No rational person likes paedophiles, right? So you won’t mind if we spy on your messaging. Just to catch the paedos, okay?
A new government-backed campaign is calling on tech giants to stop rolling out end-to-end-encryption (E2EE).
Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal already use E2EE, and Meta plans to deploy it in Facebook Messenger, but the No Place to Hide campaign says it makes it harder to detect child abuse.
When messages are sent using E2EE, only the sender and receiver can read them, not law enforcement or the app owners.
This is the usual way in – find a group that people despise and use them as a trojan horse to enable access to everyone’s messaging, because that is precisely what this is. The government backs it – of course it does – because they don’t like us having the ability to communicate privately. The government hates privacy. And if you think that this would stop with paedo hunting, I’ve a beachfront property in the Gobi you might be interested in.
Jim Killock, of digital campaigning organisation Open Rights Group, told the BBC it was “technically impossible” and any weakening of encryption would expose users to danger.
“Encryption protects us from scams, blackmail and criminal abuse of personal messages, so the government needs to face up to the fact that it is choosing to help criminals,” he said.
Quite. This comes from the usual rag tag rabble of parasitic government funded organisations on the campaign trail, keeping the funds flowing and restricting our liberties at the same time. The actual risk from paedophilia, while real is also very small. The vast majority of people simply want to keep their messaging secure from prying eyes and that is perfectly right. These campaigners have no concern about the collateral damage as long as it meets their objectives. Those objectives being to force us all out into the sunlight. Because nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?
Well, it’s not like they can say “We need access to end-to-end messaging so we can catch Islamic terrorists”, since of course Islam is the “Religion of Peace”. So pedos it is then.
Having said that the vigilante groups seem to have no problems setting up idiots to pick up “hot underaged teenage girls” from MacDonalds without the necessary infrastructure to decrypt end-to-end encryption, simply by being the recipient of the messages and then filming the buggers when they turn up at MacDonalds.
So maybe the police should try that first before worrying about what people might want to say about BoJo behind his back in Messenger.
As for “conspiring pedos”, any pedo that wants to conspire would be using the pretty much untraceable TOR browser to communicate with a messenger layered on top such as QTOX. So again, not something that is easily targeted by a push against mainstream service providers like Facebook, Google and the rest.
Isn’t that entrapment if the state does it though?
Though I still wouldn’t mind that police doing it and the case being prosecuted and then thrown out. Would let the police know who is a perv.
Could also let the other inmates know what they’ve been charged with while they are awaiting trial
It’s entrapment regardless of who does it and these vigilante paedo catchers are likely to do more harm than good, as they don’t have the same chain of custody requirements that the police need, hence a prosecution could fail or they trap the wrong person.
Notwithstanding the fact that paedetricians would be at risk too…
I always say that when any political type starts ranting about something on the internet, remove the words “on the internet” and see how sane and rational it sounds.
The government wants to ban private conversations.
If the government required everyone to wear a microphone at all times, they might catch more criminals too. But this is supposed to be a free country.
They might want to ban writing letters, too. Who knows what dastardly plots the post office might be conveying.