Hacker News Reader

Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

Does it really affect "most people". Sure, the potential effect is there - you commit a crime and they'll check your phone records and whatever to catch you and your associates but beyond that?

Most people use their phones to talk about pretty banal things.

View on HN

Sure, but "most people" aren't going to actually have the data collected on them examined. Just rising young party stars, perhaps. Or civil rights and environmental activists. Or the CEOs of companies that are competing with friends of the head of GCHQ. Do those people talk about banal things? Do those people talk about illegal things? Do those people talk about embarassing things?

Honestly, the issue here isn't "most people's" banal talk. The effects of having such a huge cache of data on hand to get "leverage" on key people that the GCHQ doesn't like is the issue.

Exactly, it's not most people but key people - ergo "most people" don't care.

In addition to the general principle that your government shouldn't be collecting dirt on its constituents, there's also the very real possibility that back doors will eventually be exploited by bad guys and reduce everyone's security.

Even if you think you don't have anything to hide from the government, you probably have plenty of stuff you want to hide from criminals.

The thing is laws change, what is permitted today may not be tomorrow. So yes today this may not affect most people, does that mean we should allow for laws today that could undermine democracy in the future? Also do you really think criminals will use a protocol authored by GCHQ?

>Also do you really think criminals will use a protocol authored by GCHQ? //

Criminals use Facebook. Not all criminals are intelligent.

But the sort of criminals that GCHQ is after, probably not.

That said Tor is used by criminals and that was developed by DARPA I gather.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com