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Comment by blotter_paper | Hacker News Reader

Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted!

*I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.

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In fact, demonstrating this point is probably part of the reason Facebook is litigating this case. It gives them a solid example of the risks of backdoors that they can point to when governments ask for them.

There's a nice plot stemming from there.

“A rogue big tech employee puts on a grey hat to orchestrate a hack + personal blackmail on government officials, to instill a deep fear out of them and make them realize the folly of refusing end-to-end encryption.”

Mr Robot season 5

I guess they just don't like the inconvenience of having to find the backdoors on their own. It's hard work! But hard work has never killed anyone*

*With the exception of people forced to work to death, or under unsafe conditions, or that were doing a perfectly reasonable amount of hard work that none the less triggered a heart attack. Or...

Depends, if months of hard work results in a drive strike, it could be said to have killed some one.

“The government” is not a homogeneous entity.

The government isn't a monolithic entity, remember.

The real irony comes from an Administration who ran on the odious idea of "locking up" government employees who mishandled communications, who then turns around and begins a mass campaign of mishandling communications...

"You're doing mishandling of communications wrong. Here, let me show you how to really mishandle communications."

How else do you expect them to conduct illegal activities?

The same way most large governments & corporations do it: Without any accountability or consequences.

"Rules for thee but not for me."

Hypocritical? How many of your personal secrets (or even your corporate secrets) would cause >= thousands of people to die or >= billions of taxpayer dollars to be lost if they were leaked?

> How many of your personal secrets (or even your corporate secrets) would cause >= thousands of people to die or >= billions of taxpayer dollars to be lost if they were leaked?

Personal means, and should continue to mean, something. I'm not willing to let governments define what is personal to me.

I don't think people with more impactful secrets deserve more privacy than anybody else.

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