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>And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger].

WOW. Why would someone in the tech industry like Gates be anti-encryption for the public? The only argument I can think of against it is "You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide"




Considering encrypted messages have to both be encrypted and decrypted, I don't think his statement is necessarily against encrypted. I assumed he meant preventing the sending of known materials like that and / or the opening of it (which wouldn't interfere with end-to-end encryption at all).


How would such a thing work though?

Would it be a map of unacceptable things, or an on device model like GPT3? Would you allow someone to type the offending thing and just disable the send button, or would you block it at the keyup event?

I don't see any way this could be implemented without kissing freedom goodbye.

I like the other commenter's take that this idea was just a bit out of exasperation.


Well, Apple just stated that they are one of the best in privacy oriented AI because their AI could run on-device. And I suppose the detection of such things would be a good example.

But I see your point: you would need to inform the user without restricting his or her freedom.


He's not some random out of touch congressman though, he personally should know better than to make such an unspecific attack on encryption. The way he said it, everyone will hear that he wants the government to limit encryption which essentially means to ban it.

And they wouldn't be wrong. If the same thing came out of someone else's mouth I assume you wouldn't be seeking out an unreasonably charitable explanation like this.

And if such a plan was introduced by Trump you probably wouldn't even think of this charitable version as a good plan at all because at the end of the day, things like censorship and mass surveillance are tools of oppression in the wrong hands, and you have no control whose hands it will end up in once it's normalized.


Don't worry, billg will make sure his messages will be encrypted. Can't let the idiot poors say the wrong things amongst each other.


Would you consider it an acceptable edge case to privacy/decryption to allow child sexual abuse prosecutors to unlock a suspect's phone which was suspected to contain GB of evidence of abuse?


he said it right there. he thinks child trafficking and misinformation outweigh privacy. i disagree with him but no reason to concoct an argument when there’s one there




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