solved. 2 - It's ineffective for it's stated goal because the stated goal is not the real goal. The goal is to enable a continued abuse of power, one which is already ongoing, and one which produces no actionable results or meaningful outcomes. Five eyes & co is upset that they're losing some of their toys. 3 - Who says governments should be able to regulate weapons? Likewise these days, who is to say they meaningfully can? 4 - Sex trafficking existed prior to encryption. The government failed to stop it then. I strongly suspect that even if the government gets it's way and breaks encryption, sex trafficking will continue exactly at the same rate. Most sex traffickers are not technology ept, nor do they need to be - the track record for capturing them is atrocious. Epstein anyone? This is a bad faith argument. "Protecting children" and "stopping terrorists" are the siren's song of every government overreach basically since the dawn of time and yet the government remains terrible at solving either problem. I don't think encryption is really the issue preventing those things from getting resolved. I do think encryption is very inconvenient for a very snoop heavy government.
raxxorrax 6y ago
I don't like it because they advocate a social credit system as an alternative, but their criticism against back doors is on point. I am in communities that don't use such tools and somehow there is no problem that would require any, but if that is the preference you have the option. I don't see further issues.
- Arathorn 6y ago
  It's not a social credit system!! It's empowering users to track their own view of reputation, as opposed to having an authority determine it.

resynth1943 6y ago

You have my full support, Matthew :-) I'll be keeping an eye on it, too.

part1of2 6y ago

What about proposing encryption as an EU human right? Has that been attempted?

feanaro 6y ago
I don't know whether this has been tried before, but it is definitely the right move. The governments should be busy fighting and trying to shut down our proposals and not the other way around.
- gcpwnd 6y ago
  Without public pressure it is not going to happen. German politicians have been positive towards this move recently (althought without mentioning it is already in progress). Sadly politics think it is the easiest solution to counter torrorism.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    Public pressure rarely materialises spontaneously, out of a vacuum. For it to materialize, someone has to rally for it. A manifesto needs to be written, the goals written down and elaborated. It has to be pushed into the media. It's not easy, but it's the only thing that will work.
  - harha 6y ago
    While at the same time these governments fail to properly use the information they have and are able to gather through traditional intelligence work properly to avoid the type of attacks they claim putting up backdoors will prevent. Most recently last weeks attack in Austria could have been avoided if the information the authorities received from a neighboring country of an attempt to purchase weapons by the attacker would have lead to actions. (I’ll try to find a link, apparently they had months to process and act) So I think this makes the situation more unsafe in two ways - back doors will lead to all sorts of issues from leaking private communication to impersonation and authorities still don’t take responsibility and fix their processes so they can do their jobs.
    - harha 6y ago
      Too late to edit my previous post, but here is the article: "Fejzulai is also believed to have travelled to neighbouring Slovakia in July accompanied by another man, where he attempted to buy ammunition suited to the weapons he used in the attack, but the sale reportedly fell through after he failed to produce a firearms licence. Slovakian authorities are said to have informed their Austrian counterparts at the time. The men travelled in a car registered in the name of the mother of an Islamist known to police." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/04/police-investigate-if-vienna-attacker-was-part-of-wider-network https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/04/police-investi...
      - daniellarusso 6y ago
        In the US, most states allow you to order ammo online or via mail order without any license, and shipped to your home.
        harha 6y ago
        In Europe this is highly irregular, and it did raise a bunch of red flags, as it should. Unfortunately no actions were taken, there seem to be communication issues within and across the ministries involved. As long as this isn’t fixed, more data won’t help, quite to the contrary it might tie up resources even further.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    They are either stupid or they don't care about terrorism. It's very easy to develop simple encryption scheme. It could be implemented by any half-competent developer. And I'm sure that global terrorists have enough money and people to make it happen. So terrorists won't care about this law. They'll switch from Telegram to Terrorgram and that's about it. But global spying over citizens will be achieved. I'm sure that politicians are just envy over China and want to replicate their measures. Many countries already replicate Great Firewall to some extent. Now they want to implement a global surveillance to strengthen their powers and prevent any kind of riots. That's terrorists they care about.
    - brabel 6y ago
      > I'm sure that politicians are just envy over China and want to replicate their measures. China has the same goal as the Western powers have: to be able to keep spying on anyone they deem enemy of the state. The difference is who they define as enemy of the state. In China, that includes pretty much anyone that criticises the Government, as well as what they see as hostile nations (probably the USA, maybe UK, which openly call China their enemies mostly without real provocation, and perhaps Japan due to its closeness to the US and its past of barbarities committed during the occupation of nearly half of the Chinese territory). In most western democracies, the enemy would be terrorists (they claim) and, as we now know, pretty much any other Government, ally or not... and that's what we currently know, there is probably a much wider reach still that we may never know for sure... the Snowden leaks show that they will collect mass surveillance not only on foreign heads of state, but on their own populations without any restrictions, just in case they need it later. Given that, I am not even sure China actually has more surveillance in place than the USA and the UK, for example. It's a huge disappointment for anyone thinking the western world holds the moral ground, we who live here need to get our Governments understand we will not accept this! Europe and some developing countries did not really react when it was revealed the US was mass-spying on its Government officials because they obviously are doing the same, they just didn't get caught in the same way yet. The people behind all this spying believe they are doing good as they're keeping world peace. I think they do the opposite: because other governments' counter-intelligence probably know more or less who is doing what against them, they're kept in a constant state of readiness for conflict. True world peace can only come when there's mutual trust between countries... While everyone spies on everyone else, we'll continue to live in a world on the brink of WW3. You think WW3 is impossible? Well, read about WW1 and how basically no one expected it at all. Circumstances today are even more heated than at the time WW1 broke out. Funnily enough, the only thing that's holding WW3 back is the nukes behind the big armies which make full-on conflict a very uncomfortable prospect indeed.
Zenst 6y ago
I'd of thought that Article 8 of human rights would encompass this. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-8-respect-your-private-and-family-life https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/arti...
- int_19h 6y ago
  That's right to privacy, not right to encryption specifically. And governments cracking down on encryption will, of course, claim that it is a matter of national security, and is a proportionate action to fight terrorism, child pornography, and other crimes.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Just like phone taps and listening devices. That said, those should only be employed if there is reasonable suspicion; iirc they still need a judge to approve employing these tools. The fear with this is that they will try and catch all messages and retroactively look for bad actors. And of course that the backdoors will be discovered and abused by bad actors.
    - posterboy 6y ago
      > iirc they still need a judge to approve employing these tools. that's a weak point, not a strength, in various scenarious a) Agency XYZ files a motion to have a member of their legal team promoted to judge at the respective courts. Motion accepted, judge signs off on all requests b) judge simply doesn't care for privacy, if it hinders the boys at work, signs off on it, gets appealed later, slap on the wrist, no consequences, learn from mistakes, rinse and repeat, obey formal obligations this time c) Police and Attorneys construct evidence to construe threats, judge Joe Shmoe believes it, signs off on it Besides, the whole system has been found to hinder investigation. The need for a warrant in night time emergencies is already relaxed in some countries, far as I know. d) More over, the judge is bound by law, so you can trust as much confidence in the judge as you want. Once precedent is established at federal court level, because of your we can trust the judges, it will be a slippery sloapy down-wards spiral for more invasive access for less serious matters -- if it isn't already. This is effectively the federal judge signing off on all warrants, subject to veto by a lower judge, what can be escalated back up the chain due to the power of attorney. Vice-versa, the state attorney is bound by executive orders from the ministry -- as was surely the case after Snowden ("no evidence") -- which has been repeatedly red flagged by EU reports (that are otherwise quite benign). The defense is the defense attorney. The precedent is frequently established because a single lawyer fails to make a case. Subsequent cases are only accepted on special occasion, otherwise declined due to precedent. Subsequently there is only limited control over a lower court's decision. The guideline cited in all commentaries on German constitutional law is, when the decision looks plain wrong. It is of course a little bit more involved in detail, but the principle is not a judge but one single judge gets to decide. Which lays a whole lot of preassure on them. Of course you get a second chance pretty much unconditionally, but that's a concern for later only if something was found, in which case the chances for an appeal on principle grounds are obviously against you. Eitherway a due notice remains at the secretion of the court (§101b (6) StPO), which may mean the judge presiding over the chamber, or the court, I'm not sure. An ironic corralary is that, of course they will at least take a look, which has to sound but cynic in this scenario. Wikipedia lists several points of criticizm against the new president of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (SCoG) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Harbarth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Harbarth > The fear with this is that they will try and catch all messages and retroactively look for bad actors. Said Stephan Harbarth was in parliament and worked on a law for collective mass surveillance, which was subsequently called by the supreme court, in which he later went on to lead. Which is incomprehensible, because I was under the impression chief justices needed to climb the ladder first (ref, probably: BVerfGG). Very similar, good ol' Mr. Biden signed responsible in 1991 on the American bill that is equivalent to the act under discussion here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 (see Title II, SubSection B: Electronic communication) not saying much at all. This is entirely dystopic. The Bad Actors I have in mind are the good guys, I don't want to see the bad guys.
josho 6y ago
Maybe generalize that further, a right to privacy.
- feanaro 6y ago
  Perhaps, but see Article 8 which is cited in your sibling comment. It already contains a right to privacy. But the term privacy is not very rigid. It can be taken and interpreted in various ways. It's certainly a good thing to mention it, but encryption needs to be mentioned explicitly, spelled out even. There cannot be any room for interpretation: citizens have a right to encrypt their communication, end-to-end with their intended party.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    That still leaves too much room for interpretation (namely, quibbling over the definitions of "encrypt" or "end-to-end"). People have a right to encrypt their communication, end-to-end with their intended participants, such that no one other than their intended participants can decrypt any aspect of their communication.
    - feanaro 6y ago
      I agree. Your expanded definition is better. Now let's flesh it out into a full-fledged proposal, put it up on a website and disseminate it among the people. Let's get it into the parliaments as something that the parliament members have to discuss and finally either accept or reject. Let's give them a good fight.
      - justinclift 6y ago
        > Let's give them a good fight. Possibly the wrong goal. How about "Let's win." instead? :)
        feanaro 6y ago
        You're right. You can tell this topic makes my blood boil, unfortunately.
andor 6y ago
I don't think that would help. Most rights are not absolute and can be restricted by other laws. For instance: * Freedom of movement is clearly restricted for people on a jail sentence. * We have secrecy of communication but also lawful interception.
- neolog 6y ago
  Sure but it could still help.
- Uke 6y ago
  perhaps even "lawful" interception shouldn't be lawful after all?
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  We also have unlawful state interception as evidenced by leaks from Snowden and multiple others. I think states currently should not get any concessions from secure communication platforms.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> What about proposing encryption as an EU human right? Has that been attempted? Rights conflict. Every new right influences the others. It is easy to shorthand every problem to a human rights declaration. But just like the right to bear arms, that can have unintended consequences.
- part1of2 6y ago
  You did not define a conflict or the unintended consequence here
  - tempestn 6y ago
    The unwanted consequence of the US second amendment is that the US has one of the highest gun death rates in the developed world.
    - KMag 6y ago
      The U.S. certainly has a problem with gun violence, but I fear gun access is the proximal problem while our cultural relationship with violence and revenge is the root of the problem. (See also death penalty support, recent violent protests in Oregon and Washington, etc.) Note that the areas with very high rates of legal gun ownership aren't the hotspots of gun violence [0]. Switzerland and several other Eurpean countries have very high rates of gun ownership, but low rates of gun violence. Certainly, fixing a sick culture is more difficult than reducing gun access, but I think long-term, we need to figure out how to be a more peaceful and forgiving society, or much of the gun violence will just shift to (granted, much less efficient) knife violence. I think improving America's culture of violence and revenge will also pay mental health dividends. Sometimes you really need a crutch or a bandaid, but it's important not to mistake it for an end-goal solution. Do any of you have any insights into ways individuals can ensure they at least leave the culture less violent than they found it? [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/us/gun-ownership-violence-statistics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/us/gun-ownership-violence...
      - 6y ago
IgorPartola 6y ago
So really it wouldn’t be encryption so much as right to have secrets. Because whether I use EDCA or a really strongly in crackable safe, my right to privacy should be a thing? It sounds like somewhat of a stronger version than the US’s fifth amendment which says that you have a right to privacy unless it has to do with the crime currently being investigated. And come to think of it, encryption is unconstitutional as in because the government can subpoena or obtain a warrant to your information it may not be able to enforce it because of the encryption. So either the government has no right to subpoena or encryption is illegal.
- part1of2 6y ago
  Wouldn't you want the word 'encryption' to be in the description, so there is no evil solicitor trying to argue about what 'secrets' meant. Or 'the right to confidentiality whenever, where-ever, and with whomever the person pleases'
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    But I would also not want the method of storage of secrets to become obsolete. The important thing is that I’m able to keep a secret, not how the secret is stored. For example, say quantum encryption comes to be known as “q-store” and is always said to be different from encryption. Now, what does that do to my rights if I move from traditional encryption to quantum algorithms?
    - tripzilch 6y ago
      Well it worked for copyright, we're kinda stuck with it, regardless of how much the we ways we store things have changed.
- thayne 6y ago
  > encryption is unconstitutional as in because the government can subpoena or obtain a warrant to your information it may not be able to enforce it because of the encryption No, you can't subpoena information from someone that doesn't have it. So the government can subpoena the cyphertext, but can't ask for the plaintext if the provider never had access to it.
freeflight 6y ago
Privacy is already a UHR according to UDHR article 12 [0] The problem with applying this is that the violation of privacy is not arbitrary, from the draft: > Law enforcement and judicial authorities must be able to access data in a lawful and targeted manner So this is framed as an matter of lawful and targeted intercept, not blanket bulk access, like pretty much all of the mass surveillance creep. [0] https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  As it should, but who will verify it's only used in that way? Who watches the watchmen? Snowden revealed that the watchmen (NSA) are scooping up all data they can find, and that they have easy access to big internet companies' data (and they're not allowed to mention your data was accessed, even if no charges were made).
  - Shivetya 6y ago
    Well that is the crux of the issue, how much do you trust your government and what are your options in supporting change. This may require a level of involvement in politics that is more time consuming than most want to expend or can. This means if not actively supporting a candidate or current representative who shares your views that you instead convince them your view is worthwhile. If not actively finding one who does. Then even once that is accomplished you likely will need to be involved in writing to other representatives as well and coordinating with similarly minded groups across your country. Politics is all about the networking to get enough voices to be heard and for something as arcane as encryption; and yes it is arcane for most; will not have as many groups focused on it. So your work is cut out for yourself in finding such groups or forming one. in the US we have EFF and others; I am found of cato but many here do not understand libertarians. the truly sad part is most people really would be happy living in a police state as long as you don't call it one. they don't recognize how they could be in one because their view of what a police state is very heavily influenced by the media and even hollywood. most of what hollywood presents is truly exaggerated dystopian types that are borderline absurd but in truth it is the slow chipping away if not giving away of rights that does the same
JAlexoid 6y ago
Privacy isn't secrecy. That's the argument. I prefer my conversations to be secret, not just private

markvdb 6y ago

Thank you Matthew!

TechBro8615 6y ago

Matrix is awesome. Also, doesn’t the French government use Matrix? Are they trying to outlaw their own policies?

Arathorn 6y ago
Several EU governments use Matrix - so yeah, there's a paradox here. On one hand Element (the company set up by the core Matrix team) depends on government work to keep the lights on for Matrix work, but on the other hand we feel a clear responsibility to push back on backdoors, given backdoors are intrinsically flawed and dangerous. This is why we're proposing a (hopefully) better alternative instead (and this is also why we're soliciting funding to support reputation work via the Matrix.org Foundation at funding@matrix.org, just in case any YC billionaires happen to be reading this...)
- novok 6y ago
  It's probably something along the lines of 'guns for me but not for thee'. But they don't even have the excuse of encryption actively hurting anyone, so it's more like 'strong walls for me but not for thee'
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    It does hinder police investigations, so it comes down to how much harm you think obstructing the police causes.
    - novok 6y ago
      So does the right to a trial, habeas corpus, the need for a warrant, juries, the right to remain silent and many other protections...
  - magnusmundus 6y ago
    > strong walls for me but not for thee Good analogy, especially because governments themselves are living in the same walls (i.e. using the same apps) and this effort will hurt their own security.

Daniel_sk 6y ago

Do you take donations?

Arathorn 6y ago
Yup, the "Support Matrix" section at the bottom of https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/ has the details. (thanks!)

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago

Thanks for Matrix. This proposal seems to address general abuse, spam, propaganda, filter bubbles, and so on. While these are worthy issues to tackle, the authors of the 7-eyes statement are not really interested in them. What they say they want is for terrorism and child pornography to be detectable or meaningfully reduced. Do you think a relative reputation system will solve that problem?

Arathorn 6y ago
Yes, we think it will help meaningfully help detect and reduce abuse - mainly because it's shamelessly mimicking the way society works in real life. Many (most?) abusive communities are at least adjacent if not overlapping with publicly visible communities. Simply put, they need a way to advertise and recruit. So, just as in person you might stay away from a given political party / religious institute / youth club because your social graph has warned you that it might actually be a front for whatever obnoxiousness, the same approach can work online (or, conversely, could also be used to help hunt down abuse in the first place). It's then up to the authorities to investigate what's going on - which is quite possible through infiltration etc without having to go and blanket break encryption for the whole of society. To be clear: this is still largely sci-fi, and we don't think this is a perfect solution, especially given this is a fundamental problem of the human species which nobody has yet solved. Our proposal doesn't solve lone wolf situations, for instance. So perhaps for that you need the ability to gather evidence from endpoints post hoc. Unrelated: one particularly dark dystopian outcome we've been wargaming is: what if someone (not us!) used decentralised rep to seed a GPT-3 style bot to locate abusive communities, and then automated the process of infiltrating & investigating them... only to then end up ascending the ranks while preserving its cover and accidentally triggered some atrocity. So, um, let's not do that.)
- skissane 6y ago
  > Unrelated: one particularly dark dystopian outcome we've been wargaming is: what if someone (not us!) used decentralised rep to seed a GPT-3 style bot to locate abusive communities, and then automated the process of infiltrating & investigating them... only to then end up ascending the ranks while preserving its cover and accidentally triggered some atrocity. So, um, let's not do that.) I think you greatly overestimate the abilities of GPT-3. GPT-3's writable memory is short-term only – its long-term memory is read-only – so by the end of a conversation, it has permanently forgotten what the topic was at the beginning. Given its lack of writable long-term memory, it is completely incapable of succeeding at any tasks involving long-term planning, such as the infiltration and investigation of a social group. Of course, you said "GPT 3 style bot", not GPT-3, but the AI you have in mind has significantly greater capabilities than GPT-3 has, so isn't fairly said to be "GPT 3 style" at all.

rkagerer 6y ago

Interesting read, though it sounds more like decentralized censorship. It's a little unclear where you're talking about reputation of individuals vs. reputation of content.

Arathorn 6y ago
Censorship implies that information has been invisibly removed by some absolute authority. Whereas here we're talking about empowering users to filter out the stuff on their terms - i.e. subjective/relative reputation. It's possible that a server admin might apply unilateral filters, but a) the user would be able to visualise those (assuming the server admin doesn't maliciously withhold that info), b) the user can switch to another server with different filtering rules. So, I definitely wouldn't characterise it censorship (although I can see why many have a kneejerk reaction of "ooh, this sounds a lot like censorship").

orbifold 6y ago

I was under the impression that all the mobile communications standards had provisions for lawful intercept, is it such a leap to think that the baseband processor is compromised aswell? Maybe the EU is just salty that they don't have the same kind of access the NSA has.

ppafin 6y ago
Yep, it's not about encryption. It's about monopoly for information feed access.

infogulch 6y ago

Does the idea you're proposing enable recording reputation scoring on the scope of a single post/message?

Arathorn 6y ago
Yes. The idea is to build it to be agnostic to the objects whose trust is being tracked, but for Matrix at least the main building blocks are rooms, users, communities, servers, messages & attachments. However you could use it for other things too if you so wanted (eg client IPs, server IPs, netblocks, ASes, E.164 numbers, URLs etc)

gfxgirl 6y ago

While adding backdoors to encryption is a bad idea my gut sys decentralized reputation is just a bad. Most here know the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive". But it's worse than that, people on different sides of the political spectrum will work to "cancel" people of the other side by working to lower their rep via crowdsourcing. 4chan type groups will do the same for "the lulz", I can even imagine the ransomware people trying to find a way to make bots and "pay us or we destroy your rep"

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Gives a new meaning to the term "character assassination".
Arathorn 6y ago
Totally agreed that badly designed rep systems can rapidly descend into Black Mirror territory. In Nosedive for instance the score you get is absolute, while the thing we’re proposing here is entirely relative and subjective. The idea is to empower users to maintain their own view of the world. If a voting ring of idiots conspire to try to trash someone’s reputation... you’d filter out the voting ring from your reputation feeds; it should stand out very clearly. That goes whether it’s bots or humans behaving like bots. Alternatively, you could choose to hang out with that tribe and believe their rep data if you so desired. We’ve been wargaming through all the various ways this could go horribly wrong (and have a few fun scenarii off the back of it - look for the GPT-3 example below), but on balance it feels a lot better than the Black Mirror episode where encryption is fatally weakened...
- contravariant 6y ago
  Maybe you've answered this point already somewhere but how exactly are you planning to make censorship (for lack of a better word) stand out?
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    Overloading the word 'censorship' is going to get a bit confusing here ;) "Censorship", meaning: "malicious server or ISP silently blocks or withholds traffic from you" is a risk in Matrix today, completely independently of the reputation stuff being discussed here. The mitigation is to get rid of servers (and even ISPs), as per https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/ "Censorship", meaning: "your server admin subscribed to a blocklist of child abuse content published by someone like iwf.org.uk" would stand out to users by the server publishing the names of the blocklists that their server admin has deployed. I'd call this server-side filtering or something instead, given the filters are visible. If the server admin withholds info about their filters, then you're back in the traditional sense of censorship from the prior paragraph.

Veedrac 6y ago

While I know I'm just attracting downvotes, your points, in order: 1) a: It's really not that hard to think of ways to solve backdoor problems with a mix of technical and social approaches. For example, having shared keys burned onto silicon, making physical access mandatory, and split between both the law enforcement and the company, so that both parties must knowingly engage. b: Most software already practically backdoored already, and it's really not that big a deal. Microsoft can push whatever updates they want whenever they want. They already have the keys to the kingdom! Google doesn't store everything E2E encrypted. They also already have the keys to the kingdom! Things have mostly worked out regardless. 2) That a measure will be imperfect is not an argument that it will be ineffectual. In fact it's pretty obviously false; making abuse harder on mainstream platforms will make abuse less mainstream. 3) This is like arguing governments shouldn't be allowed to regulate weapons, because it would be hypocritical, given they own weapons themselves, and it might normalize other countries taking away their citizens' weapons, which might prevent them fighting back. That seems like an obviously bad argument. 4) Yes, your platform that makes oversight impossible is not compatible with regulations requiring oversight. That's not an accident, in either direction. The idea later in the post seems not really honestly engaging with the topic, that it's not about ‘someone who believes birthday cake is undesirable’, but about networks which are systematically and in actuality doing things like trafficking children for sexual abuse, and that there is a moral imperative for governments to deal with this beyond just letting people choose not to engage.

vorpalhex 6y ago
1a - Because that worked out so well for HDMI? It'll be what, maybe 90 days before those "law enforcement keys" are public? 1b - If it's already backdoored then there is no need for such an act, the problem is already solved. 2 - It's ineffective for it's stated goal because the stated goal is not the real goal. The goal is to enable a continued abuse of power, one which is already ongoing, and one which produces no actionable results or meaningful outcomes. Five eyes & co is upset that they're losing some of their toys. 3 - Who says governments should be able to regulate weapons? Likewise these days, who is to say they meaningfully can? 4 - Sex trafficking existed prior to encryption. The government failed to stop it then. I strongly suspect that even if the government gets it's way and breaks encryption, sex trafficking will continue exactly at the same rate. Most sex traffickers are not technology ept, nor do they need to be - the track record for capturing them is atrocious. Epstein anyone? This is a bad faith argument. "Protecting children" and "stopping terrorists" are the siren's song of every government overreach basically since the dawn of time and yet the government remains terrible at solving either problem. I don't think encryption is really the issue preventing those things from getting resolved. I do think encryption is very inconvenient for a very snoop heavy government.

raxxorrax 6y ago

I don't like it because they advocate a social credit system as an alternative, but their criticism against back doors is on point. I am in communities that don't use such tools and somehow there is no problem that would require any, but if that is the preference you have the option. I don't see further issues.

Arathorn 6y ago
It's not a social credit system!! It's empowering users to track their own view of reputation, as opposed to having an authority determine it.