Remember: every time a government cites child pornography or terrorism as the reason ban cryptography or otherwise limit human rights, they are just using an excuse.
Just click the first link titled 'upcoming plans for communication surveillance' and actually read the document (or just CTRL-F 'encryption') to see how misleading this lobby letter is. It is a communication about child porn/abuse outlining measures for prevention, rehabilitation, etc. It doesn't say anything about banning encryption, just as one of many points it points out that increased encryption is making detection of child porn/abuse difficult and that government and industry should set up an expert group to discuss what can be done without breaking privacy.
So total bs article. I used to be a customer at mailbox but am right now very happy I moved away already...
This is the actual proposal: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/interim-reg...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26826599
I think when we something that plays right into an existing confirmation bias it's important to be extra skeptical of its claims to offset that.
My intuition is exactly the opposite: That many have a legitimate wish to combat both child porn and terrorism. Many people work with that every day and obviously they want to do a good job. And one effect of limiting crypto would help that. (That doesn't mean in itself crypto should be limited; but I don't see how writing one side off as "just an excuse" and basically offering a conspiracy theory helps anyone. Better to just say "it's unfortunate about child porn and terrorism, but it's the price that must be paid / here's another way to combat that", if that is what you mean.)
It was touted as anti terrorism and anti child pornography, 2 years after it came in the agencies that applied for (and receieved) access to people's viewing habits were released, and it was near every agency.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...
I'm not sure politicians care about these issues at all. State surveillance will most likely be used to fight political opposition instead. Fighting child abuse and terrorism are legitimate activities but politicians use them as distractions meant to make people accept total surveillance. People believe governments have their best interests in mind when in reality governments want to protect themselves from the people.
Child abuse is the perfect political weapon. Who would dare argue against such a thing? It'd be social and political suicide. All kinds of laws are passed based on the premise that it protects the children. It implies anything is justified in the fight against child abuse. There is no stop they won't pull.
> it's unfortunate about child porn and terrorism, but it's the price that must be paid
Exactly. It's bad but that doesn't mean there are no limits to how far governments can go in their attempts to combat it. Government agents already routinely violate all kinds of human rights in their fight against terrorism.
Encryption is such a small part of those crimes that it would make almost no difference to the level of crime whether it exists or not.
> One of the specific initiatives under the EU Internet Forum in 2020 is the creation of a technical expert process to map and assess possible solutions which could allow companies to detect and report child sexual abuse in end-to-end encrypted electronic communications, in full respect of fundamental rights and without creating new vulnerabilities criminals could exploit. Technical experts from academia, industry, public authorities and civil society organisations will examine possible solutions focused on the device, the server and the encryption protocol that could ensure the privacy and security of electronic communications and the protection of children from sexual abuse and sexual exploitation.
So -- you may say that you know that this project is hopeless and a foregone conclusion. But will every politician trust that -- or will they make a panel of experts to explore solutions and tell them for sure that you can't meaningfully limit encryption in the first place, and even if you did you can't do it without violating privacy, as is presumed here?
Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to technical ignorance.