<story><title>Signal threatens to dump US market if EARN IT act passes</title><url>https://uk.pcmag.com/security-5/125569/messaging-app-signal-threatens-to-dump-us-market-if-anti-encryption-bill-passes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Thriptic</author><text>I think its better to just admit that freedoms &amp;#x2F; tech will always be misused by criminal actors, and that&amp;#x27;s just a price we agree to pay for privacy, security, and liberty. I don&amp;#x27;t think think that&amp;#x27;s a controversial statement, and we make such trade offs all the time unconsciously. The United States has largely agreed to accept a certain amount of criminal gun violence in the name of personal gun ownership. We agree that a certain amount of money laundering will occur due to shell corporations and foreign ownership of assets. We agree that police have to let a certain amount of crime go unpunished in order to protect against unreasonable search and seizure. The only difference between those things and this is that no one has the balls to stand up and admit that a certain amount of child abuse is an acceptable price given the stakes at hand, even though it is true.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;gt; I think its better to just admit that freedoms &amp;#x2F; tech will always be misused by criminal actors, and that&amp;#x27;s just a price we agree to pay for privacy, security, and liberty.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s possible for both things to be true at the same time.&lt;p&gt;If Signal exists and is secure, will criminals use it? Sure they will, criminals are people and people want private communications.&lt;p&gt;But if you ban honest citizens from using Signal, will &lt;i&gt;criminals&lt;/i&gt; stop using secure communications? No, they have an unusually strong incentive to use them and will seek out alternatives. The percentage of criminals who switch to insecure communications will be lower than the percentage of honest people who do.&lt;p&gt;Which &lt;i&gt;increases&lt;/i&gt; the amount of crime, because the amount you&amp;#x27;re helping law enforcement catch criminals is smaller than the amount you&amp;#x27;re helping criminals exploit victims. This is also compounded by the fact that there are more honest people than criminals.&lt;p&gt;There is a theory of bureaucracy (&amp;quot;an institution will attempt to preserve the problem to which it is a solution&amp;quot;) that says law enforcement agencies will ask for this even when they know full well that it will increase the overall amount of crime, because more crime is good for them since it means more law enforcement.</text></comment>
<story><title>Signal threatens to dump US market if EARN IT act passes</title><url>https://uk.pcmag.com/security-5/125569/messaging-app-signal-threatens-to-dump-us-market-if-anti-encryption-bill-passes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Thriptic</author><text>I think its better to just admit that freedoms &amp;#x2F; tech will always be misused by criminal actors, and that&amp;#x27;s just a price we agree to pay for privacy, security, and liberty. I don&amp;#x27;t think think that&amp;#x27;s a controversial statement, and we make such trade offs all the time unconsciously. The United States has largely agreed to accept a certain amount of criminal gun violence in the name of personal gun ownership. We agree that a certain amount of money laundering will occur due to shell corporations and foreign ownership of assets. We agree that police have to let a certain amount of crime go unpunished in order to protect against unreasonable search and seizure. The only difference between those things and this is that no one has the balls to stand up and admit that a certain amount of child abuse is an acceptable price given the stakes at hand, even though it is true.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>faster</author><text>It sounds like you accept the bill&amp;#x27;s authors&amp;#x27; claim that EARN-IT is about protecting children.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d be very interested in hearing from child abuse investigators how the controls in the bill line up with how tech is used in abusing children. My expectation is that there is very little alignment, because &amp;quot;for the children&amp;quot; is most often the rallying cry of politicians who want something that is not in the best interests of the people they are supposed to represent.</text></comment>