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Comment by ShinyLeftPad | Hacker News Reader

Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to.

The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see their side, how new tech create new problems, and help solve it in least privacy invasive ways.

Otherwise you will always be seen as somebody who has shady agenda. It's just reality. Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.

But chat control and age verification are different things.

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> But chat control and age verification are different things.

Although they appear to be different different things at first sight, they share the same agenda and objective, mass surveillance and identification of the citizens. Once the door is opened, it can be expected that things will not end there; Politicians and their patrons will exploit this data under "committees" (and of course be excluded from such surveillance as an aggravating factor).

Nowadays it's needed a court order to access legally to the privacy of citizens, and this must be done by the Police or the Interpol, nevertheless someones want to break this.

If they were really worried by the citizens security, they would increase the number of police and judges working in this digital divisions, among other things related to this.

Well, here's a case when police did their work. A massive international bust happened because the police was able to trick gangs to use an app that was not actually e2ee. And chances that it happens again are almost zero.

I have some faith in the lack of wisdom of (most) criminals. Most of them aren't geniuses, aren't super sophisticated, aren't good at following technical rules with 100% discipline.

So it's likely to work again - not as often as a law-abiding citizen would like, but not never.

Smart criminals go into politics

And yet another notorious international bust just didn't happen recently despite the fact that the island loungers not only didn't use e2ee but actively made their crimes abundantly obvious to the public.

True. They didn't trade drugs and I guess the legal system doesn't look at their crimes with the same strictness...

> Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.

It's a matter of phrasing things. Moxie had this illustrative take: If your chat is not e2ee, it'a a group chat. It's you, your mom, every secret service in the world and some ISP employees as well. If we could clarify to our social circles and broader society that every non-e2ee chat can be browsed by some overpaid freckled 20-something borded out of his mind at a FAANG or an ISP then the viewpoint could change.

Tons of people use IG and I think they pretty much know that it's them, the other guy and whatever number of contractors monitoring chats. They just don't care.

Maybe one of the most helpful parallels is with mail. I think US and other countries have strict laws about mail communication privacy. Someone can in theory open your mail but it's strictly regulated and not done in a total way.

Also I do think talking about future malicious government prosecuting people based on what was collected previously is actually a good one. But just talking about privacy may be a little too vague.

I suspect a lot of people don't mind/care that the list is expanded to those groups. That's really a big part of the issue. It's better framing, regardless though.

More than that. Who cares if the state can read your chats/etc, when you believe you aren't the kind of people the state wants to persecute. Why deny the state ever more tools to go after people, as long as you think it's going to use them against the people you want it to go after.

I would add though that the opinion is not entirely irrational.

For many people the state is inefficient, illogical, evil and goes after them without any reason (ex: think COVID restrictions). Then why do you care about another way to label you, if you think they already do it, but randomly.

I feel that the privacy discussions do not acknowledge at all there are many other structural society issues. Sure it would make an evil-intelligent government have a harder time, but will not improve at all life with an evil-idiot government, and to me it seems those are a bit more prevalent (note: idiot = implementing solutions that will not solve the problems they claim they do, while them honestly thinking they do solve them)

> For many people the state is inefficient, illogical, evil and goes after them without any reason (ex: think COVID restrictions).

And that is an argument for agreeing to give more ways to go after you to that supposedly evil government?

I'd understand if people have high trust in government and argued "Yeah it could be misused, but I trust the government not to do that". That still misses the part that governments can change, but at least it's somewhat consistent.

>Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down.

And none of these things were ever made illegal.

>Ordinary people do not care about e2ee.

I am an ordinary person, and I care about the right to be secure and private in my communications. The founders of the United States put it in our Bill of Rights. Mail in America can't just be read without a warrant; it is protected by the 4th Amendment.

> And none of these things were ever made illegal.

Those things are barriers that make it more difficult to be criminal. We're talking about a factor that removes those barriers and makes it easier.

Not sure it's ever been particularly difficult to be a criminal. If anything, the tricky part has always been establishing who you can and can't trust.

You don't need to trust people as much with an e2ee app. Especially if you use it to deliver the goods and use crypto to get paid.

What are you talking about? Thieves' cant, burner phone, clandestine meetings--these are all things that make crime easier, and none of them are illegal. We ban crime, not things that allow crime.

How is it complicated? Having to do these things made crime difficult. There's higher barrier to entry and cost to pay. It's more difficult to scale across borders. Not having to do them makes it easier.

The internet makes crime easier; should we ban it too? Before cars, you could only steal what you could carry--maybe we should abolish cars too. "Barrier to entry for crime" is not a useful metric, because it encompasses so many things.

Or do you want a police state?

You forget that internet makes police work easier too and there's processes for shutting down a dark market website for example

With e2ee though it's not like that

Ordinary people tend to care about privacy from government intrusion when you talk to them about it, and e2ee is so prevalent for lots of everyday communication that it isn't something they think about.

Discord recently introduced e2ee for voice chat. Apple has iMessage and Facetime. Whatsapp and to a lesser extent Signal are massively popular.

If you asked and ordinary person "Should the government be able to retroactively access your voice and written communications?" most people would probably react negatively.

Sure, in the pre-computer world, the US could possibly intercept letters and phone calls, but the complexity of that was high enough that it meant it could only happen with really strong cause and cost. With the barrier to scraping up unencrypted communications at near-zero (for governments and hyperscalers), the need for everyday citizens to have protected communications is higher.

I think the below comments answer rather well for me. But of course you are rigth that criminals use technology... I just don't see it as the main issue here.

I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash... But maybe some use crypto yes. And maybe criminals use e2ee. And Marybe you are rigth that it is a problematic thing for law enforcement. That is not the point though.

The point is criminalizing ordinary people for something completely reasonable like wanting to have the ability to talk in private. And talk in private about what they think of the current leadership...

> I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash

It doesn't scale as well. Can't go cross-border easily etc.

I agree that it's wrong but I'm talking about common people (and lawmakers who care about) perception. Until they get burned they won't care and might not take your side like that.

Millions and millions of euro and dollars are being "talen" in white washimg scemes for organised crime ever year. It is a crime-business in it self.

How is it possible to be that level of biased, to not observe that the government is a product of mass violence?

And e2ee/cryptography/bitcoin is just the implementation of free speech which supposed to be guaranted?

It is like saying that killing people is OK but storing photo of oneself nudes is a crime - and keep pretending to be not idiot.

"Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room"

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