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Comment by oytis | Hacker News Reader

"... and asking for stricter regulation of the technology"

Like, stricter regulation of mathematics?

Right now, mass consumer use of technology for communication is predicated by:

1. There being a service provider that is a legal entity. 2. The service provider providing the client software. 3. The service provider gatekeeping to the social network that makes the system useful. 4. Consumers not generally being able or willing to interfere with their client end software to add E2E on top of what the service provider does, even if that is technically feasible.

Under these conditions, mandating backdoors through regulation is perfectly feasible, regardless of mathematics.

Maybe one day we'll see true P2P software that users actually control, with no central entity that the government can coerce, actually being used by the mass market. Until then, it's not defying mathematics at all to mandate backdoors.

I would argue connecting child abusers is a pretty niche market.

And enabling child abusers is even more niche, yet houses are still sold without built-in surveillance cameras, that would let law enforcement look at the recording of what you were doing (with a warrant, of course!)

But as it stands, private houses are warrant-proof places where anything can happen.

https://www.wired.com/2011/05/warrantless-house-search/

> yet houses are still sold without built-in surveillance cameras, that would let law enforcement look at the recording of what you were doing (with a warrant, of course!)

yet, but it could come. I can imagine offline AI detector that spies on you 24/7 in your house and only sends footage when it detects something illegal so the police wouldn't do the monitoring. I could see plenty of people being ok with that specially if it's advertised as a good way to proof your innocence.

I mean... people are already dumb and security-blind enough to willingly implant surveillance bugs into their homes (Alexa, Google Home, un-neutered smart TVs etc.). Just because these are manufactured and controlled by the private sector doesn't mean it's not just a stepping stone for some kind of mandated surveillance equipment installed into homes in future.

No. Thanks.

Imagine people could see on their telly what they said during the day and number of likes from the officers who watch them. The more correctly you behave, more likes you get and maybe a tax rebate. This is going to be the future. Modern politics in the UK is heavy influenced by R Thaler. People are being slowly nudged towards such concepts.

You can still communicate with end to end encryption even if they setup mitm. You just need to exchange keys and then encrypt/decrypt yourself. If this becomes a law someone will quickly come up with such an extra layer. It is going to be a cat and mouse game, people will have no privacy and criminals will always find a way, as you cannot regulate maths.

> You can still communicate with end to end encryption even if they setup mitm.

I already considered this in my predicate: 4. Consumers not generally being able or willing to interfere with their client end software to add E2E on top of what the service provider does, even if that is technically feasible.

I am sorry, you're right. I wonder what would happen to someone and something that would make it easy for your own encryption on top.

France actually banned non approved use of encryption algorithms/math in the 90s so there's some precedence.

https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_...

Governments that issue patents on math/algorithms/software already claim the power to forbid you to use them. They just need to patent all public encryption algorithms, in perpetuity.

(Sarcastic? Who knows?)

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