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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

I am weirdly.. giddy about this development. The more goverments try so hard to publicly force companies to, effectively, mandate backdoors, the more public will be aware of it. Added benefit is that FB will lose some market share.

The sucky part is.. my mom loves Whatsapp. She was able to use it wo any issues. There are few alternatives that she was able to use so easily.

All that said, I wonder. What is the breaking point for people surveillance-wise? I was so wrong a lot about the tolerance already..

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You are assuming that the public isn't aware of it and would care if they were. I think the public is aware of it, they just don't care.

I wish I could say you are wrong. I definitely saw people on both ends, but I can't say with certainty which is more common.

People is US had a joke about wiretaps and a variation of the joke returned.

People change based on stimuli.

I'm a bit more pessimistic there will be a backlash.

I've also been surprised how much a properly motivated non-techie can be. I've seen a few grandmothers who live far away purchase and setup a web cam and learn software I find confusing all by themselves.

I don't know. Even among my privacy-conscious friends there's hardly any talk about this sort of thing.

Snowden was in 2013. I think all that happened is a few people were briefly horrified, but in no time it was back to business as usual.

You can even point to China as an example of how bad things can get when the state can read everything, but people just don't seem to make the connection.

Unless your mom is planning to involve herself in illegal activities I don't see a problem. Most electronic communication channels are compromised anyway. If you don't want eavesdroppers, don't use electronics.

> Unless your mom is planning to involve herself in illegal activities I don't see a problem.

I assume you'd be happy to post all your credit card receipts and emails for all of us to see then. You're not doing anything illegal, right? That would be the only reason you don't want those things to be visible.

Sorry, I was too brief. I explained it further it in another comment. But my point was that you should presume all communications channels are transparent to nation states. I was not referring that it's okay to have a surveillance civilization. My point was that we have a surveillance civilization, and you either use the communication fabric supported or you don't.

Better ask for browsing and messaging history.

That should be a much better analogy. Especially in the postmodern hypersensitive world.

What exactly leads you to believe that posting your credit card number on hacker news is somehow equivalent to not being outraged by the U.S. sharing _encrypted_ messages of suspected terrorists with the UK? Let’s not pretend the world is so black and white.

I was arguing against the idea of "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide".

It's a bad attitude to have because allowing the government to have that power at all is a problem, even for terrorists and murderers and pedophiles. Because we don't know if people are those things until we investigate them, which means the government gets broad powers to investigate people to look for those kinds of crimes, and maybe find other people they want to get for other reasons.

I used to investigate computer crime. Yeah, my job would have been a lot easier if I had unlimited access to anyone's email. But instead I had to investigate and build a case without privileged access. It was harder, but I was glad that the system couldn't be abused.

Why should governments or law enforcement have privileged access?

Also because "good" democratic governments that respect human rights and personal freedoms deteriorate to oppressive tyrannies all the time. What's to say that your country won't?

Who'll protect you when they come knocking on your door to talk about that thing you posted about somewhere online, which used to be quite legal and no problem, but now is super illegal for some oppressive reason or another?

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

         Because I was not a socialist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Obviously not here, but I don't care much if LE sees them.

To the several downvoters: My point was not that it's okay to have surveillance.

My point was that there is no uncompromised electronical communications platform. If you wish to communicate using anything having room for a man in the middle attack, it is very hard to proof that the medium is NOT compromised by a nation state or another third party.

You can communicate fairly securely without the messaging being intercepted by black hat non-nationstate third parties. I don't think anyone can guarantee security against nation states.

So if you want to communicate, you either communicate, or you don't, but requiring a 100% tamperproof platform is really hard.

For example, Echelon system probably had/has intercept capability for all phone traffic in europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

These systems were in place in 1960:s. AFter that modern telecoms substrate was developed in close collaboration with nation state defence parties. As a non-expert, there is no reason to think any platform is secure from nation state eavesdropping.

I guess the government will only ever use their powers for good, and those powers will never fall into the wrong hands?

I suppose the definition of illegal activity is also fixed and social norms will not change over time?

Yup, governments always follow their own laws. Including, I don't know, Hong Kong for example. </mega_sarcasm>

It is an interesting perspective for me and so I feel obligated to respond. I do not think you are wrong about the compromised part. I do think you are wrong about thinking that is a desired state. The argument that innocents have nothing to hide is tired. God will sort them out follows closely.

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