Comment by kazinator
16 days ago
The bad guys know where to find solid open source crypto for their cloud backups and whatnot.
Therefore you know this is not about chasing the bad guys. It's about keeping the Average Joe under the thumb.
16 days ago
The bad guys know where to find solid open source crypto for their cloud backups and whatnot.
Therefore you know this is not about chasing the bad guys. It's about keeping the Average Joe under the thumb.
It'll catch the bad guys who don't know what they're doing, which is a pretty big percentage of them.
Yeah, this is likely not intended to catch the most sophisticated of hackers, but your average drug dealer / murderer / thief / paedophile.
I don't know where the belief that all criminals are tech experts comes from; the popularity of cool-looking "encrypted" phones as opposed to actually encrypted apps like Signal should have long dispelled that myth.
I'd argue that the opposite is probably true, people who think that crime pays are less smart and more impulsive than the average person, and hence less likely to think about things like this.
> I don't know where the belief that all criminals are tech experts comes from;
From forums of tech experts.
I do not think this attempt by the authorities will be any useful, while it would initially work... well these guys may not be hackers but are not idiots and over time you will get your average baddies become tech-savvy enough to circumvent this.
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> I don't know where the belief that all criminals are tech experts comes from; the popularity of cool-looking "encrypted" phones as opposed to actually encrypted apps like Signal should have long dispelled that myth.
I think it's a case of this: https://xkcd.com/2501/
People here work at the level of things like RowHammer, normal people don't think past the idea that a padlock icon on the screen makes them safe.
I don't know to what extent this is true. A lot of criminals strike me as good at chopping off fingers etc but not computer stuff.
There absolutely is a balance between Average Joe's right to privacy and privacy restrictions for fighting crime. Without undermining the former, I'm astounded how HN discounts the latter 100%. It is real.
I disagree. There should no compromise on my privacy ever. We are not (yet) in a dictatorship and I’m not a criminal. Why should I suffer because governments are incompetent?
Devil's advocate: we accept compromise of people's basic freedom of movement (via arrest) when under investigation. Even though we know a non-negligible amount are innocent, virtually everyone considers it a necessary compromise
Perhaps part of the difference is that the public acknowledge this as a necessary _evil_ and get rightly outraged when they hear of people being detained without good cause. But with privacy, especially electronic privacy, almost nobody cares when "we will only allow a small number of agents to use this for imminent terrorist danger" inevitably turns to "we will let any random council worker casually pull up every website you've been to with no warrant"
5 replies →
In a situation where a criminal used Whatsapp and decrypting it is needed for the conviction, why should I suffer because of your absolute views on privacy?
I hold neither of the extreme views, and frankly I am baffled by anyone in either of them.
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Because the latter are fucking pathological liars who maintain a rachet stealing away rights. They earned their reflexsive distrust.
Something something ounce of freedom something something safety something something deserves neither
That's true at a point in time, but bad guys start out as clueless noobs with poor opsec. The Silk Road guy, for example, was identified by forum posts he made before becoming a drug lord. The sort of people who become radicalized through online videos aren't using strong crypto until after they've committed to becoming terrorists. So a database of texts going back several years is quite useful in catching actual bad guys.
Which is not to say I approve of more surveillance. Just that surveillance of convenient modes of communication (iMessage) is useful to serious crime fighting.
> The bad guys know where to find solid open source crypto for their cloud backups and whatnot.
That's a very bold assumption after EncroChat and SkyECC.