How do they envision this working and yet protecting communication in oppressive regimes? Facebook can't very well offer the US the ability to pierce the encryption veil then beg innocence to the Kremlin when it wants access.
Of course, decentralized open source solutions in this space will always dominate. The oppressive governments can attack big tech economically. The Kremlin can shut facebook down in Russia if they won't give a back door. Whereas volunteer devs with no expectation of profit are immune to that kind of attack. Even better if there is no defined server to block.
I say this as someone who is not generally super enthusiastic about open source, not decentralized tech, nor is anti- big tech. This just seems like an area where big tech cos cannot compete efficiently.
Maybe they just think that Facebook should not be operating in countries with lots of corruption or oppression? And maybe they have a point. Maybe it is not possible to run an ethical communication business in a place that criminalizes what we value as protected speech.
Anyway, I doubt they will be able to accomplish this goal by asking nicely. They will need to pass a law and then there will need to be a fight about whether the law is constitutional.
A “lawful request” is determined by whatever state has jurisdiction. As they say, encryption is vital to human rights activists in China or democracy supporters in Belarus, however it would be destroyed because these countries can indeed make “lawful requests” for the information.
For thousands of years, humans have been allowed to communicate privately with each other. We should not regress that. Criminals will always exist and we should do our best to identify and bring them to justice, but not at the expense of free society.
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How do they envision this working and yet protecting communication in oppressive regimes? Facebook can't very well offer the US the ability to pierce the encryption veil then beg innocence to the Kremlin when it wants access.
Of course, decentralized open source solutions in this space will always dominate. The oppressive governments can attack big tech economically. The Kremlin can shut facebook down in Russia if they won't give a back door. Whereas volunteer devs with no expectation of profit are immune to that kind of attack. Even better if there is no defined server to block.
I say this as someone who is not generally super enthusiastic about open source, not decentralized tech, nor is anti- big tech. This just seems like an area where big tech cos cannot compete efficiently.
Maybe they just think that Facebook should not be operating in countries with lots of corruption or oppression? And maybe they have a point. Maybe it is not possible to run an ethical communication business in a place that criminalizes what we value as protected speech.
Anyway, I doubt they will be able to accomplish this goal by asking nicely. They will need to pass a law and then there will need to be a fight about whether the law is constitutional.
Exactly. This is an impossibility.
A “lawful request” is determined by whatever state has jurisdiction. As they say, encryption is vital to human rights activists in China or democracy supporters in Belarus, however it would be destroyed because these countries can indeed make “lawful requests” for the information.
For thousands of years, humans have been allowed to communicate privately with each other. We should not regress that. Criminals will always exist and we should do our best to identify and bring them to justice, but not at the expense of free society.