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bamboozled 2 days ago

The other side of this coin is that, disgusting horrific pedophiles, terrorists and drug smugglers also have access to this stuff too.

I'm not in support of this bill, I'm just saying whenever I read these arguments, it's almost like you're entirely discounting the challenge the very tech your praising incurs for law enforcement and society.

For me the paradox is simple, one the one hand people want everything to be "open and transparent" including their computers, but those same people often want the ability to completely hide everything in cryptography. Which one is it? If you were for openness and transparency in it's entirety, why wouldn't you by default be against cryptography ? This paradox is where the rubber hits the road on legislation like this and likely why the average Joe Smith doesn't really care about the cause. Because realistically, it all sounds suspicious. To a law abiding citizen, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

matheusmoreira 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There is no paradox. The optimal amount of crime is non-zero. You must tolerate some crime in order to keep your humanity and dignity. Orwellian dystopias with omniscient surveillance can reduce crime to zero but you wouldn't want to live in one.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

This is just something people need to accept no matter how angry they get about it. If they don't, they will be manipulated through their fears into trading away their freedom for a false sense of security.

beeflet 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I support transparency for institutions and privacy for individuals. Not the other way around.

inference-god 2 days ago | parent [-]

What about when a group of individuals forms an institution that's self serving and harmful to other citizens, and they're able to do a lot of this under the guise of "privacy"?

beeflet 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

All operations as a public institution should be transparent. We fund them through taxes, we have a right to know what is going on.

I don't know what you are getting at with "self serving and harmful to other citizens"? Like a private institution? a company? Of course private companies are self-serving. All of them could be described as perpetrating some subjective and nebulous "harm". There are already transparency requirements for businesses, and they are subject to warrants. To the extent that they are public institutions (monopolies, publicity-traded companies), there are increasing demands for transparency and vice-versa.

Individuals have a right to privacy and protection from undue search, regardless of scare quotes employed, unless they are living on a prison island such britan.

bamboozled 2 days ago | parent [-]

The institutions you're talking about are under attack by online propaganda and smear campaigns by countries that want to see them taken down. Open online speech is important but it's also been hijacked to do a lot of harm.

Personally I think we're cooked but I can understand why some people are trying to take action and destroy online anonymity. Ideally we'd just live in a world where people can run their own mail server and people would leave it a lone, but we don't.

Maintaining the status quo means western democracy is fucked. There is no anti-dote to propaganda and lies being spread through social media. Maybe getting rid of online anonymity would help but I understand why people don't want a digital ID either.

beeflet a day ago | parent [-]

Oh no, online propaganda and smear campaigns

bamboozled a day ago | parent [-]

Very immature and weak retort. The House of Lords will have you for dinner.

pca006132 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If what they did is never revealed to someone else, what is the problem here? It is not like we have no way to hide stuff without cryptography, and people are not advocating for police to search every apartment once in a while to look for illegal stuff.

pca006132 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Authorities cannot tap into your brain, cannot tap into physical face-to-face conversations, and people can plan out crimes using these means. It is not like there is no way to hide stuff before the born of modern cryptography.

And who want everything to be open and transparent? I am not aware of anyone who wants this.