this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Sorry for disrupting your echo chamber, I was browsing the Hot content when this aggregated up and tickled my fancy.
Got curious what the bill was actually about, not just what the hyperbole was saying, so I researched it myself and found the middle ground between the provocative takes and reached a grown up conclusion for myself.
I know that must be confusing for you, but here we are!
You've reached a conclusion on a 300 page Bill based on reading two short articles. You've performed no further research on the subject whatsoever and now you're here parading your ignorance like its something to be proud of.
When encrypted apps get backdoored or they remove themselves from the market two things will happen.
Firstly, all the sickos and crims will simply move to darkweb based communication or self hosted solutions or no-memory solutions. This will make them twice as difficult to detect and capture.
The other thing that will happen is that non-techy people who rely on private chat apps like WhatsApp or Signal, such as those supported by various charities and victim support groups including abused wives, rape victims, young people struggling with sexual or gender identity, mentally ill people and sexual abuse survivors will suddenly have nothing to use that they feel safe using. Here's a few quotes from a response paper for very similar EU proposed legislation:
"As an abuse survivor, I (and millions of other survivors across the world) rely on confidential communications to both find support and report the crimes against us – to remove our rights to privacy and confidentiality is to subject us to further injury and frankly, we have suffered enough.” – An Irish survivor of child abuse
“Using the veil of morality and the guise of protecting the most vulnerable and beloved in our societies to introduce this potential monster of an initiative is despicable.” – A German survivor of child abuse
“Especially being a victim of sexual abuse, it is important to me that trusted communication is possible, e.g. in self-help groups and with therapists. If encryption is undermined, this also weakens the possibilities for those affected by sexual abuse to seek help.” – A French survivor of child abuse
People like you and the people who dream up legislation like this aren't really interested in preventing abuse. You're interested in not seeing it and therefore being able to ignore it's happening - because nothing in this Bill will prevent a child from being abused. It seems to me that we'd be far better off as a society if we 'd spent 6 years and millions of pounds on researching and proposing laws on preventing the abuse itself.
It’s neat you’ve invented a bunch of horror stories while citing anecdotes that have nothing to do with this bill. It’s definitely working wonders for your knowledge and veracity on the subject.
Anecdotes that have nothing to do with this Bill? Are you trying to add blindness to ignorance to your list of character traits? Those quotes are taken from a EU response paper to the proposed Chat Control EU legislation. In respect of encrypted chat messaging, the two Bills are virtually identical. But, again, I wouldn't expect you to know this as you've performed no research on the subject whatsoever.
And those are not invented horror stories, they are lived realities for people who are in very difficult life circumstances. But you don't need to care about their lives do you? All that matters is that you can go on living in ignorance.
Because nobody is taking encryption away from your therapist app, jfc.
They want the companies themselves to be able to read the content to check for illegal activity. That’s not the same thing as ending encryption and thus allowing me and you to read each others messages.
I can't explain it to you again. At this point you're either simply choosing to not understand or you're actually stupid. Either way, go troll somewhere else, I'm done with you.