Hacker News Reader

Comment by hnbad | Hacker News Reader

Note that they didn't provide options for "with a warrant" and "without a warrant", they only provided options for "with a warrant but only for suspected terrorism" and "for any serious crime but without a warrant". I suspect some users would vote for "any serious crime with a warrant" but will now vote for option 1 because they still want a warrant.

View on HN

You're right, there is no option for "serious crime but only with warrant".

Option 1 is more strict in both ways. Only Terrorism (which is more serious than "just" crime) and even then only with a warrant. Option 2 is unacceptable (IMO). "serious crime" is too ambiguous and without a warrant prone to misuse.

Option 2 is clearly the "but the children!" solution which will fuck us all over.

The first option is leading right now so that's probably correct. In general germans are pretty trusting of the justice system, so I'd expect "serious crime with warrant" to win (at least I'd vote for it).

I think this is very important: The poll is intended to be able to claim that their users want as little cooperation as possible. And giving the "((1+2)/2). any serious crime but WITH a warrant" option would have undermined that, so they manipulate the poll.

At least that's what I'm reading into this. Picking option #2 was my personal "f..k y.." to them for this manipulation; not that it changes anything. (I really don't want to have a company share info without a warrant, but when a court warrant is issued they should comply).

That is my reading. They want users to pick option 1 as most users likely don't want them to cooperate WITHOUT a warrant and thus option 2 creates a false dichotomy.

It's worth noting that a lot of fringe extremists (but not necessarily terrorists) fled from WhatsApp to securer alternatives like Signal and Telegram, especially "COVID deniers" (which, to be clear, refers to a far-right political strategy). So blatantly ignoring warrants is probably good publicity for a vocal part of its userbase.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com