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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Privacy is a human right. Encryption backdoors for governments are human rights abuses.

It has nothing to do with safety; it is not a debate about “how much safety do we purchase with reduced privacy”.

It’s just as firearms rights have nothing to do with hunting, or a militia.

I said this in an earlier comment: for both encryption and guns, they will always come at a cost to society, but that cost is the price of democracy. They will always cost something, and we will always need them, but we can work to create environments that need less of them and environments that make them less costly.

Encryption also provides immense benefits to society. Modern commerce couldn't work without encryption. Companies wouldn't be able to protect their trade secrets. And so on.

Plenty of non-technical people think that they can have their cake and eat it by giving a backdoor to "the government". Which government though? The one of Burkina Faso? The fact is that backdoored encryption is broken encryption.

That's also depends on the society. Obviously it wouldn't benefit the interpol in this case.

For companies, they would have to change their business model that is not relying on trade secret, I would even argue that not having to spend time, money or effort to protect trade secret is a benefit.

Human rights are man-made and arbitrary. They aren't some kind of holy text that must be protected at all costs. They must be bent and ignored if necessary. You can't just say "this is a human right" to shut down any discussion.

That's a hilariously bad take.

Can u elaborate? If human rights is not arbitrary nor man made then its come from god ?

Human rights were fought for an won in bloody struggles. We do not want to lose them again.

Thats true if we assume that every human want the same thing. But the reason there is bloody fight in the first place is not all human want the same thing. Is good for you if you are in the winning side, you certainly don't want to lose them but you can't say the same for the other side. They too want to be on the winning side.

Obviously since there is no God then yeah they are "made-up", but their value is obvious. Governments have a tendency to want more and more power, and by governments I mean the ones in charge like Xi, KJI, and Hitler. Those sorts do not like human rights and think they know better than everyone what is best, especially if it makes them richer and more powerful. This is why human rights are important and why they shouldn't be compromised for "safety" because you might get a little safety in the short term, but tomorrow brings genocide.

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