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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I downvoted you because you show disdain regulation but it is clear the marketplace for a secure, unified messaging solution has failed. EU regulation of the telcom sector has proven effective in protecting consumers from poor decisions (such as exorbitant roaming fees). Regulation should not be the first option, but the last, and it is clear it is the only solution left in this regard.

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Literally every single time government create a communication system the first thing they do is to make sure they can read it completely breaking the overall security. Look at all the state version of 'email' non of them used end-to-end encryption. Germany had a nice example but of course the project crashed and burned.

Also, its simply false that the market has not produced good solutions and if there was a 'unified message solution' then people would cry 'monopoly' and demand government regulation as well.

The fact is that the standard tool for most people use for messaging in Europe is an incredibly secure protocol.

I'm curious to know how you feel about Tor being primarily funded by the Office of Naval Research and DARPA

Honeypot?

I feel that there is a significant difference between funding and owning/building. I also feel confusing the two harms both the value of grants and the legitimate privacy concerns for public sector tech projects.

They provide money to an independently organised group who I trust with code and a design that has nothing to do with the government. Totally different situation.

It's not a general disdain but IMO here it makes sense.

Has it really failed though?

Do we have secure SMS messages? Do we have unified mobile messaging with a mature protocol that is both widely accessible as well as secure? How many more decades shall we wait? (asked rhetorically, yet politely) Yes, I argue it has failed, and an SMS/MMS successor would look like a descendent of iMessages and Google's RCS.

iMessages supports CALEA (but is still end to end encrypted, as well as FaceTime), all US messaging products must support it (even Twilio supports it [1] [2]). You are unable to subvert nation state legal jurisdictions within fundamental telcom infrastructure. Signal can get away with it, Apple, Google, and cellular carriers cannot.

Can't have your cake (universal messaging) and eat it (end to end encryption with zero trust requirement) too. So can't we push from something better than SMS, using regulation if required? It must not be perfect, but simply extensible in the future (similar to SS7). In jurisdictions that are favorable to it, you support E2E encryption. In those that are not, you downgrade loudly. Compromises must occasionally be made.

[1] https://www.twilio.com/legal/law-enforcement-guidelines

[2] https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223136547-Submi...

The telcos were a national monopoly, which then became "deregulated" but for all practical purpose they hold a monopoly position with regards to cable-in-the-ground and various local right-of-way rights.

So, the SMS solution is what these quasi-regulated entities gave you. Whereas iMessage, RCS, Signal, etc is what private industry gave you.

I think it's great when private industry innovates and utilities can incorporate that innovation in new standards.

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