<story><title>Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?</title><text>Also, how do you respond when someone brings up concerns of E2EE platforms being used for child sexual abuse imagery or terrorism?&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that these arguments have to be made to laypersons who aren&amp;#x27;t necessarily from the United States, and who don&amp;#x27;t usually have a lot of technical knowledge.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwawayjava</author><text>and if you say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;, they&amp;#x27;re screwed. Whereas with a door, they can just push you out of the way and kick it down.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m opposed to back doors, but the door analogy is a bad one.</text></item><item><author>lysium</author><text>Shouldn’t they come to me then and look into my phone instead of constantly looking into my messages on the server?
I think the door is a great analogy.</text></item><item><author>jdsnape</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure this is a great analogy as yes, we permit people to have doors and locks but society also provides a mechanism for the government to lawfully get access to them. If the Police have a legit reason to access a property they go to court and get a warrent, and if they need to they&amp;#x27;ll kick the door in to get in.&lt;p&gt;The current government requests to be able to access encrypted info with a warrent are an extension of what currently happens in physical space.</text></item><item><author>diffeomorphism</author><text>Politicians propose to forbid all buildings from having doors. After all &amp;quot;bad people&amp;#x2F;stuff etc.&amp;quot; could lock the doors and hide behind them. Anyone arguing against that is obviously against safety.&lt;p&gt;Counterpoints:&lt;p&gt;- Do we currently have a big door problem?&lt;p&gt;- Wait, don&amp;#x27;t doors also serve an important function?&lt;p&gt;- Won&amp;#x27;t that make everybody much more insecure and basically do nothing against &amp;quot;bad stuff&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;- What if I put a wooden plank in front of the hole in my building? Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that be a &amp;quot;door&amp;quot;? Making doors illegal is not going to stop people from making &amp;quot;doors&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now, people like to spin this analogy further and revise their proposal and say &amp;quot;Fine, keep your doors, but I get a spare key for every door made&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Problems with this:&lt;p&gt;- Yes, you and everyone in your office can grab the spare key and steal all my stuff (see TSA locks and basically any time in history that was tried).&lt;p&gt;- Remember the wooden plank above? That guy will not give you a spare key and can still hide &amp;quot;bad stuff&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;- Fine, we will just use magical (blockchain) keys that nobody can steal and not make things insecure, but have an officer visit and inspect every room you have every 5 minutes. You have nothing to hide, do you?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>laumars</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s no such thing as a perfect analogy because the entire point of an analogy is it takes an argument and reframes it in a different context. Different contexts have different edge cases and thus no analogy fits an argument perfectly.&lt;p&gt;Given this door analogy works for the majority of the arguments being presented (which is impressive in itself given how different the physical and electronic worlds are), I&amp;#x27;d say it&amp;#x27;s actually a pretty good analogy.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: What are your arguments in favor of end-to-end encryption?</title><text>Also, how do you respond when someone brings up concerns of E2EE platforms being used for child sexual abuse imagery or terrorism?&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that these arguments have to be made to laypersons who aren&amp;#x27;t necessarily from the United States, and who don&amp;#x27;t usually have a lot of technical knowledge.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwawayjava</author><text>and if you say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;, they&amp;#x27;re screwed. Whereas with a door, they can just push you out of the way and kick it down.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m opposed to back doors, but the door analogy is a bad one.</text></item><item><author>lysium</author><text>Shouldn’t they come to me then and look into my phone instead of constantly looking into my messages on the server?
I think the door is a great analogy.</text></item><item><author>jdsnape</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure this is a great analogy as yes, we permit people to have doors and locks but society also provides a mechanism for the government to lawfully get access to them. If the Police have a legit reason to access a property they go to court and get a warrent, and if they need to they&amp;#x27;ll kick the door in to get in.&lt;p&gt;The current government requests to be able to access encrypted info with a warrent are an extension of what currently happens in physical space.</text></item><item><author>diffeomorphism</author><text>Politicians propose to forbid all buildings from having doors. After all &amp;quot;bad people&amp;#x2F;stuff etc.&amp;quot; could lock the doors and hide behind them. Anyone arguing against that is obviously against safety.&lt;p&gt;Counterpoints:&lt;p&gt;- Do we currently have a big door problem?&lt;p&gt;- Wait, don&amp;#x27;t doors also serve an important function?&lt;p&gt;- Won&amp;#x27;t that make everybody much more insecure and basically do nothing against &amp;quot;bad stuff&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;- What if I put a wooden plank in front of the hole in my building? Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that be a &amp;quot;door&amp;quot;? Making doors illegal is not going to stop people from making &amp;quot;doors&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now, people like to spin this analogy further and revise their proposal and say &amp;quot;Fine, keep your doors, but I get a spare key for every door made&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Problems with this:&lt;p&gt;- Yes, you and everyone in your office can grab the spare key and steal all my stuff (see TSA locks and basically any time in history that was tried).&lt;p&gt;- Remember the wooden plank above? That guy will not give you a spare key and can still hide &amp;quot;bad stuff&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;- Fine, we will just use magical (blockchain) keys that nobody can steal and not make things insecure, but have an officer visit and inspect every room you have every 5 minutes. You have nothing to hide, do you?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brlewis</author><text>&amp;gt; and if you say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;, they&amp;#x27;re screwed&lt;p&gt;This is false. If it&amp;#x27;s ever true, the crime is confined to the perpetrator&amp;#x27;s mind.</text></comment>