[simplestats]

Which side of the argument includes people who are on board with allowing backdoors into (otherwise) secure communication as long as it requires a warrant or some similar oversight? Because that's kind of how law enforcement has always operated (at least ideally) when it comes to violating freedoms.

[rfd4sgmk8u]

The bootlicking side. There is only two options: a) encrypted communication that cannot be read by anyone except the software client and the peers communicating enforced by cryptography, and b) cleartext, cops and death squads.

Stop making consolations. Math doesn't care about warrants. There is no higher oversight than 256-bit symmetric ciphers.

[stephen_g]

The problem is that we don't really have any good ways to do that. If it's encrypted in flight but not end-to-end encrypted, for example, it's open to information being stolen, or people being stalked, or information gathered to groom minors (and later even evidence being deleted) by bad actors at the messaging platform's companies (such as sysadmins who have access - these kind of things have actually happened!). Further, all the private (and sometimes intimate) information that has been messaged is open to hackers if the security of that messaging platform is breached.

So the trade-off is that law enforcement have to look for other ways to enforce the laws - like they need to find one side of the message conversation and get a warrant to access the data stored on their phone to view the communications. Technology has actually given them far, far more scope for access into people's lives for surveillance than they've ever had! They are exaggerating the problems with things like end-to-end encryption because it's taking away a very effortless source of surveillance - something that they probably shouldn't have ever had (the ability to easily snoop on everybody's phone calls and messages, which we know in the US and other places that they did warrantlessly for many years).