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Wired's Attack on Privacy

(simplex.chat)
89 points snvzz | 1 comments | 22 Oct 24 00:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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VariousPrograms ◴[22 Oct 24 01:52 UTC] No.41910406[source]▶
It's silly how privacy detractors try to associate so-and-so terrible group with any software that simply lets people talk without corporate or government surveillance, as if the concept of a private conversation is a strange and suspicious thing now.
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AlexandrB ◴[22 Oct 24 02:43 UTC] No.41910699[source]▶
To play devil's advocate: private face-to-face conversations do not allow for effective coordination of actions across large distances. There are plenty of good arguments for keeping the government out of everyone's private messages, but this kind of messaging and a conversation are not the same thing.
replies(3): >>41910922 #>>41910989 #>>41911179 #
1. Brian_K_White ◴[22 Oct 24 04:23 UTC] No.41911179[source]▶
Just as the governments power to violate anyones privacy when needed was previously tolerable only because it was physically limited.

ie warrants and wire taps and physically breaking in to buildings and safes could be done to anyone at any time, but not everyone, at the same time, all the time, from afar, without even being seen.

It's disingenuous to rationalize or excuse one without acknowledging the other.

And even the old form of the right and ability to break in to any safe still didn't magically un-burn a paper, so that argument against encryption was never valid.

Devils advocate is a critical role, but in this case it only serves the valuable role of showing that no matter how hard one tries, there is no validity to authoritarian/statist attacks on encryption, or indeed any self-actualized tech.