To be honest the motivation to keep our children (or people more generally) safe seems way more clear to me that the motivation… to prevent people from having private conversations… to what end?
It's the stepping stone between the two: you cannot believe the motivation is to keep kids safe if the action makes kids less safe. That doesn't prove a specific other motivation. But it does pretty decisively disprove the stated motivation.
Ah, I see. You’re saying the threat of someone successfully breaching a child’s data and appropriate keys from a service is more significant than the threat of just internet weirdos relying on E2E to transact child pornography with impunity.
Pretty much. That is what happened every time other people have been given access.
We're in the middle of a whole bunch of cases of policemen being sacked or charged here for asking our underage girls on dates, keeping and sharing nudes from crime victims phones etc.
And remember: if someone is lying about why they're doing something that's further evidence it's not something you want. If they had a good reason, they'd be up front about it...
To expand the total surveillance even further? It seems to me that every government, no matter how liberal or progressive, loves surveillance. Look at how quick European governments started to vacuum up the data from mobile operators when COVID broke out - all "for your safety", of course.
But again… for what? Are you under the impression that every government is actually authoritarian under the hood but that characteristic just doesn’t really show its head due to encryption? Seems to me authoritarian governments have no problem being authoritarian with or without these sorts of provisions.
Side note: I’m not actually against E2E encryption. Strong proponent really. I just think these arguments tend not to resonate with a very broad audience outside of the security/privacy/technolibertarian communities