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Yes. There are people with problems. Instead of helping them fix their problems it's just easier to prevent nice things from everybody. Strange times indeed.

• benfortuna 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • throwaway290 2y ago
    You're right. But apparently every time this topic comes up we cry that this is abuse of our freedom. Tech is not good or bad but it does have unintended consequences and open new ways for abuse. This is tough to swallow for us who work in tech but is obvious to everyone else. If we stay in denial and do not volunteer to help use tech smartly to compensate for bad side effects, they will vote in some dumb law and some bad guys will exploit it for surveillance later.
    • BurningFrog 2y ago
      Government recording all our conversations also has have "unintended" consequences. The track record of such societies is rather terrifying.
      • throwaway290 2y ago
        You think I disagree? My point is almost exactly the same, we should stop that (by promoting a saner solution).
        • yencabulator 2y ago
          So, what's an example saner solution? Or is this one of those "just" sentences?
          • throwaway290 2y ago
            Is it as "just" as "just ignore the abuse and keep making tools used for that purpose"?
            • yencabulator 2y ago
              Of all the things potentially worthy of "just", the status quo sounds most appropriate. But I think you not being able to state what a saner solution is is enough for this conversation.
              • throwaway290 2y ago
                Knowing you value minuscule amount of privacy over another person's life and suffering was already plenty.
    • Hizonner 2y ago
      There is in fact no "smart" way to compensate for this particular "bad side effect". Either your communications are spied on to weed out unapproved material, or they're not. And there is no way to make the system architecture care about which material is allowed to be "unapproved". The right answer here is just to accept that, beyond a certain point, further reducing the amount of circulating child porn requires unacceptable tradeoffs. Then stop whining and wishing for impossible technical solutions.
      • benfortuna 2y ago
        There is in fact. You could build AI directly into the app to detect inappropriate content and block it. The app has thus not violated end-to-end encryption, nor has that content been exposed to external parties. Platforms could definitely do more.
        • shinryuu 2y ago
          And how do you deal with all false positives. That will just be deemed collateral damage?
          • hellojesus 2y ago
            To add to your excellent point, who gets to validate the models efficacy? How do we know the state hadn't trained it to report users talking about maga, or Isreal, or for those with Chinese national lovers?
          • throwaway290 2y ago
            How do you deal with all those UUIDs colliding? You can design a system where false positives are so rare they are insignificant and can be properly handled. The only reason we don't is because we don't think it's that much of a problem.
            • Hizonner 2y ago
              No, you can't. Machine learning doesn't work that way. You can keep the false positive level reasonably low for copies of already known and flagged images. You can't do it for new images.
  • Krasnol 2y ago
    Neither Whatsapp nor Signal can do anything about it, since they don't know the content of the messages. That is the whole point of their protocol. That is the whole point of privacy. Nobody falls for that crap. We all know that CP is being presented as a scapegoat here because, "how can you be against something that MIGHT help against CP!?!?!" while in fact and in the end it'll be used to spy on everything.
    • xorcist 2y ago
      Nonsense. Whatsapp owns both endpoints. They could know perfectly well what you write, when you write it, to whom, and anything their heart desires by way of their analytics. The messages themselves contains no business value to them. They could send it by carrier pigeon for all they care as long as the client is their product.
      • Krasnol 2y ago
        They "could" maybe. But since you seem to not have more information, we have to remain on the assumption that they're still using Signal protocol and can't see what the messange contents are.
        • tcfhgj 2y ago
          They could use the signal protocol AND see the contents
        • hellojesus 2y ago
          Signal could still see the contents of your messages. Anything you enter into their app could be scanned or sent back in plaintext to some server, all prior to actual transmission via their protocol. The only way to ensure that can't happen is to inspect the code and compile it yourself, or at least validate the hash of the binary you're installing. But we've also recently learned with the xz fiasco that you'll need to be sure to add checks all the way down. Of course, you could always encrypt before entering the text into signal, but at that point why use signal?
      • 2y ago
  • bitcharmer 2y ago
    Your argument makes as much sense as banning knives because they are sometimes misused to attack people. What about alcohol? Some people drink and drive, we should ban alcohol too!
    • cuu508 2y ago
      Banning sale of alcohol in gas stations would not be unreasonable.
      • bitcharmer 2y ago
        It would
        • fuzzfactor 2y ago
          Lots of them will probably be selling alcohol years after they are no longer selling gasoline.
    • throwaway290 2y ago
      If knives can be used remotely to monetize child abuse at scale then yeah you bet they would be controlled. Your analogy fully misses the point. (And still, in many countries I've been to tobacco and maybe also alcohol are banned for sale near schools.)
  • gherkinnn 2y ago
    CP is a pretext to grab power, the same way terrorism was 20 years ago. If a government actually cared, they would start dismantling the catholic church. Risking a slippery slope fallacy, I see no way governments won't expand the scope of this intrusion. Before you know it, being critical of a certain foreign government [0] or teachers criticising the department of education [1] will be limited. 0 - you know what conflict I mean. Will we have to resort to coded messages wherever we go? 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-government-keeping-files-on-teaching-assistants-and-librarians-internet-activity https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-governme...
    • jiggawatts 2y ago
      The Australian government enacted the same type of "protect the children" laws, and then immediately used it to surveil journalists critical of their policies.
      • smartbit 2y ago
        Do you have more details on this? A link maybe?
    • Aerroon 2y ago
      Didn't the UK's web filter contain political websites too?
  • mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
    The bad stuff will just move somewhere else as it always has done. Compromising everyone's privacy will eventually mostly affect innocent people. Or even cause the platforms to cease existing altogether, which looks like a real possibility with Signal. Pedos will just move on to whatever service isn't compromised yet. You can outlaw or hamper secure encryption in some jurisdictions, but due to the generic nature of computers you can't in principle stop people from using secure encryption.
    • generic92034 2y ago
      > but due to the generic nature of computers This might only be a temporary state, though. Smartphones are, in that sense, not generic. PC might follow.
      • LocalH 2y ago
        Smartphones are general-purpose computers with a bunch of little digital locks, that while strong, are not impervious. Such locks, when used to protect a device owner, are good. The same type of locks, when used to deny a device owner full rights to use their device as they see fit (absent harm done to others), are evil.
      • scrps 2y ago
        mtl is saying computers are big boxes of math and you can't ban math. Though given how incredibly clueless politicians have become I wouldn't be shocked if they tried.
        • tekknik 2y ago
          They could however require a license for a compiler/interpreter, and then require binaries to be signed by said compiler. As you said they seem clueless, so I bet they will try.
  • effie 2y ago
    > what else are governments going to do One way that would put down lots of exploitation and support privacy of adults would be video and online surveillance of all children when not alone, using a parent-controlled computer to detect bad things happening. This could start in kindergarden and school and gradually expand to all spaces that are not home. Children have some right to privacy, but not as strong as adults. On the 16-th year, if the child wants so, surveillance gets turned off and he/she is granted more privacy. Like with age limits on car driving or working, at some point the state says, you are old enough to take responsibility, we won't protect you from harsh life anymore. This is a targeted, reasonable solution with little collateral damage, that upholds the right to privacy for adults. It's what parents would want, instead of the bureaucrats. And who really, actually cares about safety of the children, parents or bureaucrats?
    • Jensson 2y ago
      > support privacy of adults > video and online surveillance of all children when not alone So, you want children to have no privacy just to get a tiny bit more privacy to adults? Are adults really this horrible towards children, do you really think you would like this as a child? > Children have some right to privacy, but not as strong as adults. Why the hell not? Do you really think it is ok that your daughter gets constantly video surveilled all throughout puberty? Do you really think that is a lesser evil than your text messages being scanned for some keywords? Would you be happy if there was a camera constantly watching you as you jerked off as a kid?
      • effie 2y ago
        > Are adults really this horrible towards children, do you really think you would like this as a child? Only parents would have access to surveillance records. Children often do not like stuff their parents make them do, and their power over them, this would be one more thing, with great benefits. > Why the hell not? Because they are children, they do not have full responsibility for their actions, and they are more vulnerable to abuse, and protecting their safety is more important than protecting their privacy. I want to keep the status quo, where children are protected, and adults have rights. The way stuff is going, we're all getting more like children with one parent called Big Brother. > Would you be happy if there was a camera constantly watching you as you jerked off as a kid? That is not what I'm suggesting. I'm talking about public spaces (including online) where adults are present. If the kid wants to jerk off, or two or more kids want to make love, they can go home or use some private space like a bathroom.
  • lenkite 2y ago
    Why should everyone have to suffer so that state's job in catching criminals is made dead easy ? Such criminals are a microscopic minority of the population. Governments - esp in the west - have disinvested in traditional investigation and moved to using mass surveillance as their default operating strategy. And citizens are being made to pay the price.
  • xorcist 2y ago
    This argument is more thought provoking than people may think. What we see is a shift of power. Electronic communications started out as private enterprises, then mostly taken over by states because of the need centralization, and now almost completely taken over by private enterprises one layer above. Governments are still trying to make sense of what happened and find their role in this new world. Platforms are centralization at work, and it's not that far fetched to think that states could do a better job than Twitter or Facebook. Platforms have immense power. After all, we mostly agree that Facebook very literally facilitating genocide was not good for society. What we disagree on is how much they knew and how much was circumstantial. There is also this idea that jurisdictions matter for platforms. The Chinese connections with Tiktok owners are problematic since we know for a fact that they have the power to influence elections. The American ownership of Facebook is not similarly problematic, largely because the CIA and other institutions interests mostly align with ours. It would not surprise me if the Saudi money financing Twitter/X would turn out to be just as important as the financing of 9/11. In light of that, it should not be surprising that EU states wants to play the game too, even if it will have very little practical effect.
    • hellojesus 2y ago
      States can already play the game. But this isn't playing the game via competition. This is just stealing data via lawfare
  • a0123 2y ago
    We keep having "anti child exploitation" measures, like all the bloody time. It's been decades by now. And the problem keeps getting worse. So either it's just not working whatsoever and this is useless and should stop. Or it's never really about child exploitation. Just like "temporary measures" against terrorism which have been temporary for 30+ years now (no, it didn't start on 9/11). Almost like it was never about terrorism.
    • Hizonner 2y ago
      > And the problem keeps getting worse. You're swallowing the propaganda. The problem hasn't changed to speak of.
  • einpoklum 2y ago
    Just put the entire population in jail, I'm sure you'll be able to prevent a lot of crime that way.
  • jalapenos 2y ago
    Why do you take their motives at face value? Obviously, the moment these platforms lose privacy, the criminals cease communication on them immediately. So they're the last group this is aimed at. The solution to crime is the same investigation and detective work and anonymous tip offs and so on that it's always been. People going undercover and infiltrating these groups and then bringing them down. By chasing the criminals off this platforms, all that happens is the detective work gets harder. Now they've got to go find where to start their infiltration, all over again. This outcome is so obvious that the only conclusions available are that the lawmakers are either IQ 60 morons, or that they have malicious intent.
    • okr 2y ago
      I read it somewhere, but most of the crime is done by people with low IQ. So it makes work for the police actually easier. Well, we went in billions to these chat apps. The state just follows. As sceptical as i am, i think, i want the state to resolve online crimes.
    • throwaway290 2y ago
      > Obviously, the moment these platforms lose privacy, the criminals cease communication on them immediately You overestimate how smart they are, you forget how a lot of crime is opportunistic, that if abuser has to convince a child to install a shady app they would have much lower success rate and set off many alarms, etc.
• tekknik 2y ago
  This is the standard reaction humans have these days, ban things because a small minority screw it up. See guns.