[no_opinions]

EFF is special in that is completely disregards legitimate use cases to access information.

I thought civil liberties was about fine tuning the scope of the government's power from sweeping in innocent citizens. EFF doesn't attempt to suggest a statute to do a better job in these areas. It lumps together a complicated subject.

They appear to believe any reason the government has to want to access E2E communication is illegitimate.

> Facebook and others would face immense pressure to also provide them to authoritarian regimes, who might seek to spy on dissidents in the name of combatting terrorism or civil unrest, for example.

It's blocked in China. Russians use VK.

> Many people—including journalists, human rights activists, and those at risk of abuse by intimate partners—use encryption to stay safe in the physical world as well as the online one.

If someone's safety was at risk, why would they be on Facebook at all though.

They sell their data in bulk. Maybe what you really want is a GDPR-like assurance as a consumer.

> “enable law enforcement to obtain lawful access to content in a readable and usable format.”

It's public information this is already done by large companies.

Why not make this into a conversation about who can access the data, for what reasons, and what threshhold of proof is needed to minimize the sweep?

> law enforcement and national security agencies in these three countries are asking for nothing less than access to every conversation that crosses every digital device.

Law enforcement and national security are not the same thing.

They're exacerbated by places like EFF that blur them together to get donations and keep laypeople running in circles.

EFF is supposed to be staffed with lawyers. The least it could do is help the public understand the intricacies.

[nine_k]

The problem is that there's no way to make a backdoor only for legitimate uses. There is an illusion that it could be done, but practice shows that it gets exploited by bad actors, too.

Another problem is that correct strong encryption would work equally for nicest law-abiding citizens and for vilest criminals. But there are other numerous efficient means to fight against criminals, even if the encryption is available to them. For the law-abiding citizens, there is no reasonable way to stay safe in many areas, such online financial transactions, if the strong encryption is not available.

[phs318u]

Interestingly, this article [0], indicates that in theory at least, it may be possible to develop a privacy-respecting secure network that is capable of optionally (per node operator) rejecting some traffic. However, assuming such a thing is possible, it would still not satisfy the TLA’s (assuming what they’re really after is the ubiquitous transparency).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21169768

[smudgymcscmudge]

I happen to agree with EFF on this, but even when I don’t agree with EFF, I appreciate that they are consistent on their pro-privacy stance. We need more organizations like EFF that are a consistent voice for one cause and aren’t swayed by unrelated political matters.

[chillacy]

What do you think about parallels between the EFF and NRA? They're both principled and wouldn't budge one inch on their respective issues.

Full disclosure: I donate yearly to the EFF, this is just food for thought for those who support the EFF and not the NRA like I do.

[koboll]

I strongly disagree with you.

But I just want to say it's disappointing that you're being downvoted by people because they disagree with you, rather than because you're not contributing to the conversation.

[kick]

Paul Graham:

I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

[smudgymcscmudge]

That’s good to know. I hadn’t read that before.

[geomark]

I feel the same. Upvoted not because I agree, but because I disagree and want to hear arguments that oppose mine. That's how it's done, son.

[natch]

Same, but I think saying these arguments "oppose yours" is a bit too flattering to the arguments. They aren't really legitimate enough to rise to the level of opposing a reasoned view. But I understand what you mean.

Let's just recognize that they are ill-founded arguments coming from someone who has not grasped the basic points of the article, or the basic issues of what is being discussed.