Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

I'm seeing more value in your comment than, apparently, the other people who have answered it here.

I think you are 100% right that above-the-law communication is not good for society. This should be obvious. At the same time, allowing government to be able to spy everywhere is also not good for society. Also obvious. The correct solution is therefore something in the middle.

I'm not convinced by the other arguments here that usually contains a hint of slippery-slope, what-aboutism or false dichotomy fallacies.

The proposed legislation is terrible: it is not balanced and does not contain any safeguard to avoid abuse. However, it does not mean that the equally terrible situation of having easy way for criminals to avoid justice is the good solution either.

Personally, I think that a good system should be a distributed system where several independent justice organizations share the set of key needed to decrypt (for example, a message can be decrypted only if Amnesty International, Interpol and the Austrian Justice Department put their 3 keys together, each individual key being useless on its own). In this model, abuses are almost impossible while obvious crime can still be investigated. I don't know any argument that really works to say that this model is not always better than the free-for-all-all-anonymised-messaging.

Such ideas already exist, and David Chaum even came up with proof of concept of something similar https://www.wired.com/2016/01/david-chaum-father-of-online-a...

> I think you are 100% right that above-the-law communication is not good for society. This should be obvious. At the same time, allowing government to be able to spy everywhere is also not good for society. Also obvious. The correct solution is therefore something in the middle.

That conclusion is logically wrong and does not follow from the premises. You are decrying fallacies in other arguments while making them yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

> The proposed legislation is terrible: it is not balanced and does not contain any safeguard to avoid abuse.

Then the logical course of action is to try to stop this legislation. Everything else about the argument is irrelevant right now, what matters is the close very bad thing in front of us that we can do something about. Eliminate that and then we can have a reasoned discussion about what the proper approach is.

> several independent justice organizations share the set of key needed to decrypt

There’s no such thing as keys that only good guys have access to. It has been shown time and again that someone with access will abuse it or be tricked.

I won’t go long on this point, however, as I was not familiar with your specific example. I’ll read up more on it. But again, that’s a conversation that matters later.

> That conclusion is logically wrong and does not follow from the premises.

I am not saying "the good argument is moderation" (argument to moderation fallacy), I'm saying "the two extremes are obviously wrong, and, it turns out, the middle is smarter".

The argument to moderation fallacy is when you are saying that the good answer is good because it is in the middle. I don't do that, I find the good answer and I just state that it happens to be in the middle.

I guess you are also doing a fallacy: "every solution that are in the middle is wrong because it can only be the result of the argument to moderation". It is obviously incorrect, there are plenty of solution that happens to be good and being in the middle.

> Then the logical course of action is to try to stop this legislation.

First, I'm not saying that we should not stop this legislation. I'm just answering to a comment saying "and then what", which is a discussion that we are, I hope, allowed to have.

But secondly, a very good way to stop this legislation is by proposing something that checks all the boxes used to justify this legislation while having way better safeguard.

What is your strategy? To say to people that are worried "yeah, well, too bad for you". Or to say "oh, I understand your point, why not this solution, which do what you want, and also avoid what I'm afraid of".

Of course, we both know that one reason this legislation exists is because government want to spy on us. But if we propose something that satisfies all their justifications, they will have to either drop the pretends and openly admit that want to spy (and lose the support of people who are worried), or accept the solution where they cannot spy.

> There’s no such thing as keys that only good guys have access to. It has been shown time and again that someone with access will abuse it or be tricked.

This argument is a footgun: if indeed you cannot trust no-one, then EVERY online communication is already compromised. Your phone is full of spyware, even when you choose the most trustworthy one (because your point is that they don't exist), your softwares and servers are full of back doors, your internet provider and all your VPN are recording your communication, and even if you manage to get through all that, your interlocutor will not (and your interlocutor themselves is not a good guy).

But then, I'm not saying everyone is a good guy, I'm saying that if we share DIFFERENT keys, each key being different and necessary to decrypt (think of a door having several different locks needed different keys), the probability that ALL THE GUYS are bad guys is exponentially low.

If the probability of them being a bad guy or being tricked is 10%, then the probability that a 2-key system is failing is 1%, the probability that a 3-key system is failing is 0.1%, the probability that a 4-key system is failing is 0.01%, ...

> But again, that’s a conversation that matters later.

That's a fallacy. YOU are spending your time answering my comment instead of working to stop this legislation. When I check your account, I can see that you are also posting comments on "Getting 50% (SoTA) on Arc-AGI with GPT-4o" or "Show HN: Paste2Download – No Login, No Ads, Downlo..." instead of stopping this legislation.

Then, suddenly, when some people are having a deeper discussion that can help putting the rug under the feet of the bad guys, you are, incorrectly, arguing that the best strategy would be to not propose any alternative and antagonize the innocent people that are being fooled by the bad guys.

Also, these reflections on alternative approaches exists for a while (Chaum's idea is almost 10 years old). Bad legislation on the subject reappears regularly. It is time we progress instead of just pretending that we never have time for a deeper reflection, which is obviously not true.

> The argument to moderation fallacy is when you are saying that the good answer is good because it is in the middle. I don't do that, I find the good answer and I just state that it happens to be in the middle.

If that’s your position you should remove the word “therefore” from your final sentence. Because that word means that the conclusion was drawn from the previous statements.

> if indeed you cannot trust no-one

That’s not what I said. Though admittedly my argument was too compressed and assumed the reader would understand I’m referring to the often used “good guy law enforcement” arguments. My fault for not having been clearer, I went for brevity.

> That's a fallacy. YOU are spending your time answering my comment instead of working to stop this legislation.

I don’t see how that’s a fallacy. Which one is it? You could maybe call it hypocritical or inconsistent, but none of those are fallacies. Furthermore, the point—which feels ridiculous that it needs to be spelled out—is not that you need to be fighting the legislation 24/7, but that when discussing it you should strive to focus on what it is, not what it could or should be.

> you are, incorrectly, arguing that the best strategy would be to not propose any alternative

Again, that is not what I said. Though in this instance you seem to be taking a bad faith position. I have said twice that it’s worth to have the conversation. I even said I’d read up more on your example because I wasn’t familiar with it. You’re misconstruing my argument in a way that feels really dishonest.

> and antagonize the innocent people that are being fooled by the bad guys.

Especially here. This part is just plain absurd and an attack with zero basis in reality.

> If that’s your position you should remove the word “therefore” from your final sentence. Because that word means that the conclusion was drawn from the previous statements.

What if I would have said "the solution on the left is obviously bad, the solution on the middle is obviously bad, therefore the solution is on the right"? That would obviously not be a argument to moderation fallacy, and yet the logic behind the existence of the word "therefore" stays the same. So, the "therefore" does not imply "it is because it is the middle", so, no, the "therefore" does not imply I've chosen the middle simply because it is the middle.

The "therefore" simply means that if I've explored different options and they are bad, it would be clever to consider another one. It does not mean that the middle solution is chosen _solely_ because it is the middle one.

> I’m referring to the often used “good guy law enforcement” arguments

The solution I'm proposing is not to give keys to law enforcement.

> I don’t see how that’s a fallacy. Which one is it?

A fallacy is a incorrect reasoning in an argument that looks correct superficially. It's what you have done here: there is no logical ground to link your counter-argument to my argument, nothing in your counter-argument implies my argument is incorrect. I'm not going to play fallacy golf, it's usually a sign of loosing the forest for the tree.

> Furthermore, the point—which feels ridiculous that it needs to be spelled out—is not that you need to be fighting the legislation 24/7, but that when discussing it you should strive to focus on what it is, not what it could or should be.

That's a terrible strategy. It's basically: "I don't understand the context, I don't know what this bad legislation tries to solve, I don't know what people who push for this legislation wants, I don't understand how the bad aspect from this legislation have appeared and how to remove them".

Again, I'm proposing a solution that is difficult to say no to from honest people that were tricked into thinking the bad legislation was the only way. You propose nothing, you just say "no" and antagonize your interlocutors. Who do you think is the most efficient for potentially make this legislation fail?

> I have said twice that it’s worth to have the conversation

Exact, and this discussion is happening now, and yet, you are saying "it's not the time to have it". That is incorrect, there is absolutely no reason to not have this discussion now, this discussion is very very useful to fight against this legislation.

> Especially here. This part is just plain absurd and an attack with zero basis in reality.

You realise that in this discussion, all you have done is to attack SOMEONE FROM YOUR SIDE, with the argument that they should not use their brain and try to find solution.

Let's also notice that during this discussion, you haven't talked at all of what this legislation is, what we are arguing about now is basically what would be the best strategy to take it down. Your answer to that seems to be "the best strategy is to not discuss strategy, because we can only discuss about what this legislation is", which in itself does not make sense.

You want to talk about what this legislation is, take a page from your own book and stop arguing with me, let people who want to think about the situation and design clever ideas to end up with a win-win situation do what they want.

> I think you are 100% right that above-the-law communication is not good for society. This should be obvious. At the same time, allowing government to be able to spy everywhere is also not good for society. Also obvious. The correct solution is therefore something in the middle.

The correct solution should be something in the middle. Old-fashioned wiretapping, with a warrant and the need to dedicate staff to installing and monitoring the tap is basically okay. The problem is that the mathematics of cryptography and the scaling inherent to information technology mean that only all-or-nothing solutions are possible. If the cryptography is intentionally broken, it's broken not just for law enforcement, it's broken for everyone. If law enforcement has a backdoor they can use with a warrant, they're capable of using it without a warrant, and probably will. And if their special keys get leaked, then again, the encryption is broken for everyone.

Like you point out, secret sharing is one way of getting around this in principle. But governments would never make their access dependent on an NGO; in practice I'm sure they'd only agree to secret sharing schemes where the separate parties were separated only by nominal bureaucratic firewalls, and then you're back to the original problem.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read most of that last message yet. No disrespect meant, I’m just tired and don’t think continuing will be a healthy use of time. For either of us.

> You realise that in this discussion, all you have done is to attack SOMEONE FROM YOUR SIDE, with the argument that they should not use their brain and try to find solution.

I did read this part, as the all caps caught my attention. I did not attack you. Disagreeing with parts of your argument in no way reflects on you. Still, my words have seemingly affected you negatively and for that I apologise as it was not my intention. I wish you a genuinely pleasant week.

It's not up to governments to agree.

Right now, there are encrypted communication solutions that exist. None of them have been built by a government. We can build Chaum's network and start to use it. If we do that, government will have to either accept this network as a legal usage, or admit that they don't care about kids and crimes but just want to spy.

And sure, some government will admit that, but it's not by chance that right now the bad legislation are justified by "for the children" instead of "because we want to spy on you": admitting that will make these legislation obviously harmful, and they will be stopped even more easily.

There are some reasons why a network like the one proposed by Chaum is not used. One is that it's not easy to put in place, similarly to how difficult it was to build ethical journalism network for example. A second one is that some people don't want such network, either because they want to do illegal things or they want to spy on citizen. But another reason is the childish mentality of being instantaneously against any ideas that does not fit into the "100% anonymity" of the Silicon Valley techno-libertarian (not saying that anyone who is against is like that, but some who are against are indeed like that).