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by thomastjeffery 1207 days ago
There is no reason to hate yourself. This is morally right ground. Children need privacy protections. That isn't just a counter-narrative: it's a deep and direct criticism of the narrative that says we should dismantle privacy to protect children.

If an effort to protect children also endangers children, then that effort is not worthy of implementation.

Narratives are not limited to "how we share ideas", but also "how we contextualize them".

If you haven't heard the counter narrative we are proposing, then you may not be aware of the way encryption backdoors endanger children. It's important for us to share that context as narrative.

1 comments

Do you have sources that describes some of the specifics with how weakening encryption endangers children?

I've been emailing back and forth with proponents of this law (working on getting access to someone who has mild influence in Parliament). They've been asking for sources that aren't just my own knowledge and experience, and framing how this bill also harms children would be extremely helpful

Of the top of my head, I would recommend Cory Doctorow. He's put a lot of effort into activism in this space.
What protects children is communication with their parents, not that third parties can read their messages
If parents could be made decent humans, a large portion of the abuse would be solved.

I don’t support weakened encryption, but parents are very much part of the problem.

Problem and solution do not separate themselves across that boundary.

In the set of parents, we find problems and solutions.

Because of this reality, we can know that simply "having parents to talk to" cannot guarantee a solution.

The same pattern is present with breaking encryption: it gets us to a solution: allowing law enforcement to invade the communications of perpetrators. It also gets us to a problem: allowing perpetrators to invade the communications of children.

We can't simply choose the outcome we want and ignore the other. Both are strongly predictable. That means this strategy is not worthwhile.