Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pb1729 627 days ago
It wouldn't cover steganography. What looks like an unencrypted video file may have an encrypted message hidden in the noise.
3 comments

Also wouldn’t cover encrypted messages sent in the clear. Exchange keys ahead of time and you’re just sending noise to each other. I guess you could still target users sending random noise under the assumption they are using encryption.
Do you think they'd be trying to take encryption away if they weren't already inspecting the packets deeply enough to notice the difference between natural language and encryption noise? One has to imagine that the whole point is to read the underlying message, right?
It's extremely costly to deeply inspect terabytes of traffic.
Assuming the compression is lossless. As it is you have to go looking for places on the web that will even host a bit-for-bit copy of an image you've uploaded. Though I suppose there will always be options.

But if they become too much of a hassle they'll become the domain of people who have something to hide, which would be a significant downgrade.

I myself have nothing to hide, but I want to provide cover in case you do.

It doesn't have to be absolute. Just cross some threshold of inconvenience.