[Kim_Bruning]

I read this as "European Police Chiefs want everyone to leave their digital keys under the doormat". I always have the idea that police are late to this particular arms race and don't realize that their way of thinking about security is still somewhere last century.

I mean, I don't even mean it to be insulting or anything. People can't be good at everything. It seems that police I've met so far (n<10) are pretty awesome people, but they don't seem to be particularly security conscious qua electronic security.

Else the police chiefs would (for one) realize that they need that end-to-end encryption themselves. It's a fairly basic building block, you'd think.

OTOH, maybe my impression is wrong, and there are exceptionally skilled police people who I've just never met? But why would they be advising their chiefs so badly then?

[JPLeRouzic]

> police are late to this particular arms race and don't realize

It is smarter and simpler than that: Once the use of encryption keys is banned, everyone using one will label himself "I am a terrorist" and will be at least annoyed endlessly by the judicial system.

https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2023/12/15/encryption-discus...

[pyuser583]

The problem isn’t outdated thinking. Outdated thinking is fine. Conventional police tactics, and surveillance, work just great with encryption.

The problem is a very futuristic vision of what surveillance should look like.

[outime]

It's not a bug, it's a feature. In other words, I don't think they're being ignorant at all. They've been pushing this angle from different places in the EU and this is one more. They won't stop until it's a reality.

[zarzavat]

They are trying to maximize their power to their own advantage, just like everyone else. (Un)fortunately it’s way too late to ban e2e encryption for anyone who really wants it (i.e. nerds and criminals), but they might end up banning it for the general public out of spite.

[loa_in_]

Yes, they're trying to make their jobs easier, even if it undermines everything else. In fact that is such a big part of their lives that they'll be done and retired without ever experiencing the fallout, so they do not care.

[ben_w]

I've met some very nice literal communists, who wanted to abolish money.

I think that's about the same level of wrong as cops trying to abolish encryption — I can see what they're saying and why, but the world can't be as they want it to be.

[Kim_Bruning]

To be fair; if we abolish money, quite a number of crimes become impractical to say the least.

I could almost imagine the collective police chiefs writing the same document except for :%s/e2e/money/g .

It would be roughly as practical in 2024, so that's a neat argument!