3 ms·

Stupid question: Wouldnʼt it be alright if an open source messenger scans messages locally against a secret word list and only sends it to police if there's a h

Stupid question: Wouldnʼt it be alright if an open source messenger scans messages locally against a secret word list and only sends it to police if there's a hit, otherwise only send it to the recipient with the usual end-to-end encryption? The secret word list would need to be curated and digitally signed by several parties, including data security advocates to ensure that it doesn't simply contain the entire dictionary.

vletal 4y ago
It's like online voting. It works as long as the government does not have a malicious intent of staying in power indefinitely. Then the secret word list might include stuff like "free speech" or "Uighur" and the world would go to hell.
- toffi-fee 4y ago
  That's why I mentioned the multiple parties. But I understand your point. It would just be the next step for them to sneak in all kinds of words.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    We're not just talking about words here, though. You have to ask yourself: * Who do I trust to look at the pictures in the government database? * Who does the government trust to look at these pictures? * Who would even be willing to look at these pictures? These are probably disjoint sets, leading to a very empty intersection. Unfortunately, the logical impossibility of a government implementing a system that citizens should be happy with is not a barrier to it implementing some other system which it claims is good enough.
pseudo0 4y ago
That's the Chinese approach: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-has-function-block-political-keywords-2022-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-ha... Also, having a secret, local wordlist is a challenge. Eg. What is stopping someone from testing every possible one-word message, using the reporting functionality as an oracle?

3 ms·

Stupid question: Wouldnʼt it be alright if an open source messenger scans messages locally against a secret word list and only sends it to police if there's a h

by toffi-fee 4y ago

vletal 4y ago
It's like online voting. It works as long as the government does not have a malicious intent of staying in power indefinitely. Then the secret word list might include stuff like "free speech" or "Uighur" and the world would go to hell.
- toffi-fee 4y ago
  That's why I mentioned the multiple parties. But I understand your point. It would just be the next step for them to sneak in all kinds of words.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    We're not just talking about words here, though. You have to ask yourself: * Who do I trust to look at the pictures in the government database? * Who does the government trust to look at these pictures? * Who would even be willing to look at these pictures? These are probably disjoint sets, leading to a very empty intersection. Unfortunately, the logical impossibility of a government implementing a system that citizens should be happy with is not a barrier to it implementing some other system which it claims is good enough.
pseudo0 4y ago
That's the Chinese approach: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-has-function-block-political-keywords-2022-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-ha... Also, having a secret, local wordlist is a challenge. Eg. What is stopping someone from testing every possible one-word message, using the reporting functionality as an oracle?