The Crypto wars are not over. Governments regularly try to weaken public encryption tools.
In this week's newsletter, I interview @Mer__edith, president of Signal encrypted messaging app about how we got here.
If Signal was a pen-maker, she said, no one would expect it to turn over all the writing generated by its pens.
"I don’t think we have much of a chance for a livable future if we don’t have a truly private means to communicate with each other."
https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/01/07/back-into-the-trenches-of-the-crypto-wars
@Julia @Mer__edith Well, yes, and I agree, but I think the analogy is invalid. If Signal made internet-enabled pens that recorded everything written with them and sent it back to some central database, governments absolutely *would* expect access to that, however much of an invasion that was. If Signal made just standard pens it would be impossible.
@VoxDei @Julia Signal doesn't make pens, Ben, It's an analogy. But Signal, like a regular pen company, creates tool for communication that does not collect data. In both cases, asking regular pen co or Signal for this data is asking these services to turn over something they don't, and should not be expected to, have.
@Mer__edith @Julia Oh yeah, I understand that. Don't get me wrong, I'm on your side here. But the pen company physically cannot do that. Signal theoretically could, even if doing so would defeat half the point of the product by breaking e2e encryption. Governments understand that as "You could do that and you are choosing not to".
Sorry, I'm not trying to be a dick, you know all this a million times better than I do. I just didn't think the analogy was as good a defence against the "Give us a backdoor" brigade as might have been wanted, was all. Feel free to ignore me, I won't be offended. :-)
