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Comment by ZanyProgrammer | Hacker News Reader

'When you are using the tool for business, that is a deal breaker.' People say stuff like this all the time, implying that their business transactions are completely sacrosanct. At some point bog standard enterprise tech is going to be leaky someplace. I can't imagine the government would give a shot about my companies work. But then again I'm not the average paranoid HNer when it comes to this

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You don't know what the government cares about and what it doesn't. Over the last decade, many people used enterprise systems and hardware only to find out they weren't secure and the mundane information that traversed those systems were valuable to the government...and that they were compromised. [1]

You just don't know whose tapped the line, whose listening, and what systems your text is being indexed into. So reliable E2E is key.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2014/12/13/belgacom-hack-gchq-insid...

If they want to listen to you they will listen to you, although you may make it more expensive for them to do so.

Unless you're using physical couriers and airgapped networks with TEMPEST protection. I say this unironically; these are facts people tend to brush away.

Agreed, my logic is entirely the opposite. This would be a dealbreaker in my personal life, but why would I care what the gov't knows about my work life? Of course, I don't run the business...

The "government" like the "cloud" is just an abstraction.

The cloud is at the end someone else's computer. No, I'm sure Microsoft CEO isn't interested in sabotaging my business just like I'm sure the POTUS doesn't actively decide to kill innocent civilians. However, they make compromises (something we all do in engineering) and some of those compromises could end up with us as collateral damage.

What I'm getting at is even if all government agencies have purest of pure hearts, someone somewhere will eventually leave a door unlocked. Nobody can tell me with 100% certainty that this won't happen in the US and I trust their competence more than some outside contractor working for the Qatari emir.

This is my point of view on why we shouldn't have a dragnet. I don't have to argue that my government is evil. I don't even have to say my government is incompetent. But who in my government will testify for the other 200+ governments and their agents?

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