[boccko]

When they have a court warrant, it's not arbitrary. I think some rights were given to the people to combat government tyranny (right to bear arms for example), but combating government tyranny is just not feasible anymore, due to a set of factors, like our inability to organize behind a common cause. Anyway, the choice here is reserving our ability to overthrow an unjust system, or giving the government the rights to catch those who might want to unjustly overthrow it.

[Kim_Bruning]

The court warrant sounds like it's a good idea, and don't most other things work that way too? Actually End-to-end encryption isn't that different.

It so happens that there's no point in taking out a warrant against the man-in-the-middle, because he has no access to begin with.

You'll have to get a warrant against one of the ends.

What these proposals would end up doing is to force people to weaken protocols and start spying as a man-in-the-middle, just so that they can be targeted by a warrant.

This is just a little bit silly, I feel; and doesn't really help anyone. I don't think that authorities realize that that is what they're asking for. Usually when it gets explained to them, sooner or later they relent. And then a few years later someone replaces them, and it happens all over again.

[sjy]

I don't see any proposal to "weaken protocols." Why would the government try to mandate the use of provably unsound end-to-end encryption, weakening security for everyone, when it could just order Apple and Google to spy on the user's end, which they control?

[feanaro]

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Possessing cryptography does not imply the boogeyman will, as a consequence, gain the ability to overthrow the system. On the other hand, there's very concrete evidence governments are the boogeymen.

[indigochill]

>giving the government the rights to catch those who might want to unjustly overthrow it.

So how decides when an attempt is just? Did the British think the American revolutionaries were just in declaring independence?

[Nasrudith]

It is might makes right essentially - if treason doth prospor none dare call it treason. If there is absolutely no hope of any effort to revert it succeeding it is just.