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How is this an erosion of citizens rights? From my understanding, every country in the world have always been able to tap to phone lines to listen to conversat
by whynotmaybe 2y ago
How is this an erosion of citizens rights?
From my understanding, every country in the world have always been able to tap to phone lines to listen to conversations whenever they wanted (sometimes surrounded by laws).
And now every country is trying to do the same with electronic communications that were evading this situation.
Of course it will be abused, it always was the case and always will.
I see this more as a wake up call that only face to face communication in private settings are legally private.
Privacy was never automatic before 2000`s, it required effort.
It seems people forgot that.
- NalNezumi 2y ago>From my understanding, every country in the world > it always was the case and always will >before 2000`s, it required effort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
- whynotmaybe 2y agoHow ? It seems to be a continuation of historical trends where privacy was never automatic but somehow people always forget it. Is this fundamentally different?
- fwn 2y agoWhen I was standing in the field in the Middle Ages, harvesting turnips, and I said to the guy next to me: I don't think I like our prince. There was no permanent record of that. If I was standing at the loom and I said to the weaver next to me: I don't think we're getting enough of a share of the value of our work, then there was no permanent record of that. Today, if I ask my colleague on MS Teams what he wants for lunch, IT will probably still be able to process that message automatically 30 years from now. Without a persistent record, privacy was the default. All messages were ephemeral. Large-scale automated surveillance power is a contemporary anomaly, and it is currently uncertain whether open and democratic societies will survive this very recent and dangerous threat.
- whynotmaybe 2y agoYou're comparing oral discussion with written discussions. We got so distracted by shiny new tools that we forgot what it was underneath. My grandfather, before the modern computer era, used to say "words fade, writings stays". Trying to prevent government from breaking encryption won't solve the underlying issue that we are naive.
- andelink 2y agoAm I wrong to expect a letter I send someone via mail to not be opened and read by the post office first? I’ll be damned if I ever reach your level of indifference.
- whynotmaybe 2y agoNo, you can expect that it won't be read. But nobody can assure you that it never will. This is the same with email or IM. I don't go around giving my Gmail password to everyone, but I know that many processes at Gmail read my mails. I don't consider it indifference to know that every written conversation I make could be read by someone. Nobody should blindly trust anyone telling you the opposite.
- fragmede 2y agoDon't blindly trust it, but that's the whole point of end to end encryption!
- whynotmaybe 2y agoWhat's the point of encryption? It's to protect data for some time, not forever. All encryption can (and will) be broken. I was there when Md5 became obsolete and was replaced with Sha-1 ( made by the nsa) which is now also obsolete. I was there when all 8 letters password on windows could be cracked in minutes. And discovered that windows kept a copy of the hash locally, unless your password was +15chars. Don't blindly trust end to end encryption.