Comment by K0nserv
1 day ago
Already the US can serve as a good example when discussing the need for unbreakable cryptography and e2e systems. The current decline nicely illustrates how quickly you can go from "The police have legitimate needs to break encryption to find heinous criminals" to something far more dystopian.
No amount of crypto is going to protect you from this mess. Technical safeguards work as long as it is backed by the law and the constitution. But when they are suppressed, the people in power will just find someone smarter than you and bribe, gaslight, bully, blackmail or beat them into helping them compromise such safeguards. And not to mention the fact that they love playing hideous psyops games. This is a social and political problem. You need social and political solutions. Technical solutions are just band-aids.
> No amount of crypto is going to protect you from this mess. Technical safeguards work as long as it is backed by the law and the constitution. But when they are suppressed, the people in power will just find someone smarter than you and bribe, gaslight, bully, blackmail or beat them into helping them compromise such safeguards.
I don't agree. Having unbreakable crypto is the absence of a tool. My point is that a democratic government can create the tool with good intentions, but you are only one election and a few months of backsliding away from the tool being used for nefarious purposes. You are right that technical solutions are just band-aids, but if you never create the tool it cannot be abused by a new authoritarian government.
True, while not panacea, there is a reason why 'going dark' was perceived as an issue.