Venezuela Anti-U.S Revolt Ending in Whimper as Exodus Mounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-14/venezuela-anti-u-s-revolt-collapses-in-poverty-mass-migration <comment><USER2> The scary thing is Venezuela was doing relatively well not that long ago. I like to think democracy and a relatively good economy can keep a nation afloat and healthy to some extent ... but rather Venezuela's government has largely chosen this path in one way or another. It's kinda terrifying.

<comment><USER3> "Voter turnout [at Venezuela's 1998 election] was 63%, and Chávez won the election with 56% of the vote. Academic analysis of the election showed that Chávez's support had come primarily from the country's poor and 'disenchanted middle class', whose standard of living had decreased rapidly over the previous decade, while much of the middle and upper class vote went to Römer.

Chávez's presidential inauguration took place 2 February 1999. He deviated from the usual words of the presidential oath when he took it, proclaiming: 'I swear before God and my people that upon this moribund constitution I will drive forth the necessary democratic transformations so that the new republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these new times.' Freedom in Venezuela suffered following 'the decision of President Hugo Chávez, ratified in a national referendum, to abolish congress and the judiciary, and by his creation of a parallel government of military cronies'. Soon after being established into office, Chávez spent much of his time attempting to abolish existing checks and balances in Venezuela. He appointed new figures to government posts, adding leftist allies to key positions and 'army colleagues were given a far bigger say in the day-to-day running of the country'."

TL; DR Institutions which should have fought back didn't and populism usurped the democracy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez#First_presidential...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez#First_presidential_term:_2_February_1999_–_10_January_2001)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for that, I was just about to say. It hasn't been a democracy for quite a while.

Source: I have relatives who were born and raised in Venezuela.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Who is flagging these articles?

</comment><comment><USER6> The greatest argument against socialism is the condition of countries (Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, China before capitalism, North Korea, etc.) that try to adopt it in some form. Socialists will forever argue that some implementation was flawed. But I see many varied implementations of capitalism and each is functional.

<comment><USER7> Would you consider a 'typical' Western-European style 'social democracy' to be essentially capitalist? Honest question.

I can definitely agree that going 'full socialism' hasn't had a good track record, but somehow it doesn't feel right to call what we have over here 'capitalism'.

<comment><USER8> I'd call it a hybrid system... True socialism is where the government decides how much toilet paper to produce, say 100k units per month..while the public uses 200k or 50k... -- so there's either a surplus or not enough.

Supply and demand are null/void, the government might then decide lets up tp production as it's needed. Capitalism is the market decides based on indicators from 'votes' \--everytime you spend money you're voting on what that item is worth, how much supply/demand is given to it, etc...

Giving people who live in a country benefits and providing social well-being is NOT true-socialism, it's just love/respect for fell human beings. Ensuring everyone in a country lives above poverty shouldn't be debated about it should be something people take a sense in pride about and something they focus on eradicating.

It's not true-socialism in you still have a market, market conditions still predicate what's bought/sold/manufactured. The only difference is tax dollars are spent a little more on helping people. I think America is a horrible manager of money we could easily implement universal healthcare or guaranteed basic income and change some of the tax code to afford it all.

There's plenty of things we waste money on. The defense department has gatherings where they pay around $5 per ounce for coffee, $15 for donuts or pastries, etc.. private contractors can somehow get away with gouging the government and basically stealing tax-dollars.

We spend a trillion a year on a huge military, we don't need to be the police of the entire world. We need to close all bases, we have enough nukes/etc to dispel threats to our own borders, let's stay neutral again until we're called into another world war, but let's stop all the wars we're currently in.

I hope the predictions are true for 2030 that 40% of jobs will disappear forever, as it'll force us to really consider guaranteed basic income or end up just as Venezuela is now.

<comment><USER9> In Europe, that's we call communism, not socialism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if techies can do anything to help? Better flow of information? Crypto?

</comment><comment><USER11> Some needed contextualization here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States)

<comment><USER3> U.S. and European foreign policy has hurt Latin America. But that has nothing to do with Venezuela's present condition. Hugo Chavez was popularly elected in internationally-recognised elections. Through his and his successor's mismanagement, a formerly-wealthy oil nation--better off than others in the region--has fallen. This is a story of failed institutions and the destructiveness of populism, not of foreign interference.

<comment><USER11> That's one perspective. Another (perhaps broader) perspective is that there's been a generations long civil war throughout South and Central America between elites and oppressed populations, and throughout this conflict, the US state has sided with and supported elite rule, oftentimes including gross violations of human dignity. This goes back to the Monroe Doctrine.

<comment><USER3> If the U.S. is responsible for Venezuela's present condition, then Venezuela never had a hope. "During the 1970s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America. With the region's highest growth rates and the lowest levels of inequality, it was also one of the most stable democracies in the Americas" [1]. (Unfortunately, the economy failed to diversify away from oil before "the collapse of the 1980s and 1990s when global oil prices dropped.")

Not only was Venezueala wealthy before Chavez, it ran proper elections. Its balanced, stable democracy reflected its population's will.

The unfortunate truth is aloof upper/middle classes ignored Venezuela's poor. The latter got pissed off and, on their own volition, voted in a demagogue who then tore apart the country. Many problems in Latin America find origin in American meddling. Venezuela, today, is not one of them.

[1] [http://americasquarterly.org/content/venezuela-chávez- anatom...](http://americasquarterly.org/content/venezuela-chávez-anatomy- economic-collapse-ricardo-hausmann-and-francisco-r-rodr%C3%ADguez)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Black and Hispanic residents disproportionately targeted for jaywalking in NYC - <AUTHOR> https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/black-and-hispanic-residents-targeted-jaywalking-nyc.html <comment><USER2> This is hardly relevant. In a city of nine million people, about one ticket per day was given out total. A sense of proportion is important.</comment>


You Don't Actually Want to Boost Your Immune System - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/12/boost_your_immunity_cold_and_flu_treatments_suppress_innate_immune_system.html

<comment><USER2> Here's what may happen if you take a drug which really does try to 'boost your immune system': [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412) \- almost immediate systemic organ failure, angioedema leading to loss of fingers and toes, and long term health problems.</comment>


Are you an advanced rubyist? - <AUTHOR>

Try to do this by memory without using a ruby interpreter.
Given:

  class Test
    def attr
      @attr
    end

    def attr=(value)
      @attr = value * 2
    end
  end
 Evaluate:

  t = Test.new
  t.attr = 5 # Returns => ?
  t.attr # Returns => ?
 I don't consider myself an advanced rubyist, and I couldn't answer this until today. Nonetheless, the behavior surprised me. I've read a number of books about ruby and never seen this behavior mentioned; in fact, most deem a setter method as just another method. Any explanation for this behavior? <comment><USER2> It's not the method that's special, per se, but the `=` operator. The `=` operator always returns the right operand, discarding whatever is returned from the setter method. AFAIK it's because that's the expected behavior when you're doing chained assignments. You wouldn't normally want the leftmost operand in `a = b = c` to get a weird value just because the middle operand internally does some transformation, so the `=` operator yields the right operand unaltered.

If you went directly through the method (e.g. `t.send(:attr=, 5)` or `t.method(:attr=).call 5`), you'd get 10.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the explanation chc, and grn. Indeed, invoking the method indirectly with send or method does produce 10. Nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's related to the right-associativity of the assignment operator and its expected semantics. If you write

        a = b = c

then it is interpreted as

        a = (b = c)

When c = 5 then you expect that

        a = b = 5 # which is equivalent to a = (b = 5)

results in a and b set to 5. That's why = must return its right-hand side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I understand exactly what you're saying, and I don't dispute the semantics.

I guess my only problem is that in this case "t.attr" isn't really _equal_ to 5, therefore making

      a = t.attr = 5

differ from

      t.attr = 5
      a = t.attr

which to a novice would appear equivalent. 99.9% of the time you wouldn't expect assignment to have side-effects. But in my eyes Ruby gives you so much power to use responsibly, it appears out of character to disallow it in this instance. (Note: I had to forgo a little trick with ActiveRecord that would've reduced duplication because of this.)

In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal. But it was very interesting to me. :)

<comment><USER2> The alternative is making

      a = t.attr = 5

different from

      t.attr = 5
      a = 5

which is most often what someone means when they write a chained assignment. It's all part of the "principle of least surprise" that Rubyists used to tout so much — but unfortunately, different people find different things surprising.</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing a NotebookBar in LibreOffice - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/NotebookBar <comment><USER2> Given that on desktops there's (usually) more horizontal than vertical screen space why don't they put their ribbon ... sorry, notebook bar, horizontally ?

Their illustration is a perfect example : lot of free space on the sides of the document, but they're taking more spaces at the top.

And if MS Office is any indication, they'd better make the old interface the default or 20 years from now people will still complain that it was better before ;-) At work we went from Office 2003 to 2010 about 3 years ago, and my colleagues are still complaining about it (but we're French, it's kind of a way of life here).</comment>


The Insecure Developer - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/agisilaosts/the-insecure-developer <comment><USER2> I listened to this podcast where they were trying to figure out why some car salesmen sell 2x or 3x the cars of the next best guy on the lot. They found a pattern where the best performers would maybe briefly celebrate a sale and then immediately think "Oh god, I'll never sell another car, gotta get cracking right away." The less successful guys would go back to their buddies and brag, tell stories and go home early.

Insecurity itself isn't necessarily a predictor of failure, it depends on what you turn it into.

<comment><USER3> That being said, I'd much rather be the less successful guy than the guy constantly afraid of failure. "Productivity" is only as good as it advances your own personal life goals, and I don't think it should come at the expense of mental wellness.

<comment><USER4> This is also a form of self selection. If you believe that working hard is not worth what you get from it, you won't do it and someone else will.

The less successful guy would also "rather" be himself than the other guy, because he too believes the other guy must be trading his mental health for his productivity.

The successful guy doesn't see it that way. He's happy when he sells a car, and he's happier when he sells more cars. He spends his whole day doing his job, maybe even does research at home. He still enjoys his time with his family, has whatever hobbies he invests his free time in (presumably also more successfully than the other guy). He gets to retire earlier, and he knows it, and that gives him more motivation to be successful.

It is absolutely tragic that people can have the idea that less success is more happy. Some people feel better working harder and you shouldn't have to attribute some opaque negative consequence to them to feel better about the gap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't the point of an internship to continue your formation ? How comes companies making the same tests as for recruiting for real jobs ?

"Hi, we are not going to pay you, or not very much, but please be at the same level as senior that are already working for us"

I had interns back in the day I had an office (and not working from home) and I always made them work on basic tasks under my supervision. Once I had one woman who was very good, and she worked on a website that ended in production, but most of the time the purpose was to work on internal projects that can be used even if not perfectly polished. You know, stuff you always say you're going to do some day, but you don't.

The advantages were on both sides. They learned real life cases, under my supervision, and I had the tools I didn't.

Disclaimer : I'm French so maybe my example is not relevant.

<comment><USER6> _> How comes companies making the same tests as for recruiting for real jobs ?_

1) Because _desirable internships_ have more candidate applications than available slots. E.g. Google has 40,000 students wanting an internship but only 1500 slots.[1] With that supply & demand ratio, Google can be selective via difficult coding tests.

2) Even though internships are unpaid, companies evaluate interns to potentially offer permanent employment. If so, a company like Google would want to fill those 1500 slots with "the best" rather than randomly pull from 40000 candidates.

That's how it is at the hot tech companies. Maybe other internship programs outside of tech sectors such as Peace Corps think of interns differently.

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/1683136/how-to-actually-land- an-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/1683136/how-to-actually-land-an- internship-at-google-and-turn-it-into-a-job)

<comment><USER7> Re 2. Internships are paid. Pretty well actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sleepy, so I shouldn't post, but here goes. Confidence is really important for a programmer. Writing good code is very, very difficult. On the other hand, writing terrible code that barely works is not so difficult. There is a pretty big gulf between the two and if you don't have confidence that you can achieve something better, it is unlikely that you will even look.

Having said that, our industry is full of a lot of people who probably are not well suited for the job. Quite a few people look at the 6 figure salaries that you can get in some places in the US and figure it's a cushy way to get rich. Similarly, there are tons of jobs. _Everybody_ is looking.

But here's the catch. "Everybody" is not looking for the average programmer. They are looking for the top 1% of applicants. Anybody who is hiring (i.e. everybody) can verify this. How man CVs do you get a month? How many do you interview? How many do you hire? And even _then_ more than half the time I reckon companies are dissatisfied with the programmers they hire.

So there is actually a huge supply of average programmers that nobody wants. The average programmers aim at the "barely works" bar, and having hurdled it think they are senior programmers. A year or two under their belts, they demand their incredible wages.

At the same time, we all ask ourselves, "How can we protect ourselves from the hordes of untalented hacks knocking at our door?" Whiteboards, puzzles, trick- du-jour. It doesn't matter, because the real problem is what I stated at the top.

Confidence is important because writing good code is very, very difficult. Writing terrible code that barely works is not so difficult. We think we need to protect ourselves, but we don't need binary barriers to protect us from the untalented hacks. We need a better attitude. We need to realise that programming is a skill that takes time and effort to develop.

Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an _overwhelming_ task. There is so much to learn that you will be drowning in it for years (another reason people put their fingers in the ears and think they are amazing).

So to any "young" programmers (of any age), my advice to you: Have courage. Have confidence. Love what you do because it's a crappy, horrible job if you don't -- no matter how much you get paid. And for those who don't love it... there are lots of jobs that are not programming, but are still in the industry. Quite a lot of them even pay more than programming! Seek them out.

<comment><USER9> >Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an overwhelming task.

This is something that is near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to rant on it a bit. There are quite a few high-paying and fast- moving fields.

Pretty much everything under medicine or law moves is moving on a week-to-week and even day-to-day basis, just like software development. Unlike software development, practitioners in these fields get paid to stay up to date, as part of their day jobs. Lawyers spend a good chunk of their days just reading the latest case reports that are relevant to their field, and boy howdy do our legal systems churn out a lot of reading for them to do.

It's pretty much only in software development that we expect professionals to stay up to date and develop new skills /in their spare time/. There would be a lot more 1% developers out there (or rather, we'd be able to look for the 5% or 10% rather than the 1%) if companies were willing to have their teams spend 4 hours a week training, but no one is willing to do that.

I have guesses on the causes of this industry-wide unwillingness to train, but one thing is for sure: this situation will never resolve itself as long as we honestly and unironically expect members of the field to spend their evenings and weekends learning new algorithms and languages instead of playing with their kids or chilling with their mates.

You know why so many developers settle for mediocrity? Because mediocrity pays the rent, and no one is supporting their path to excellence.

<comment><USER10> Every job I've had and encourages engineers to have reading groups, on any topic they want. It's also my experience that most people ignore these opportunities Is this also what others see?

Some reasons I can think are people: \- don't want any more meetings; \- are bad at having a merit driven discussion

<comment><USER11> Majority of meetings are not merit driven discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Insecure or maybe well known as imposter syndrome hits me hard many times > from when I started as an iOS developer

Used to feel the same when the Python-crowd harassed me on choosing PHP over Python for webdev. I got my revenge when the python-devs i knew started rewriting their entire projects in ExpressJS/NodeJS due to scaling-related issues and mine still outperform them after 5 years of service.

</comment><comment><USER13> > What the heck means, "You aren't diverse enough"?

It means you're a white man and apparently it has become an accepted form of discrimination.

<comment><USER5> Or maybe it means that he was not "good enough" for the multiple technologies they use. Like just in one language but not all they use.

Pretty dumb at the end if you ask me.

<comment><USER14> Then the hiring firm is a group of fools best avoided.

Tools change like fashion. What is "hot" today will be nearly frowned on in 5 years and forgotten in a decade or so. In 20 years the fundamentals still matter, the tools, not so much (Pascal? Powerbuilder? Win32 in C?)

A smart developer can learn any tool. Hire for aptitude, not today's toolset.

<comment><USER15> I agree. Of course, there is a "spin-up" time and we prefer to select the competent candidate with skill in our tools vs the competent candidate with skill in a different tool; but absolutely a competent developer should be able to adapt to any environment.

Interviews can help accommodate this by allowing the candidate to solve a coding test in a language of their choice, while also inquiring about the candidate's learning plans. (Want to make sure they are willing to adapt to the team's tools and not try to force the team to adapt to them!)

I took a job once where the code base was in a FORTRAN-derivative language. I had never used FORTRAN or anything like it. Not a problem. I studied the code. I studied the docs. I figured it out and did the work. I would expect nothing less of any other competent developer.

Another job had a toolchain based on NodeJS on the server-side. Never used NodeJS. Not a problem. Studied the code. Studied the docs. You know the story.

The key skill is a developer's willingness and ability to learn the tools that are desired for the job at hand, and to accept and learn new tools when the time is right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates Fails Guessing Average Grocery Costs on Ellen – Time - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/5169246/bill-gates-grocery-shopping/ <comment><USER2> Why is this news? If you never do the shopping why would you know prices? You don't have to be a billionaire to not know prices. Reporters/shows do this to embarrass rich/powerful people. It never fails.

</comment><comment><USER3> to be spun "Bill Gates delighted to hear that he will donate away his money to 3x the people he initially thought he would be"</comment>


Climbing the wrong hill - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdixon.org/?p=989 <comment><USER2> That's a terrible analogy. Good analogies should provide an honest insight into a complex situation using a simple imaginary construction. In this case, there's no reason to assume that anyone's objection to founding a startup has anything to do with short-term versus long-term goals, and even if there was, the analogy of the "hill problem" doesn't address that objection at all.

I think it's much more reasonable to guess that this guy's reluctance to do the startup dance is the result of more complex considerations. His current job is safe; not glamorous, sure, but safe. He's probably making good money, and even if he doesn't really enjoy it, he's just found out that other people actually _want_ him. That can be a powerful motivator by itself.

The startup thing is risky. Talking about it is all well and good, and we can make startups sound really sexy because they're what _we_ prefer or need to do, but that doesn't mean that they're really for everyone. People might like the idea of startups, but when it comes to the actual risk, guesswork, and extreme hard work associated with them -- not so much.

I mean, hell, I'm working on my second one now, and I couldn't imagine working for anyone else ever again (or sitting in a cubicle). On the other hand, there are definitely days that I would love to not have to worry about whether or not I'll find enough business to pay the rent a couple of months from now. I haven't had a real get-away vacation in I-don't-know-how-long, and my average work day is probably around 11 hours long. I honestly don't know how my girlfriend puts up with it. And, I'm constantly thinking about one business or the other; it's not like I can just "punch out" at 5 or 6 o'clock each day and not think about work until the next morning.

So, yeah. Startups aren't all roses, and maybe some people are smart enough to figure that out _before_ they jump into them.

<comment><USER3> I agree that the connection to startup v. career just isn't there, but I really like the analogy insofar as it concludes that it's worthwhile to "meander some in your walk (especially early on)," and "randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain."

<comment><USER4> That randomly drop, fits pretty well with some old advice to occasionally try something REALLY different, if only as a hobby or on a vacation, to help keep yourself flexible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So is he proposing simulated annealing for finding the best occupation in one's life ? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing>

A person looking for for purpose in life might have much more limitations than a hill climbing algorithm. He/she also has different advantages than such algorithm, so I do not think this is very good analogy.

<comment><USER6> One crucial advantage is that we have the examples of others to follow or avoid. In this respect, particle swarm optimization (as referred to in another comment in this post [1]) may be a better model.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832163>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of this: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/11/understandin...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/11/understanding_l.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me, I have written a fairly good, fairly generic hill-climbing "library" for Python. I did it because I needed something specific quickly, and it's gradually grown over time. I haven't found anything generally available that does the same thing, and I was wondering if anyone here can suggest some existing libraries/modules that I can compare/contrast with before thinking about tidying up and releasing.

Suggestions?

<comment><USER9> Yes, I can certainly point you in the right direction.

Toby Segaran, author of the highly esteemed and good-read Programming Collective Intelligence (published by O'Reilly, so you know it's good), released all of the source code that he talked about in the book. You can find it all here on his blog: <http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=44>.

He talks about hill climbing and variants (random restart, simulated annealing). He does a great job of explaining the algorithm and the math behind the hill climbing decisions. For optimization, something hill climbing is not even the best tool. Look at some of the other optimization strategies he employs (specifically the genetic mutation algorithm).

I highly recommend buying the book, even if only one chapter currently interests you. I bet you the other chapters will too. It's on Amazon, and at B&N if you want it this second.

<comment><USER8> Brilliant - thanks - I'll check that out.

I do know that hill-climbing isn't always the best strategy - I've got experience. What I'm lacking is knowledge of people from other disciplines doing things in an organised and more complete manner. This is a good start.

I've also found AIMA stuff on Google - <http://code.google.com/p/aima-python/> \- which claimsto be a Python implementation of algorithms from Russell and Norvig's 'Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach'

<comment><USER6> I haven't done much of a survey, but I stumbled into this and looks promising:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_swarm_optimization>

I found this book a very enjoyable read (edit: and a lot less intimidating than the Wikipedia article!). Be warned, though, that it's one or two chapters worth of technical detail. The rest goes to motivating the subject and exploring its philosophical implications. And that is OK, because the algorithm is actually quite simple.

<http://tinyurl.com/lns85a>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I liked the 'The Dip' explanation way better: there are some things that are worth doing and others that are not. Most people do a lot of worthless stuff just because doing the worthy stuff is harder, even though it might yield a higher return in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER11> * Imagine you are dropped at a random spot on a hilly terrain, where you can only see a few feet in each direction (assume it's foggy or something). The goal is to get to the highest hill.*

Who climbs a hill they don't know in the fog, starting already lost and without navigation kit? Silly computer scientists.

<comment><USER12> I assume the "you are dropped" part is involuntary. The hill-climbing part just makes sense, so you can get high enough to see where the heck you are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This might actually be a viable analogy if the hills were "fuzzy" - i.e. changed in height and location over time. Because careers are like that - often the highest hills get worn down, or moved to other countries.</comment>


Attorney General will ask Zuckerberg to halt plans for end-to-end encryption - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/bill-barr-facebook-letter-halt-encryption <comment><USER2> > We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to > implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without > ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety.

Oh, so you're asking for more end-to-end encryption?

> While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, > WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism- > related content through its own systems, it also notes that "mere numbers > cannot capture the significance of the harm to children."

This is such a lazy argument :/

<comment><USER3> 99% of domestic disturbances happen in private homes. Should they put cameras there, too?

<comment><USER4> It's called "Telescreen" and will be soon available.

<comment><USER5> It's called laptop, smartphone and smart tv, is already available and we do know it's already watched and listened to.

<comment><USER6> ^^^ Source Please.

<comment><USER7> How about the (now former) head of the FBI recommending we cover our front- facing cameras?

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/23/the-fbi-recommends- you-c...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/23/the-fbi-recommends-you-cover- your-laptops-webcam-good-reasons/)

and, mostly because it's mentioned in the engadget article:

[https://twitter.com/topherolson/status/745294977064828929/ph...](https://twitter.com/topherolson/status/745294977064828929/photo/1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children.

Oh, bull crap. By this argument, literally no protection or liberty that allows even one child to be harmed could ever be tolerated. Why stop at vetting baby-sitters or teachers? We ought to require mandatory background checks for every person who ever visits a family or goes into a public space that might contain children. Law enforcement also ought to be able to track every underage child at all times, via mandatory GPS collars.

At the risk of sounding callous, there are occasionally some situations where you really do need to shut up and multiply.

<comment><USER9> The argument about children is easily invalidated by the fact, that for some reason that during the Vietnam / Afghanistan / Irak war many children were harmed for much less than everybody's privacy.

<comment><USER10> Those are other people's children.

The reptilian brain will respond differently to children from different cultures on the other side of the world. I understand the logic behind your argument but policy isn't driven by logic.

<comment><USER11> Hell, it's nakedly visible in policy in treatment of children from different cultures in the US itself. Xenophobia is a known route to power. This impulse CAN be countered by putting it in the light. Policy can and should always be driven in part by logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The claim of catching 99% of activity is really hard to justify. In many detection systems you cannot know your true number of false negatives. It's inherently unknowable in this case. A better metric would be mean time to detection for a given CEP sharer or perhaps a metric around how much CEP is shared before detection, or perhaps a metric for network size of CEP and how well FB can clean up an entire network at once.

This NYTimes article [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child- sex-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex- abuse.html) is quite good. I don't want to punish FB for doing a good job of detection by turning around clutching my pearls at them. Stamos tweeted that every hosting platform has these challenges and I believe him.

There has to be some nuance from the absolute privacy folks on this one. How do we balance the need to fight child abuse with privacy?

<comment><USER13> It's easy to detect a vast amount of child porn, simply because the vast majority of child porn sharing is just a few thousand different files, shared over and over again. A few hundred thousand files if you count the non-nude and nude "child modelling" stuff, too.

You can catch a majority of such content just by running a dumb hash over the bits, even though the detection rate suffered a little thanks to dumb smartphone users who will screenshot everything instead of sharing the files, thus creating "new" content.

If you add some simple "content hashing", like [https://pypi.org/project/dhash/](https://pypi.org/project/dhash/) or Microsoft PhotoDNA [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/photodna](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna) you can catch an astounding number of content shares, something which really looks great in press releases. My guess would be that the vast, vast, vast majority of those 18M reports that letter mentions came from automated engines detecting the "common" content with dumb bit or content hashes. But you really didn't do much except annoy and scare some online pedophiles* who shared the same 10, 20, 40 year old content* and maybe even put a few of them away for good or caused them to kill themselves. And yet, you almost never actually prevented ongoing child rape and other abuses.

The problem however is that you absolutely cannot catch new content that way. Content that isn't widely shared but shared between two people or in rather small groups. These small groups have elaborate vouching and proving systems in place, and are hard to infiltrate, going as far as having to prove yourself by sharing a picture of you victim holding a sign with a time stamp and some passphrase.

facebook aimed their AI at porn so they might catch some of this new content by accident; it's porn after all. Then again, my hopes aren't that high, seeing Microsoft's bing fucked up even removing the known child abuse content from search results even as the company runs the PhotoDNA database I mentioned before. And google's AI is "clever" enough to think black teens are gorillas, but they are supposed to catch child porn?

Also, those dedicated child abuse content producers do read the news and know not to use facebook or twitter. Most of them do, anyway.

There is essentially three types of pedocriminals I have observed: the aforementioned part time online pedos who share the same old child abuse content but do not actually produce it or abuse children in the real world, a group of active pedophiles who do not care about getting caught because they live in places where they do not actually have to fear the police investigating them __ _, and a cautious group who might use common public services to make initial contact and talk a little in code but will immediately exchange tox ids etc or at least link to "how to setup qtox over tor"_ __* guides (I saw a few "groomers" do just that), and never share anything incriminating over a public service. My guess is that they are be behind tor or a VPN even when using those public services.

And there is a small number of dumb fucks too who will get caught easily and who end up in the press, and, of course, a probably quite large group of pedophiles who just abuse children but do not tell anybody about it, especially not on the internet.

The majority of people you'd actually want to neutralize because they engage in ongoing child abuse you will not catch on facebook or twitter or whatever. I sometimes liken it to catching a lot of drug users, but not the dealers let alone the drug producers.

Not that my experience dealing with the police is much better. The average time for them to get back to you is a few months if they are from the West, and usually never in other parts of the world, even if they have dedicated groups and/or tip lines. Maybe sometimes they do investigate without acknowledging the reports you sent, I don't know, but it is my feeling that probably not. I don't want to blame the individual police officers and detectives who have to deal with this shit, it's probably all due to lack of resources and institutional support.

But to shit a bit more on the police: I saw some chats with essentially reverse-grooming, where a "girl" started off telling how "wet" she is and how much she likes dicks and only then that she is only "13". After learning about "her" age the dude then usually quickly leaves, but often only after having posted some personal information already. I later learned that such "girls" are either the police "child grooming" units, or blackmailers. I don't even want to know how many of the grooming cases that actually go to court are a result of this tactic, catching stupid horny wannabe pervs, while the actual groomers go free. Burning resources like this instead of using them to catch the truly evil and nasty people again seems to be a political decision.

Source: personal experience from having to deal with this shit occasionally, and having caused some pedophiles to go to prison.

* There have been a few studies that found that the group of people consuming child abuse media and the group that actually molests and rapes children doesn't have too much overlap, contrary to what one might expect.

 __A lot of the "common" content is rather old, like digitized VHS tapes and magazine scans, or stuff like "1st st __ __" (the producer of which went to prison like 10 years ago) or the East European nude "modelling" stuff from the early 2000s, or webcams from a time when webcams had half a megapixel. There is some newer stuff, like "R _b_ n" and "R __girls ", but that's the exception. And if you try to fill in the blanks and google any of this, you're stupid and/or evil; don't.

 __* I have had a few tell that to my face, taunting me to report them to their local police.

 __ __I am singling out tox /qtox because at least at in the recent past it seems to have been the goto tool for security conscious pedophiles, based on my personal observations.

<comment><USER14> > There have been a few studies that found that the group of people consuming > child abuse media and the group that actually molests and rapes children > doesn't have too much overlap, contrary to what one might expect.

Do you have some links for this? I've anecdotally heard it both ways.

[https://olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/I%20C%20A%20C/2013%20-%2...](https://olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/I%20C%20A%20C/2013%20-%20April%2018-19/09f%20-%20BUTNER%20STUDY.pdf) seems to imply the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is amazing to me that people that are supposedly "pro-business" and "pro- market" are against encryption.

Mostly encryption protects privacy and business information. Corporate espionage is bigger than state espionage or terrorism my many multiples, and directly threatens national security as well as markets.

Encryption is pro-business and pro-privacy for business and individuals. Without encryption or with backdoors you are trusting that bad actors don't get access to it, they will.

Why have a world class security system, yet plenty of keys under rocks in the backyard?

I wish encryption was framed like this:

Going without encryption or including backdoors is another level of trust, like leaving your window open on vacation and putting a note that says, "Only Sally the neighbor can come in through the window, please" (Sally being the gov't). Guess what, Sally won't be the only one coming in. In that situation you may as well open the front door because that is the same as the backdoor or window, just less obscurity but more attractive to underground/opposition forces whether that is state, corporate, personal or more.

Oversight and security has gotten lazy, two decades of surveillance based detective work without warrants over real detective work with warrants has made enforcement and security lazy and unable to operate without all the noise that comes with access to everyone's data. Initially it was about terrorism, but everyone knows it is about business information, personal information and other over steps like the drug wars or fights against sex workers or other wars on people that are low hanging fruit that are picked on constantly. Good detective and intel work needs to come back and less of the surveillance type.

<comment><USER16> Terrorists can and will use steganography, which even the most advanced automated systems cannot detect.

They want to surveil the public.

<comment><USER17> They don't even need to... You can have a correct implementation of RSA in like 20 lines of code. The cat was out of the bag 20 years ago.

<comment><USER18> Correctness defined as "this produces the right answer" vs correctness defined as the above with the addition of "this does not leak information / is not highly vulnerable to side-channel attacks" are very different things, and only one of those definitions is actually useful for cryptography.

Writing it yourself for the first time, or just copying some code off the internet, is going to have a vanishingly small chance of being actually secure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety."

Isn't the entire point of E2E Encryption for user safety, as in safety from the government reading your message?

<comment><USER20> True E2E Encryption would also mean the platform(FB, Telegram, Google, Apple, etc.) also can not read the messages and thus the law enforcement can not force them to reveal what a user said because it would be impossible for them to know.

<comment><USER21> You are partially right but the issue is that E2E isn't even enough. E2E doesn't matter if they force a patched binary that _also_ sends the data to the government. This is _EXACTLY_ what the Australian laws saws they must do, oh and it is a gag order so they can't disclose it.

I'm starting to wonder if this is a smokescreen. Eventually give in to E2E because you know you have got app store signing keys for the apps so you can upload a patched one with backdoors.

<comment><USER22> This is a good point. E2E is better then not, but you still can't trust FB. Anybody who seriously cares about privacy will still use something open source.

<comment><USER23> But its not about those couple people, its about rolling out better security to billions of people. Even a 0.01% increase in secuirty is an incredible benefit if it runs on a platform like Facebook.

It also totally changes how government has to force Facebook into giving them something. They can't just request access to some server anymore.

The main way to defeat a state is to make mass survailance difficult enough that it doesn't scale well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, > WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism- > related content through its own systems, it also notes that "mere numbers > cannot capture the significance of the harm to children."

Ah yes, "think of the children!" This is so tired, I'm (just a bit) surprised they fell into this argument.

<comment><USER25> I will believe that anyone in politics gives a shit about children when the US stops bombing children in other countries.

<comment><USER26> Also:

Kids being shot in schools: the price of freedom.

Private communications means also criminals can communicate privately: outrage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I hate these requests for government back doors into tech communication software in the name of "the children". Let the parents worry about and protect their own children. Let the government mind its own business and stay out of ours.

<comment><USER28> And if the parents are the abusers, then it's okay?

I am still pro E2E encryption, especially given the Snowden revelations (the US gov cannot be trusted to be responsible), but it does come at a high cost.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child- sex-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex- abuse.html)

<comment><USER29> The thought that people can remove all crime or get anywhere near it is faulty from first axioms.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio)

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

If you start thinking that parents "can be" the criminals then you've decided that parents are automatically guilty and must be proved innocent. This goes against the very moral fiber of the entire western world theory of law, the presumption of innocence.

<comment><USER30> How is the idea that we can remove all crime faulty? Blackstone is just saying that we _shouldn 't_ try to remove all crime because it's more harmful to society to try than to let some crimes go unsolved. His main argument is that there might be an ambiguous situation where someone appears guilty but actually is not guilty.

It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with a high degree of accuracy.

We probably shouldn't, especially not without being able to quickly update our laws, but it could be done. Imagine if anyone going over the speed limit was instantly charged a fine. We can do that today with complete accuracy, but we choose not to do enforcement that way.

<comment><USER31> > It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with > a high degree of accuracy.

Unless the state itself is criminal. Not only can law stray from morality, authorities of the state can even violate the laws of that state itself. If you can imagine an extreme authoritarian state with a constitution, can't you also imagine that the leaders of that state choosing to ignore that constitution?

But before even getting into the above, you've assumed the possibility of perfect surveillance. Who or what and how could that ever be possible?

The only way I can conceive of perfect law enforcement is to have very few if any laws. Everything else is an excuse for the personal fancies of authoritarians.

<comment><USER30> All phones could be mandated to record audio/video at all times and stream it to government servers for archiving and processing, for example.

And you could set up society so that you'd be useless without carrying your phone, as we're most of the way there already. Not streaming your complete data to the government would become a crime.

All public places could be recorded in a similar way.

If you combined it with satellite tracking of the whole planet, you could even identify people that have chosen to go off the grid for some period of time, so you could solve crimes that happened in the forest if you want.

That's pretty close to perfect surveillance.

I can't think of a crime that couldn't be solved this way, but it's not a society where I'd want to live.

<comment><USER29> Who watches the watchers? Who prevents the watchers from deleting footage/recordings? Unless you're genetically engineering humans to no longer have any desires, anyone can be bribed or blackmailed for the right price.

<comment><USER30> Other watchers would watch those watchers. Government officials would not be exempt from data collection. People would eventually learn that you can't bribe or blackmail because it's impossible to do without having it recorded and detected by surveillance. That's how our system of government works today, but the only people who get caught are those that leave evidence behind. If you use technology to ensure everyone creates tons of evidence, then everyone doing something illegal can be caught.

I'm not sure why I'm being so heavily downvoted, the only difference between the dystopian future that I describe and the system we have currently, is that the government isn't collecting and processing data on such a wide scale. If they collect more data, we will have more crimes solved and more privacy forfeited. If you take that to its logical extreme, we have full surveillance, no privacy, and no crime. I'd rather live in a world where we have some crime, but privacy and no surveillance, but I think it's far more likely we'll head in the opposite direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety."

I don't understand why they don't just ask for what they want, why say it's about "user safety" when it's not about that at all.

Just say "As a matter of national security, the government needs to be able to read user messages (and we don't care if that opens up a hole that enables _other_ governments to do it too)"

<comment><USER33> Quite simply because this makes it hard for Facebook to fight back. If they do, they look like they're on the wrong side of morality.

If the demand was phrased around security, it would be less emotionally laden (for most).

<comment><USER32> I'd be awfully surprised if anyone that really cares about this would be fooled by this ruse. For most people, if the government says "We need to do this so you'll be safe", the vast majority of people will agree, or at least won't actively object.

<comment><USER34> The argument is, as the saying goes, "good enough for government work."

I find that quite appalling, to be frank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ah yes, another case of "We must stop the pedophiles and terrorists, so please just allow us to monitor everything you do at all times"

</comment><comment><USER36> Forgive the OT comment but in the UK we have a soft drinks manufacturer named AG Barr, most famous for Irn Bru.

I spent a few moments trying to understand what had led to the manufacturer of Tizer, Irn Bru, and various other traditional British soft drinks getting involved in this.

[https://www.agbarr.co.uk/](https://www.agbarr.co.uk/)

<comment><USER37> Wow, that's quite a stretch for a title ambiguity: attorney general or soft drink?

Submitted title was "AG Barr Will Ask Zuckerberg To Halt Plans For End-To-End Encryption".

<comment><USER38> I mean, I doubt that many UK natives know the name of the US Attorney General off the top of their heads. It seems like a reasonable mixup to me.

<comment><USER39> Reasonable to think that a soft drink provider would ask FB to not use end-to- end encryption?

But I agree that AG should be expanded.

<comment><USER38> They realized that something was off, obviously. They were just saying it was confusing at first because without the context of knowing who Barr is, "AG" is a nonsense word. The only remaining parse is a soft-drink company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There was a discussion not long ago about brain privacy on the front page and this twitter thread was brought up in the comments:

[https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/709314886384427008](https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/709314886384427008)

> Fun game to play: Take statements from Comey et al. Replace "smartphones" > with "brains"/"memories"/"thoughts". Technology will get us there!

Very on brand for the new versions of this request...

</comment><comment><USER41> How does the Attorney General feel about foreign governments making "lawful requests" for people's private Facebook messages? Does he believe America benefits from giving _every_ government access, or does he believe that these systems would somehow serve America alone?

</comment><comment><USER42> If they don't do E2E, users will abandon Facebook for platforms that do support it (and already are). And they aren't doing this to commit crimes, but to prevent advertisements from targeting every conversation they've ever had.

<comment><USER2> I wonder how many WhatsApp users are aware that their messages are encrypted end-to-end.

<comment><USER43> I also wonder how many users are aware of the imperfections in the end to end encryption in WhatsApp.

[https://keybase.io/blog/chat-apps-softer-than- tofu](https://keybase.io/blog/chat-apps-softer-than-tofu)

(I have no affiliation with Keybase, I just appreciate their very thorough and public analysis.)

<comment><USER44> Thanks for posting this!

I used the wayback machine to read the older version of this article, it took specific aim at WhatsApp and Sigal, indicating that (in so many words) it disapproved of the apps providing a notice of Safety Numbers changing instead of the app flipping its wig and making the user take affirmative action to continue communications, otherwise it wasn't true TOFU.

I have about 30+ contacts on Signal, and I almost __never__ get Safety number changes. I certainly don't think making the user click through yet-another- dialog-they-wont-read will be a big security improvement.

I suppose I disagree with the 'not true TOFU' argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I, for one, love the sweet irony where the Attorney General is making Zuck and FB appear like the good guys.

Also, should we read this request as "if you implement E2E encryption we will no longer have visibility over what FB users say"?

If so, and because the connection between us and FB is over https, I assume there are deals in place where various 3-letter-agencies from these 5 countries are given (or they take themselves) the contents of our private messages? I wonder why they would be opposed to something like E2E then /s

</comment><comment><USER46> Detecting child abuse pictures is not incompatible with end-to-end encryption if the detection is done locally.

Facebook (or other messenger app owners) could train a good classification model to detect child abuse pictures on large servers and provide the model to smartphones locally. Before sending pictures, the app would run the trained model (which is cheap computationally). If if detects pictures of abuse with a certain accuracy, the app would block the transmission of the picture (possibly, explaining why to the user). If the detection of pictures of abuse happens again, the user could be banned from the app for 1 day, and if it happens more often the ban would become longer and longer.

That way facebook can fight child abuse without ever having the pictures.

<comment><USER47> don't trust the client. How easy it would be for a motivated community to create a binary patch that skipped the local abuse checks?

<comment><USER46> There are ways to run trusted code on a client using remote enclaves (provided it is supported by the local CPU)

[https://signal.org/blog/private-contact- discovery/](https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/)

<comment><USER48> How are you going to get a pedo to setup a secure enclave on his box that you control?

This is one of those technologies that are cool in theory but almost impossible to implement in practice on current hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> They can ask all they want, the answer should always be "No."

</comment><comment><USER50> Why should Facebook guarantee that it won't lead to security concerns? That's not their job. Is the AG going to go around asking all companies not to do E2E encryption until they can each make that guarantee?

</comment><comment><USER51> Question for those more knowledgeable than I in this space: a huge value prop for iMessage is E2E encryption, correct? Why hasn't that gotten similar response from the AG? (OR has it already, and I may have missed it?)

<comment><USER52> I'd like to contrast with the other responses here by offering my suspicion that Apple is cooperating with governments to quietly swap out keys for users upon receiving a court order. It would explain why Skype was banned by China and iMessage was not.

<comment><USER53> This. Apple cooperates a lot with law enforcement than they let out. While they make a big deal about on-device security, iCLoud which most users turn on is the loophole. Apple turns in backup content when asked much more willingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Hey Barr, if innocent people have nothing to hide, please set an example by releasing all your private communications to the public.

</comment><comment><USER55> There are many forms of tyrants, but there are none so terrible as those stifling their own people in the name of freedom and safety.

</comment><comment><USER56> Zuck looking like the good guy in an exchange about privacy. Now that takes some doing...

</comment><comment><USER57> In the current political environment, allowing the government (just about any nation's) in via eliminating end-to-end encryption _is_ a reduction to user safety.

</comment><comment><USER58> > Our understanding is that much of this activity, which is critical to > protecting children and fighting terrorism, will no longer be possible if > Facebook implements its proposals as planned.

Here is some legislation from 2000: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000)

> Critics claim that the spectres of terrorism, internet crime and paedophilia > were used to push the act through and that there was little substantive > debate in the House of Commons.

20 years in life of internet is a lot. Same arguments. Remarkable.

<comment><USER59> This predates the age of the Internet by millenia. Almost every politician in History appeals to children to drive their policies or block their opponents'.

<comment><USER60> How? Childhood is a rather modern concept and child labour exploitation peaked just a few centuries ago during the Industrial Revolution.

What historical events and periods are you referring to in the past millenia?

<comment><USER61> corrupting the youth was one of the charges against Socrates made by essentially political opponents.

<comment><USER62> Which, incidentally, he was undoubtedly guilty of. By putting all sorts of notions into their heads.

<comment><USER61> from the perspective of a contemporary Athenian, yes, he did say things that were incompatible with the state religion. I don't think a modern reader necessarily has to agree that that's "corrupting the youth". the Athenians also probably didn't care very much about this anyway. the charge was literally true, but it was also bullshit because none of the accusers actually cared about any of the offenses they were charging him with. what they actually cared about was that he had humiliated them in public on many occasions and his association with (though not outright involvement in) the reign of the thirty tyrants.

so actually fairly analogous!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> It's really amazing how often tyranny is justified on the basis of "safety". It's why the "trust and safety" team moniker ubiquitous in the tech industry sounds so Orwellian.

I think tech companies would have a stronger basis for refusing to monitor and censor user traffic if they hadn't volunteered to monitor and censor _some_ user traffic. Doing anything some of the time makes you vulnerable to pressure to do more of that thing.

Carrying all legal content and refusing any cooperation with the government without a warrant is the _only_ sustainable path.

</comment><comment><USER64> I don't think this often, but, in this case, Facebook is doing the right thing both ethically and practically.

<comment><USER65> Facebook isn't doing it because they believe in it. WhatsApp added E2EE after being acquired by Facebook but before FB fully took control, a parting gift of sorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Time for Facebook to make like Google and say 'sorry but foregoing end-to-end encryption would lower the Barr'

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/11/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/11/googlers-say-f-you-to-nsa-company-encrypts-internal- network/)

(Of course, this just prompted Google to serve more legal data requests, but better than letting the Justice Dept sweep everything for who knows what end)

</comment><comment><USER67> The problem is deeper than just protecting your data against the government: One of the products these guys sold to corrupt goverments was a tool to _plant CP_ on people's computers.

[https://hacked.com/italian-hacking-team-hacked/](https://hacked.com/italian- hacking-team-hacked/)

How do you like those apples?

I can't think of a technical defense against a threat like that that doesn't involve disconnecting all the computers in my house and throwing them away.

<comment><USER68> > a tool to plant CP on people's computers.

This tool is not described in the article you've linked. Do you have an additional link for those of us who want to read more about this?

<comment><USER69> Here is another discussion on it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836336)

It is true, there is a tool that was developed to basically plant evidence on a compromised machine. So the idea here being that the hired hackers would compromise the machine and then the government client would tell the hackers to put CP, incriminating evidence or other stuff on the machine before the police raided the house/building. The computers would be seized and then it would be used as evidence to prosecute the target.

It is real.

Also if you are interested, dark net diaries did an episode on this group called "hacking team".

[https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/38/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/38/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> F*ck AG Barr... they can subpoena their data requests like they should have already been doing.

</comment><comment><USER71> > "We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to > implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without > ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety."

Seems easy for FB to comply with this: they are adding encryption specifically to _improve_ user safety.*

The later extract in the article body talks about "public" safety, which is the classic false dichotomy that has been brought up by law agencies for the past 30 years.

Much as it sticks in my craw to say something supportive of either of that meretricious duo Barr and Patel, I have to admit I am glad that they are using an open letter rather than trying for a backroom deal or quiet threats. Perhaps they tried those already and have been rebuffed.

I have seen some friends of mine outraged by social media's inability to do wholesale censorship, spurred by some NYT articles on child abuse from last week. I wonder if that was coordinated?

* OK, they are a corporation doing it to encourage people to use their service, but they are trying to accomplish _that_ by improving user safety.

</comment><comment><USER72> > Risks to public safety from Facebook's proposals are exacerbated in the > context of a single platform that would combine inaccessible messaging > services with open profiles, providing unique routes for prospective > offenders to identify and groom our children

So the government not having access to private communication is a threat to public safety, and won't somebody think of the children!

</comment><comment><USER73> It is interesting that they chose to control Facebook instead of calling it a monopoly and splitting it into two, because it's their interest to have a choke point that they can conveniently go after. Apple is big and they provide e2e encryption, but they're not a choke point because not everyone uses Apple. On the other hand, everyone (except me) uses Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER74> > ... without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety.

Australian here. Does "user safety" include journalists not being raided and/or prosecuted for publishing public interest material? For example, likely evidence of war crimes by some of our soldiers.

As has begun happening here, after laws were introduced forcing our telco's to allow monitoring of _anyone_.

</comment><comment><USER75> This is most likely motivated by the US government (current and past administration) efforts to suppress whistle-blowers:

[https://theintercept.com/2019/08/04/whistleblowers- surveilla...](https://theintercept.com/2019/08/04/whistleblowers-surveillance- fbi-trump/)

</comment><comment><USER76> How many crimes are solved through wiretapping or evidence gathered from Facebook servers? Facebook's 99% figure needs more context — maybe that's 99% of just 1% of all child abuse / sexual assault / terrorism crimes?

Some more statistics would be useful to quantify the impact on criminal justice of losing either of those options. Otherwise the arguments just feel political or emotional.

End-to-End won't impact the major source of evidence in, say, sexual assaults where the victim unlocks their phone and submits a copy of their decrypted message threads to the police, though this is a controversial policing method, recently reported on in the UK:

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/21/people- repor...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/21/people-report-rape- routine-demands-mobile-data)

<comment><USER76> 2,500 prosecutions as a result of "the work we did with Facebook in the last year", according to UK government (Brandon Lewis, a minister on Radio 4, October 4th.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I find it strange that there isn't already some precedent from the supreme court on the right to encrypt under the second amendment. This isn't a new idea [1] and the debate about whether or not encryption is a fundamental right is already going on for ages...

If Americans cared so much about their freedom to protect themselves from their government, rationally it would make far more sense to be up on the fence about encryption than about firearms.

[1] [https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/3696/is-the-right- to...](https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/3696/is-the-right-to-keep-and- bear-crypto-protected-by-the-second-amendment)

[Edit] I don't want to start a flame war about guns, I'm genuinely curious about what the law would say about encryption under the second amendment.

</comment><comment><USER78> The only thing I can say about this is that, once we'll have BMIs, the Government will want to tap into that as well, because you may have dangerous thoughts.

If you see the insanity of this, you should see the insanity of the Government tapping into private messages.

</comment><comment><USER79> You'd think that with all his billions, Zuckerberg would buy himself a spine and tell the AG to fuck off. We keep having this debate because law- enforcement types won't be happy until they can monitor your thoughts in real time. You expand their powers even a little, and the next day they're clamoring for more. And it's always the same excuses: preventing terrorism or protecting children.

Well, I don't see the Feds cracking down hard enough on homegrown fascist groups, and I would be happy if Bob Barr's kids or grandkids were locked in a dungeon and made to sit in their own filth Omelas-style if it meant we'd have strong crypto for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER80> No one is physically raped, murdered, or even injured (beyond choosing to be offended by a certain combination of letters on a screen) in the electronic arena. All crimes they like to mention for the fear factor take place in meatspace and as such leave traces that can be followed by appropriately skilled investigators.

Electronic surveillance is primarily used for reconstruction and back tracking after a significant crime has taken place. After the fact.

Electronic surveillance is paying cheap lip service to a problem instead of paying the expensive price of doing it properly, in meatspace, with boots on the ground.

</comment><comment><USER81> Perhaps Zuck will make a deal with the Devil and go forward with this if he receives some agreement that they won't break up FB into many companies and continue to allow the firm to do shady things with user data.

<comment><USER82> Republican administration will not break up FB. Elizabeth Warren could, which is why she won't win the election if she's nominated. Big Tech, which is in charge of what we see and don't see is directly threatened by her, so you can bet that "algorithms" will all of a sudden find it appropriate to de-rank her content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> If they're worried about kids, maybe they should have asked to not enable E2E for Messenger Kids. There's already a feature to let parents see their kids' messages. I'm pretty sure they have no plans of breaking that. Government should be providing their expertise to help FB train AIs to help alert parents to suspicious chats. There are lots of good ways to protect kids. This ain't it.

Ask any woman/minority, domestic abuse victim, etc. They don't want people spying on their messages.

</comment><comment><USER84> Remember - we don't actually need social media. Encrypted email is enough to protect your actual private communication so you can revolt or share a little illegal material with a few friends. It's not fair to ignore the network effect here. And what do we, as a society, gain from social media? Nothing! It's addicting us, wearing down our critical thinking, and it's stopping you from going outside.

</comment><comment><USER85> What happens if someone distributes an OSS toolkit that enables everyone to easily setup an encrypted ad-hoc peer to peer network?

If you want to prevent criminals from communicating safely in the long run, you would have to prohibit open internet access and/or mathematics.

Prohibiting platforms will lead to some delay at best. The collateral damage, taking away privacy from the population at large, is proably the real goal.

</comment><comment><USER86> > mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children.

So, when is ban on guns, cars and parents coming? Each of them killed countless kids.

</comment><comment><USER87> My questions for Attorney General Barr would be after revelations about warrantless wiretapping, the FISA court, and National Security Letters, what did you think would happen, and given the US government's gripes with Huawei, isn't the only difference that this backdoor is for the Five (or Three) Eyes?

</comment><comment><USER88> I don't want to give up my privacy just because some bad actors are using (or will use) OTHER end to end encrypted messaging apps. Bans won't solve the problem of child abuse and etc., when i'll want to live in a dictatorship i'll move to china or some similar place.

</comment><comment><USER89> Didn't we already do the crypto wars? I guess we need to go through this again for those who missed it.

</comment><comment><USER90> I guess FB could just respond by linking to this blog post: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/05/end-to-end- encryption/](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/05/end-to-end-encryption/)

</comment><comment><USER91> > prioritize public safety in designing its encryption by enabling law > enforcement to gain access to illegal content

I don't think it works that way. Serious criminals that we really want to catch are probably not coordinating their activities using unencrypted channels anyway.

</comment><comment><USER92> "We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety."

I don't get it. How could end-to-end encryption reduce user safety?

<comment><USER93> This is the authoritarian argument that it makes everyone less safe if they're not allowed to spy on everyone.

<comment><USER94> It's even a poor version of that argument. The victims of whatever crimes this would allegedly prevent aren't necessarily users of the platform. In that type of scenario, the perpetrators are the users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> And this is why I enjoy politics from afar. If you're invested, all that's going to happen is that your otherwise good person you support will start pushing shit like this. Party doesn't matter: state power will always be the goal.

</comment><comment><USER96> Granting one government access to data is the same as granting access to every government.

</comment><comment><USER97> Banning encryption in one place will not change anything, it just means that those who want their actions hidden will go elsewhere or use tools such as VPNs, which seem fairly common these days, even amongst general users.

</comment><comment><USER98> Well, I guess we know now that law enforcement reads our messages whenever they want.

</comment><comment><USER99> I'n extremely surprised that warrants haven't been brought up yet here. A device cannot be unencrypted when a warrant is issued, so that evidence is lost, assuming the device itself is lost. Is this an ok course of action?

</comment><comment><USER100> Lack of proper security (i.e. lack end to end encryption) always reduces public safety due to bad actors being able to snoop on the data. Not that anyone should trust Facebook to begin with for exactly the same reason.

</comment><comment><USER101> Do you really think the user cannot implement end-to-end encryption themselves?

</comment><comment><USER102> "Think of the children" often covers a lazy powergrab. Now is full transparency bad or the role of privacy itself that is not a online comment battle conversation but this is just lazy.

</comment><comment><USER103> Removing / banning encryption will hurt us all, including (I hope) the ignorant and authoritarian politicians responsible for eroding our privacy.

I eagerly await the publication of these politicians' private communications.

</comment><comment><USER104> If 99% then why not Facebooks systems include AI to catch bad guys before they act and imprison'em in a benevolent virtual reality using oculus.

Classic Spielberg called 'Minority Report' with underwater 'precogs'

</comment><comment><USER105> Yet another reason not to have so much concentration in a single person. If we had smaller or more distributed social networks it would be impossible to control the spread of E2E encryption.

</comment><comment><USER106> If Facebook implements E2E encrypted chat, and they are able to catch 99% of those child exploitation cases today, are they going to be down to catching 0% of those cases with E2E in place?

</comment><comment><USER107> The constitution does not specify that one's speech must be intelligible to the government. Governmental restrictions on strong encryption plainly violate the 1st amendment.

</comment><comment><USER108> I think its more about "We wont be able to collect data en masse as efficiently anymore" than it is about "National Security or prevention of sex trafficking".

</comment><comment> munk-a Interesting side note, if the concern is that this end-to-end messaging is being made available through the same service that hosts social profiles - instead of asking the company to _please-please-please include backdoors thank-you_... maybe, just maybe, it's time to break up a vertically integrated monopoly - when your argument is that their vertical integration is literally a threat to public safety.

This will, of course, never happen because breaking up businesses and consumer protection is verboten and anti-american, but I really wish someone with a big voice could stand up and make this point because it makes them look silly.

</comment><comment><USER109> I don't see the point in this request. We're going to have to figure out how to live with encrypted messaging regardless of whether Facebook implements it.

</comment><comment><USER110> Maybe what we need is an "encrypted messaging system" generator.

If there is an infinite supply of encrypted channels, controlling them all becomes literally impossible.

<comment><USER111> I think you're describing PGP. Other than some platforms having character limits, you can run PGP over any text format as long as both clients (or humans) know what to do with the encrypted messages.

A system that handled things like performing the encryption and decryption of messages over any platform would be interesting, the only pushback you would get from an authoritarian government is them telling providers to "block all pgp/encrypted comms on your platform" and/or the platform actively attempting to block your client's access to the API.

<comment><USER110> What I mean is not generating the encryption layer, but generating the transport layer.

For instance, discovering and negotiating various publically available http or irc or jabber etc. nodes, and coordinating around their unavailability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> META: DAE get popups/hijack ads when the click anywhere on that article? I'm on macOS Safari, and I'm wondering if it's me, or the site.

</comment><comment><USER113> At the end of the day, Facebook isn't the arbiter of whether bad actors can speak privately or not. Anyone can communicate privately using encryption tools. Do we shut down every website that offers to convert your message into cypher text? A scary world it would be if all communication was accessible by government. I liken this to stopping gun violence by pointing to mental disease. Is Facebook really the way to stop bad actors? What about the next communication device like cell phone transcripts? Is that fair game too because criminals communicate by phone?

</comment><comment><USER114> We probably need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to use encryption, otherwise this cat and mouse game will never end.

</comment><comment><USER115> "It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy." -Isaac Asimov

</comment><comment><USER116> But what if the rest of the world doesn't want the rules of the USA applied to them? Perhaps only do this to USA-users in the USA?

</comment><comment><USER117> The timing of this this seems suspicious. Combined with the ramp up of antitrust investigations, it almost comes across as a shakedown.

</comment><comment><USER118> Do any police out there miss actually solving crimes as opposed to just sucking up all the cell phone data and Ring camera feeds?

<comment><USER119> Don't forget searching public DNA databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER120> ZuckerBerg was talking real tough when the opponent was Elizabeth Warren. Let's see if he'll go to the mat with this one.

</comment><comment><USER121> I thought there a backdoor already? Messenger and Whatsapp, all proprietary, can't be trusted anyway. :)

</comment><comment><USER122> Another attack on privacy and liberty that cheaply hides behind "protecting children" as the reason.

</comment><comment><USER123> No Libra? Eat this! I removed Moxie's E2E encryption from WhatsApp for you, I can put it back, you know.

</comment><comment><USER124> Makes me wonder what level of access the Five Eyes currently has if they're this afraid of losing it.

</comment><comment><USER125> So that FBI can have my cat pictures?

</comment><comment><USER126> The corrupt and criminal AG recruiting foreign governments to interfere in our elections? That one?

</comment><comment><USER127> I don't get it, hasn't E2E been already available for a long time in facebook messenger ?

</comment><comment><USER128> While not being a fan of Zuck, I sincerely hope his reply to Barr is "Fuck off, clown"

</comment><comment><USER129> "...except for phone calls with the President of Ukraine. Those can stay secret."

</comment><comment><USER130> This is equivalent of asking for a ban of wax stamp seals in the age before the internet.

</comment><comment><USER131> What a great way to convince even more of my contacts to switch to Signal :)

</comment><comment><USER132> Does End-to-End Encryption mean anything here?

What's stopping the government from just forcing Facebook to provide access to the servers directly, or through some sort of portal?

This just means the government can't intercept them without Facebook cooperation... no?

<comment><USER133> I believe end-to-end means that the message is encrypted on the sender's device, remains encrypted in transit and on Facebook servers, and is then only decrypted on the receiver's device. Facebook themselves would not be able to read user's messages.

<comment><USER132> Ah, ya that makes more sense.

Although I have a tough time believing Facebook would lock themselves out fully... they need all those data points for pushing ads...

<comment><USER134> They get plenty of data from what people post to the facebook and instagram platforms. I can definitely see how business incentives could swing toward E2E encryption for messaging. (Not because most people will know the difference, but because people who influence tech trends will, and are privacy conscious.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER135> my (conspiracy) theory after watching some house of cards: No end2end encryption before the US election 2020 🇺🇸

</comment><comment><USER136> Assume these services are being tapped. If you want ultimate privacy exchange keys with your contacts offline and you PGP over any messaging service.

</comment><comment><USER137> What are Facebook's options?

</comment><comment><USER138> This is bs. Facebook can already push a bonked app to your phone which makes interdiction easy.

<comment><USER138> Why must I always get downvoted when I say anything slightly critical or anti big tech?

</comment></comment><comment><USER139> I'm in favor of the government being capable of seeing and viewing 100% everything. 110%.

The infrastructure should be there. If there's a court order or lawful authorization, info should be accessible without delay.

 _But_

The way to do that would be more systems of review for when it's used, generally making the standards more strict, less ambiguous.

 _But_

The problem is there are side effects to changing the law that can give away methods and also put convictions at risk. There's other ramifications we may not know about until it was put in effect, but they could be negative. I bet that's one reason there isn't as much movement in the area.

There was an article in the news recently that right now in USA the case law considers unopened email to be discarded.

GDPR went into effect in EU. That is another aspect that US doesn't a similar thing for (does it _need_ one? I don't see people bringing it up often, convince me otherwise?)

My point is, backdoors are more of a hypothetical thing. The legal framework around them and making them better is more productive use of your time.

That would involve people coming together and nuancing what the types of privacy are and whether it involves US people, foreign countries, drug dealers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER140> Kind of seems this news should be considered in context with the other Trump/Zuck news today that strangely hasn't been upvoted to the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152869)

</comment><comment><USER141> Right to privacy supersedes the AG's request.

</comment><comment><USER142> In other words, these politicians are unelectable

</comment><comment><USER143> > the letter raises concerns that Facebook's plan to build

> end-to-end encryption into its messaging apps will prevent

> law enforcement agencies from finding illegal activity

> conducted through Facebook, including child sexual

> exploitation, terrorism, and election meddling.

Not buying the case for the protection of children from the UK, after repeated failures to protect children despite mountains of evidence [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. Finding pedophiles is relatively easy in the UK, they are one of the single most hated groups and often cited as the reason to bring back capital punishment.

Terrorists are already using encrypted chat services such as Telegram to evade intelligence agencies. Encryption has no influence over election meddling.

What this is really about is watching the general public. Facebook now blocks content even in private messages. The other day I wanted to share a free- documentary (i.e. fully legal) with a friend and so shared a page with a direct download and magnetic link, which in turn Facebook kindly blocked. Something that is pouted as "safety" is actually just about trying to line the pockets of the film/music industry.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_child_sex_abuse_ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_child_sex_abuse_ring)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_grooming_gang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_grooming_gang)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_child_sex_abuse_rin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_child_sex_abuse_ring)

[6] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_sex_abuse_ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_sex_abuse_ring)

[7] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Wales_child_abuse_scanda...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Wales_child_abuse_scandal)

[8] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulu_child_sexual_exploitation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulu_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal)

[9] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_child_sex_abuse_ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_child_sex_abuse_ring)

[10] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_child_sex_abuse_ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_child_sex_abuse_ring)

</comment><comment><USER144> This could probably be reworded better.

"While the letter acknowledges that Facebook, which owns Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, captures 99% of child exploitation and terrorism- related content through its own systems, it also notes that "mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children." "

</comment><comment><USER145> Sometimes I can understand the willingness to reduce the privacy of self and others in order to ensure that the law is able to prosecute those involved in heinous crimes. Our current political environment though involved a president openly calling on foreign governments to investigate his political opponents. What is to stop them from going after the private communications of those same opponents in the name of targeting "Corruption".

Encrypt it, end to end, the government does not need to be able access all private communications of private citizens. There are other means of investigating potential crimes.

<comment><USER146> > _Encrypt it, end to end, the government does not need to be able access all > private communications of private citizens._

Law enforcement and security agencies need to be able to access _any_ communication. This does not mean that they should monitor _all_ communications.

They can eavesdrop on _any_ phone call. They do not eavesdrop on _all_ phone calls.

The problem with E2E encryption is that it prevents eavesdropping even with the standard legal safeguards (warrant, etc), while not being required for the privacy of users. It is only effectively a marketing tool to convince people to use services from providers they don't trust, although, of course, since they control the app they can still in principle access the data.

<comment><USER147> The police have more than enough data to do their jobs without having sweeping surveillance powers.

Even with E2E the police can get warrants for the devices which is usually more than enough to access data.

They just want an easier job, it's not a major roadblock. When police jobs being easy is a good sign that privacy has been completely destroyed.

<comment><USER146> One of the points of eavesdropping is that the target is unaware of it, which enables the police to gather more evidence about more people.

E2E is not required for privacy. There is also a difference between privacy and the right to privacy, and a guarantee that no-one will ever be able to know what I'm doing.

There is no absolute, including absolute right. It's all about balance: We have a right to privacy but the police may search our homes and eavesdrop on our communications in strict, specific circumstances because that's in the public interest. The idea is simply to have the same online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER148> FB has enough privacy problems, and now we supposedly want them to read and keep all private person to person messages? No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER92> Sometimes I think that things like this is a problem related to age. Older people (often those is charge) is not any where near as tech-savvy as younger people. They just don't understand. Ignorance. In time it will all be alright...

</comment><comment><USER149> I claim Citizen Privilege per the Constitution and the "... Supreme Court has found that the Constitution implicitly grants a right to privacy against governmental intrusion from the First Amendment, Third Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment." __Law enforcement rooted out criminals and organized crime before end-to-end encryption and you can do so now. YOU, a hypocrite who testified he was against law enforcement spying on Americans while investigating if a possible crime was occurring ... even if they have probable cause. Public Safety my Ass! __[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Right_to_privacy](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Right_to_privacy)

</comment><comment><USER150> For those of you opposed to this request from the government, what do you think the negative consequences are for end to end encryption? Do you think there are no negative consequences or are they just negligible? Just try and imagine what the cost might be, how broad the impact might be and who and how many would bear the brunt of those costs.

Nobody really cares about your personal Facebook messages to your friends and family. You're not that important. But still considering what is being offered in payment for this privacy, it's still worth it to you?

I'm not so sure it is, personally.

<comment><USER151> You make the mistake of assuming the watchmen have and will always have noble intentions. Rather, you should assume that at some point, someone in power will have the most ignoble intentions.

What do you think the negative consequences are for a government to have a permanent record of every private conversation made over the Internet? Bear in mind that the fraction of all private conversations which occur over the Internet is only increasing.

You must assume that "exceptional access" really means "routine access". While the government claims it only wants access to _some_ encrypted content, decryption leaves no trace. The NSA's collection posture is: "Sniff it All, Know it All, Collect it All, Process it All, Exploit it All, Partner it All." Does it sound to you like the NSA will sit on their hands while some other USG functionary has the Golden Key?

> Nobody really cares about your personal Facebook messages to your friends > and family. You're not that important. But still considering what is being > offered in payment for this privacy, it's still worth it to you?

Perhaps you're correct now. But imagine that a decade from now, you (or a friend or family member) become an activist or a political candidate. Now your incumbent political opponents have a wealth of sensitive private data to mine to find _anything_ to imprison or discredit you. The argument extends further than your own direct interests: What happens to our political system when policymakers are completely transparent to the NSA and their political co- conspirators?

Considering the very real risks of a totalitarian government ruling with an iron machine learning model, or a silent coup by military intelligence, is it still worth it to you?

<comment><USER150> You didn't address my question though. You're just thinking about the cost to you personally if you don't have end to end encryption. I'm asking you to think about the cost of having it. What's the cost. Compare that probably real cost, a thing that is a real problem right now, with your own personal alarm at some future imagined problem.</comment></comment></comment>