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by throwawaythekey 2144 days ago
I normally enjoy Sam but found that episode was voiced more by his inner parent than his usual hyper-rational self. Child porn is a scourge that should be destroyed but there was minimal discussion of the following that I would normally expect from Sam:

  - Relative merits of the alternatives to the banning/reduction of e2e encryption, e.g stronger police resources, education and community programs

  - Is there a strong link between the sharing of material and the creation of material?
To demonstrate the seriousness of the issue they cite a study that around 5% of the population have consumed child pornography. My own experience has been that unsavoury images can be posted in public places and none of the viewers intend to see the material. I suspect (and hope!) this is where the 5% comes from. This is not caused or solved by the masses having access to encryption.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was having this reaction just because of my idealogical support of encryption.

1 comments

Curious what does “reducing of e2e” refer to? What does reduction without elimination look like?
E2E refers to end to end. I imagine he means encryption in transport as opposed to encryption at rest.

HTTPS is transport encryption. It's what keeps your bank account info from being intercepted in a usable state.

Reduction w/o elimination means weakening encryption. The advantage is that it can be easily broken by those who want to see what's inside.

His proposal would allow me (or countless bad actors) to decrypt data captures containing secure traffic, like your bank login. Strong encryption is the minimal method for preventing that.

Presumably like historical encryption, available to the government and the super wealthy. That was what they were attpting when they tried to classify PGP as munitions.
The podcast makes the suggestion that encryption doesn't have to be universal. If most communication were through unencrypted channels then policing would be easier, and the use of an encrypted channel would still be possible for critical communications (although may draw scrutiny).

I use reduced to mean non universal.