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>“Privacy is really, really important and we all have the right to our privacy,” said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol, the law enforcement age

by devmor 2y ago

>“Privacy is really, really important and we all have the right to our privacy,” said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union. “But when we see now that encrypted communication is really an enabler for crime, then we have to do something.” That was a pretty terrifying line to read - the idea that they feel comfortable assuming a great deal of the public will agree with or find this reasonable is pretty worrisome.

try_the_bass 2y ago
I think a great deal of the public does agree with this sentiment, though? In general, "the public" is usually okay with things that reduce anti-social behavior.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  The public would probably say that they agree that things that reduce anti-social behavior. But if you instead phrase it as: “should international law enforcement have a perpetual copy of every single written message you have ever sent in order to reduce anti social behavior?” You will discover that there is a limit to what people will tolerate.
  - lb1lf 2y ago
    There hopefully is, but it never ceases to amaze me how many, even highly intelligent, reasonable people, buy into the 'I don't do anything illegal, hence I have nothing to hide and off to the races we go' mindset. Heck, even if I try to point out all the fun side effects - say, how embarrassing it would be if a copy of your, ahem, correspondence with that cute intern was leaked, or simple guilt by association, like finding yourself on a watchlist after buying a car from a suspected Islamic militant or something similar, I am mostly met with a shrug and a variation on the theme 'Oh, they'd never do that / surely if that was to happen, it would be fixed in due course'. Basically, I more and more feel like the odd man out - as my position that 'Seeing as I am not doing anything criminal, the authorities have no business snooping on me' is seen as the militant one. Won't somebody think of the children, etc. Sigh. Rant over.
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      People who say they have nothing to hide can be shut up quickly by asking them to tell you their online banking credentials.
      - try_the_bass 2y ago
        But this isn't the same, though? People might be more than happy to share information with you, but they're probably not too keen on giving you ownership over it or anything else they might own. There is a bit of a difference between "access to my information" and "control over it", and you're kind of conflating the two
        dghlsakjg 2y ago
        I didn’t say I wanted to take control of anything, or even use the information, I just want to know what the credentials are… The point is that everyone has information that they would rather not have distributed. To prove the point, you just have to find the right piece of information to ask for. There’s always something that people do, in fact, have to hide.
        try_the_bass 2y ago
        > I didn’t say I wanted to take control of anything, or even use the information, I just want to know what the credentials are… But giving you the credentials is giving you control? They're the same thing in this case! The fact that you're asking for them implies that you want to use them, does it not? Otherwise, why would you ask? > The point is that everyone has information that they would rather not have distributed. To prove the point, you just have to find the right piece of information to ask for. There’s always something that people do, in fact, have to hide. But they're saying they have nothing to hide because they haven't done anything illegal. The original statement was "I don't do anything illegal, hence I have nothing to hide". They're saying that someone looking through the history of the things they've said and done would find no evidence of wrongdoing. If you asked for their banking records, that might be an appropriate thing to ask for in the pursuit of evidence of wrongdoing. But asking for the ability to control their finances isn't the same thing. The ability to control their finances has no relevance to any illegal behaviors they may or may not have partaken in. So you're not really finding the "right piece of information to ask for". Instead, you're cleverly moving the goalposts from "information relevant to the search for wrongdoing" to a much broader scope. I don't think anyone who says "I have nothing to hide" believes that law enforcement should have access to your bank account to spend your money; but they're probably fine with some level of law enforcement having the ability to view their financial records under the right circumstances. Since they've committed no financial crimes, there will be nothing to see. Of course you'll argue the hypothetical that "everyone has committed some crime" (which is probably true!), but plenty of people commit crimes accidentally and are let go with no punishment (or never even prosecuted) when it became clear that there was no intention of breaking the law. This obviously isn't true in call cases, because lack of criminal intent does not prevent damages, etc. However, the best way to prove that there was no criminal intent is by having more information about that person, to demonstrate that their previous actions are consistent with such a narrative.
- devmor 2y ago
  I mean that it is worrisome that the public would agree with this, or at least that public sentiment is shifting in that direction enough that this statement doesn't cause visceral outlash against anyone that would say it.
  - try_the_bass 2y ago
    Why would it? As encryption and other privacy technologies become more widespread, so too have those who take advantage of them for the sake of enabling their anti-social behaviors. It also allows people with anti-social behaviors to coordinate in ways that are increasingly hidden from the groups they are working against. So yeah, people are going to have an increasingly negative response to something they generally used to have neutral-to-positive responses to. No one should be surprised that this is the case, least of the very people advocating for more (and more widely available) privacy tools! Ubiquitous privacy leads to ubiquitous distrust. After all, how do people know someone is trustworthy? By being able to see their actions, and see how they compare to their stated intentions. A mismatch between stated intentions and actions is evidence that a person is not trustworthy; the more of their actions they can hide from others, the more duplicitous they can be without being discovered. Put differently, and more personally: In my face-to-face interactions, I may have never met a person before, but I can still "vibe check" them based on the wealth of side channels available to my senses and intuition. It's subject to my own personal biases and things, but I have come to trust my intuitions. Online, I have next to none of those same contextual clues, so my default is to just not trust anyone. If I choose to do something online that requires trust, I appreciate the fact that people have online histories; and if someone has chosen to scrub theirs, this isn't so much of a red flag as it is a reason to not diverge from the status quo. So when I imagine the world that privacy advocates want, where you know nothing about anyone that isn't voluntarily disclosed, I see a vary dark, mistrustful place where effective social cooperation has been utterly neutered. Even when people are willing to share information that "validates" their trustworthiness, the fact that _all_ information about them would be voluntarily disclosed convinces me that it would be so curated as to be useless for the task. This is made even worse if you imagine the deniable authentication folks get their way. I also personally believe that the effective anonymity of the internet is in large part behind the decay of trust in general, for many of the same reasons. We no longer trust each other because we know so little about each other; and what we do know we trust less and less, because it's becoming increasingly easier to hide or curate that information. Online privacy advocates have already largely gotten their wish: it's not terribly difficult to be anonymous online, and I think our online discourse has been decimated as a result. Obviously not only due to accessible anonymity, but it's certainly a substantial factor. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of my interactions online these days are with people I've never seen before and will never see again. And the people I do recognize are generally the people I'm least inclined to want to interact with (i.e. basically any Twitter personality). It's all pretty fucked up, if you ask me
jfactorial 2y ago
"Freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion, these are really, really important and we all have rights to them..." said a law enforcement director who would soon make clear they didn't believe in rights at all. "But," they continued rather than stopping at defending rights, "when those rights can be used to enable activity which we deem criminal but hasn't yet been tested in court, we have to take them away."

by devmor 2y ago

try_the_bass 2y ago

I think a great deal of the public does agree with this sentiment, though? In general, "the public" is usually okay with things that reduce anti-social behavior.

dghlsakjg 2y ago
The public would probably say that they agree that things that reduce anti-social behavior. But if you instead phrase it as: “should international law enforcement have a perpetual copy of every single written message you have ever sent in order to reduce anti social behavior?” You will discover that there is a limit to what people will tolerate.
- lb1lf 2y ago
  There hopefully is, but it never ceases to amaze me how many, even highly intelligent, reasonable people, buy into the 'I don't do anything illegal, hence I have nothing to hide and off to the races we go' mindset. Heck, even if I try to point out all the fun side effects - say, how embarrassing it would be if a copy of your, ahem, correspondence with that cute intern was leaked, or simple guilt by association, like finding yourself on a watchlist after buying a car from a suspected Islamic militant or something similar, I am mostly met with a shrug and a variation on the theme 'Oh, they'd never do that / surely if that was to happen, it would be fixed in due course'. Basically, I more and more feel like the odd man out - as my position that 'Seeing as I am not doing anything criminal, the authorities have no business snooping on me' is seen as the militant one. Won't somebody think of the children, etc. Sigh. Rant over.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    People who say they have nothing to hide can be shut up quickly by asking them to tell you their online banking credentials.
    - try_the_bass 2y ago
      But this isn't the same, though? People might be more than happy to share information with you, but they're probably not too keen on giving you ownership over it or anything else they might own. There is a bit of a difference between "access to my information" and "control over it", and you're kind of conflating the two
      - dghlsakjg 2y ago
        I didn’t say I wanted to take control of anything, or even use the information, I just want to know what the credentials are… The point is that everyone has information that they would rather not have distributed. To prove the point, you just have to find the right piece of information to ask for. There’s always something that people do, in fact, have to hide.
        try_the_bass 2y ago
        > I didn’t say I wanted to take control of anything, or even use the information, I just want to know what the credentials are… But giving you the credentials is giving you control? They're the same thing in this case! The fact that you're asking for them implies that you want to use them, does it not? Otherwise, why would you ask? > The point is that everyone has information that they would rather not have distributed. To prove the point, you just have to find the right piece of information to ask for. There’s always something that people do, in fact, have to hide. But they're saying they have nothing to hide because they haven't done anything illegal. The original statement was "I don't do anything illegal, hence I have nothing to hide". They're saying that someone looking through the history of the things they've said and done would find no evidence of wrongdoing. If you asked for their banking records, that might be an appropriate thing to ask for in the pursuit of evidence of wrongdoing. But asking for the ability to control their finances isn't the same thing. The ability to control their finances has no relevance to any illegal behaviors they may or may not have partaken in. So you're not really finding the "right piece of information to ask for". Instead, you're cleverly moving the goalposts from "information relevant to the search for wrongdoing" to a much broader scope. I don't think anyone who says "I have nothing to hide" believes that law enforcement should have access to your bank account to spend your money; but they're probably fine with some level of law enforcement having the ability to view their financial records under the right circumstances. Since they've committed no financial crimes, there will be nothing to see. Of course you'll argue the hypothetical that "everyone has committed some crime" (which is probably true!), but plenty of people commit crimes accidentally and are let go with no punishment (or never even prosecuted) when it became clear that there was no intention of breaking the law. This obviously isn't true in call cases, because lack of criminal intent does not prevent damages, etc. However, the best way to prove that there was no criminal intent is by having more information about that person, to demonstrate that their previous actions are consistent with such a narrative.
devmor 2y ago
I mean that it is worrisome that the public would agree with this, or at least that public sentiment is shifting in that direction enough that this statement doesn't cause visceral outlash against anyone that would say it.
- try_the_bass 2y ago
  Why would it? As encryption and other privacy technologies become more widespread, so too have those who take advantage of them for the sake of enabling their anti-social behaviors. It also allows people with anti-social behaviors to coordinate in ways that are increasingly hidden from the groups they are working against. So yeah, people are going to have an increasingly negative response to something they generally used to have neutral-to-positive responses to. No one should be surprised that this is the case, least of the very people advocating for more (and more widely available) privacy tools! Ubiquitous privacy leads to ubiquitous distrust. After all, how do people know someone is trustworthy? By being able to see their actions, and see how they compare to their stated intentions. A mismatch between stated intentions and actions is evidence that a person is not trustworthy; the more of their actions they can hide from others, the more duplicitous they can be without being discovered. Put differently, and more personally: In my face-to-face interactions, I may have never met a person before, but I can still "vibe check" them based on the wealth of side channels available to my senses and intuition. It's subject to my own personal biases and things, but I have come to trust my intuitions. Online, I have next to none of those same contextual clues, so my default is to just not trust anyone. If I choose to do something online that requires trust, I appreciate the fact that people have online histories; and if someone has chosen to scrub theirs, this isn't so much of a red flag as it is a reason to not diverge from the status quo. So when I imagine the world that privacy advocates want, where you know nothing about anyone that isn't voluntarily disclosed, I see a vary dark, mistrustful place where effective social cooperation has been utterly neutered. Even when people are willing to share information that "validates" their trustworthiness, the fact that _all_ information about them would be voluntarily disclosed convinces me that it would be so curated as to be useless for the task. This is made even worse if you imagine the deniable authentication folks get their way. I also personally believe that the effective anonymity of the internet is in large part behind the decay of trust in general, for many of the same reasons. We no longer trust each other because we know so little about each other; and what we do know we trust less and less, because it's becoming increasingly easier to hide or curate that information. Online privacy advocates have already largely gotten their wish: it's not terribly difficult to be anonymous online, and I think our online discourse has been decimated as a result. Obviously not only due to accessible anonymity, but it's certainly a substantial factor. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of my interactions online these days are with people I've never seen before and will never see again. And the people I do recognize are generally the people I'm least inclined to want to interact with (i.e. basically any Twitter personality). It's all pretty fucked up, if you ask me

jfactorial 2y ago

"Freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion, these are really, really important and we all have rights to them..." said a law enforcement director who would soon make clear they didn't believe in rights at all. "But," they continued rather than stopping at defending rights, "when those rights can be used to enable activity which we deem criminal but hasn't yet been tested in court, we have to take them away."