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Comment by m12k | Hacker News Reader

I like to compare this to mandating surveillance cameras in every home. It would certainly make detecting and investigating many crimes easier. And the government might pinky swear to never watch without a warrant. They may even keep that promise. But that slippery slope is far from the only issue. Even more damning is that as long as this exists, whether used in official capacity or not, it will be the most sought after thing by hackers from crime organizations and hostile nations. Espionage, blackmail, you name - no person or organization would ever be safe, everybody's privacy and security is undermined.

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There is a reason why they added exemptions for themselves. Either they believe it is unsafe or perhaps there is a problem with child abuse on the EU legislator level which they want to cover up.

We are at a point where we shouldn't have to justify opposition to it. Just hold legislators of the EU accountable. If that isn't possible, hold the whole EU accountable and if that isn't possible, the EU has no legitimacy for such laws in the first place. Back to those responsible on a national level and repeat.

>We are at a point where we shouldn't have to justify opposition to it. Just hold legislators of the EU accountable.

I have no idea what this means.

I don't think comparing it to something like camera surveillance inside your home is a good idea.

You kind of own your home – if someone places camera in your property, you can just remove it / obstruct vision / sound etc. If doing that will send you to jail then the level of dystopia around is so big it's irrelevant anyway – you're a slave with no rights and you will do that the shocking stick tells you to do.

Phones are different - you kind of don't own them by default because bootloader is locked so you are not free to execute the code you want on the device, as well as app store exists which it tells you what you can install and what you cannot install. The only leverage they have is to make Apple/Google remove certain apps from the EU stores.

You own your home, but there are still laws regulating what you're allowed to do in your home.

That's exactly the thing. Legally you own your phones. You are responsible for what they do.

We are now kind of a the crossroad. Either we expand the SaaS model to everything, or we enforce the until-now rules of ownership of the law.

That really depends on the phone. There's definitely phones where you can unlock the bootloader. It's not as common as it should be though, for sure.

Yes, exactly. This proposal is just free riding on the sadly enstablished conception that you don't really own your device: it doesn't work in your interest but in those of the manufacturer, the developer of the programs you use and, if this becomes law, your government.

If we really want to stop chat control and all the other proposals that will inevitably come after, we should really work hard to try to reverse this. I think asking "don't break encryption, please" is really the wrong way to go about it.

How about we compare it with something more realistic? Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON. Since 1971, the 5 eyes countries have been spying on people en masse and scanning communications.

You probably don't like the comparission because you want to be an alarmist who is acting like this is new. All the fears you have, have literally been proven to be...

... well founded and spurred the widespread adoption of end to end encryption?

No, it didn't. It took decades for that to happen.

These programs really entered the public consciousness with the Snowden leaks in 2013. Signal was released in 2014.

I only mentioned one program. A program that is literally comparable because it's literally what is being replaced. That program has been public knowledge in media such as TV shows and movies for decades. So when we're fear-mongering, we should only compare with that, and we should see what effects it had and the nonsense being used for fear-mongering.

Also, Signal was released not because of end-to-end encryption but because the founder sold WhatsApp and wasn't happy with the direction.

> That program has been public knowledge in media such as TV shows and movies for decades.

Nobody I know heard about it before Snowden. You need to provide some statistics to demonstrate it was a common knowledge.

> You need to provide some statistics to demonstrate it was a common knowledge.

It was referenced in popular media for decades... So people knew about it and it was public knowledge. The reason no one cared is that the outcome of it wasn't the horror story being repeated constantly.

The funny thing is, if you think this law would affect you, it will probably reduce the amount of data they get. Why? Because they still spy on you with end-to-end encryption, it's just more work and they hack the shit out of you.

> Because they still spy on you with end-to-end encryption

What are you talking about?

> and they hack the shit out of you

Good luck. I'm using Qubes OS btw.

You're confusing the founding of the Signal Foundation with the release of Signal. Textsecure/Redphone which Signal came from existed in some part around 2010 or thereafter. Their merging and re-release as an all-in-one IP-based encryption app also came before WhatsApp was sold to Facebook.

TextSecure (which later merged with RedPhone to become Signal) had existed since 2010. So it would be interesting to know if there were many other end-to-end encrypted services and products at the time since this was pre-leaks.

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