Comment by beezlewax
14 hours ago
I emailed my local TD minister in Ireland about the inherent dangers of chat control. They had some lacky respond with an email that framed the conversation in a way that made it look like I was interested in the illegal content and not privacy/control or nefarious future governments.
This is what I fear the most. It is gas lighting and just manipulation. The idea of privacy will become associated with crime.
Further down the line technical solutions that are private will become illegal and in general not being pro survailance will get you in trouble
Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to.
The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see their side, how new tech create new problems, and help solve it in least privacy invasive ways.
Otherwise you will always be seen as somebody who has shady agenda. It's just reality. Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.
But chat control and age verification are different things.
> But chat control and age verification are different things.
Although they appear to be different different things at first sight, they share the same agenda and objective, mass surveillance and identification of the citizens. Once the door is opened, it can be expected that things will not end there; Politicians and their patrons will exploit this data under "committees" (and of course be excluded from such surveillance as an aggravating factor).
Nowadays it's needed a court order to access legally to the privacy of citizens, and this must be done by the Police or the Interpol, nevertheless someones want to break this.
If they were really worried by the citizens security, they would increase the number of police and judges working in this digital divisions, among other things related to this.
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> Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.
It's a matter of phrasing things. Moxie had this illustrative take: If your chat is not e2ee, it'a a group chat. It's you, your mom, every secret service in the world and some ISP employees as well. If we could clarify to our social circles and broader society that every non-e2ee chat can be browsed by some overpaid freckled 20-something borded out of his mind at a FAANG or an ISP then the viewpoint could change.
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I think the below comments answer rather well for me. But of course you are rigth that criminals use technology... I just don't see it as the main issue here.
I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash... But maybe some use crypto yes. And maybe criminals use e2ee. And Marybe you are rigth that it is a problematic thing for law enforcement. That is not the point though.
The point is criminalizing ordinary people for something completely reasonable like wanting to have the ability to talk in private. And talk in private about what they think of the current leadership...
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>Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down.
And none of these things were ever made illegal.
>Ordinary people do not care about e2ee.
I am an ordinary person, and I care about the right to be secure and private in my communications. The founders of the United States put it in our Bill of Rights. Mail in America can't just be read without a warrant; it is protected by the 4th Amendment.
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How is it possible to be that level of biased, to not observe that the government is a product of mass violence?
And e2ee/cryptography/bitcoin is just the implementation of free speech which supposed to be guaranted?
It is like saying that killing people is OK but storing photo of oneself nudes is a crime - and keep pretending to be not idiot.
Ordinary people tend to care about privacy from government intrusion when you talk to them about it, and e2ee is so prevalent for lots of everyday communication that it isn't something they think about.
Discord recently introduced e2ee for voice chat. Apple has iMessage and Facetime. Whatsapp and to a lesser extent Signal are massively popular.
If you asked and ordinary person "Should the government be able to retroactively access your voice and written communications?" most people would probably react negatively.
Sure, in the pre-computer world, the US could possibly intercept letters and phone calls, but the complexity of that was high enough that it meant it could only happen with really strong cause and cost. With the barrier to scraping up unencrypted communications at near-zero (for governments and hyperscalers), the need for everyday citizens to have protected communications is higher.
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"Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room"
> The idea of privacy will become associated with crime.
The risk is there but it is not a given. The debate is not new, it's been going on for decades. It's a permanent struggle.
Respond and ask them directly if they're accusing you of a crime, or if they intend to address the point of your message rather than making libelous statements that they may later be forced to explain should they persist.