'"Tech companies like Facebook have a responsibility to balance privacy with the safety of the public," Ms Patel said in the open letter, which was also signed by the US Attorney General William P Barr, Acting US Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan and the Australian minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton.'
How are you going to ask companies like Facebook to give you faster access to information across international borders and still say 'Hey you should have some privacy too'. It just seems blatantly dystopian. This is part of a growing trend of governments that want back doors to social media in the name of security and justice: Australia, the USA, and now the UK. That being said HN, how do you propose governments deal with online criminal activity? A lot of people here will criticise this and while that criticism is justified I just wonder if there's an alternative solution to this problem.
When you connect to your bank the transmission is encrypted but your bank has the data available in cleartext.
When you use your smartphone to call someone or send a text the transmission is encrypted over the air but your operator has access to the data in cleartext, and there is in fact a system in place to duplicate traffic for police eavesdropping. You have privacy, your bank/operator doesn't abuse data they have, and the police is able to request access within the law.
This has existed for decades, it is accepted, it works.
The issue is that some tech companies (cough Facebook cough, but not only them) have abused the access they have to data and shot their reputation in the process, so now they are trying to salvage the situation by saying "Oh but we now have E2E so you can still use our services"... No-one trusts anyone, and that destroys the established balance between privacy and law enforcement/national security.