Bill Gates advocates for stopping end-to-end encryption | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates advocates for stopping end-to-end encryption

reclaimthenet.org

18 pointskiki_jiki32 comments

Is this real news? I see no mentions of primary sources, and when I do a google search I find some much older articles with much more context and nuance.

I’m not sure I believe this in any way. It is taking quotes out of context, and creating an exaggeration.

So clicking the wired link in the post then doing ctrl+f I found where they are getting this from https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most-us-test...

I think wired is generally not out there trying to libel people. I am honesty curious why Gates has been out of the public sphere for over ten years but is suddenly out there shilling against crypto for 'the children'.

I had a look at that article but I couldn't find where in that article he is "shilling against crypto for 'the children'". Can you share a quote?

There are these:

> When you have encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography.

> Being big in the social media business is no simple game, like the encryption issue.

Personally, I wouldn't call these quotes "shilling", but Gates does seem to have funny thoughts on encryption. Maybe half-baked, but he is smart enough to not voice half-baked thoughts on an interview.

However, I'm also sceptical about the type of "free speech" reclaimthenet.org is advocating. The tone of the article is very sensationalistic, focusing more on calling-out Gates, rather than debunking his thoughts.

I thought he seemed pretty exasperated in that interview on corona response. Maybe he let his guard down, I was surprised to read the encryption stuff too.

He's not been really out of the public sphere.

He has always been involved in a number of social issues through his foundation and have been very vocal/public about them.

Maybe we're just hearing a bit more about him and his thoughts because he's involved in looking for a way out of Covid through his foundation, and has famously 'predicted' something like this.

I agree that this piece makes me file reclaimthenet.org under "fake-news spreading". I'm no Gates fan but I've rarely seen so much vitriol in so little space.

This bears more research. Disturbing if true. Article is marred by inflammatory rhetoric.

I don't believe there is a way to stop end-to-end encryption. You can easily make data look non-encrypted but actually contain something encrypted underneath.

a.k.a. steganography

The actual quote, without breathless editorializing, is:

"The irony is that it’s digital social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, 'OK, there’s just an evil person, and that explains all of this.' And when you have [ ] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography."

I've removed Wired's additions within brackets, and suddenly it doesn't seem at all clear Gates is talking about end-to-end encryption directly. It might be said that is the only way to accomplish his wish, but when I first read the article I thought he could as easily be talking about legal remedies as anything else.

Bill, I thought you were a pretty smart guy... Can't you think of anything that will increase public health knowledge and awareness (especially vaccines) that doesn't involve monitoring private conversations for goodthink? I think this is a very lazy way to go about you foundation's mission statement.

If we can't (and I really don't think this is the case), then anti-vaxxers are the price we pay for a free and open society. To quote David Foster Wallace, there is a "baseline vulnerability" that a free society has (whether it be terrorism or the proliferation misinformation), and those that succumb to those vulnerabilities are "sacrifices on the altar of freedom." [0]

[0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-as...

Even if true, he's just one (already rich) person.

He's riding high on being correct about covid-19 so he is influential to a lot of people.

Is this click-bait news, I cannot tell anymore?

He didn't outright advocate for it from the interview that I believe motivated this article, but he did pretty strongly imply that end-to-end encryption facilitates crime and shouldn't be allowed:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/bill-gates-lies-spread-faste...

>“Some of the messages on their platform, they don’t even see because of the encryption on WhatsApp,” Gates said. “In order to not have any responsibility, they’ve made that opaque. You know, so whatever the issues — anti-vaccine, child pornography — they have made sure they can’t intervene on those things.”

Ah the classic "why wont anyone think of the children" reasons.

Pretty much every freedom facilitates crime in one way or another.

Nice equivocation of CP and asking critical questions about vaccine safety.

The term "anti-vaccine" does not refer to people who are only "asking critical questions about vaccine safety".

Sure it does. Anyone questioning the mainstream narrative is immediately labeled an "evil anti-vaxxer". Try it sometime.

This is very disappointing. My response for people on this side is this: Great, hand me your unlocked phone. I promise not to share anything with anyone else.

Gates has never shied away from the idea of amassing enormous power over others to himself and others he trusts.

That's not how I read it. The quote is Gates talking about Facebook. My interpretation isn't that he's saying E2EE is bad, but rather he's saying that E2EE is a convenient way for Facebook to avoid/deny responsibility for things being spread through parts of the platform that they own.

Exactly right. This is not a story but blowing a quote out of context into something that it is not.

I can't see any implication from that position with respect to E2EE except that these platforms shouldn't be allowed to have it.

His position doesn't seem to be a blanket "e2e should be banned", but rather that social networks have a responsibility to police discourse on their platforms and they've used e2e as a mean to avoid that responsibility.

I personally think it's a red herring - even where there is no e2e, like on regular FB, it's extremely difficult to police user-generated content and fake news (a category that arguably includes TFA). This is just trying to whip up a storm against Gates.

His position with respect to E2EE seems to be that social networks and other communication platforms shouldn't be allowed to have it.

It's pretty clear what his philosophical outlook is, and what he would say about ANY widely adopted use-cases of E2EE.

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