3 ms·

I don't know why they are not proposing this instead (well, I do, because they'd prefer more power), but I do not find this proposal acceptable either. The fac

I don't know why they are not proposing this instead (well, I do, because they'd prefer more power), but I do not find this proposal acceptable either. The fact that you might be able to see that a government read a message of yours offers little assurance that the government will not start abusing this power. After all, what possible recourse do we have after we start seeing these notifications on our messages? Certainly the government won't start telling us the exact reason they are snooping. The very fact that your conversations had been snooped on by the government might imply there is something shady about you. Where there is smoke, there's also fire, right? And this still has us relying that governments won't start pressuring clients to have special code which bypasses the notification when it is convenient for them. No. The government must not be allowed to deny the citizen his right to have private conversations.

rusk 6y ago
The key to all this is probable cause. Which is exactly what the mass data harvesting operations are seeking to circumvent.
londons_explore 6y ago
> little assurance that the government will not start abusing this power. My hope is that if millions of people started seeing these messages next to their conversations with their lovers, the people would vote for a different government. There's a big difference between knowing big brother is scanning for criminals, to seeing big brother has right now looked at my private message.
- feanaro 6y ago
  That's a bleak future to hope for. We can do better. How about if we do not allow big brother to scan for criminals in the first place? Big brother has no business scanning for anything. Also, remember that criminals are defined by the law and the law is defined by the government.
Shingbogle 6y ago
But they already do that with warrants. As long as they have a warrant and aren't breaking encryption by putting in backdoors, they should have the ability to listen in on conversations. That's how it is now without encryption.
- feanaro 6y ago
  Yes, without encryption, they have that possibility, after they prove probable cause. Without getting into a debate whether that is appropriate, it is important to keep in mind that it is the citizen's right to privacy of conversations is the more fundamental here. The government does not have a right to snoop on everyone's conversations, they simply have this possibility in certain situations. So, for me, this changes nothing.

rusk 6y ago

The key to all this is probable cause. Which is exactly what the mass data harvesting operations are seeking to circumvent.

londons_explore 6y ago

> little assurance that the government will not start abusing this power. My hope is that if millions of people started seeing these messages next to their conversations with their lovers, the people would vote for a different government. There's a big difference between knowing big brother is scanning for criminals, to seeing big brother has right now looked at my private message.

feanaro 6y ago
That's a bleak future to hope for. We can do better. How about if we do not allow big brother to scan for criminals in the first place? Big brother has no business scanning for anything. Also, remember that criminals are defined by the law and the law is defined by the government.

Shingbogle 6y ago

But they already do that with warrants. As long as they have a warrant and aren't breaking encryption by putting in backdoors, they should have the ability to listen in on conversations. That's how it is now without encryption.

feanaro 6y ago
Yes, without encryption, they have that possibility, after they prove probable cause. Without getting into a debate whether that is appropriate, it is important to keep in mind that it is the citizen's right to privacy of conversations is the more fundamental here. The government does not have a right to snoop on everyone's conversations, they simply have this possibility in certain situations. So, for me, this changes nothing.