[disruptiveink]

I don't understand why they keep trying this over and over. It can't possibly be a moral crusade as it keeps happening with different players, but I don't understand the purpose.

We now live in a world where the opposite routinely happens: a crime happens, you give the police access to Apple or Google's Find Device / Find My data, they throw it in the trash. Law enforcement has more data to find and procecute criminals than they have time. People get scammed out of money by the thousands every day, over the phone, an insanely easy system to tap and trace. No one gets arrested.

Who is actually repeatedly pushing for things like these within the EU? For what purpose? What crimes went unprocecuted because of the unability to perform mass surveillance like this? It seems that all the time, when law enforcement actually cares about, it's trivial for them to get evidence? So why does this keep popping up every year?

[vasac]

You know the answer, you’re just not comfortable saying it out loud.

[disruptiveink]

I really don't, what is the answer? I assume higher ups at law enforcement, who are detached from the day-to-day operations, make up excuses about "end to end encryption being a challenge" because it's a meme, much like execs in our fields parrot "challenges" to boards and VC investors that are often fully removed from actual execution issues.

And then because it comes up in slides so much at that higher level, politicians actually start thinking that's why we haven't solved all crime, our guys are competent and clearly they're not understaffed, it's that pesky "not being able to break end to end encryption" that is preventing law enforcement from doing their work!

[123yawaworht456]

>It can't possibly be a moral crusade as it keeps happening with different players, but I don't understand the purpose.

it's not a moral crusade. they don't give a shit about children. they don't give a shit about crime. to the people in power, crime - even the most heinous kind - is just background noise. the laughably short sentences given to the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes in the EU/UK reflect that.

mass surveillance is a means to identify and suppress dissent.

the people in power care only about maintaining it. it's that simple. and once you acknowledge that, it will finally make sense why the US/EU/UK are implementing the same measures that China and Russia do.

[immibis]

That's pretty much exactly why. The EU is structured in a way where various groups keep proposing things and the elected representatives keep voting against them. There's no law saying they can't keep proposing the same things that keep getting rejected, so, they do.

We have this exact same post multiple times a year, where an EU body proposes a bad encryption law and everyone gets angry about how authoritarian the EU is. And then everyone forgets about it before the elected representatives get to vote on it and they vote to reject it, but that doesn't get to the front page so it doesn't give everyone the opposite emotions.

Also, end-to-end encryption is a challenge to law enforcement - idk why you think that's a meme. If they could just spy on all citizens 24/7, they could solve crime so much more easily! (Now that's a meme)

[dinfinity]

This.

From the article:

> Next year, the EU Commission is set to present a Technology Roadmap on encryption to identify and evaluate decrypting solutions. These technologies are expected to equip Europol officers from 2030.

> Now, lawmakers promise to be committed to finding the right balance between "allowing for efficient and future-proof solutions to facilitate law enforcement’s lawful access to digital information, while respecting the right to privacy and maintaining high levels of cybersecurity," said EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner.

Basically the status now is "we've heard that most people think it is a really shitty idea, but we really, really think we can make it work and are going to come up with how! Just give us some time!"

It is misguided, wasted money and effort, and deserves to be called out as such; The chances of it actually being implemented are very, very small, however.

[rusk]

I’d imagine there’s a lot of money chasing around the lobby and some of it just slushes into things like these. Easy passive income when you think about it.