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Wiretapping was also used by all police states to preserve dictators, by eliminating competition and punishing citizens for wrongthink. As citizens of a country

Wiretapping was also used by all police states to preserve dictators, by eliminating competition and punishing citizens for wrongthink. As citizens of a country behind the Iron Curtain, my parents were always afraid to talk on the phone, because the secret police was always listening, either directly or via informants. You're going to say that in democracy, the state uses warrants issued by a judge for wiretapping and there's due process. How's that working out in the US, given Snowden's revelations and the Patriot Act? Leftists wrongly think that the state represents the will of the people. It doesn't. Democracy is preserved primarily by (1) a culture of liberalism and (2) the state having limited powers. But as could be seen in WW2, democracy is fleeting, actually. Being from Eastern Europe I've got to say that seeing privileged Westerners willingly give up freedoms, that other people died for, has been such a huge disappointment. --- As for crime prevention and investigation, you can still follow individuals around, install bugs in their home, compromise their personal devices. But it's never enough, is it?

pif 3y ago
Thank you for expressing your opinion, I appreciate it. Actually, I don't have a strong opinion because I recognize the issue to be very complex.
- Kalium 3y ago
  Are we sure it's complex? Or is it portrayed as complex for political reasons? So far we've seen a lot of assertions that encryption is a major hazard to public safety, mostly from groups with a long history of abusing access to wiretaps. We've seen precious little evidence to support this. The other group claims that encryption enhances privacy and pushed back against abuse. There's plenty of evidence to support this. More than once in my life, I've seen people attempt to advance an unsupported position by claiming it's very complex. Sometimes this is true and they just need time to support their points. Sometimes it's completely untrue, and the idea is to leave uninformed onlookers with the impression of complexity that needs to be negotiated. How sure are we that this issue is genuinely very complex, versus the real possibility of false complexity in an effort to confuse you and me?
maccard 3y ago
> As for crime prevention and investigation <...>, compromise their personal devices. How do you compromise someone's device that's running iOS 17 and using an encrypted messaging app? > But it's never enough, is it? The reality is that people are using E2E en masse, and it's not possible to compromise modern devices the same way it possible to compromise a phone line in 90's. I can open telegram and buy any number of substances/devices/items, paying with Cash App. This just wasn't feasible even 10-15 years ago in the way it is now. So what do we do? (I don't have an answer, fwiw).
- bad_user 3y ago
  If you want to compare abilities, in the 90s you also didn't have Internet-connected cameras on every corner, or in public transportation, also able to do face recognition even with masks on, you couldn't use Wi-fi to see through people's walls, or to monitor the IPs a home connects to, etc. As for iOS, there are always vulnerabilities that state-level actors can exploit. Not long ago simply sending a message to someone via iMessage could have compromised an iPhone. Which is why iPhones now have a "lockdown mode". Criminals are either dumb enough to expose themselves via insecure devices, or competent enough to use an extra layer of encryption, which can't be prevented. Even if you outlaw general-purpose computing, people can just send encoded messages with custom algorithms, WW2-style. If you target someone specifically, and have access to their location, there's no way they can protect themselves while also keeping a communication channel open. Let's be honest, this isn't about targeting someone specifically, but about fishing for wrongthink. > So what do we do? As a citizen, not my problem. Law enforcement should do their jobs without encroaching on my privacy. Or my child's privacy for that matter. If scientists invent a way to read people's thoughts, what next? Mass surveillance for people's brains directly because there's no other way? If the question is mass surveillance, NO is always the answer as far as I'm concerned.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    At least in the US you cannot outlaw encryption. It is covered under 1A.

pif 3y ago

Thank you for expressing your opinion, I appreciate it. Actually, I don't have a strong opinion because I recognize the issue to be very complex.

Kalium 3y ago
Are we sure it's complex? Or is it portrayed as complex for political reasons? So far we've seen a lot of assertions that encryption is a major hazard to public safety, mostly from groups with a long history of abusing access to wiretaps. We've seen precious little evidence to support this. The other group claims that encryption enhances privacy and pushed back against abuse. There's plenty of evidence to support this. More than once in my life, I've seen people attempt to advance an unsupported position by claiming it's very complex. Sometimes this is true and they just need time to support their points. Sometimes it's completely untrue, and the idea is to leave uninformed onlookers with the impression of complexity that needs to be negotiated. How sure are we that this issue is genuinely very complex, versus the real possibility of false complexity in an effort to confuse you and me?

maccard 3y ago

> As for crime prevention and investigation <...>, compromise their personal devices. How do you compromise someone's device that's running iOS 17 and using an encrypted messaging app? > But it's never enough, is it? The reality is that people are using E2E en masse, and it's not possible to compromise modern devices the same way it possible to compromise a phone line in 90's. I can open telegram and buy any number of substances/devices/items, paying with Cash App. This just wasn't feasible even 10-15 years ago in the way it is now. So what do we do? (I don't have an answer, fwiw).

bad_user 3y ago
If you want to compare abilities, in the 90s you also didn't have Internet-connected cameras on every corner, or in public transportation, also able to do face recognition even with masks on, you couldn't use Wi-fi to see through people's walls, or to monitor the IPs a home connects to, etc. As for iOS, there are always vulnerabilities that state-level actors can exploit. Not long ago simply sending a message to someone via iMessage could have compromised an iPhone. Which is why iPhones now have a "lockdown mode". Criminals are either dumb enough to expose themselves via insecure devices, or competent enough to use an extra layer of encryption, which can't be prevented. Even if you outlaw general-purpose computing, people can just send encoded messages with custom algorithms, WW2-style. If you target someone specifically, and have access to their location, there's no way they can protect themselves while also keeping a communication channel open. Let's be honest, this isn't about targeting someone specifically, but about fishing for wrongthink. > So what do we do? As a citizen, not my problem. Law enforcement should do their jobs without encroaching on my privacy. Or my child's privacy for that matter. If scientists invent a way to read people's thoughts, what next? Mass surveillance for people's brains directly because there's no other way? If the question is mass surveillance, NO is always the answer as far as I'm concerned.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  At least in the US you cannot outlaw encryption. It is covered under 1A.