"""The main criticism was that it is simply impossible to rule out that a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes. A lowering of the security level would immediately affect all users - and not just those who are the subject of a judicial investigation."""
The comment says:
> I'm glad you're keeping safe dealers, pedophiles, and other criminals as well as their lawyers.
This does not look like a solid point to me; it looks like rhetoric.
> This draft included a passage that would have forced companies such as WhatsApp and Signal to decrypt their encrypted chats upon request by the authorities for criminal investigation.
> Belgian intellectuals like Professor Bart Preneel said that "by putting a backdoor into Whatsapp, you would make it less safe for everyone".
This does not look like a solid point to me; it looks like rhetoric. Anyway:
> a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes.
If they can get their hands on a governmental private key, which is unlikely.
The US government gave… gave, not leaked, not accidental, deliberately outright gave.. the identities and other personal information of people who had worked with the US in Afghanistan to none other than the Taliban. Because the Taliban pinkie promised not to slaughter them. Too bad, the Taliban didn’t keep its word.
Let’s not be naïve about the government’s ability or interest in keeping things private.
Depends on the systems connected to the private key of course, but billions per incident are certainly possible in some cases.
Even if this is just private chat on messenger platforms rather than 2FA or HTTPS, imagine how blackmailers would respond to getting all the nudes, the drunk confessions, the adultery, from 30 minutes access to all of the 10th most popular chat app in your country.
But those private keys aren't going to be created by the government. They will be created by Facebook, Signal, Telegram etc., who will then hand over one of them to my government, one to yours, and one to each and every government that makes a similar law, from Argentina to Zimbabwe. And they could just as easily hand over another to <insert billionaire or other non-governmental figure you dislike here>.
Why do you believe this is unlikely?
Then perhaps you can explain why so much stuff leaks from, say, the USA government?
Not just the stuff from government employees or contractors like Snowden and Manning who appear to be motivated by whistleblowing, but also the actual double agents working for the Soviets in the Cold War, and the apparently accidental leaks of NSA spyware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue
As for revocation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29642783
Snowden got a lot of data without anyone stopping him. The risk is what if he’d been malicious instead of a whistleblower?