We (the citizens) need access to all the politicians communication, just in case if they do anything illegal... 24/7 microphones, digital communication tracker, etc. Let's start with that, and then move on to "normal people", if politicians still believe in no privacy.
Politicians are the most surveilled people, and sometimes vote for things like this for fear of or as the result of being targeted by their own or other countries' intelligence agencies.
If the CIA wants Spain to ban encryption, they're not going to be bothered by the resistance of some Spanish MPs, they're going to fix the problem.
We (the citizens) need to ban secret police and secret courts.
> Politicians are the most surveilled people, and sometimes vote for things like this for fear of or as the result of being targeted by their own or other countries' intelligence agencies.
Not here. Probably not anywhere outside US and some very few countries.
Politicians are mostly corrupt, though degrees vary. Most relevant child abuse was covered by famous politicians¹²³⁴⁵. Nevertheless, the same politicians cut budgets for police to do actual investigation work, because that could harm themselves, then want to cut the last line of defense the public has to do actual investigation and journalism (which requires free speech and privacy) by declaring that this is required to fight pedophilia.
We need to do something against this. We really do.
Politicians are just ambitious people, sharing full spectrum of other traits. Most people would become equally corrupt if presented the opportunity. Being ambitious just amplifies the temptation.
You underestimate the selection pressure. While I agree that many people would become corrupted, the profession (so to speak) attracts certain people. It is even to the point where you need some negative traits (explicitly: skeletons in the closet) to rise up, because it means you're easier to control.
If you downvote, please at least state a reason. All of the links are reputable and verified. And all of them were covered by famous, reputable politicians.
You state that "Most relevant child abuse was covered by famous politicians" and list 5 examples. This does by no means prove your claim. For all I know, the rate of child abusers could be much lower among politicians than in the general population.
Didn't downvote. But saying we need to do something about corrupt politicians isn't novel. I'm also not sure how pedophilia and Jeffrey Epstein is meaningfully related to the topic at hand.
Politicians usually go with the "think of the children" persuasion tactic when they want to do some nefarious stuff (and when they don't "fight terrorism" or recently "misinformation").
Two good reasons to downvote this would be 1) that it's a conspiracy theory and 2) that reading about pedophilia every time one turns on the internet is exhausting.
Not everything that's uncomfortable and swept under the rug is a conspiracy theory. Calling the revelations about Jeffrey Eppstein and his shady connections in 2023 conspiracy theory comes off as dismissive.
Nobody said that on this thread, I hope you know that.
Critical thinking and scepticism are essential, both when you read things from traditionally reputable sources, like WaPo, NYT, state media, politicians, and alternative media, like Youtube opinion people, online forums, or your friends, family and colleagues.
My point is simply that "distrusting the government" doesn't mean you should believe the theories. The theories are probably less trustworthy. They can be less trustworthy than a untrustworthy government!
> Critical thinking and scepticism are essential, both when you read things from traditionally reputable sources, like WaPo, NYT, state media, politicians, and alternative media, like Youtube opinion people, online forums, or your friends, family and colleagues.
Not all of them - the Time one from 2014 (link number 3) actually links to the Wikipedia article that has a section about the VIP paedophile ring claims (that the article is mostly about) being discredited in 2015 [1]. (The page title was changed from 'Scandal' to 'Hoax' after the article was published and redirects)
"it's a conspiracy theory" Is not a fact a good reason.
Why do conspiracy theories get a bad rap? it's because there's people who think the moon landing isn't real and the earth is flat. These are what jumps to mind when anyone says "conspiracy theory". Here you are using that association to try to cover for corrupt politicians, which is not exactly a very far out there concept.
Because it's usually speculation without evidence, and because no matter how much evidence contradicts a conspiracy theory people continue to cling to it like a religion.
I'm not sure what "Most relevant child abuse was covered by famous politicians" is supposed to mean, but most child abuse isn't committed by politicians, there is no evidence that most politicians are child abusers, and there have been several insane conspiracy theories about child abusing politicians in recent years so it's pretty natural to be skeptical when it looks like someone's starting down that path.
I expect there's already people who'd say "The crazy conspiracy theories about child abusing political figures were intentionally spread online by child abusing politicians so that anyone on social media talking about politicians abusing children would only be met with eye rolls"
Are you disagreeing with the information in GP's links?
As far as I can tell this is all looks pretty legit and the onus is on people like you to prove that all this evidence is somehow fabricated.
This powerful "pedophile network" is likely politicians who shopped online at Tesco in the early 2000s and had their credit card numbers used by criminals for fraudulent purposes, and likely got caught up in Operation Ore and falsely accused of having purchased child pornography online. Thousands of people in the UK were raided by police and had their life destroyed over this, and the majority were entirely innocent.
At the time the News of the World, a Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid,
was stoking the moral panic over pedophiles and creating an atmosphere of fervour over this issue. Maybe other News Corporation owned media worldwide might have started this whole panic around child pornography in the first place, in the early 2000s? With Murdoch seeing the Internet as a large threat to his dominance over the media?
And rooting out hidden enemies within is typical of what happens during a moral panic. Same with McCarthyism. In reality it's very unlikely that there are pedophile networks within the UK government.
My reason to downvote will be: Around half the girls I've met in my life were molested by adults as children, and it wasn't by famous people or politicians. It was by neighbors and family members in the suburbs where they grew up. It's fine to call out hypocrisy in the ruling class that covers up for their own while claiming to be trying to address the problem, but at the end of the day the vast majority of the millions of daily cases of child abuse are taking place right nextdoor or even in the same houses as the people who make a lot of noise about corrupt politicians. I'd even go as far as to say that an obsession with famous child abuse cases is a good indicator of someone who's either committed or thought about committing that sort of crime.
Spain is already a 1-party consent country, it is legal to record any conversation as long as you are part of it. However, it is not legal to publish them, but they can be used in a trial.
Thanks. Looking up “1-party” sent me down an interesting rabbit hole learning about the limited “0-party” rights of interception. For radio interception in NJ, it is legal (and only legal?) to intercept:
f. Any person to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted:
(1) by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;
(2) by any governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communication system, including police and fire, readily accessible to the general public;
(3) by a station operating on an authorized frequency within the bands allocated to the amateur, citizens band, or general mobile radio services; or
(4) by any marine or aeronautical communications system;
———
Which would imply that broadband RF recording using SDRs, even if it excludes the cell phone bands, is not OK!
For example, the MURS band seems to be illegal to intercept.
Absolutely ridiculous, this signal is coming into your private property, it should never be illegal to receive it. So they are criminalizing monitoring the voltage on a piece of wire (an antenna) in your own property, that is what an SDR does.
These signals are being sent into your property, whether you want it or not. I think you have a natural right to receive it. It doesn't matter if the government says it's illegal, or attempts to enforce it. Just as we can hear anything nearby with our ears, nobody tells us we can't overhear conversations in a restaurant, trying to do so would clearly be absurd. My opinion here is from natural law.
Can someone steelman the argument against one-party consent? I literally can't think of any reason anyone would want it, other than wanting to be able to lie about what they said later. It doesn't even help people who are saying things that might be dangerous if they leak, since illegal != impossible.
Having to be constantly on guard about what you say in case someone's recording you and can play it back for others, or in court, often out of context...
Basically, some expectation of privacy especially in a 1-on-1 conversation, even if it's via telecommunications tech rather than in-person.
Some people adopt a more filtered, cautious way of speaking anyway as a defense mechanism. For them it doesn't matter so much. Other people talk informally with less of a filter, and for them it matters quite a bit.
Given that recording is ubiquitous now anyway, and voice deepfakes are about to render even that irrelevant, there probably isn't a good argument against 1-party consent today.
(However, government officials, outside of a foreign policy context, deserve no privacy for anything related to their official duties. The argument that they need to be able to talk informally with their peers, without fear of public judgment, works against the public interest far more than it works for it. That helps build rapport, but no politician these days would fully trust someone they're just building rapport with; that kind of thing may be valuable for diplomatic relations and spies, but not for regular government officials. Privacy and secrecy among ordinary politicians is little more than a recipe for corruption and side-dealing that they know the public would be rightly upset about.)
To add some practical context to this insightful comment: in Belgium, 1-on-1 conversations are considered private and as such protected, meaning you need a judge order to listen in. However, If the conversation is professional, both parties are allowed to record it.
Now, any conversation with 3 or more parties is considered public. A closed group chat on whatsapp has the same legal protection as shouting it on a megaphone to a crowd, meaning none whatsoever and people have already been convicted for their speech in closed chats or forums.
> Can someone steelman the argument against one-party consent? I literally can't think of any reason anyone would want it, other than wanting to be able to lie about what they said later.
Are you actually asking hackernews, in a thread about banning encryption, why "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is not a good justification for being monitored without your consent?
I don't consider it "being monitored" when the person you're talking to is the one doing the recording. Contrast "I'm legally allowed to keep emails sent to me after I first read them" with "other people are legally allowed to read emails sent to me". Wouldn't almost everyone agree that the former is a good thing but the latter would be a bad thing?
> don't consider it "being monitored" when the person you're talking to is the one doing the recording
Compromise is reached in quiet, safe places. Politicians make bombastic statements for their base and donors, and then go behind closed doors to negotiate. You can't negotiate in earnest if every offer for compromise you put forward immediately results in (a) the losers of that compromise creating a ruckus and (b) your opponent using (a) to weaken you.
Public negotiations reward playing to the audience. (You see this in small groups–letting leaders or the people in a friend group who disagree pull aside almost always solves the problem better than litigating it as a group.) If every conversation might be recorded for replaying to a third party, then every conversation will be treated as an open one. That destroys room for compromise.
> Compromise is reached in quiet, safe places. Politicians make bombastic statements for their base and donors, and then go behind closed doors to negotiate.
That may be. But corruption also festers in quiet safe places. It's not clear to me that the the tradeoff is worth it.
> corruption also festers in quiet safe places. It's not clear to me that the the tradeoff is worth it.
Public legislating, private bargaining [1]. This keeps substantive deliberation in the public domain while the horse trading, the job republics delegate to elected representatives, has a limited space within which it can efficiently engage.
This seems like a weak argument since compromise may be more difficult, but it certainly isn't impossible when conversations are transparent. Eventually the "losers" of a compromise are going to learn about how their elected officials voted and what the impact of that vote will be for them, and they'll hold their elected officials accountable for it regardless.
It just isn't worth forcing every person to give up the ability to protect themselves by recording their everyday conversations just so that politicians can lie to the public and their donors while screwing over the people behind closed doors.
Legislative deliberation, i.e. hashing out details, should be open [1]. At the bargaining phase, when you're working out high-level frameworks, the theory says closed doors win [2]. (Put another way, in a transparent bargaining environment, the winning move is to ignore your opponent and beat your drums to your base.)
> Eventually the "losers" of a compromise are going to learn about how their elected officials voted
The point is to let both sides table ideas without having to face the downside. To propose what if scenarios to the other side.
That cuts two ways. If everything they said was on the record there would be no point in putting on a show since it will immediately turn out the show is all fake.
Imagine if politicians acted like normal people, negotiating things in nuance instead of being showmen.
Don't blame the politicians. Blame the people who have opinions. The public debate is so dominated by bad-faith arguments that it's not productive to treat it as a real debate. Until the social consequences of arguing in bad faith are severe enough, all meaningful political discussion must happen off the record.
Okay, fair enough. I was so focused on my own perception of privacy that it hadn't occurred to me that the person I'm talking to has every right to record the conversation just as much as they do to remember it.
Speaking as someone who often has to tell people "Email that to me or I won't remember it", I can see the utility without it being intrusive.
The main difference is that if they remember it and tell someone else, it's hearsay, but if they record it and play it for someone else, it's evidence. At least until deepfakes ruin that idea and make the two equivalently refutable.
You seem to be referring to zero-party consent, which yes HN would tend not to want. I think most of HN would be into one-party consent, meaning you can time shift that which you already had the ability to hear (and therefore let third parties hear it, without knowledge of the other original party).
The police already have the ability to monitor you without consent. One party consent lets people record their own conversations and push back against false allegations about what they did or did not say.
1. Privacy. The cornerstone of personal conversation has always been an inherent right to privacy. Traditionally, conversations held in confidence were sacrosanct, and any disclosure of their content required mutual agreement. Otherwise, the second party can simply deny it and it will never be known with certainty what has been said.
2. Chilling effect on authenticity. In a climate where any conversation could be recorded without one's consent and later used against them, people would be compelled to adopt calculated diplomacy in all their interactions. This would sterilize authentic conversation, replacing genuine thoughts with measured communication, removing a lot of depth and meaning.
3. Weaponization of speech. Recordings under a one-party consent system could be misused in a myriad of damaging ways, from creating training data for voice (deepfake) AIs to insidious forms of blackmail. This extends beyond traditional notions of blackmail to include public shaming or character assassination. This is the "group chat has leaked" scenario, but potentially decades later. One could be a completely different (and potentially reformed) person, but their past will always haunt them and not let them get ahead in their public life, like hold an office or public trust.
4. Limited utility. In many places that allow first-party consent, these recordings are not recognized as valid evidence in court without consent from all parties involved. This significantly undermines their perceived utility as a defensive tool. Is it worth surrendering our privacy for this?
5. Accountability for human folly. People often vent and ramble, it's part of our emotional expression and a necessary component of our mental health. If every idle venting or thoughtless comment were recorded and held against us, it would make our lives much less peaceful. Sometimes it's good to let some thoughts die in a conversation. Reflect on your own past and the blunders of youth - good that they were not recorded, right? This also applies to intoxicated conversations, conversations while suffering from mental health illness, and similar.
6. Two-party consent already serves many purposes. For most business or evidence needs, two-party consent is enough. One can simply tell the other party that they will start recording the call if the other party does not hang up, and that will be implicit second-party consent in many countries. So one can record conversations, and one can choose to have only recorded conversations with some people. One-party consent has only marginal benefits over two-party, but it has significant downsides.
7. Little effect on harassment or threats. Threats and intimidation could be made in other ways, like face-to-face, or through coded language. "Your political campaign is going great, it sounds like a guaranteed win unless someone fabricates a scandal. You need to play it safe with the people that could."
8. Third-party recording. One-party consent doesn't mean a third party isn't recording. For example, smartphones could record audio of conversations for ad targeting and government purposes if there was one-party consent (one party turned on the call recorder).
9. Other contexts. If the laws for one-party consent are too permissive, this could lead to a lot of surveillance activities becoming permissible. For example, the definition of a conversation could be stretched to include all chatter on an office floor if just one person consents to the recording (perhaps a manager).
> Chilling effect on authenticity, Accountability for human folly
There are lots of places with 1 party consent already. Not a problem
> Weaponization of speech
People who are going to commit crimes won't hesitate to commit other crimes. Irrelevant.
> Two-party consent already serves many purposes
For business 2 party consent is not enough. It would be enough if people didn't regularly commit crimes... but they do. Wage theft is probably the most common type of theft. Add on shenanigans with worker's comp, and other workplace nastiness and 1 party consent is very much needed.
> Little effect on harassment or threats
If one person can understand covert speech, other people can too. Irrelevant.
> Third-party recording
I'm a little sympathetic to accidental sharing of recordings, but there are plenty of ways to record that don't have this danger (dedicated recording devices and apps where the data doesn't leave the phone come to mind).
> Other contexts
Lots of things are possible. Your example isn't particularly compelling, though: not every instance of speech has an expectation of privacy.
While of course no government comes close to that level of radical transparency, Finland comes closer than most. I believe Finland requires all official government documents be made public by default, unless they are specifically exempted. Many other governments, like the US through FOIA, let citizens request documents with varying degrees of success, but proactive disclosure is much more rare. And of course, this is just about official documents and doesn't cover the contents of private meetings.
(I'm just an interested observer, so I'd love to hear from actual Finns on how they feel about their government's level of openness!)
It's the same here in Sweden. It just feels natural that _obviously_ we should have access to what goes on in the public sector, unless there's a very specific reason not to. There was a huge backlash when the current government decided to hide who received electricity subsidies this last winter, as it was seen as a way to hide corruption.
Way back when, Ukraine implemented video recording of all politicians' offices in order to combat corruption. I read an article where a citizen was trying to get something done at a local government office, tried to offer a customary bribe, but was rejected as the officer pointed to the recording camera in the corner of the room.
Yep, and they're working and being paid for and by us. If they're working for the benefit of the people (or at least their voters), why would they keep secrets from us/them?
I have been advocating this for some time. If we want full transparency, let's start with the public servants. Oh, they won't be able to make backroom deals, fail at peace agreements because they walked out after 2 hours, and we'll know exactly how they failed? Yes, that's how it should be, because millions of plebs will have to fight and pay the price for their abject failure, negligence and incompetence later. Let it be on full display!
Look, maybe nuclear secrets, black ops and some kind of weird Blackwater (er excuse me Academi) stuff can be off the books, although that has historically resulted in a lot of misery, especially the CIA: https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/511185078/america-in-laos-tra... and is probably a major reason behind war in Ukraine since 2014 ... but also in dozens of other countries, too. You'll find out when it's fully declassified 10 years later, but by then they'll just say "mistakes were made".
Come to think of it, we'd all be richer, too. Want to get rid of wasteful spending? Start with the Pentagon. Somehow debt-ceiling Republicans aren't eager to do that but it can't account for $35,000,000,000,000 https://www.yahoo.com/video/pentagon-35-trillion-accounting-...
that’s what I’m saying, quadruple or 10x their pay to increase the cost of them selling out for corruption but also make them wear 24/7 body cameras, maybe we can get the true patriots who are willing to sacrifice some privacy to do the good work and as a bonus shorter terms will just work themselves out naturally
Have everyone in govt making in excess of 2x poverty line be subject to a tax of 99% for all income exceeding the avg of 5 years of income before joining govt
You can be rich and join govt. You can live ok post-govt. But you sure as hell should not get rich off govt
It's called public service for a reason. Its a service. Not a career.
Either you have a sense of duty and are willing to sacrifice, or else go work on the private sector.
Doesn't this make it impossible for anybody not already rich to get into politics? You'd need a second job to support yourself. And second jobs are a problem not only for focus, but also as conduits for corruption
if you are not rich, what makes you so special to think you can be rich , after leaving the govt?
What has changed since the moment you joined, (nonrich), and now suddenly, you leave and you are hot stuff ?
You can still earn a living in govt, even nice money ( >$100k+ for senior jobs) the point is, that is your cap. Job security and duty come at a price. That price is not trading in insider govt connections.
You can live comfortably. You can have job security. But you cannot get rich off it. That is your "sacrifice" if you want to call it that.
And to be clear, because i realize my comment was not: You can have a really nice bump in earnings while in govt.
- For example, if you have an avg salary of 50k, then join govt, at make 100k, that bump is yours to keep just like everyone playing by the same rules. However, once you leave govt, your cap goes back to 50k . So either retire in govt or just go back to what your situation was.
As you may imagine, the complaint is never that public service pays "well" therefore the hypotetical is very unlikely to happen in the first place.
It is so ridiculous that the exact same discussion has to be repeated again and again. The arguments haven't changed. "Bad thing is happening and we need this to ensure it doesn't anymore". The bad thing changes to what's currently the most popular threat although protecting children is obviously an all-time favorite.
I think the next angle will be that it's needed to prevent hate speech. Any other ideas?
There needs to be an international human rights treaty that enshrines the right to end-to-end encryption. Law enforcement all over the world already has more than enough power to do their jobs. If they cared about protecting people, they should be embracing the wide availability of strong encryption with open arms.
It's time politicians spent time increasing accountability and preventing abuse before they even think about granting more power to law enforcement.
They never needed to go to a "next angle"; the "protect children" has almost always worked (with the occasional "prevent terrorism" thrown in for diversity) :)
You don't need to change the angle, you just need to keep trying until the people's views align enough to get it through. "Never let a crisis go to waste", and such.
Counter-terrorism, criminal investigations, national security, cybersecurity, anti-corruption, regulatory compliance, breaking up organized crime, stopping drug distribution and trafficking, stopping black market trades (weapons, human trafficking, and the aforementioned drugs), stopping production of illegal materials, preventing insider trading, detecting fraud, stopping money laundering, preventing corporate espionage, nationalistic thought-police stuff that some countries legitimately want, stopping identity theft, political back channel interference prevention, social stability (someone might incite unrest), economic stability (someone might share ideas bad for the economy), public health safety (someone might share anti-vax ideas), gang activity prevention, stopping cults and sectarian violence, scam/fraud call and message prevention, disrupting ransom schemes, preventing propaganda, stopping environmental crime, disrupting illegal immigration, military and government organization advantage against allies on whom they can spy if they pressure them into abandoning E2E... oops I mean... peacekeeping, preventing the undermining of democracy (or the fatherland/motherland for those of the authoritarian inclination). There are definitely a few bingo cards worth of possible excuses.
> As a matter of fact, it seems over my 40 years here that most of the time it's religious extremists who want to ban speech and literature
It's weird how short term people's memory is. It was only a few decades ago that certain mainstream political group wanted to make "violent video games" illegal. Their figurehead was a frontrunner for US president in 2016. You don't have to throw a stone very far to see that people on both sides want to ban free speech. Just look at how freaked out states like NY and California got over 3D printed gun files. Give them a few years and I guarantee they'll come after crypto next, if crypto stands in their way.
The only thing I've learned is that everyone wants to claim they support free speech but they just mean "their" speech, not the other guy.
Funny, there are a ton of violent video games still and tons of guns after all that uproar! Bit of a difference from actual, real life laws which were recently passed to effectively try and make being gay or transgender illegal; laws which have already started harming those communities in those places.
Well, there's a lot of grumbling about the Supreme Court potentially moving to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut. A number of Justices currently on the court don't seem super fond of that decision and it relates to the same concepts as Roe v. Wade. Getting rid of Griswold weakens Lawrence v. Texas, which eliminating that would immediately make homosexual sex illegal in several states.
In the U.S., that would be considered "case law" and is a corner stone of common law systems. There's statutory law, which is the law as written, then there is case law, which is the "found law" established by courts adjudicating and being bound by the precedents established in the process of doing so via stare decisis.
...That all goes out the window once your judiciary becomes an extension of the political apparatus of course. Once that happens, your courts will just start creatively reinterpreting what things mean to most effectively and comfortably bring about what they deem to be the way to go.
Hence why Roe v. Wade, while being a great thing, was ultimately bad jurisprudence.
There are already laws on the books in many jurisdictions, but they're not in effect at the moment because of this case law. The moment a case overturning Lawrence happens, the laws instantly go back into effect.
Also, if a state feels it's time to try it again, they might just go ahead and enforce this law to make this kind of a case happen again, hoping the SC comes to a different decision.
>love this was "flagged" even though I didn't break any rules. I was just stating facts,
Maybe it was flagged because you started a slapfight about LGBTQ issues on a thread about encryption; then started implying anyone disagreeing with you was a fascist bending over backwards to ban books, instead of a human with potentially justified objections to said material?
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Assume good faith.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
You can easily scroll down to see the off-topic tangent that GP has taken this thread into. Including some chime-ins that are somewhat unsavory from people that I suspect have a more ideological slant on this particular issue and probably aren't discussing in good faith.
I listed the guidelines you potentially broke when you claimed to have broken no rules. If you take that as me being a "fascist", then I suppose that's a problem with your own perception of the world. I encourage you to consider treating people more like humans with unique opinions to consider.
I used to buy the incrementalist argument that these books are inappropriate for grade schoolers. But then the law, predictably, was extended to high school and shows no sign of stopping.
Banning books has never been looked back on as a sign of a strong society. School is meant to be about resolving conflicting ideas. Pretending kids aren't getting 10x worse on the internet, or from their friends with an internet-connected device, just separates society into an imbecilic underclass and ones who can afford a more interrogative education.
Even at that level, why ban a book? Set them in a special section that requires parents to accompany the kids to check out the books. I remember my mom coming with me to the library as a kid to help me find books.
>Banning books has never been looked back on as a sign of a strong society.
This clearly isn’t true in and of itself.
For example, you’d never write these kinds of comments in support of inclusion of certain Holocaust-adjacent material, which is actively banned in many western countries. Countries that, I might add, you would probably consider as doing well today?
You support book bans, you just don’t support banning these books. Please be honest and transparent about this, it’s much more respectable.
> For example, you’d never write these kinds of comments in support of inclusion of certain Holocaust-adjacent material, which is actively banned in many western countries. Countries that, I might add, you would probably consider as doing well today?
Fucking "Mein Kampf" is available, today, in several thousand libraries and bookstores around the USA and I wouldn't have it any other way. Some of us actually believe in the right for information to be free. I served in the military to fight (ostensibly) for freedom like this.
I agree with you. I was clearly referencing how books that claim the holocaust didn’t happen (or was misrepresented) are illegal in huge swaths of the western world.
I’m not endorsing those viewpoints, merely showing how huge numbers of westerners actually are ok with book bans as long as it’s the right topic.
Those who deliberately blur the line between "book banning" and "setting the curriculum in schools" are dishonest (at best). Clearly, everyone who believes in free speech believes that all adults should have access to any and all books, pamphlets and printed material, no matter how "obscene" or objectionable that material is. However, those who suggest that any and all printed material, no matter how "obscene" or objectionable, should be allowed in classrooms (let alone into the classrooms of young children) are extremists who should not be taken seriously. Even worse, the notion that parents should not have any input about what "obscene" or objectionable material their children are exposed to in public school is profoundly authoritarian.
> Those who deliberately blur the line between "book banning" and "setting the curriculum in schools" are dishonest (at best).
From what I understand some schools have pulled lots of books from libraries overall. There were tons of books I had access to that weren't directly a part of the curriculum, and in fact parts of the curriculum specifically gave my classmates and I the opportunity to explore different topics and books which weren't a pre-chosen part of the curriculum.
> the line between "book banning" and "setting the curriculum in schools"
Both sides do this. Parents should have a direct say in the books teachers assign their students. One group of parents doesn't get to decide which books are and aren't allowed in a library.
The idea that there are "two sides" is a contrived fallacy. I'm not on anyone's "side". I believe in absolute, unfettered free speech for adults and that every parent has an absolute right to decide what their own children are exposed to.
> idea that there are "two sides" is a contrived fallacy
Policy-wise, and even in respect of Americans' views, agree. In terms of politics, it's as real as it's contrived. The messaging, debate and legislation is done in a two-sided way, particularly in Florida, where national attention has paramagnetised even school boards.
> absolute, unfettered free speech for adults and that every parent has an absolute right to decide what their own children are exposed to
This is fair. There are logistical issues with letting parents go à la carte on public education. But that's solvable.
I don't see banning books from libraries statewide helping parents "decide what their own children are exposed to." The brush is too broad, and it's one group of parents making decisions for others' kids. (And to preëmpt accusations of hypocrisy, I think it's equally ridiculous when "progressive" elements strike classics for all because somebody might get offended.)
So if a parent doesn't want their kid to know about gravity, should it just be no longer taught in schools? What if a parent believes long division is a satanic ritual, should they just skip arithmetic?
What if my child is in the class with a flat earther parent?
Either that, or we could reorganize public schools to get back on track as to what their purpose actually is.
I don't want crazy religious idea being taught, I don't want people's opinions about how there are 57 genders being taught and I don't want a teacher or a school district trying to instill their chosen value system on my child. I want them to learn how to read. I want them to learn how to write. I want them to learn how to add and subtract. Frankly, considering how miserably school systems are failing to teach kids basic literacy, they should be embarrassed to even discuss their cultural, religious and/or political agenda (even when they insist that their agenda isn't cultural, religious and/or political).
When I was in school ~40 years ago, with 3 or 4 exceptions out of a class of ~100, every child could read, write and do math at or near grade level. I didn't know a single thing about the personal lives of any of my teachers, whether they were married, had kids, and certainly not what their sexual orientation was. It didn't matter - because they were there to teach academic subjects! Nor did any of my teachers know (or concern themselves with) my personal life, my sexual orientation or anything else aside from my academic performance in the subject they were teaching. There are a lot of reasonable, normal people who just want schools to become centers of academic learning again instead of another battleground in the cultural war.
At the same time you can agree the library having a few books where the protagonist has two mom's or two dad's isn't reducing the literacy rate of the school, right?
I'm still trying to square your "every parent has an absolute right to decide what their own children are exposed to" with parents who feel the round Earth is a lie.
>At the same time you can agree the library having a few books where the protagonist has two mom's or two dad's isn't reducing the literacy rate of the school, right?
I'm arguing that the literacy rate in the average school is currently so low in the United States that many students are unable to read at all. I'm arguing that anyone who is more concerned with the number of gender diverse library books than the number of students who are unable to read and write is part of the problem.
From most measures I can find, reading and math ability was higher pre-COVID than 40 years ago at US public schools. Maybe your experience with only 3% below grade level was 1) not an accurate measure given you were an elementary school student at the time and 2) just a single school out of literally many thousands in the US. I don't know about you, but my recollection of my elementary days sure isn't accurate enough to base an unbiased recollection of an entire nation of public schooling. I barely remember my grades, much less my classmates, much less the classmates the next classroom over or the next school over or the next district over or the next state over.
At my ultra prestigious school 60 years ago all seven members of my class could read and write at college level by third grade. Schools are so terrible compared to yesterday.
I'm still waiting to hear about what to do when a parent says the round Earth is against their beliefs and they have the right for their child to never be exposed to such absurd, extreme, and unnatural ideology. It seems pretty core to your idea that "every parent has an absolute right to decide what their own children are exposed to."
>From most measures I can find, reading and math ability was higher pre-COVID than 40 years ago at US public schools
In many of our largest cities, we are spending over $15,000 per student, every year. In many of these schools not a single student meets grade level standards in reading or math. That's right. Not one single student in the entire school. Let's take Baltimore, which spends over $17,000 per student, and has been one of the most outspoken cities about the need for a greater focus on "cultural education".
>Project Baltimore combed through the scores at all 150 City Schools where the state math test was given.
>Project Baltimore found, in 23 Baltimore City schools, there were zero students who tested proficient in math. Not a single student.
>Among the list of 23 schools, there are 10 high schools, eight elementary schools, three Middle/High schools and two Elementary/Middle schools.
>Exactly 2,000 students, in total, took the state math test at these schools. Not one could do math at grade level.
23 of 150 schools, 2000 students. Not a single student in any school proficient in math! Over $17,000 a student! A large number of the other districts had only 1 or 2 students proficient in the entire school. The highest grade-level proficiency in the entire city was 38%. If a city receives more than $17,000 per student, and turns out dozens of schools where not a single student is proficient, then that city has failed utterly in its educational mission. Suggesting that the problem is that they are "underfunded" (which is the en vogue political position of apologists for the educational system) is absolutely absurd. The failure of our public schools, and the widespread defense of that failure, is a microcosm of our societal failure at large.
New York State is now officially lowered its "proficiency standards" for testing, conceding that kids just aren't as literate or educated as they were in the past, and that standards must be lowered so that it can appear that our failed educational system is functioning.
But you can be sure that going forward, New York State officials will be comparing the "proficiency rates" of next year (with the lowered standards) with the kids from previous years, and pretending that kids are just as educated as before (if not touting their 'improvements'!)
It is one thing to argue for lower standards, less literacy and a generally less-educated population in lieu of an agenda of social and cultural indoctrination. It is an entirely other thing to pretend that our failed educational system is actually teaching our children to read, write and perform arithmetic at the levels it has done historically for over a century. We are going to suffers severe consequences as a nation raising a generation of children who cannot read, write, do basic arithmetic or think critically.
>I'm still waiting to hear about what to do when a parent says the round Earth is against their beliefs and they have the right for their child to never be exposed to such absurd, extreme, and unnatural ideology.
They can send their kid to a private school run my lunatics just like the parents who think there are 57 genders. Public school should be for sane, reasonable people who just want their kids to learn how to read and write and not be indoctrinated with any fringe madness.
Which do you think had a greater impact on our schools: books which have potentially gay characters, or the COVID pandemic?
When you see massively falling test scores after school districts got massively interrupted for a couple of years from a pandemic, do you think it's the pandemic response that caused it or acknowledging gay people exist?
Note, I made a point to mention aptitude pre-pandemic for a reason. I imagine 40 years ago you could have also found tons of entire schools where every student was below grade level. I do agree we need to improve schools. I don't think pulling books from the library because they might touch on a topic like gay families exist is doing anything meaningful to address it.
> not be indoctrinated with any fringe madness.
Fringe madness like the round earth right? I guess you're the arbiter of what is and is not fringe madness? Whatever happened to the parents being able to choose, suddenly when it's something you believe in it's just basic fact?
For the record, I'm not a flat earther. But at the same time when I hear people saying any nutjob should have the absolute right to dictate what the curriculum or books are in the school, you'll have to deal with this. Some parent wants to not have their kids exposed to gay or trans ideas or concepts. Some parents don't want their kids exposed to the theory of gravity. Empowering one of these groups to ban the books is also empowering the other.
So we agree that banning books on the topic of diversity is part of the problem, right? Because the bans don't add anything to the time and skills needed to teach reading or maths.
The only people who are concerned about it are the ones trying to take them away. The books in the library didnt tank literacy rates. Do you even hear how dumb that sounds? "Literacy is falling, so we should take books out of the library"
What do you mean? It’s been in the news constantly about Floridas don’t say gay laws and stuff. You folks will reach as far as possible to make book bans seem reasonable.
the separation of church and state is very inconvenient for them, and they have done every thing they can to blur those lines to be forgotten about by the masses.
>religious extremists who want to ban speech and literature
It's always religious extremists who want to ban speech and literature. This includes the secular religion of the DC Blob, the Spanish government and many other governments currently seeking to ban "hate speech", "disinformation" and (even more absurdly) "malinformation".
All words are made up. Most of them have meaning. Some of them are contextually misleading, and some are contextually assaulting.
For example, shouting the words, "Fuck God" in the middle of church would be considered an assault on the congregation.
Calling a non-binary person a "Man" would be considered an assault on that person.
Many of us secularists and atheists would very much like to leave the shadow of religious organizations. We can't do so without openly confronting the reality of those religious organizations and their power over our lives.
> That said, don’t pretend the side you’re referencing is “peaceful”. It is extremely militant. They explicitly seek out moderator and other positions of power to enforce their world views via censorship.
Frankly, the LGTBQ community are fighting for survival. If the far right gets what they want, these people will not be able to live in safety. So maybe being militant is reasonable when their lives are being threatened.
Well, the “ends” have consequences. I find it funny that the side so hellbent on calling everyone else “fascist” is the first to employ the definition of fascism (merger of state and corporate power) to enforce censorship on others.
If you’re (other) and just want to be left alone then you better start vocally separating yourself from the mainstream “community” and their jackboot tactics now, because the backlash is coming (due to said tactics) and it’s going to overspray unless mitigated now.
Just for clarity on this point: If you meant Brían Nguyen, it was 'a' Miss America pageant and not 'the' Miss America pageant. The title wasn't "Miss America", it was "Miss Greater Derry"
States are not banning books and talking about gay and transgender people. Not sure where you got that info from. As I understand, what they are doing is removing non age appropiate books from elementary and middle school libraries, some of which include LGBTQ content. I would not call this "banning a book", in the same way that not being able to watch violent movies in elementary school is not "banning a movie".
I would suggest you look into the content of the books being challenged and come to your own conclusion as to whether they are age appropiate or not. After all, the term "age appropiate" is subjective.
> As I understand, what they are doing is removing non age appropiate books from elementary and middle school libraries, some of which include LGBTQ content.
That's the same thing.
Defining a book as "age inappropriate" because it talkes about sexuality means that talking about sexuality is age inappropriate.
But taking about sexuality is critical for the healthy development of an LGBTQ+ child! How else can they understand, or even put into words, what they themselves are going through?
Teachers can show children Schindler's List, but can't talk to them about sex. That's the reality we are discussing here.
Talking about sexuality is critical for the healthy development of any child. Terribly wrong ideas can take root at a very young age.
Every time an educator evades a child's questions about sex they are "grooming" an antisocial deviant; protecting people from truth is inherently destructive.
And it's clearly attempted to make any mention of gay or trans people existing or being in any way normal "not age appropriate". The sponsor of Florida's law gave pure mention of a child having two dads as an example of what should be prevented in schools.
"discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity" (direct quote from the law in question) is not "instruction on how to have sex", however often people claim it is. If that was what the law was banning, I'd be a lot less concerned about it, but it just isn't.
> where the book is being offered to/pushed on young children
Huge difference between saying teachers shouldn't distribute the book and it should be removed from the school library. Libraries don't push books by virtue of having them on their shelves.
And again, when you look at the populations getting uppity about this, it's the ones with high rates of teenage pregnancy and STI transmission. Which makes sense. If Suzy only sees pictures and videos online, or has acts described to her by equally-clueless friends, she's less capable of making informed decisions than someone who also saw the terminology and context in a book. (She's also been informed the topic is taboo.)
> Can you explain in detail how Grindr is an important part of Suzy's safe sex education
Not particularly, but it's a moot question. It's not part of her sex ed. It's on a book shelf. We don't ask why The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is an important part of Suzy's anything when we concur with it being available. Same here.
Turning the question around, what's the harm in Suzy going into a library, picking up this book and learning Grindr exists? (Again, in a hypothetical universe where this sequence of actions occurs without her knowing of it already.)
> Reminder that Suzy is 11 years old, not a teenager
"The average age of first exposure" to online porn is 12 [1]. Even if Suzy's parents practice perfect digital hygiene, unless they're raising her as a houseplant, she's going to be exposed to this at a younger age than we were. The choice is whether she gets exposed within a context of information, understanding and comfort, or if she's thrown into the fray in a state of ignorance.
Neither am I a parent. I am open to changing my mind. (This isn't a topic I thought about until recently.)
Removing items from a library strikes me as something that should be a cultural red line in a free society. A restricted section, where one needs e.g. parental consent to access the books, seems to square the circle of not letting one group take away another's access to information while keeping parents in the driver's seat.
Note that my argument begins and ends with libraries. I don't really have an opinion on classroom instruction and materials.
> there is no book for children that talks about oral sex that is was in any place where a kid could read it
Yes there was, and your conviction that this must be an exaggeration shows just how completely out of touch the mainstream media-following public is from the reality of the situation. Just as a single example, the children's illustrated sex instruction manual "This Book is Gay" has had its relevant contents republished all over the internet, so that one would practically have to have been specifically avoiding seeing it. It is using LGBTQ as a shield for pedophilia and as an LGBTQ person that makes me sick. The very title gleefully declares this intent: "This Book is Gay" and therefore if you object you must be a homophobe, and not, you know, someone who thinks that maybe children shouldn't be having sex unless and until they are old enough to work it out for themselves.
ETA: I almost forgot that even Snopes had to admit about the contents of this particular book: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tampa-school-sex-book/. In fact snopes reports it's even worse than what I said; it provides instructions on how to obtain access to hookup apps. To kids. Hookup apps. Kids. It's sick.
Well, I read the snopes article and the book seems edgy but reasonable. Why is it sick? Is it wrong to teach middle school kids about sex before they might have it in high school? Anyways, I said I wasn't going to respond here anymore, so I won't, but I guess your morals and mine aren't a matching pair. I don't see how sex ed harms middle school kids. If anything, it helps them not be a dufus and get preggo when they have sex the first time. Lots of movies that middle schoolers watch show people meeting each other in different situatiosn and then dating, which isn't any different from a "hookup app", which aren't used for as much sex hookups as you folks seem to think, it's where people today meet each other to date. Sex isn't sick, it's how humans make babies and become closer as couples and sometimes how they have fun.
"No one is teaching kids how to have oral sex, but if they are then they are not teaching them how to hook up, but if they are then they're only teaching them to hook up with each other and not adults, but if they are then actually it's just helping them make an informed choice (about safe ways to hook up with adults, while in middle school)!"
You have an answer for everything, don't you? Funny how all of your answers are aimed toward promoting pedophilia.
Please don't do this sort of flamewar (or any flamewar on HN), and please don't do tit-for-tat spats. They're not what this site is for and destroy what it is for.
Just because I keep refuting your grasps at straw-men doesn’t mean I’m moving the goal posts nor does it mean I want to fuck kids. I believe other commenters in this thread have covered why it’s important for kids to learn about sexuality before they actually have sex.
Please don't do this sort of flamewar (or any flamewar on HN), and please don't do tit-for-tat spats. They're not what this site is for and destroy what it is for.
Who is "you folks"? I can think for myself, thanks. I'm providing some context for your naive or perhaps intentional misunderstanding of what is actually happening.
And who do you think votes for these decisions? The parents. So presumably many parents think that some books in school liraries are not age appropiate.
I haven't even expressed my opinion on this topic yet you are assuming my stance because you lack nuance. That's why I suggest you read the actual books that are being challenged and come back with a more informed perspective.
Here are the top most challenged books of 2022 according to the ALA:
- "Gender Queer" by Maia Kobabe
- "All Boys Aren't Blue" by George M. Johnson
- "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison
- "Flamer" by Mike Curato
- "Looking for Alaska" by John Green
- "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky
- "Lawn Boy" by Jonathan Evison
- "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie
- "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez
- "A Court of Mist and Fury" by Sarah J. Maas
- "Crank" by Ellen Hopkins
- "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" by Jesse Andrews
- "This Book Is Gay" by Juno Dawson
OK, now assuming I have read them, and I probably won't but assume I do: why should they be banned? Tell me exactly why parents shouldn't be on the hook to track what their kids read and talk with them about what they believe? Why is information like this dangerous? What danger does it pose to society that gay people and transgender people exist? What danger does information about sex pose to a child?
Then, once you answered that, tell me why I shouldn't ban Catholic churches from my community because of the perceived risk of pedophilia loving sexual pervert priests? (note: I don't believe we should ban churches, but at least I can show evidence of a threat)
My point here is that information is not dangerous and should not be banned or kept behind a locked door. That's how we end up with powerful interests controlling us.
One point of outrage I've seen is about this Florida law passed last year that said schools need to have an online catalog of the books found within the school library, have a public notice period for comment for any book being added to the library, a 30 day grace period for after the book is introduced for a parent to make a formal complaint, a form to make a complaint about an existing book, and banned pornography ... why do so many people take offense with this very democratic process?
> why do so many people take offense with this very democratic process?
The words written for a law aren't how the law is actually implemented. Law isn't code. The group in power, in this case people who want to limit how LGBTQ people live, will write a perfectly reasonable law, and then only apply that law to cases that they personally believe in. In other cases, such as if you were to complain about the bible being lewd, they would state some exception for it and ignore your request. This "perfectly democratic" law is, in fact, used in a non-democratic way!
Did you read it? When the law came into affect, the teacher quit her job rather than possibly be in legal and work trouble if she even mentioned why she wore a fucking diamond ring. Read better.
I just don’t understand this line and I see it so much. I’m not remotely “Christian”, some might even call me christophobic.
Yet I enthusiastically support these measures and would love to see them expanded. How do you cope with that? Not everyone who is against you is religious.
This is already tested somewhat in the UK, where you're required by law to provide a password to an encrypted file or volume when asked. If you're in possession of the encrypted volume, the courts assume you know the password, and throw you in jail if you don't. Obviously this can be easily abused by slipping an encrypted USB drive into someone's backpack.
The point is that they will look at intention and surrounding context - is there a crime leading to you in some way and could it have been facilitated in part by encrypted messaging? Did you also transit a billion random Spanish words during this time frame? If so, it seems to follow by their current laws and logic that they can assume this was encrypted information and therefore broke the law. And if you refuse to decrypt it for them, that's another broken law.
Perhaps we need to make a special decrypt program, one that accepts any password and just produces some log files. They can't prove it is not the data (except by claiming they planted it)..
This is done on projects like VeraCrypt with hidden containers to give you plausible deniability - one password opens the decoy container and another opens the real one. Of course this means a ton of wasted space on the disk, and as soon as you boot the decoy container it starts desytroying hidden container data. And also there's apparently ways to detect hidden containers if this is to be believed:
Encryption is the one-to-one mapping of a set of bytes to a set of bytes. Software + key is the mapping function. When doing cryptographic forensics you don't use the user's software, you use your own.
So proving that the user's decryption program is fake is trivial and may not even come up as you wouldn't bother running it.
And you can't choose keys in a way that would alter the byte mapping in a way that you can control, the true key will map to the true data, and anything else will map to random bytes.
What if I use my own proprietary encryption algorithm? If I don't specify a file extension, then how could they tell what algorithm is used -- it's just a scramble of bytes.
In fact, what if encryption one day gets so good we cannot distinguish it from plain English? Kinda like trying to spot LLM generated content.
I recommend filling up the empty space on hard drives and flash drives with random data from /dev/urandom. What is the government going to do, try and get you to decrypt that? On my computer I already have several terabytes of completely random data. Decrypt that, thought police.
If encryption is illegal, you are suspected of having to encrypted data and don't provide the keys, the police won't be puzzling about what's random or encrypted bytes: they'll interrogate you, abuse you and throw you into jail.
There is no law in the UK making it illegal to possess random data. And I strongly encourage other people to use the "dd" command and create some large random files on their own computer, themselves. It's a perfectly legal form of protest. The more people that do so, the less these key disclosure laws can be enforced?
In fact it would be really nice if Android smartphones, when encryption is enabled, fill up all the unused space with random data. I wonder if they do that already or not?
Even better would be have the operating systems fill up the unused space with random data upon partitioning the disk, by default. SSDs are very fast nowadays so it doesn't really take too much time to do so.
This random data filling could even be implemented by SSD controller firmware. Any SSD firmware developers here, please consider doing this by default, as it would severely impact the ability of the government to violate our rights. If AES crypto hardware is available, just use a random key, and let the hardware generate a stream of encrypted zeros.
Also if you run a Web site, you can generate chunks of random data dynamically each time and serve it up to the users. That way it will end up being stored in peoples' browser caches worldwide. Even a couple of kilobytes at a time would be fine. This can be embedded in HTML files, added as dummy data in video files, music files, JPEG, PNG, etc. Again, this is all perfectly legal to do. Transmission and possession of random data is not illegal.
So anywhere you can, if it's cheap to do, don't pad it with zeros, pad it with random numbers instead! You can even do it with RAM, because it will likely end up in the swap space at some point.
When nearly every computer or embedded device out there contains large quantities of random data on it's disk, these "key disclosure laws" will be rendered completely useless.
But I strongly doubt it's illegal to cause thousands or even millions of computers to have random data in their browser caches, as long as no hacking takes place? Just by padding files with dynamically generated random data, as I described above?
We could write software to do this, and people can install it on their web servers, as a means of protest?
They’ll be interrogating and torturing suspected individuals, but the ability to perform dragnet surveillance or steal your data without a warrant would be curtailed. The comic mocks encryption advocates but portrays a return to old school police work necessarily limited in scope, which is what we want.
You're speaking as if this will help you. If you go to the prosecution/trial phase, you will be found guilty since you probably hadn't the best opsec and forensic analysis of your computer found the encryption/steganography software you used, or you left something in the system logs (e.g. timestamps of accessing files), or you left something in the thumbnail cache, or you did not rename the file before deleting it, or the timestamp analysis of e.g. you browser data and logs will show clear behavioral patterns pointing to you hiding data. If you use VMs, their ram is stored in a plaintext file unless you configure it otherwise, on your ssd it never goes away due to wear protection. Even if you had an encrypted drive you will be forced to give them the key, then they will rederive the master key and analyze parts of the disk free space to find something on you, again on ssd this is a certainty and on for example Bitlocker you can never change the master key, ensuring you going to jail.
Even if all of this did not incriminate you, you're in trouble for something in the first place, since you're on trial, right? So probably other people you communicated with lead them to you. And in this case, the judge applies common sense, there is this traffic cell of 6 people and on 5 computers we have clear evidence but on 6th nothing, therefore you're still probably 95+% guilty? Judges aren't stupid.
People making comments like yours annoy me since you seem to be calming people down that we could endure total strong encryption ban, while we absolutely could not.
The type of person you are replying to has most likely never lived in any sort of authoritarian regime. People like them play these games...almost like the equivalent of a child saying "I'm not touching you".
What happens in authoritarian regimes is that the law is used to justify the actions of the ruling body, not the other way around. So if you just so happen to blast random static and act suspicious, you'll be taken, beaten and either admit to a crime or a law will be made or amended to justify it. And then you'll admit to it.
The price of freedom is constant vigilance. You are correct in saying we could not endure a total strong encryption ban.
So what's the point of sending random static over the network and looking for trouble like that then?
Complying in a way that you find slightly less humiliating but still complying?
Well yes, if you're not using encryption and it's a one off thing, the judge will probably find you not guilty.
The OP seemed to suggest that when you ban encryption, random people will randomly get in trouble, therefore banning encryption is a bad idea.
But judges have common sense and law enforcement has limited resources (prioritization) therefore random people will probably not randomly get in trouble. Therefore strong encryption ban is very realistic and very easy to sell to the population, and not like the OP claimed something that will backfire. This is why his comment is naive. He likes encryption and doesn't want for it to be banned therefore he deludes himself with some alternative reality where doing something he doesn't like backfires and is reversed.
Well no, judges do not have common sense. They are either extremely obtuse or corrupt. Worst case, they will make up their mind early on and refuse to budge.
Sometimes they are too old to even comprehend the technology.
Judges are always on the side of law enforcement, and whomever can purchase the more reputable legal firm. Judges have favorites, and biases.
Laws like this will immediately backfire. It won't hurt politicians initially. They get immunity. But it will allow the party in charge to cement their position through illicit use of encryption.
No encryption allowed for the opposing party! But us...
Extremely late edit : I would also point out that "random people" are easier to arrest than actual career criminals. Police here are extremely lazy and usually only go for the low hanging fruit. Some of these cases do get thrown out. But not all of them.
Did the other anti privacy laws and customs backfire? Did big tech which is in bed with the goverment censoring you while the goverment pretends you have your 1st ammendment rights backfire? Did mass metadata collection backfire? Did KYC backfire? Did banning open wifi networks backfire? Did banning face coverings in public backfire? Did indefinite contempt for refusing encryption keys backfire? Did Patriot Act backfire? Did judges signing every warrant without reading backfire? Did that FBI raid on anonymous vault storage for people, where they admitted to laying on the warrant backfire? Did civil asset forfeiture backfire?
Will the soon introduced kybc (know your business customer) forcing hosting and cloud providers to identify their customers before allowing them a Vps backfire?
My country does not have free speech. It has some of the most stringent copy right laws in the world. It also has defamation laws that have been used to suppress truthful reports.
Police are allowed to hold you indefinitely with no justification. (Technically they are limited to 30days) They are allowed, and constantly refuse to allow you access to a legal representative.
They are allowed to force you to confess to a crime you never committed.
Politicians get away with corruption, and secure votes through the use of cults.
I know what it looks like when the current dominating party was created by a literal Class A Warcriminal from WW2.
These anti- encryption laws make life even worse. The last thing we have here is a semblance of privacy.
I do not want, or need 1st world countries such as Britain or Spain to give an example for my government to follow.
I am, of course, familiar with the wrench decryption method (https://xkcd.com/538/).
I am saying no ban on encryption can be logically consistent since you can’t absolutely prove that something is encrypted. Even if it is a file called encrypted_drive.imencrypted.
I’m not a lawyer but this kind of ban should be wide open to legal attack. Especially if the country also has freedom of speech. And if it doesn’t have that, it should.
And if all else fails and this insane law passes, the illiterates who pushed it through will cause a national economic and security disaster. Online crime will skyrocket. The KGB/FSB will have a feeding frenzy. Voters will quickly learn to love encryption again.
I'd have more sympathy to the "we need to be able to read every one's message, and open up everyone's communication to criminals to stop crime" story if there was any evidence it would actually do anything.
There is no evidence that the reason terrorist attacks (the common go to) would be stopped by removing encryption from people, because we know that existing attacks have occurred even when law enforcement is already aware (take the Manchester bombing: multiple friends and family had reported him to the police on multiple occasions).
We do have a huge amount of evidence that any such attack on privacy will immediately be abused. In the UK those laws that were passed to "stop terrorism", etc are used to catch people not picking up dog poop, not paying TV licensing, etc. In the US we had wide spread warrantless surveillance of literally everyone, courtesy of AT&T.
My opinion is that any law that proponents proclaim will only be used to stop X should contain terms along the line of "any use of this legislation for any purpose other than X invalidates this law, any evidence acquired must be destroyed, and any convictions derived from such evidence are no longer valid". I would give good odds that any attempt to add such text would result in push back by the people saying the law is only needed to stop X.
Spain's politicians don't understand what this ban means. In their eyes, it's like allowing a policeman to open suspicious mail at the post office; and no, it's like getting your mail in transparent envelopes, or receiving all your online shopping in crystal boxes. However, nobody will convince them since someone has sold them the other idea: the same people who sell ultra-expensive software to government that causes nothing but problems.
Fair point. We always hear about the NSA has this or that. The calls to ban encryption are lower in the US, so I wonder if NSA has something they just won’t share with Europe?
My view on banning encryption in any way is always the same: it will disadvantage the innocent masses, and the criminals they purport to be targeting will simply continue to use it. The black hats will rejoice because now their victims are less secure by law. Good luck stopping them.
I don't understand how this is proposed all over again when it has zero chance to be effective.
Criminals will not use apps that compromise security. They will still use apps that are end-to-end encrypted. These people are breaking the law already, why would they make an exception for one that would compromise their opsec?
Oh sweet summer child. It's a government. This one may be "far-left". The UK wants to do the same and is "far-right". The far-right in the USA want to ban porn, prostitution and burn books. Governments are made of psychopaths. It doesn't matter what kind of politics the psychopaths are pretending to have in order to get into power. The reason that politicians even have parties is so that there is always someone else to blame, not them: you blame "the far-left" and not the psychopaths in power. The problem is always "woke people", "fascists", "lefties", "racists", you name it. No the problem is psychopaths.
More the opposite. Corporations are granted charters (and limited-liability) by governments because they are extensions of governments. They're either meant to
1) take risks to accomplish goals that would be beneficial to government, but that government does not want to risk itself, [e.g. if there were no grocery stores, government would have to feed you, but government doesn't have the information to choose locations and stock stores effectively, which competition provides]
2) allow the government to do things that government isn't allowed to do directly [e.g. censor content, cut off undesirables from financial services, pay lower than their current government union contracts or legislation], or to
3) aid the transfer of wealth from government to insiders through either government overpayment for services it could more cheaply provide itself, or by having looser labor/materials sourcing/pollution regulation or monitoring than government does, providing self-dealers a margin built from externalities.
A city files a charter with the state to be recognized as a city. A business files a charter with the same state (not a city) to be recognized as a business. It's like instantiating the same base class, but extending each one with specific properties that identify them as different objects.
Whether it is A->B or B->A doesn't really matter. It's all a method of operating as a defined entity to the state with minor differences. It would not be hard to define something like Apple with it's corporate campus as a city. That would blur the lines pretty significantly. They could create an actual Apple Police. I'm guessing that would do some heads in.
Corporations serve at the pleasure of the government. Big corporations serve as single chokepoints for extortion or blackmail (via threats to business, legal via regulation or otherwise) to put in backdoors.
For the purposes of privacy and human rights, corporations and the state are integrated in almost all large industrialized nations. Businesses are too busy being businesses to fight city hall.
If you get a million people together, you'll get a million different ways to "get shit done". Deciding which ways to do things and who does what is a power structure.
Add in billions of dollars in quarterly revenue, and you have a power structure that will willingly integrate itself with the state to preserve those cash flows.
This is why iMessage is backdoored and isn't really e2ee.
The corporations just want to stake their claim of keeping our data to themselves away from other corporations. Crazy were in a situation where corporations and governments are at war over who gets the looting rights.
How do you ban cocaine? How do you ban special parts in guns that make them automatic? How do you enforce any law that's not practical to enforce?
You just make it a felony with a penalty of decades of imprisonment. Then, all the businesses stop doing it and you selectively enforce the law in order to make an example out of people. The idea is never to enforce it fully.
If encryption is a felony, your average business will stop using it, which is pretty much the desired effect. They don't care so much about your personal website or data store using encryption. They'll just make it a fringe technique.
It's like staying so are you banning freight and air travel too to those politicians in order to stop cocaine. When do programmers get it that those analogies don't mean anything in real world.
Except it's not cocaine. It's banning bikes, when everyone uses bikes, no? VPNs and SSL explicitly are the target, in part. It's not a figure of speech, it's factually the thing. If your point is politicians don't get that then... fuck idk, I'm hoping for maliciousness over that level of incompetence.
Government can ban combustion too. So that next time it's revealed in a court of law that you caused combustion, you'll be locked up. It's not about preventing combustion, it's about if they find evidence that you combusted, you getting a criminal sentence.
The how probably isn't so hard if you are a state actor. You won't be 100% effective, but if you make it a felony to possess systems that can do it, to use systems that can do it, to possess any data that can be tied to such a system, etc., etc. it's quite likely that usage would drop to nearly nothing.
I think the how is pretty simple: If you're a company that runs a chat/communication app and you can't comply with a government request for the contents of private communication on your platform then you're in violating of the law.
If you have any presence in Spain then you'd be subject to fines or whatever cross-jurisdictional sanctions they can get away with. Or if you're untouchable legally they could require ISPs to block you and you can play whack-a-mole. The majors players where 95% of communications happens would either have to play ball or withdraw from the country. In practice this probably means that small apps get away without complying until the government has a request for you that you fail to meet.
It's a horrible and terrifying idea, but I think it's reasonable to enforce and get the vast majority of people to have unencrypted communications. (but not the vast majority of dedicated criminals)
It is not pretty simple. A govt can't win a whack-a-mole game. Consider attempts to block Telegram in Russia. They caused so much collateral damage while not even approaching the goal, that the whole effort had to be canceled and swept under the rug.
Finland "warned that the proposal could conflict with the Finnish constitution" and Germany "has staunchly opposed the proposal", so I don't think there's going to be an EU law banning end-to-end encryption. So if Spain were to act alone, I can't imagine banning WhatsApp (which uses end-to-end encryption) would go over well with their constituents. It's on 98% of their smartphones and (at least in 2015) they used it more than any other EU country [1]. WhatsApp (like Signal) said it would leave the UK rather than weaken encryption if end-to-end encryption was banned there. [2] I'm sure the same would be true for Spain.
Maybe WhatsApp is lying, but it would put them in a predicament for the following situation: a user from outside of Spain chatting with someone inside of Spain. Assuming they comply with Spanish law, they could,
1. Say nothing and show no warning message. Would generate negative press and distrust in the platform.
2. Show a warning message when a user tries to message someone in Spain. Some would commend the transparency, but the press and public may still be upset that they acquiesced to the Spanish governments' demands.
3. Create an entirely different version of the app for Spanish users. This wouldn't generate much negative press outside of Spain, but Spanish users absolutely would be upset that they can't contact people outside Spain with the app.
This is not an edge case scenario: 15% of people in Spain are foreign-born (likely contacting family and friends from their home country) and 2.7 million Spaniards live abroad (likely contacting family and friends inside of Spain.)
Option 3 is likely out of the picture, but of options 1 and 2, while neither would result in the death of WhatsApp, some users may indeed leave the platform due to it. In order to be worse than losing the entire country of Spain, 2.35% of WhatsApp users would have to leave the app. That seems unlikely, but even still WhatsApp might not feel it's worth the risk, and in any case they'd probably prefer to not have to spend development hours building systems to comply with the law. Easier to just cut them off.
Most likely it would enable them to go "well we can't decrypt your messages you exchanged with you conspirators which we think would prove you're a criminal, but since you used E2EE you are now a criminal by default."
It also enables them to stop petty criminals, but we both know they don't really care about that.
> but since you used E2EE you are now a criminal by default
Wouldn't simple mappings introduce sufficient plausible deniability in this case?
An example: Every two bits in the encrypted message are mapped to 0=A, 1=T, 2=G, 3=C and suddenly everyone is transmitting DNA sequences for research and evaluation.
Attach the encrypted message to a legitimate sequence and-- boom! --you have a "telomere".
If they can get the apps removed from Google/Apple app stores in their country, and put blocks at the ISP level to prevent anyone actually communicating with Signal or WhatsApp servers, they'll get most of the way there.
tbf communications are now classified by ridiculously broad criteria like degree-of-separation (my Doordash driver who called me donated money to "terrorists" so now my communications are fair game), keywords (I venmoed my friend for tickets to ISIS-the-band's last show) and geography (I live within 100 miles of the US border) so LLMs don't seem necessarily worse
Much like certain segments of American society prioritize gun regulation as the paramount factor influencing their electoral choices, I aspire that citizens might accord an equivalent level of importance to the prohibition of end-to-end encryption in shaping their voting decisions.
Off the wall idea - given that encryption was classified as a munition in the U.S. from an export control standpoint, does that mean it’s protected under the second amendment?
personally, i doubt this to be true. the voting masses are by and large not that smart on issues like this. granting access to personal data in order to receive promotional information has been accepted and liked by a large percentage of the masses. if not liked, then tolerated. if not tolerated, then willfully ignored.
if the argument is to get discounts on retail products/services, then of course the "think of the children" or "but terrorists" will work on them as well.
putting that much decision making in the hands of the voting public is always a scary idea, and never a sure thing.
Anyone with any insight as to why this topic is suddenly in the limelight in so many places at the same time?
I find it remarkable that, even though the UK government is desperate to demonstrate any form of tangible benefit to Brexit, and talks about independence and sovereignty etc, it is moving in exactly the same direction as EU nations on this, ignoring all advice to the contrary.
To be honest I’m kind of feeling left out. My messages are boring. Perhaps if this nonsense goes ahead I’ll start communicating dinner plans with my wife through our own custom key pairs, just to mess with them.
The dirty secret of the web is that the past 2 decades of VLOPs have led to a stunning increase in CSAM and sex trafficking. Governments know this from initial good-faith participation by VLOPs to escalate abuse to authorities. They were quickly overwhelmed. We know all this because of investigative journalism done by NYT in 2019.
VLOPs are interested in E2E encryption now because it lets them ignore their sexual abuse problem by making it untraceable and therefor unreportable. No normal user needs or benefits from E2E encryption on Facebook.
We don't need a blanket ban of E2E encryption but we do need regulation around who can use it and when. Preventing VLOPs from smoke-screening their platform abuse is a good middle ground.
Many idealistic technocrats on the web already believe E2E encryption is an absolute moral good, so it's hard to even get the conversation started. As evidenced by the extremely simplistic black & white takes in this thread. VLOPs are counting on this when they market E2E features as in their users' best interest.
I suppose that massive increase of cases is why the special "sex trafficking" courts the US government set up in 2018 shut down for lack of cases. This is just anothe scare like the red scare, terrorism, etc. Very little actual impact or events but huge response in terms of getting re-elected and showing eyes ads so it's blown way out of proportion in the public discourse.
Basing your laws off the needs of corporate persons instead of human persons is bad policy. Authoritarianism might look good in the short term but $godwin. Will you suggest going after the post office for people mailing illegal items too? It's misplaced. The person who commits the crime commits the crime.
Here is the investigation I referenced. Consider reading the report and grounding your argument in reality. This stuff is happening. What should we do about it?
The answer you don't want to hear and is bound to be extremely unpopular is: nothing. If the only way to effectively rein in online CSAM is to fatally compromise encryption, that's a price not worth paying. We have already sacrificed many a personal liberties at the altar of "think of the kids!!", and, as you mention, it's yet to prove effective at the task. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
You're conflating transport encryption and E2E encryption. The OP article is only about E2E encryption, which is not fully implemented on Facebook to date, so not allowing them (and other VLOPs in the same position) to implement it just maintains the status quo.
My claim is that these platforms have a proven history of elevating CSAM on the web and are turning to a currently unused technology, E2E encryption of messages and groups, to crystalize the problem instead of tackle it.
This has nothing to do with theoretical beliefs about encryption in general, the value of transport encryption used by Facebook and nearly every other website, or personal liberties. Nobody needed E2E encryption on Facebook in its first couple decades. Nothing is being sacrificed if they don't implement it now. The sacrifice happens when the _do_ implement it. We sacrifice the ability to do anything about the CSAM influencers profiting on the platform.
I'm not even arguing for a blanket ban of E2EE. What I'm arguing for is that we don't allow VLOPs to use it.
I am talking about what the original article mentioned, which is that certain Spanish legislators are pushing for what sounds like a blanket ban on E2EE by service providers, including the dominant communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal. This, in and of itself, is a massive overreach.
> Nobody needed E2E encryption on Facebook in its first couple decades [...]
The reality is that "transport encryption" does absolutely nothing to protect you from a malicious, authoritarian state actor, which is why the state's asking for it in the first place and why there have always been activists pushing for adoption of E2EE on these platforms. I should know, I was and still am one of them, so it's a bit absurd to say "nobody needed it for decades" when the only reason it's being adopted in the first place is because there's clear demand. And because the state has steadily gained the ability for technologically feasible mass surveillance for the first time in history, which is also a new phenomenon.
> We sacrifice the ability to do anything about the CSAM influencers profiting on the platform.
I'll spell it out bluntly: I acknowledge it could have such an effect, and it's a sacrifice I am willing to make, and deem to be a net gain for society as a whole. People have throughout history engaged in despicable behaviour, and will continue to do so in the online world because it's a reflection of who we are as a species, both good and bad.
> I'm not even arguing for a blanket ban of E2EE. What I'm arguing for is that we don't allow VLOPs to use it.
So we lose the ability to *maybe* do *something* on *some platforms* using only the online communications of the perpetrators, whom probably represent single digit percentages in the population. Meanwhile, traditional policing continues to exist, and the ban would, in practice, affect almost everyone else (or else what's the point?). Except, of course, the technologically literate criminals who will as always find ways around it.
I'm assuming you're aware of the far-reaching potential for misuse of your proposal, and presumably that's a sacrifice you're willing to make, so our differences can be easily summarised: you place higher value on punishing a relatively limited number of individuals for crimes deemed particularly damaging and offensive over sacrificing the whole of society's right to private communication, I do the opposite. In fact, if you grant that this issue will likely never fully be resolved (as history suggests is the case), we merely disagree about what the tolerable level for this crime is in exchange for safeguarding societal freedom. Same with all other forms of criminal activity throughout history...
As we've already sacrificed much in the name of this very issue, I hope people living in democratic nations understand what's at stake here, and that there will never be an end to these authoritarian arguments. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I understand your position and if you're willing to say the quiet part out loud then that's enough to stop me hounding your position. I just don't want anyone having their cake and eating it too.
I disagree with how you frame my position. First the argument that criminals will always find a way around it is specifically why I think legislation should target VLOPs. Nobody can just build one of those, including criminals. If you want to firm up my position it's not that E2EE is the last battle against CSAM; rather it's that VLOPs proliferate CSAM in previously impossible ways, with a virality factor unachievable by older means. Criminals are of course free to return to Signal or whatever, but it won't give them the reach that Facebook gives them so it's still progress even if we didn't save every single child on the planet.
Moreover, I disagree (again) with your desire to pull my position into a theoretical debate about free speech absolutism. I just don't think two people on HN are going to get to the bottom of that one. But with a little nuance, which yes is messy, we can stop the proliferation of CSAM on VLOPs without constraining individual liberties. Just go do those liberties on anything except a VLOP.
I appreciate the candour, and understand you’d rather these measures be restricted to a very limited number of platforms.
Ultimately, you’re right, our debate here will have little effect on the outcome, given that members of the Spanish government stated in no uncertain terms they would indeed not restrict it to the large social media platforms. I was pointing to the specifics mentioned in the article instead of pulling it in a theoretical debate like you said.
Alas, whether their stated intentions are the true ones, I trust few legislators to nail some platonic ideal state of authoritarianism, even if they’re benevolent. Too much power stands to be concentrated in too few hands for this ever to go our (society at large) way. When we shift the debate to the problem of the integration, we’ve already lost.
This was a delightful read. Two contrasting points of view coming together without a flame war. For a second I had to double check that I was on the internet.
Me, I don’t know where I stand. I think if it eliminated CSAM, terrorism and other such things, it’s a price worth paying.
What I need to be convinced of is the scale of that elimination, because if erosion of privacy is the cost paid, people (as in Joe Public) will want to see returns on that.
What I think it’ll actually do is move offenders away from those platforms and onto ones that are even harder to monitor. I mean, I’d assume that Meta will be able to see who is talking to who even without the content, which puts some pieces of the puzzle together in the presence of other evidence. I’d also assume end to end encryption doesn’t mean much if the app itself has a CVE that leaks information once decrypted, and it certainly doesn’t mean much if authorities have possession of your device (in the UK, not unlocking a device and apps when asked to is itself a punishable crime).
So if all this will do is drive people to platforms that eliminate such things and make the job of law enforcement even harder, it isn’t worth it.
But if there’s more to it than that, it might be. Im guessing it’s feasible that WhatsApp push out an update that sends them your private keys, because I’m assuming the app itself has access to them. If Im right, then in theory the end of E2EE could open up a huge backlog of messages and solve “historic” crimes. If that’s the case, it might be worth it.
Too many variables for me, so Im placing myself firmly in the “I don’t know” camp.
We don't need to ban E2E, especially not "to think of the children". I am thinking of my children when I say I don't want any ban on encryption at all. I want them to enjoy their lives and the internet as I have, without the government constantly sticking its nose in. That's what “thinking of the children” really means if you're being sincere about it.
How would this even work? Sorry in advance, since I'm not well-versed in encryption, but wouldn't HTTPS also fall under end-to-end communication? What about for military purposes? How would enforcement of this work? Like would they just require that What's App and the like not use end-to-end, or fully just block all encrypted packets on the ISP side? If not, couldn't someone just program an app to do the same, or download APKs of Signal or a similar app? This strikes me as being completely bone-headed.
Wow, so would non-gov-signed certs be completely banned? Like if a website used Let's Encrypt, then would the government just ban people from accessing it? How would that even play out with VPNs? This seems so completely unenforceable, unless Spain decided to enact a China-style Great Firewall, and even then this would be an entirely different level.
All I'm seeing is Spain wishes to disconnect from the rest of the world.
Without encryption, you do not have banks, you do not have email, you do not have 90+% of websites, you don't have any business software sales, and now as of Win11 and its Bitlocker-by-default strategy, you don't have consumer desktops.
If Spain wants to get on the fast track to a revolution by literally destroying their economy in the most efficient manner, I say let them. This is a self-solving problem.
They are fine with transport encryption. They want do ban E2E encryption. As long as the companies (and the authorities) can access your data at rest, they are fine.
Encryption does not work unless everything is encrypted, even at rest.
There are no secret keys that only the "correct" people can use, there are no impenetrable vaults where hard drives live and only the "correct" people have access to. It is either encrypted, 24/7/365, in all the forms it lives in, or it is not encrypted.
Banning E2E is the first step on banning encryption entirely. There is no other sane way to conceptualize this.
What is "E2E" is a bit ambiguous. Server-Client is a sort of end-to-end in network context. Maybe nowadays people say E2E for between personal device encryption?
Reminder that France actually did this in the 90s, because why wouldn't such an exceptional country with glorious leaders do that? Clearly they knew was was best.
> Until 1996 anyone wishing to encrypt any document had to first receive an official sanction or risk fines from F6000 to F500,000 ($1000 to $89,300) and a 2-6 month jail term.
This news item from 1999 is about France finally making it legal to use toy ciphers to encrypt documents in France. Let that sink in. Trivial toy ciphers were actually illegal to use in france for 3+ years.
This (I think '97) was when I realized that France is not your typical western democracy style country. Nothing about France is typical.
(And, yes, the it was that Dominique Strauss-Kahn.)
What makes electronic messages be different to other forms of private communication that they need to be provided to the government automatically? And in the case of Spain in particular, there are reports of Pegasus being used to spy on Catalan politicians [1][2].
They can shove this CSAM BS up their asses. We all know that this "save the children" is nothing but fig leaf used to cover total surveillance and control. Opening their communication to wide public instead as the other poster have proposed makes way more sense.
"The psyche of a fascist is “authoritarian” in the sense that it attaches itself to figures of strength and disdains those it deems weak. It tends toward conventionalism, rigidity, and stereotypical thinking; it insists on a stark contrast between in-group and out-group, and it jealously patrols the boundaries between them. It is prone to obsession over rumors of immorality and conspiracy, and it represses with self-loathing the sexual licentiousness it projects onto others. In all of these ways, fascism appears as the political manifestation of a pre-political disposition. The authoritarian personality does not always turn explicitly fascist; its politics may remain dormant, only to emerge under certain social-historical conditions."
I'm curious. Why are European Governments from the UK to Spain suddenly trying to ban end-to-end encryption.
I mean I would be extremely surprised if agencies such as the GCHQ were unable to crack or completely circumvent end-to-end encrypted messages (and any well-funded signals intelligence agency that claims it's unable to do so, should be required to give an accounting of what it spends it's budget on), so why the sudden desire to ban it?
Wouldn't it be better to give the bad guys a false sense of security to lull them into using seemingly secure end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, and then quietly gather evidence against them?
I see those things as a big slap in the face for freedom. Can you imagine? We forbid locks in your homes. You have nothing to hide (but a lot to lose).
I hate the argument 'You have nothing to hide'. It is so untrue for every single person in the world. It is such a weak argument.
You have nothing to hide and we forbid to use any form of encryption.
Alright, lets AI call your grandmother with all the information hackers got on you. Lets see if you really had nothing to hide.
Would homomorphic encryption or any other privacy enhancing technologies allow for a middle ground here?
Would allow you to scan the encrypted messages for incriminating or illegal content when there is reason to believe a specific account is doing something illegal (could require court approval, then a further process for full decrypted messages as part of court proceedings)
Ahh interesting. So you could not have one key encrypting the messages than a separate org-wide key encrypting the naughty word list. That makes sense. Thanks.
This seems similar to the ridiculous questions members of the US Congress asked Google and Facebook employees a few years ago. Law makers (particularly the older, less technologically inclined) tend to view things through the worst possible lens because they lack the knowledge required to understand the inherent value of technologies such as encryption.
I think you misunderstand the display put on by most senior members. They have staff that can get details. However, playing dumb or obstinate is a negotiating tactic. The authority hierarchy at play is more important that the details of the tech, viewed a certain way. Let's be blunt, more than half of all representatives in both parties work on behalf of local, state, Federal and international security.
It's not just lack of knowledge, but lack of willingness to learn and apply it.
Their priorities are set on the power plays that happen in government chambers, the government and corporate interests that ask them to change laws for some purpose, and performing actions that will keep them elected (in that order). Banning encryption is something that satisfy the second group, where government organizations would love to make their jobs easier by having a key to encrypted communications. The fact that the entire internet is built on encryption is only a barrier to these governmental powers telling lawmakers to "pull the trigger" on banning encryption, since the compromises will hit corporations the most (since corporations actually do need perfect encryption without the government spying on them).
The politicians saying they need to curb CSAM, mean exactly what they say they mean. The problem is exactly as big as they say it is. That doesn't make their desired angle of attack a good idea, but if you make predictions based on the assumption they mean something completely different and want to spy on people, or that they're being influenced by people who do, you're going to predict wrong. There's a reason many of them are fixated on trying to fingerprint CSAM content out of encrypted messages without decrypting them, something that would not enable the government spying everyone seems convinced it's really for.
The article says the majority of EU countries want to scan peoples' messages for illegal content. If this ends up being implemented, then it has crossed the line and we are now living in an authoritarian state. A watershed moment indeed.
But other than that, how does one even notice these proposals, and how can one help to prevent them from passing? Or even, how to help change the people representing the country in these things?
politics has patterns, it has some procedural and bureaucratic parts, those are very visible (legibility! see also "Seeing like a state")
but in general there's the separation of powers (branches of government), the opposition parties, the checks and balances, and the media.
to answer your question directly, the bigger the government the more separate agencies it has, the more people you need to watch them, the more people are needed to simply raise their voices, give their faces as the opposition, and then more people to keep track of what-the-hell are they doing.
that's how you got special interest groups. single issue parties. (and if such a party manages to raise the salience of their issue to the "national level" then this basically forces other parties and actors to reveal their preference regarding that issue.)
As a Spaniard, genuinely curious about why they are so worried. I mean, the real reason. My first bet is Catalonia, but wouldn't be surprised they are actually worried about their own security.
I don't use E2E encryption to evade my government. I use E2E encryption to protect myself from criminals and malicious actors. Oh, government == malicious actors ??
Apparently Germany is an exception. From the story:
> Representatives from Germany—a country that has staunchly opposed the proposal—said the draft law needs to explicitly state that no technologies will be used that disrupt, circumvent, or modify encryption. “This means that the draft text must be revised before Germany can accept it,” the country said.
Afraid people votes conservative and the election is the next Sunday. The more confused and afraid get the voters, the more will search protection in the angry and vicious candidate that promises stability.
For the PP all is a flaming hell, for the Socialists all is unicorn glittering wonderful. All are wrong and they know it. The truth is in the middle.
I would just assume that everything said in this week is fake or incorrect. This is simply typical FUD to catch some late votes in minor groups of citizens.
