Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

I find it amusing that WhatsApp and its e2ee is used as a common target for regulation by the government when their own ministers are using it to organise all sorts of shenanigans; illegal parties during lockdown, “anonymous” briefing of journalists, leaking compromising information about their peers. Not to mention that it always seems like the government is run via WhatsApp (probably need the e2ee for that!).

Ultimately this is about perceived control, the paraphrased saying goes “if you outlaw encryption only outlaws will have encryption”. Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists, it will however allow the government and law enforcement to say “you have encrypted chat software, that’s illegal, therefore you must be doing something illegal”. However, that wont necessarily translate to prosecution, it’s only the perception that matters.

Pandora’s box may have been opened but governments will always find a way to “control” their citizens, usually through fear.

The government likes having THEIR communications e2e but we peasants should not also have that freedom. They feel they should be able to monitor and control every aspect of our lives because that is the type of people that politics attract. They look at China's power to monitor communications, block the entire nation's internet, and wall off entire cities not with shock but with envy.

It doesn't really matter if government ministers organise their illegal lockdown parties over end-to-end encryption or not, when the police force were fully aware of it at the time (two officers stationed on either side of the door!) and decline to "investigate".

Was the same police force who surrounded these dangerous criminals?

"Covid: Women on exercise trip 'surrounded by police'" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814

Power deserves scrutiny. Politicians should have less privacy than the average person.

LOL. Your right. If anything politicians should be denied E2EE

Norwegian politicians are required by law to only use official channels of communication (government email, phone etc) when discussing anything related to their public service. Citizens can demand to get access to these communications, even anonymously. This has made it possible for regular citizens to uncover both small and big abuses of power through the years, most recently exemplified by a close connection between the Police and a private anti-drug-lobby organization that has had a big influence on drug policy for decades.

I have, however, heard that apps like Signal has become more common among politicians, but using it for official business is still illegal.

> Norwegian politicians are required by law to only use official channels of communication

Is it really enforacble? What are the sanctions for breaking the law?

What if someone says it's a national secuirty matter?

Scenario nr 1: You are a misiter and you are discussing possible scenarios about a given event (let say something like an abortion). Should pulbic have full access to it?

Scenario nr 2: You are a minister and you are negotiating a new factory in your country. Foregin corporation wants to keep it secret before the deal is reached. How can you communicate?

If politians would be given a device from the deep state to handle all communication then they would have to use is exculsivly, you are givin the deep state an enormous power.

If it's a national security matter then they should definitely be using the official channels.

> Foregin corporation wants to keep it secret before the deal is reached. How can you communicate?

Foreign corporation wants to do X but X is banned in country.

We don't accept that for minimum wages, discrimination laws, pollution laws, etc. Why should communication laws be any different?

But there are law that limit the communications e.g. insider trading.

Imagine a public corporation that wants to build a factory, but wants to keep to secret for now, cause they don't want the competition to know or affect the share price.

The law ("Offentlighetsloven") is quite nuanced and take into account a lot of different situations and edge cases. The law does not only apply to politicians, but to every public servant in any position.

The law is available in Norwegian here, if you want to run it trough a machine translation service and have a look: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/nou-2003-30/id38285...

Scumbag politicians here in the Netherlands are actually using Signal to avoid courts obtain their communications through the Dutch equivalent of the FOIA.

Politics here is starting to look more like mob politics... Our prime minister is actually known to do as little on paper as possible - so when the shit hits the fan, he'll always say "oh I didn't know" or "I didn't remember"...

> Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists

Hmm, I used to think this, but now? Now I think most people are bad at tech and security. No reason to expect the average criminal would be better.

Of course, trivial for us to make it, or hide it in something that looks unrelated. And I expect serious organised crime to be able to afford a developer with no morals.

But normal crime? It probably will make a difference.

You are quite right, normal and “pretty” criminals will just use whatever and not care about encryption. Not only because they won’t necessarily be educated about it, but it will have no impact on their ability to operate.

The police and intelligences agencies aren’t intercepting the communications of normal and petty criminals. It’s organised crime and terrorism that matters, they will obviously continue to use it anyway.

> The police and intelligences agencies aren’t intercepting the communications of normal and petty criminals.

Snowden showed otherwise - they're spying on everyone's conversations, criminal or not.

If they did have that capability do you think they would use it to take down and prosecute a small time drug dealer exposing what they are doing? Even exposing this capability to the Police by give them “secret” intelligence would inevitably result in the knowledge of their capabilities leaking.

If they do have this capability it is only every going to be used for large scale organised crime, terrorism and state security.

They do have this capacity. Given that the existence of this capacity is now public, it is my belief the UK is mainly limited by a combination of selective enforcement, lack of courts and lack of police (weirdly, given their preferred “tough on crime” rhetoric, U.K. courts and police are severely underfunded right now).

It's possible that they like surveillance because it is cheaper than traditional methods.

They might like the cost savings for evidence gathering, but there’s something ridiculous like a half million backlog of court cases in the U.K. right now so the rest of the justice system isn’t in a position to use that evidence.

For the "skeptics", etc — plenty of article sources and other jump-off points here, for those that want them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

> If they do have this capability it is only every going to be used for large scale organised crime, terrorism and state security.

Don’t forget political opposition / dissidents, and analysis to see what they can get away with in terms of public opinion.

Well, I don't know about phone conversations, but every Tom, Dick and Harry gets access to web surfing history. Given that highly casual attitude - formalised into law! - I wouldn't put it past them to informally do whatever they like with the rest of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#...

Even the customers on the darkweb have to encrypt all of their orders with PGP or they won't be accepted. Encryption is definitely used by smaller-time black market operations.

There have been a few interesting cases of "custom" encrypted solutions being sold to crime groups then compromised by law enforcement.

The thing is, most "normal" crime doesn't rely on comms at all - street and domestic violence, burglary, car theft, etc. Fencing stolen items probably could make use of it. It's only really organized crime. And the UK has an increasing problem with organized crime .. from the top, like the unlawful "fast lane" procurement scheme. And the recent business with MI5 identifying an (extremely overt) Chinese agent.

And a surprising amount of terrorist recruitment gets done in the open. As long as you're not planning specific acts it looks like "free speech".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com