[nekitamo]

This is what we get for installing mandatory government backdoors all over our communications infrastructure. Unbelievable that such a critical piece of infrastructure wasn't secured properly. But after the OPM hack and the bungled implementation of CIA "drop sites" online, nothing about our government's cyber incompetence surprises me anymore.

[dlcarrier]

I'm really tempted to stop using phone numbers, altogether. The security is really bad, and phone numbers are used for identification almost as often as social security numbers, but there's no requirement to have one.

[jacquesm]

Technically not. But not having a working phone number will quickly become a problem when you need to interact with authorities, banks, insurance companies, the legal system etc. I remember when cell phones were becoming affordable and I thought I was clever by ditching my land line. That got me no end of trouble, then bit by bit it became more normalized to the point that if you have a landline now people look at you a little funny. Not having a phone number today would be the same as not having a landline would have been in the early 90's, and probably much worse than not having a phone was back then.

[krisbolton]

Top tier state-sponsored actors don't need backdoors, their skill, resources, and persistance mean they can penetrate almost any system. Ascrbing this to mandatory backdoors distracts from the fact we need to improve cyber resilence and build better offense.

Reading the Atlantic Council's recent paper on what the US can do to counter the system China has created which funnels exploits to their government shows how mistatched the West is versus China. Paper here: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/C...

[zargon]

I think your point is we need deeper security improvements than only patching back doors. But it does come across like saying “hackers don’t need to guess passwords to get in, therefore just use hunter2.”

[wakawaka28]

If they don't NEED them, why do they always DEMAND them? The fact is that mandatory backdoors makes things easier for attackers. Counter offensive capabilities do not cancel out defensive vulnerabilities. Once your data is gone or your personnel killed, there's no taking it back.

[hammock]

You are being downvoted by anti-backdoor people, which is fine, but you highlight an interesting new facet of the discussion:

How do we build a functioning world where secrets are not required? By this I don’t mean “everyone behaves good and therefore has nothing to hide/fear” but rather, how do we function in a world in which secrets are simply not possible?

[mensetmanusman]

Computers can never be 100% secure. It’s just a matter of how many zeros one is willing to spend, especially when physical access to the hardware is so easy (for nation states).

[wakawaka28]

They can be close enough to 100% as you like. Even if that was true, it does not excuse the morons who built the stuff for easy spying instead of reasonable security.

[JumpCrisscross]

> when physical access to the hardware is so easy (for nation states)

So where is our deep, persistent infiltration of China?

[beeflet]

>Computers can never be 100% secure.

This is ridiculous defeatism. You are going to need more 0's than exist in the global economy to crack many cryptosystems.

[Veserv]

You only need to spend barely 7 zeros to defeat any organization in the world. About half of a single tank to defeat any commercial IT system no matter how much they spend on “security”.