You can still do surveillance in the same way that east germany used to.

Get a warrant, put hidden microphones and cameras into their light switches and ceiling lights.

Turn one of their members into a double agent and get them to spy for you.

Of course that's not as easy as total surveillance. Because it's not supposed to be. The extra effort isn't that hard if you're going against a criminal gang, but it's enough to prevent the state from going "fishing" by surveilling everyone.

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testdelacc1 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Right, but the communication is happening over encrypted, disappearing messages. If you had a microphone or a camera all it would capture is a guy sitting in a chair tapping on his phone.

But all this assuming you found probable cause to surveil a citizen in the first place. Where's the probable cause coming from?

And that's assuming that they can even figure out who the higher level bosses are in the first place.

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kuschku 2 days ago | parent [-]

> But all this assuming you found probable cause to surveil a citizen in the first place. Where's the probable cause coming from?

There's a basic right to privacy, which can only be restricted with probable cause. Your argument sounds like you disagree with this very basic premise?

	▲	testdelacc1 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It’s stunning how poor all the replies on this thread have been. Not even an attempt to read what I’m saying. No, I don’t disagree with the need for probable cause. I was asking, how do you build the case for probable cause against someone you’ve never seen and whose communication is completely encrypted? You can’t. I don’t have a solution for that, and I don’t think anyone does. I am merely pointing out that it’s a problem, and that the police’s suggested solution is surveillance.

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jacobgorm 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Total surveillance is not what the Danish minister is arguing for. He is arguing that communication companies should be required to insert wiretaps following a court order, just like a POTS telecom company would.

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kuschku 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Total surveillance is not what the Danish minister is arguing for

If you backdoor E2EE crypto for one user, you've got to weaken it for everyone. There's no way around that.

What he's arguing for would require wiretapping every citizen, just in case you need to listen to the logs from any one citizen.

Even worse, the criminals will just compile the open source E2EE apps themselves without the backdoor, so the only people you'll be able to wiretap will be law-abiding citizens.

The "best" option (if there even is such a thing) would be to surveil endpoint devices, but the governments have failed to strongarm Apple into complying, so now they're going after the service providers.

Additionally, even with E2EE protocols, you can already tell from the metadata who is talking to whom, which is everything a government needs to get warrants, seize devices, and install surveillance devices.

So in the end, this proposal won't affect criminals, will reduce the security for every law-abiding citizen, and isn't even going to do anything useful against crime.

	▲	testdelacc1 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> you can already tell from the metadata who is talking to whom, which is everything a government needs to get warrants, seize devices, and install surveillance devices. The standard for probable cause has sharply declined in this scenario you’ve constructed. And you’re assuming that the government will seize the device, install surveillance software and the criminals will continue to use those devices? I don’t see how. Even if the government has access to remote takeovers using unpatched zero days, those are not used on local investigations.