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Comment by Veen | Hacker News Reader

I was more or less of your view until my 11-year-old niece was groomed and ended up sending naked pictures of herself to a 25-year-old man. Now, that incident was discovered because my niece's friend told her parents, but I do wonder whether, that aside, her parents would have found out at all. I am not in favour of banning E2E, but I do think it's foolhardy to deprive parents and law enforcement of any means to monitor children's social media activity.

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No body is depriving parents access to their children’s phones with this. Parents guiding and supervising technology use is about as old as the internet itself.

Think of my children is just another step along the line of pearl clutching. But I’ll do you one better, I had a covert video taken of me and circulated around the internet and school that I went to. Would e2e encryption made any difference to that? No.

"Think of the children" is often abused, but that doesn't mean everyone claiming to want to protect child welfare is acting in bad faith, regardless of thought-terminating cliches like "think of the children" and "pearl clutching". It's entirely likely many of the politicans who support this move have genuine concerns. They are probably misguided, but not, I think, malicious.

It's unfortunate what happened to your niece but the situation has clouded your rationality.

A parent wouldn't let an 11 year old go to a frat party. They wouldn't let them go unsupervised to a concert. Most probably wouldn't leave their children home alone for a week. So why in the fuck do their kids have unfettered Internet access? Do they also let the kid just go to anyone's house without at least knowing who that friend is?

How would unencrypted messages preventing grooming of your niece? Her parents should be checking on her devices the same as they'd want to know who her friends were and where she was when not at home. A phone or Facebook is not a babysitter and certainly not a parent.

If E2EE was banned or restricted what at all would have changed with your niece? If she was groomed on completely unencrypted IRC what would be different? If she was groomed by some friend's older relative what would be different? Her parents failed at several occasions to actually parent her. Restrictions or banning E2EE wouldn't make them more capable parents.

> If E2EE was banned or restricted what at all would have changed with your niece?

What changed is the message she send will be unencrypted and not E2E, so now more people have access to them and maybe save or send them to their own closed messaging platform.

I think the biggest problem is that parents have less and less right - or indeed, ability - to monitor their childrens communications and function as decent and responsible parents. Inevitably, were this implemented, someone would find a way to turn it against parents' rights to monitor their children.

And confounding this issue is the fact that the major platforms (Facebook, et al.) simply don't want parents to have this kind of control over their children, because it will effect their bottom line. Children with less adult supervision tend to be far more easily manipulated.

Its not just child diddlers who want this manipulation to proceed un-impeded by parental oversight - its Facebook, et al. too!

So this evil campaign is going to get a lot of corporate support, I fear. For the wrong damn reasons.

(Disclaimer: am an angry parent who is sick of the shit my kids have to deal with online... but who will also NEVER give up personal encryption as a right.)

Parents control their children's devices, they don't need to intercept messages on the network and decrypt them

Children must be educated to understand these things can happen. It happens in Primary School here in Scotland (ages 4 - 11 approx.). If you are technically literate you will also be informing your children when you allow them on devices. After that you should respect their right to privacy. No need to ban e2ee, that's a canard.

Well, to be blunt, my sister in law definitely explained to her 11-year-old daughter that sending pictures of her vagina to strangers wasn't a good idea. Kids don't listen.

Probably not appropriate but the Reddit channel r/kidsarefuckingstupid is proof positive. Also the lived experience of everyone who remembers being a child. Or has children. Or knows any. Yup.

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