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Comment by chaps | Hacker News Reader

Can you please explain why this isn't a big problem to you?

He's just noting how the article is focusing entirely on how this bill will affect journalists in particular rather than literally everybody.

That's understood. That's obviously a huge problem, but isn't it worth pointing out one of the bigger issues of the bill? There are many, many people who agree with this bill who may not have thought about this specific issue. It's worth pointing out how the ends that supposedly justify the means, can have major, major faults.

The weakening of structures that allow political journalists to expose corruption is not a small issue and should be discussed on its own.

In other words, I'm asking: "Why does this topic not deserve its own conversation?"

>That's understood. That's obviously a huge problem, but isn't it worth pointing out one of the bigger issues of the bill?

That's not "one of the bigger issues" of the bill. It's not even that interesting as an issue -- journalists have other ways to talk to sources. Deep Throat didn't use "end to end encryption".

But not allowing end to end encryption affects all of society (e.g. everybody's text messages, chat, and voice calls), not just some specific use case of a specific line of work.

One specific example doesn't make the whole set of journalists who need to communicate with others over the internet. Consider that during a pandemic, people are limited in travel, and over the internet is the de facto way of communication.

Do you think that a system like this won't be abused in targeting journalists trying to expose corruption? Surely that's a big issue.

You’re ignoring that E2EE is how anonymous communication is done now, including communicating with journalists.

I'm not ignoring anything. Communications of the masses use electronic media and will continue to do so, and those will be compromised if E2EE is forbidden. Masses aren't gonna stop talking and writing to each other digitally.

Journalists however, having a special need to protect their sources, and being aware of a potential lack of E2EE can always find other ways - similar to what they used to hide their sources before E2EE, when their phones could be tapped, etc, including intermediaries, face to face meetings, etc.

Journalists might be hurt from killing E2EE, but theirs is less of an issue (and they can take precautions). The big issue is with masses lacking E2EE.

> Journalists however, having a special need to protect their sources, and being aware of a potential lack of E2EE can always find other ways - similar to what they used to hide their sources before E2EE, when their phones could be tapped, etc, including intermediaries, face to face meetings, etc.

Except now there's stingray towers, scraped social media profiles, phone metadata, databases of license plate reader data, Palantir, CCTV with facial recognition, Clearview AI, and an army of private tech companies attempting to create detailed profiles of everyone on the internet and selling that information to god knows what malicious actors/governments.

As technology has progressed, journalists have accordingly updated their methods for protecting sources. E2EE is one of the technologies in the 20th/21st century that is essential to that end.

Which demographic do you think sources come from: "journalists" or "the masses"?

Will journalists really lose access to their sources, or will they simply abandon US-based companies for secure communication?

If a potential source is too afraid to reach out, did that source even exist in the first place?

I think the impact is certainly concerning, but I doubt that it's likely that most sources are currently even using E2E encryption in the first place I'm not trying to minimize this, either: the EARN IT act is a huge problem. I suppose my point is that you can't get rid of good encryption, but you can prevent US companies from using good encryption which is simply going to push people offshore.

This could even have totally perverse impacts: suppose that China can read your messages, but all you care about is that your provider is not hosted in the US?

They are saying it is a big problem. A problem much bigger than the already awful "journalists will have hard time protecting sources".

That doesn't seem to be what was said.

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