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Comment by badRNG | Hacker News Reader

> There, since 2018, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Tola) has allowed government agencies to compel telecommunications providers to allow authorities to intercept criminal messages – powers that are not yet available to police elsewhere in the world.

That "yet" is terrifying. If you thought the PATRIOT Act was an overstep, you need to read TOLA. This is the revival of the crypto wars. Good write up on it here [1]

[1] https://www.internetsociety.org/news/press-releases/2021/new...

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I don’t understand how it is legal to eavesdrop without a warrant, even if you are target bad-faith actors and have probable cause - that’s how you get warrants in the first place.

Furthermore, everyone on this thread is talking about more secure communication. But my mind always goes to assuming every communication channel is compromised by default, and then flooding it with many, many false messages and wasting adversary resources chasing them.

How does one even know they are criminal messages if they haven't already been intercepted?

Messages on their own are considered criminal until proven otherwise, just like your cash (see civil forfeiture). I wish I could add /s

I recall reading a while back that judges were signing off on surveillance warrants based on messages using any sort of encryption (like https), because obviously anyone encrypting a message is up to no-good. /s ;)

> based on messages using any sort of encryption (like https)

I hope you're strongly /s, because if HTTPS being used as transport is enough to rubber-stamp a warrant, then this is in practice a blanket agreement to surveil all communications on the Internet.

Most approvals are basically rubber stamps. Judges usually just believe whatever law enforcement tells them. Most of the time they spend no time digging into it. Just my experience.

you state that like it's not the intended end goal. everything is a step towards this.

Have you ever heard of the nsa and their five eyes buddies?

It's an island prison -- of course these are criminal messages to begin with!

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