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Its both, ultimately politics is not all-knowing and you can't stamp out all technical solutions. Like, breaking encryption is just not possible if the encrypt

Its both, ultimately politics is not all-knowing and you can't stamp out all technical solutions. Like, breaking encryption is just not possible if the encryption is set using a proper algorithm. Governments try, and they try to pass laws, but it's literally impossible. No amount of political will can change that. Ultimately I can write an encryption algorithm or use GPG or something and nobody on Earth, no matter how motivated or how rich, can read what I encrypted, provided I do not let out the key. If I just keep the password in my head, it's impossible. So, until we invent technology to extract secrets from a human brain, you cannot universally break encryption. Its just not possible. Doesn't matter if 7 billion people worldwide vote for that. Doesn't matter if Elon Musk wants it. Doesn't matter if the FBI, CIA, and the NSA all work together.

_aavaa_ 1y ago
I would like to introduce you to rubber hose cryptography.
- kps 1y ago
  That doesn't work well for mass surveillance of regular people.
  - _aavaa_ 1y ago
    We’re talking about how the ability for the public to use strong encryption is contingent on laws allowing that. Normies won’t start using PGP. Normies will use whatever popular app their friends are on. Those apps can have their encryption made illegal, kicked off stores, and their developers jailed. The thing protecting the developers from this isn’t the strength of their encryption, it’s the laws saying the encryption is legal.
dns_snek 1y ago
It's not a technical problem. Chat Control wasn't about breaking encryption, it would bypass encryption with client-side scanning. It targets the apathetic 99% of the population who won't have the energy or knowledge to do anything about it. It's also not a technical problem because technical solutions (like GPG) already exist. The problem is political (stopping these authoritarian laws) or should that fail, social (convincing people to inconvenience themselves with alternative communication apps that aren't available on app stores)
- Gormo 1y ago
  > It targets the apathetic 99% of the population who won't have the energy or knowledge to do anything about it. That's the same 99% of the population whose motivations and priorities define the incentive structures applicable to politics. If 99% of the population don't care about your issue, you're not going to win the political fight without quite a lot of leverage attached to entirely unrelated issues. So the choice is between creating impediments to the enforcement of this bad policy, and at minimum using technology to establish a frontier beyond which it can't reach -- one that is at least available to those motivated to seek it out -- or instead surrendering completely to politics controlling everything, with it being almost a certainty that the political process will be dominated by adverse interests.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    > If 99% of the population don't care about your issue, you're not going to win the political fight Indeed, that's why I'm not very hopeful about the future of our privacy. We will need technical solutions to Chat Control of course, but that's just the last step. First we need to crack open iOS and Android with anti-trust enforcement. An uncensored chat app is useless if we can't install it on our devices without government approval. Unfortunately a significant portion of the tech community is in favor of these walled ~~prisons~~ gardens. Anything we try to do is doomed to fail without freedom to do what we want with devices we own, so until we get past that hurdle I'm hopeless that we'll be able to do anything about Chat Control.
    - Gormo 1y ago
      > Indeed, that's why I'm not very hopeful about the future of our privacy. I'm not very hopeful about politics generally, for that very reason. The obvious solution is to work to make politics less of a determinant of outcomes. > First we need to crack open iOS and Android with anti-trust enforcement. Another political solution? Not going to happen. We need to work towards a functional mobile OS ecosystem that isn't controlled by Apple, Google, or the government. That won't be easy, and won't offer any immediate short-term options, but work is already in progress, and will in the long run be far more effective than waiting for politics to save us.

_aavaa_ 1y ago

I would like to introduce you to rubber hose cryptography.

kps 1y ago
That doesn't work well for mass surveillance of regular people.
- _aavaa_ 1y ago
  We’re talking about how the ability for the public to use strong encryption is contingent on laws allowing that. Normies won’t start using PGP. Normies will use whatever popular app their friends are on. Those apps can have their encryption made illegal, kicked off stores, and their developers jailed. The thing protecting the developers from this isn’t the strength of their encryption, it’s the laws saying the encryption is legal.

dns_snek 1y ago

It's not a technical problem. Chat Control wasn't about breaking encryption, it would bypass encryption with client-side scanning. It targets the apathetic 99% of the population who won't have the energy or knowledge to do anything about it. It's also not a technical problem because technical solutions (like GPG) already exist. The problem is political (stopping these authoritarian laws) or should that fail, social (convincing people to inconvenience themselves with alternative communication apps that aren't available on app stores)

Gormo 1y ago
> It targets the apathetic 99% of the population who won't have the energy or knowledge to do anything about it. That's the same 99% of the population whose motivations and priorities define the incentive structures applicable to politics. If 99% of the population don't care about your issue, you're not going to win the political fight without quite a lot of leverage attached to entirely unrelated issues. So the choice is between creating impediments to the enforcement of this bad policy, and at minimum using technology to establish a frontier beyond which it can't reach -- one that is at least available to those motivated to seek it out -- or instead surrendering completely to politics controlling everything, with it being almost a certainty that the political process will be dominated by adverse interests.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  > If 99% of the population don't care about your issue, you're not going to win the political fight Indeed, that's why I'm not very hopeful about the future of our privacy. We will need technical solutions to Chat Control of course, but that's just the last step. First we need to crack open iOS and Android with anti-trust enforcement. An uncensored chat app is useless if we can't install it on our devices without government approval. Unfortunately a significant portion of the tech community is in favor of these walled ~~prisons~~ gardens. Anything we try to do is doomed to fail without freedom to do what we want with devices we own, so until we get past that hurdle I'm hopeless that we'll be able to do anything about Chat Control.
  - Gormo 1y ago
    > Indeed, that's why I'm not very hopeful about the future of our privacy. I'm not very hopeful about politics generally, for that very reason. The obvious solution is to work to make politics less of a determinant of outcomes. > First we need to crack open iOS and Android with anti-trust enforcement. Another political solution? Not going to happen. We need to work towards a functional mobile OS ecosystem that isn't controlled by Apple, Google, or the government. That won't be easy, and won't offer any immediate short-term options, but work is already in progress, and will in the long run be far more effective than waiting for politics to save us.