[izacus]

There's plenty of high moral principles, but "let's build technology that explicitly protects criminals - especially child and women traffickers - against investigation" ain't one of them for majority of people living in democracies.

[milutinovici]

How does it protect trafficers especially? Does it have some extra trafficking features? Does it unlock additional capabilities if you're a criminal? Or maybe it just protects everyone?

[everyday7732]

Your assumption that "criminals" are doing something morally wrong is fundamentally flawed. Civil rights activists were criminals, as were suffragettes, and the people who protected Jews in Nazi Germany, and gay or trans people just existing in countries where that isn't allowed. All criminals. Law enforcement isn't even always carrying out the law, as we've seen with ICE arresting, assaulting, searching, deporting people on no other basis than their skin color.

Democracy dies when people can't protest. When they are under constant surveillance, afraid of being singled out by the government intelligence gathering mechanisms. Unable to speak out about injustice, organise and engage in healthy counter culture.

Look at Russia, look at China. Don't imagine that giving your own government and law enforcement the same tools of surveillance and oppression will have a different outcome.

[budsniffer952]

You do realize there's another side to it, right? There are morally good examples where privacy is needed, and morally bad examples where not being able to access data is harmful.

I personally agree with you, but for most people it's not black or white. They want privacy when it suits them, but would take yours away in a heartbeat.

[everyday7732]

I agree that privacy is not always a force for good. I think that when we remove privacy we normally lose much more than we gain.

People easily focus on negative consequences of privacy (dangerous people being able to communicate secretly) and don't notice the benefits they enjoy because of privacy.

[izacus]

Yes, exactly, but if you actually follow all of those groups, none of them changed things by building bunkers into which police couldn't ever enter and any crime could happen there.

As someone who grew up on the other side of the iron curtain, I find this idea that you'll make your own government an enemy and shield criminals against it utterly naive, since that's not what actually changes society. It's a form of techno-cowardice, where people hide behind technology to avoid doing the hard stuff.

[everyday7732]

It's not cowardice. It's a standard defence against tyranny. Governments can change quickly so even if you think your present government is democratic and healthy it still pays to keep the tools to defend against it if it changes.

If your government is seeking to remove those tools from you then that is a warning sign.

[HybridStatAnim8]

Thats... exactly what they did. They relied on secrecy and hidden locations to aid their cause.

Like... this is how the entire underground railroad and many other examples worked out.

[izacus]

Not in my part of the world, which is both safer and more democratic than the US approach you're defending.

There were also other groups hiding away and doing interesting things - killing, maiming murdering. It took access to private communication and files to take those down - you may have have heard of some [0].

[0]: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/138889467

[tenuousemphasis]

Critical thinking isn't exactly your strong suit, clearly.

[HybridStatAnim8]

If you are referring to GrapheneOS, there is nothing that GrapheneOS offers or advertises that "explicitly protects criminals".

GrapheneOS is not for criminals, its not aimed at criminals, its not designed for criminals. Not implicitly or explicitly.

[ktallett]

You forgot terrorists on your usual list of reasons e2e is bad. Technology will always be used for bad and good, but there are far more people using it for good than bad.

[Anvoker]

In the era before the advent of mass digital surveillance, it was well understood that there are many different ways to fight crime. Now every time I see this conversation being had, it's treated as if keeping any amount of privacy beyond what you personally find acceptable is tantamount to endorsing the existence of human traffickers. Warrantless spread-shot digital surveillance is now often treated as essential.

I have a question for you. Why don't you advocate for more surveillance? The more active and widespread the surveillance, the more criminals can be caught. If you think it's not entirely practical, just embark on a thought experiment with me -- assume it would be practical. Would you do it? Would you have everyone be under perfect surveillance 24/7 in order to catch every criminal? Let's call this stance surveillance maximalism.

If you agree with surveillance maximalism, then we're just very different people and I don't think we can find common ground. I hope we can live peacefully in different countries with different laws that suit our preferences.

If you disagree with surveillance maximalism, then why is your arbitrary tradeoff so good? It's not obvious why it's better. You are assuming the moral high ground, but you're also doing the same thing you're accusing me of -- you're accepting some amount of traffickers existing by not being a surveillance maximalist.

By adopting this moral high ground, the discourse is kept at a shallow level. We talk less about which surveillance measures are actually effective or not, what has happened to crime rates over time, what is the context in which crime occurs, what are the negative consequences of undermining privacy, what are the negative consequences of mass surveillance etc. Instead we waste our time and energy on cheap moral opprobrium.

[izacus]

> In the era before the advent of mass digital surveillance, it was well understood that there are many different ways to fight crime. Now every time I see this conversation being had, it's treated as if keeping any amount of privacy beyond what you personally find acceptable is tantamount to endorsing the existence of human traffickers. Warrantless spread-shot digital surveillance is now often treated as essential.

That's not what anyone writes, especially not me.

> I have a question for you. Why don't you advocate for more surveillance? The more active and widespread the surveillance, the more criminals can be caught. If you think it's not entirely practical, just embark on a thought experiment with me -- assume it would be practical. Would you do it? Would you have everyone be under perfect surveillance 24/7 in order to catch every criminal? Let's call this stance surveillance maximalism.

Because it's a bad tradeoff between free society and safe society. There's a reason why we put checks and balances on enforcement agencies and why it's so important to keep them up to date.

> If you agree with surveillance maximalism, then we're just very different people and I don't think we can find common ground. I hope we can live peacefully in different countries with different laws that suit our preferences.

I do not agree with surveillance maximalism.

> By adopting this moral high ground, the discourse is kept at a shallow level. We talk less about which surveillance measures are actually effective or not, what has happened to crime rates over time, what is the context in which crime occurs, what are the negative consequences of undermining privacy, what are the negative consequences of mass surveillance etc. Instead we waste our time and energy on cheap moral opprobrium.

I agree, so perhaps losing your mind and going into mindless screaming every time anyone opens a debate about tradeoff between access, surveillance and privacy isn't the best way forward. Which is what's happening here way too many times.

Just because I acknowledge an issue which gave us things like surveillance warrants and existence of police forces doesn't mean you can just strawman me into whatever position you hate. Perhaps think on the reason why every single stable prosperous society has concepts of police and police warrants which grant access to private spheres when deemed necessary.

[inigyou]

Do you believe window curtains should be legal? Should it be legal for a TV to not include a microphone and require an internet connection (as recent LG TVs do)?

[izacus]

If you're too lazy to engage with the topic at hand, don't.