[Fradow]

The general sentiment is that law enforcement is able to work well enough without being given the right to infringe on any citizens privacy unchecked (and by that I mean without a court order or minimal oversight).

In this case, it's with a court order, but the real issue is that it mandates having backdoors, something pretty much everyone with a lick of understanding of what it entails is strongly against.

[donkeyd]

> the real issue is that it mandates having backdoors

I'm seeing this response in many replies to mine and I feel like this is because people don't understand how laws like this actually work. Especially because people in the US like to apply their mistrust of LE to European LE.

The Netherlands already has a law in place allowing police to hack citizens in case of specific crimes, comparable to this law in France. This does not require companies to create back doors, but allows LE to remotely enter devices of suspects if deemed necessary. This needs to be confirmed by a judge and therefore isn't applied very often, only in specific cases where there's no other option.

Fighting cyber crime without these laws becomes nearly impossible, because often a perpetrator is very good at covering their tracks and offensive hacking is a necessity to find a perpetrator. HN then has the tendency to say "for now", implying that this will soon be applied to petty thieves and the general populace, but this law doesn't allow that, has many safeguards and therefore that doesn't happen.

[cultureswitch]

> HN then has the tendency to say "for now", implying that this will soon be applied to petty thieves and the general populace, but this law doesn't allow that, has many safeguards and therefore that doesn't happen.

Institutional safeguards are the most miserable line of defense. The moment there's political will to make them go away, that happens instantly. Look at what happened to a formerly democratic country such as Turkey.