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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

> Encrypt it, end to end, the government does not need to be able access all private communications of private citizens.

Law enforcement and security agencies need to be able to access any communication. This does not mean that they should monitor all communications.

They can eavesdrop on any phone call. They do not eavesdrop on all phone calls.

The problem with E2E encryption is that it prevents eavesdropping even with the standard legal safeguards (warrant, etc), while not being required for the privacy of users. It is only effectively a marketing tool to convince people to use services from providers they don't trust, although, of course, since they control the app they can still in principle access the data.

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The police have more than enough data to do their jobs without having sweeping surveillance powers.

Even with E2E the police can get warrants for the devices which is usually more than enough to access data.

They just want an easier job, it’s not a major roadblock. When police jobs being easy is a good sign that privacy has been completely destroyed.

One of the points of eavesdropping is that the target is unaware of it, which enables the police to gather more evidence about more people.

E2E is not required for privacy. There is also a difference between privacy and the right to privacy, and a guarantee that no-one will ever be able to know what I'm doing.

There is no absolute, including absolute right. It's all about balance: We have a right to privacy but the police may search our homes and eavesdrop on our communications in strict, specific circumstances because that's in the public interest. The idea is simply to have the same online.

"Law enforcement and security agencies need to be able to access any communication." Why?

If someone could magically build a system that allows for the communication to be eavesdropped only by the allowed government agency, my objections would be dramatically reduced. But that's not the way tech works. Building one backdoor makes the entire system, and all users, vulnerable to a whole host of other malicious actors, including hostile foreign nations and unscrupulous hackers. We live in a world today where anyone can be hacked, even major institutions and corporations like NYTimes, Yahoo and Sony. We desperately need systems that are more secure, not less.

Backdoors are needed because a system uses E2E encryption.

If the system uses only P2P encryption then no backdoor is needed, which actually makes the system more secure to external threats. It is then for the provider to allow access to data only to "allowed government agencies" according to the law, which is how mobile phone networks work.

The solution to this would be to compel the company to push an updated version of the app to the target device, and thereby intercept traffic only from the target of the warrant, while maintaining E2E encryption for everyone else. (Of course, some will complain that even this ability to surveil is too much, and all encrypted messaging should be open source to avoid this possibility, but to me it's far preferable to leaving open the potential of hoovering up everyone's communications.)

> Law enforcement and security agencies need to be able to access any communication.

I don't agree with this -- but I think this does strike at the very heart of what the debate is all about.

'Law enforcement and security agencies need to be able to access any communication.'

Why? And while we are at it, why is this such a given that they need it.

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