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The people who are closest to the problem of children’s safety online come to a different assessment as to whether the larger risk is predators or hackers steal

The people who are closest to the problem of children’s safety online come to a different assessment as to whether the larger risk is predators or hackers stealing… their identities? Their credit card numbers? Just generically “reading their messages?” And no, “they” aren’t arguing encryption in general is just bad. For example, I specifically mentioned that that’s not the case. Battling the strawman is your own rhetorical choice.

pdonis 3y ago
> The people who are closest to the problem of children’s safety online come to a different assessment as to whether the larger risk is predators or hackers stealing… their identities? The people who are closest to the problem are the children's parents. Are you saying they would rather not have encryption? The people who are against encryption, from what I can see, are not parents. They are businesses who don't want to have their access to data curtailed, and politicians who favor those businesses. I have not seen any real arguments against encryption from them, just FUD about "protect the children!".
- ethanbond 3y ago
  You think just “parents” are the people with the strongest grasp on the issue of CSAM? I mean, maybe you’re just looking for weak versions of the argument. There are a ton of people who dedicate their careers to monitoring and combatting child abuse imagery. As far as I can tell, they’re unanimous in the view that E2E encryption is a huge, huge help for predators. I’m sure they’re not unanimous on how to level that fact with another distinct fact that E2E encryption is also useful for lots of other things. Calling a real problem FUD doesn’t make it moot. That’s just a way for you to avoid addressing the argument.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > You think just “parents” are the people with the strongest grasp on the issue of CSAM? That's not what I said. I said parents are closest to the issue of how to protect their children from predators. > There are a ton of people who dedicate their careers to monitoring and combatting child abuse imagery. As far as I can tell, they’re unanimous in the view that E2E encryption is a huge, huge help for predators. E2E is a huge help for predators to hide from Big Brother surveillance, yes, of course, that's obvious. What is not obvious is whether Big Brother surveillance actually helps protect children from predators. Asking the people whose salaries depend on Big Brother surveillance whether that surveillance actually helps protect children does not strike me as a good way to evaluate that question.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Child predator gets caught. Authorities see metadata or have other reason to believe he’s been exchanging material with dozens of other predators. Unfortunately they cannot see who any of those people are due to strong encryption. Is this a hard to imagine case? Seems completely obvious what the claim is here and that it has a basis in reality, and it’s obvious why someone dealing with this problem up close might be extremely highly motivated to solve it.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        Child predator gets caught. Authorities tell child predator that the best way to minimize the number of years he spends in prison is to tell them what other predators he has been in contact with. Child predator gives them the information. Sure, this is an imagined case, just as yours is. Is it any less plausible? I don't think so. And so we have two plausible imagined cases that give opposite answers to how useful banning encryption would actually be to law enforcement. In other words, imagined cases are of no help whatsoever in actually evaluating this issue. What we, as members of the public (or for that matter concerned parents, for those who are), need in order to evaluate whether we should agree to banning encryption is open and transparent data on how well law enforcement does this job with vs. without encryption. Also data on how many child predators and other nefarious actors actually use encryption, given that it is easily available now. Child predators existed before encryption was available on consumer devices, and indeed before the Internet itself existed, so there should be plenty of historical data to use. Has anyone done such an analysis?
      - pdonis 3y ago
        > it’s obvious why someone dealing with this problem up close might be extremely highly motivated to solve it. It's obvious why law enforcement wants to ban encryption, sure--it means they have an excuse for not doing the actual hard work of gathering human intelligence about child predators and other nefarious actors, and shutting them down the old-fashioned way. Which says nothing at all about whether they actually can do the job better using Big Brother surveillance than they could the old-fashioned way.
      - amiga386 3y ago

pdonis 3y ago

> The people who are closest to the problem of children’s safety online come to a different assessment as to whether the larger risk is predators or hackers stealing… their identities? The people who are closest to the problem are the children's parents. Are you saying they would rather not have encryption? The people who are against encryption, from what I can see, are not parents. They are businesses who don't want to have their access to data curtailed, and politicians who favor those businesses. I have not seen any real arguments against encryption from them, just FUD about "protect the children!".

ethanbond 3y ago
You think just “parents” are the people with the strongest grasp on the issue of CSAM? I mean, maybe you’re just looking for weak versions of the argument. There are a ton of people who dedicate their careers to monitoring and combatting child abuse imagery. As far as I can tell, they’re unanimous in the view that E2E encryption is a huge, huge help for predators. I’m sure they’re not unanimous on how to level that fact with another distinct fact that E2E encryption is also useful for lots of other things. Calling a real problem FUD doesn’t make it moot. That’s just a way for you to avoid addressing the argument.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > You think just “parents” are the people with the strongest grasp on the issue of CSAM? That's not what I said. I said parents are closest to the issue of how to protect their children from predators. > There are a ton of people who dedicate their careers to monitoring and combatting child abuse imagery. As far as I can tell, they’re unanimous in the view that E2E encryption is a huge, huge help for predators. E2E is a huge help for predators to hide from Big Brother surveillance, yes, of course, that's obvious. What is not obvious is whether Big Brother surveillance actually helps protect children from predators. Asking the people whose salaries depend on Big Brother surveillance whether that surveillance actually helps protect children does not strike me as a good way to evaluate that question.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Child predator gets caught. Authorities see metadata or have other reason to believe he’s been exchanging material with dozens of other predators. Unfortunately they cannot see who any of those people are due to strong encryption. Is this a hard to imagine case? Seems completely obvious what the claim is here and that it has a basis in reality, and it’s obvious why someone dealing with this problem up close might be extremely highly motivated to solve it.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      Child predator gets caught. Authorities tell child predator that the best way to minimize the number of years he spends in prison is to tell them what other predators he has been in contact with. Child predator gives them the information. Sure, this is an imagined case, just as yours is. Is it any less plausible? I don't think so. And so we have two plausible imagined cases that give opposite answers to how useful banning encryption would actually be to law enforcement. In other words, imagined cases are of no help whatsoever in actually evaluating this issue. What we, as members of the public (or for that matter concerned parents, for those who are), need in order to evaluate whether we should agree to banning encryption is open and transparent data on how well law enforcement does this job with vs. without encryption. Also data on how many child predators and other nefarious actors actually use encryption, given that it is easily available now. Child predators existed before encryption was available on consumer devices, and indeed before the Internet itself existed, so there should be plenty of historical data to use. Has anyone done such an analysis?
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > it’s obvious why someone dealing with this problem up close might be extremely highly motivated to solve it. It's obvious why law enforcement wants to ban encryption, sure--it means they have an excuse for not doing the actual hard work of gathering human intelligence about child predators and other nefarious actors, and shutting them down the old-fashioned way. Which says nothing at all about whether they actually can do the job better using Big Brother surveillance than they could the old-fashioned way.
    - amiga386 3y ago