[ocius]

How would you even ban encrypted communication in practice? It takes only one expert cryptographer who is willing to build a communication platform that encrypts its traffic and hides it as part of legitimate traffic to counter any such law.

Yes, initially you might be able to catch a few bad guys who don't switch to the new service quick enough, but soon enough, all that is left is the ability for police & co. to read private messages of a population that is mostly innocent.

[abecedarius]

You can't both ban it and respect human rights as we understand them today.

But that a ban must fail doesn't follow. E.g., requiring passports for travel was a WWI development, and supposed to be a temporary restriction on freedom; the practice was supposed to end after the war, and they had some kind of international meetings about it, and nothing ever happened. Now this has become obscure history that people hardly ever think about.

[AinderS]

Don't be overconfident. They can make the use or possession of encrypted apps a crime. Then being able to hide your communications or data won't matter - the hiding itself will be criminal.

[fulafel]

At least in the EU they're going after the tech corporations and commercial operations and not necessarily outlawing grassroots diy software use.

The line of argument that criminals would be too smart to stay on commercial services is not really robust, as catching just the not so smart ones would be good enough for politicians. There are better arguments.

(The upcoming EU "chat control" mechanism is about similar remotely triggerable client-side fuzzy searching ).

[hugh-avherald]

It's not much of a counterargument to say that encryption would be easy to access. Most crimes are easy to perform. The point is that if you're caught with encryption software, the prosecution rests.

[junon]

As said a million times before, you can't. These laws are written and enacted by people who don't understand this stuff.

[imtringued]

The point of DRM and anti encryption laws aren't the criminals. Only law abiding citizens get bitten by these laws.

[junon]

Criminality wasn't part of the question.

[Schroedingersat]

They do.

The goal has never been to catch the bad guys.

[CJefferson]

Many people who commit crimes don't get caught, but you could, with work, catch many people who were using encryption.

Look at tor and people running illegal companies through our, some get away with it, but a bunch did get caught eventually.