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1121 points xyzal | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.44s | source
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ManBeardPc ◴[] No.45209514[source]
Glad we could delay it for now. It will come back again and again with that high of support though. Also the German Bundestag is already discussing a compromise: https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-1108356. They are only unhappy with certain points like breaking encryption. They still want to destroy privacy and cut back our rights in the name of "safety", just a little less.
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kebman ◴[] No.45210669[source]
Is this a good time to plug the creation of chat protocols running over distributed hash tables (DHT) (essentially a decentralized way of creating mini message servers) and with forward security and end-to-end encryption? I made a POF in Rust but I don't have time to dev this right now. (Unless angel investors to help me shift priorities lol...)
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_aavaa_ ◴[] No.45210893[source]
It’s not. This is a political problem, not a technical one.
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const_cast ◴[] No.45211360[source]
Its both, ultimately politics is not all-knowing and you can't stamp out all technical solutions.

Like, breaking encryption is just not possible if the encryption is set using a proper algorithm. Governments try, and they try to pass laws, but it's literally impossible. No amount of political will can change that. Ultimately I can write an encryption algorithm or use GPG or something and nobody on Earth, no matter how motivated or how rich, can read what I encrypted, provided I do not let out the key. If I just keep the password in my head, it's impossible.

So, until we invent technology to extract secrets from a human brain, you cannot universally break encryption. Its just not possible. Doesn't matter if 7 billion people worldwide vote for that. Doesn't matter if Elon Musk wants it. Doesn't matter if the FBI, CIA, and the NSA all work together.

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dns_snek ◴[] No.45211427[source]
It's not a technical problem. Chat Control wasn't about breaking encryption, it would bypass encryption with client-side scanning. It targets the apathetic 99% of the population who won't have the energy or knowledge to do anything about it.

It's also not a technical problem because technical solutions (like GPG) already exist. The problem is political (stopping these authoritarian laws) or should that fail, social (convincing people to inconvenience themselves with alternative communication apps that aren't available on app stores)

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Gormo ◴[] No.45211745[source]
> It targets the apathetic 99% of the population who won't have the energy or knowledge to do anything about it.

That's the same 99% of the population whose motivations and priorities define the incentive structures applicable to politics. If 99% of the population don't care about your issue, you're not going to win the political fight without quite a lot of leverage attached to entirely unrelated issues.

So the choice is between creating impediments to the enforcement of this bad policy, and at minimum using technology to establish a frontier beyond which it can't reach -- one that is at least available to those motivated to seek it out -- or instead surrendering completely to politics controlling everything, with it being almost a certainty that the political process will be dominated by adverse interests.

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1. pcrh ◴[] No.45213294[source]
> If 99% of the population don't care about your issue...

That depends largely on how the issue is presented. For example, it is now seen as "only sensible" to use pseudonyms online to protect your true identity from random people.

Why does the same not apply to your other data?

Why should the government have access to pictures of your children?

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2. Gormo ◴[] No.45215843[source]
Which is all well and good, and to the extent that people are won over to those arguments and create more political capital for putting an end to these privacy-violating policies, all for the better.

But that's not a substitute for nor mutually exclusive with technical measures to protect privacy, which will work regardless of the political milieu.