this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

If that means compromising encryption, which it does, then the benefits to everyone of end-to-end encryption and the protection it affords against both government overreach/abuse and third-party intruders tend to outweigh the benefits of government surveillance through encryption backdoors.

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 1 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Maybe only the biggest companies should be required to be able to decrypt certain messages if a court warrant is produced. Privacy fans could use services exempt from this requirement, like Signal. But there are laypeople who just use iMessage because it's the default, and you could catch criminals sending bad stuff over iMessage.

I think there are valid concerns on both sides of the argument... but I am just imagining if you have a group of violent people planning an attack over iMessage, I want law enforcement to be able to read those messages.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Word would just get out that you should only use the secure services to communicate anything sensitive. We already have plenty of messaging services that are insecure, but enough people are preferring to use a secure option that it's worrying the UK Government.

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 1 points 6 days ago

Maybe people just use what's popular. Telegram is pretty popular in some countries even though I don't think they have end-to-end encryption by default.

Anyway I guess I don't know what the answer is. Personally I would probably still use iMessage and WhatsApp even if I knew the companies behind them could potentially read my messages by decrypting them. If there's a proper system in place so that messages are only read when there's a court warrant, it's probably unlikely my boring messages to friends and family would be spied on by anybody.

Maybe I need to send more interesting messages and then I would care about the privacy of them a bit more.

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