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> But in the fight against child pornography, domestic politicians and legislators have identified [end-to-end encryption] as the core problem and would prefer
by jmull 6y ago
> But in the fight against child pornography, domestic politicians and legislators have identified [end-to-end encryption] as the core problem and would prefer to ban it.
There's no logic to this. These people already access banned child pornography. They aren't going to hesitate to use encryption to do so, banned or not.
The encryption tech already exists and is widely and freely available and a ban doesn't change that. A ban could keep good encryption out of popular, high-profile platforms. But these people are already seeking out the dirty, dark corners of the web, and I'm sure will have less trouble adjusting to this than almost anyone else. My random guess is they will be communicating and sharing images via encrypted blockchains that are ostensibly (or even mainly) for something else, or some such.
- prepend 6y agoI view it differently in that even if breaking encryption allows for the arrest and wiping out of all child pornography, the damage to the non-porners is too great to warrant. Similar to how a jury trial requires unanimous agreement among 12. This leads to some true criminals not being convicted, but it provides the benefit of many more innocents not being wrongfully convicted. I think the “criminals will break the law anyway” is a dead end as it bypasses the moral decision that society needs to make of whether privacy is worth some tiny percent of evil doing. One day we’ll have the ability to have mental implants that block bad things. Similarly, we’ll need to decide whether that is worth implementing if it means bad trade offs. The argument isn’t that criminals will skip the implants, I think the important argument is whether putting implants in all the non-criminals is worth the effort.
- estaseuropano 6y agoThere's no logic in it as the article misstates the acural legislation and intention. Read the linked documents and its pretty obvious (I left a longer comment below).
- jmull 6y agoFrom your linked document: > The Commission announced that it will propose the necessary legislation to tackle child sexual abuse online effectively including by requiring relevant online services providers to detect known child sexual abuse material and oblige them to report that material to public authorities by the second quarter of 2021. The announced legislation will be intended to replace this Regulation, by putting in place mandatory measures to detect and report child sexual abuse, in order to bring more clarity and certainty to the work of both law enforcement and relevant actors in the private sector to tackle online abuse, while ensuring respect of the fundamental rights of the users, including in particular the right to freedom of expression and opinion, protection of personal data and privacy, and providing for mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency. If the measures to detect certain kinds of content are "required" and "mandatory", that rules out end-to-end encryption. Sure, they promise to use their powers to snoop only for good. Perhaps this commission means it, too. Just not sure why it would only be used for good, though. I see multiple posts in this thread that seem to have the same generous reading of this that you have. But I don't see where that is coming from. They seem to be clearly calling for regulations that will not for allow end-to-end encryption.
- estaseuropano 6y agoNot to rehash other discussions in this comment area, but there are many ways to do more than what is currently done. As you quote they want any changes to preserve privacy which means certainly no end to E2E.