Hacker News Reader

Comment by lowkey_ | Hacker News Reader

I'm merely clarifying HN's common opinion.

As for the whistleblower, I'm very skeptical of her — to be a tech PM against encryption, and somehow linking e2e encryption to making the platform less safe, is dubious at best. Removing misinformation and calls to violence on the Facebook platform doesn't need to include monitoring private messages.

The idea that she's been a PM at large tech companies for 15 years and doesn't understand that Facebook monitoring messages will mean China can monitor those messages is almost too suspicious to believe.

View on HN

How do these two align? Why would FB sending messages that are sent encrypted (not e2e) and stored on US servers allow China to read messages? If you allege hacking then why wouldn’t they be able to hack the devices?

Re misinformation: why would misinformation not simply happen in e2e group chats like it is already happening in e.g. Brazil or India? What’s the difference between posting to a group of friends on Facebook vs sharing a group message to those friends?

I do think messages should be encrypted but the trade off isn’t as straightforward as you make it sound.

> Why would FB sending messages that are sent encrypted (not e2e) and stored on US servers allow China to read messages?

Not parent, but I think the idea is that if BigCo does business in CountryA , then CountryA's government invariably forces BigCo to spy on their users who are residents.

Obviously compromising the user's device is a workaround open to governments but hard to achieve in bulk.

FB does not do business in China. This is rather a risk for Apple given they store keys in the cloud and do business there fwiw. I agree it’s a risk for almost all other countries.

I think you're missing the context of what this is about:

> Strangely, the example she gave suggested that Facebook needs to have looser encryption in order to somehow protect Uyghurs in China from government attempts to implant spyware onto their phones. [1]

And Facebook responded, sticking up for e2e encryption:

> A Facebook spokesperson responded to The Telegraph with what we all should realize at this point is the responsible approach to encryption: "The reason we believe in end-to-end encryption is precisely so that we can keep people safe, including from foreign interference and surveillance as well as hackers and criminals." There is no such thing as encryption back doors that only the "right" people can access. If they exist, they can eventually be found or accessed by others. [1]

[1] https://reason.com/2021/10/25/whistleblower-absurdly-attacks...

The idea is once a company has some power over its users, that power will be used by some government somewhere as well. The latest example: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-naval...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com