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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

I hate these requests for government back doors into tech communication software in the name of "the children". Let the parents worry about and protect their own children. Let the government mind its own business and stay out of ours.

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As a parent, I reject this disingenuous pretense of concern for "the children". Folks are eager to invoke children to justify the surveillance state while conveniently forgetting the plight of children when it comes to concentration camps, poverty, and climate change. Secondly, children themselves have frequently been the victim of surveillance abuses and there is no reason to suspect that this instance will be any different.

Yeah considering the profoundly terrible conditions in the concentration camps this administration is holding children in, this seems a littlllleeee disingenuous.

This administration? Is that singular?

I'm not interested in getting into a slapfight about who was worse, but I think it's pretty clear that _The Trump Administration_ is treating Southern American migrants purposefully poorly.

I know you're trying to point out some supposed hypocrisy for not criticizing Obama or Clinton or something, so I'll let you know I think they too enacted unforgivable political violence. Happy?

People exist outside the Republican/Democrat spectrum.

Yes, just convenient how silent those people are in certain unforgivable situations, until it comes to retrospect of course

You're purposefully misrepresenting the left to stroke your ego. People were extremely critical of Obama during his terms.

Stop JAQing off and stuff your crypto-fascist views up your ass you Trump slurping gonorrhea nodule.

inb4 "Leftists can't have civil discussions"

Fascist. Classic.

Oh fuck you got me. Good work. I'm going to renounce my political views now.

Shut the fuck up you stupid fash.

You have issues

You scoff, but history is full of democracies that did things like that. Recent history. Governments can go bad, and we should be especially wary in an age when technology gives then extra leverage. I wonder if there will come a day when it's impossible to overthrow your government - or if we're already there.

Edit: actually thinking you might be seriously talking about conditions for illegal immigrants detained in the US. Hyperbole, but still not a nice situation.

Your edit is correct, I'm very serious unfortunately.

I'm married to a Latina and spent ten years in Latin America. I think the current situation is deplorable, but these are the times we live in. I hope it gets better after this next election.

"Children have frequently been the victim of surveillance abuses"

What are you talking about? I'm seriously asking. This sounds like something people say without having anything real behind it.

Here is one particularly egregious example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/610k-settlement-in-school-webca...

Here is another example that is less of an isolated event:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/opinion/surveillance-stat...

And if the parents are the abusers, then it's okay?

I am still pro E2E encryption, especially given the Snowden revelations (the US gov cannot be trusted to be responsible), but it does come at a high cost.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-...

That's a really horrible situation, but running an information drag net on the entire world is the wrong way to crack down on that kind of crime.

We could solve a lot of those problems if we put a camera, or quartered a soldier, in every home.

Not often I get to invoke the 3rd Amendment. Get out of here, you Loyalist!

The thought that people can remove all crime or get anywhere near it is faulty from first axioms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

If you start thinking that parents "can be" the criminals then you've decided that parents are automatically guilty and must be proved innocent. This goes against the very moral fiber of the entire western world theory of law, the presumption of innocence.

How is the idea that we can remove all crime faulty? Blackstone is just saying that we shouldn't try to remove all crime because it's more harmful to society to try than to let some crimes go unsolved. His main argument is that there might be an ambiguous situation where someone appears guilty but actually is not guilty.

It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with a high degree of accuracy.

We probably shouldn't, especially not without being able to quickly update our laws, but it could be done. Imagine if anyone going over the speed limit was instantly charged a fine. We can do that today with complete accuracy, but we choose not to do enforcement that way.

> It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with a high degree of accuracy.

Unless the state itself is criminal. Not only can law stray from morality, authorities of the state can even violate the laws of that state itself. If you can imagine an extreme authoritarian state with a constitution, can't you also imagine that the leaders of that state choosing to ignore that constitution?

But before even getting into the above, you've assumed the possibility of perfect surveillance. Who or what and how could that ever be possible?

The only way I can conceive of perfect law enforcement is to have very few if any laws. Everything else is an excuse for the personal fancies of authoritarians.

All phones could be mandated to record audio/video at all times and stream it to government servers for archiving and processing, for example.

And you could set up society so that you'd be useless without carrying your phone, as we're most of the way there already. Not streaming your complete data to the government would become a crime.

All public places could be recorded in a similar way.

If you combined it with satellite tracking of the whole planet, you could even identify people that have chosen to go off the grid for some period of time, so you could solve crimes that happened in the forest if you want.

That's pretty close to perfect surveillance.

I can't think of a crime that couldn't be solved this way, but it's not a society where I'd want to live.

Who watches the watchers? Who prevents the watchers from deleting footage/recordings? Unless you're genetically engineering humans to no longer have any desires, anyone can be bribed or blackmailed for the right price.

Other watchers would watch those watchers. Government officials would not be exempt from data collection. People would eventually learn that you can't bribe or blackmail because it's impossible to do without having it recorded and detected by surveillance. That's how our system of government works today, but the only people who get caught are those that leave evidence behind. If you use technology to ensure everyone creates tons of evidence, then everyone doing something illegal can be caught.

I'm not sure why I'm being so heavily downvoted, the only difference between the dystopian future that I describe and the system we have currently, is that the government isn't collecting and processing data on such a wide scale. If they collect more data, we will have more crimes solved and more privacy forfeited. If you take that to its logical extreme, we have full surveillance, no privacy, and no crime. I'd rather live in a world where we have some crime, but privacy and no surveillance, but I think it's far more likely we'll head in the opposite direction.

> It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with a high degree of accuracy.

How would you handle corrupt senior police officers covering the tracks for themselves, their fellow officers, and friends in high places?

That's some of the most blue eyed innocent comment I have ever read. Go read about the Soviet Union.

How would E2E encryption help catch parents who abuse their kids? It might help in a minority of cases where they stupidly discuss it or share images but that's a small fraction of abusers. Certainly not enough to justify blocking encryption.

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