Comment by ball_of_lint
13 hours ago
Oh it's so nuanced and hard to parse that he's arguing for compromise.
The trouble is, compromise isn't really a tenable option with encryption. Either you make a draconian law that forces all electronic devices to run approved software only, or people will have access to easy encrypted messaging. There's really no middle ground, because where the smallest weakening of encryption affects everyone's privacy, only outlawing encryption completely will get it out of the hands of criminals. The cat's out of the bag.
Author here and in earlier writing seems to make the argument that a little compromise would make the courts less unhappy, but I think that's misattributing motivation. These laws actually are originated by big tech, who think they will be shielded from liability and make more money off of selling your data. https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
I don’t think the author is arguing for compromise though?
I think the author would love to see more enlightened policy, but he doesn’t believe it’s going to happen. Hence the closer: “ Please make my predictions come out wrong.“
Also, these laws don’t simply originate from big tech. That particularly OSINT study was done by someone who wrote their own interpretation of the data points they uncovered, to create a narrative that was comforting to them.
Big tech has been aware that a reckoning was coming, because they and safety advocates have been fighting for years now. The fact that there was no actual teeth or ability to enforce e regulation, and that harms were evolving beyond reason and imagination was general knowledge.
Meta is lobbying to influence the shape of the manacles they know are coming.
> make a draconian law that forces all electronic devices to run approved software only
That would outlaw programming. It's just not feasible at all, anyone with any kind of tech literacy understands that encryption is here to stay. It's also necessary for the web to function at all for the things we use it for, such as banking.
There is no way to prevent people from communicating in secret. Even if they did strictly control digital communication people would just communicate some other way.