<story><title>Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/bill-barr-facebook-letter-halt-encryption</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>IfOnlyYouKnew</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not entirely sure how those four examples are supposedly invalidated by giving them a clever nickname.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll take the privacy side in most any discussion of privacy-vs-security, but categorically denying the possibility that some crimes could be aided by encryption seems a step to far.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also bad PR strategy: anybody not already on your side will be put off by your apparent lack of reasoning skills.&lt;p&gt;Instead, acknowledge the possibility and show them &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; you consider the benefits outweighing the risks.</text></item><item><author>Kinnard</author><text>The Second Great CryptoWar: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reason.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;the-second-great-crypto-war&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reason.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;the-second-great-crypto-war&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;The proponents of this process use fear tactics to win support, what the four cypherpunks dub &amp;quot;The Four Horsemen of the Info-pocalypse: child pornography, terrorism, money laundering, and the War on Some Drugs.&amp;quot; In other words, laws passed to go after child pornographers, terrorists, money launderers, and drug dealers end up chipping away at everyone&amp;#x27;s privacy. The classic example is the PATRIOT Act, passed to prevent terrorism but soon used to expand wiretapping and National Security Letter powers in other contexts.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>saagarjha</author><text>&amp;gt; We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety.&lt;p&gt;Oh, so you’re asking for more end-to-end encryption?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism-related content through its own systems, it also notes that &amp;quot;mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is such a lazy argument :&amp;#x2F;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>loup-vaillant</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not entirely sure how those four examples are supposedly invalidated by giving them a clever nickname.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re not. A number of horrible things &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; happen as a result of pervasive end to end encryption.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;However.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have to run the numbers here. On the one hand, perhaps a bit more crime, some of which horrible. On the other hand, the privacy of &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a hard sell. Just picture a politician on live television having to choose between having this cute little child being raped for years before they commit suicide (letting the perpetrators off the hook), or ramp up the surveillance a bit. Picture them choosing &lt;i&gt;rape&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Nevermind the false dichotomy. The horrible fact is, the value of human life is not infinite. A mere inconvenience, suffered by enough people, is worth killing a few. Such situations rarely present themselves. (We rarely condone murder in the name of the betterment of humanity: some tried, didn&amp;#x27;t go so well.) End to end encryption (and metadata hiding while we&amp;#x27;re at it), is such a situation. The harm, though hard to perceive, is significant, affects everyone, and can potentially grow into full blown totalitarianism (possibly enforced by incentives rather than violent policing).&lt;p&gt;Preventing that is totally worth killing a few children… or at least spend resources on properly policing the problem, like going undercover.&lt;p&gt;Still, go say that on TV. I&amp;#x27;m not even sure I&amp;#x27;m safe writing it here.</text></comment>
<story><title>Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/bill-barr-facebook-letter-halt-encryption</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>IfOnlyYouKnew</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not entirely sure how those four examples are supposedly invalidated by giving them a clever nickname.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll take the privacy side in most any discussion of privacy-vs-security, but categorically denying the possibility that some crimes could be aided by encryption seems a step to far.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also bad PR strategy: anybody not already on your side will be put off by your apparent lack of reasoning skills.&lt;p&gt;Instead, acknowledge the possibility and show them &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; you consider the benefits outweighing the risks.</text></item><item><author>Kinnard</author><text>The Second Great CryptoWar: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reason.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;the-second-great-crypto-war&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reason.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;the-second-great-crypto-war&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;The proponents of this process use fear tactics to win support, what the four cypherpunks dub &amp;quot;The Four Horsemen of the Info-pocalypse: child pornography, terrorism, money laundering, and the War on Some Drugs.&amp;quot; In other words, laws passed to go after child pornographers, terrorists, money launderers, and drug dealers end up chipping away at everyone&amp;#x27;s privacy. The classic example is the PATRIOT Act, passed to prevent terrorism but soon used to expand wiretapping and National Security Letter powers in other contexts.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>saagarjha</author><text>&amp;gt; We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety.&lt;p&gt;Oh, so you’re asking for more end-to-end encryption?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism-related content through its own systems, it also notes that &amp;quot;mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is such a lazy argument :&amp;#x2F;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kyboren</author><text>Some crimes can also be aided by whispered in-person conversation.  Should we require all in-person conversation to be shouted near a government office?&lt;p&gt;The societal default used to be that substantially all conversations were inaccessible to the government except through testimony.  Encryption does nothing to change the availability of information through testimony.&lt;p&gt;Previously, remote conspirators could collaborate through the post, and their conversations could only be accessed with a warrant specifically targeting those communicators.  End-to-end encryption does little to change the availability of information in a targeted investigation; it just means it&amp;#x27;s a little more difficult to access the information than entering a phone number into XKeyscore.  Investigators can install malware on the device, or microphones and video cameras in the suspect&amp;#x27;s home to hear or see what is being communicated.&lt;p&gt;Forbidding end-to-end encryption, in combination with our mass surveillance apparatus, changes the societal default to be that substantially all conversations are trivially and automatically accessible to the government.</text></comment>