I disagree. There should no compromise on my privacy ever. We are not (yet) in a dictatorship and I’m not a criminal. Why should I suffer because governments are incompetent?

Devil's advocate: we accept compromise of people's basic freedom of movement (via arrest) when under investigation. Even though we know a non-negligible amount are innocent, virtually everyone considers it a necessary compromise

Perhaps part of the difference is that the public acknowledge this as a necessary _evil_ and get rightly outraged when they hear of people being detained without good cause. But with privacy, especially electronic privacy, almost nobody cares when "we will only allow a small number of agents to use this for imminent terrorist danger" inevitably turns to "we will let any random council worker casually pull up every website you've been to with no warrant"

A compromise here is not technically possible. There is no half crypto. Crypto with a backdoor is not crypto.

Someone's encrypted files should be regarded to be in the same category as material they memorized in their brain. Off limits.

Find some other way to get evidence about their wrongdoing to convict them.

So, strictly speaking, that's not how UK law, at least, works. The court can absolutely compel you to say things you memorized - in fact, including encryption passwords. You can of course, physically, refuse, but you can be held in contempt of court, and jailed until you reveal the information, indefinitely. So not at all off limits.

Indefinitely jailing people to get a confession sounds like a midevil torture tactic. Is that a good balance of the Average Joe's right to privacy and privacy restrictions for fighting crime you speak of?

> Indefinitely jailing people to get a confession sounds like a midevil torture tactic.

That's very clearly not what I wrote. You can demand information this way, not a confession... People in the UK generally have a legal obligation to answer any questions the court has, unless they are themselves the accused. There are a small few other exceptions.

To get back to the point.

Just because UK law allows compelled disclosure doesn’t make it right—it makes it a bad law. It creates a self-incrimination loophole, shifting the burden of proof onto individuals instead of the state. Leading to erosion of due process and a presumption of guilt, forcing people to either comply or face punishment, even when no crime has been proven. Civil rights advocates have lambasted this law.

So I ask: Do you believe it to be balanced?

Using flawed laws to justify more erosion of privacy only deepens the problem.

In a situation where a criminal used Whatsapp and decrypting it is needed for the conviction, why should I suffer because of your absolute views on privacy?

I hold neither of the extreme views, and frankly I am baffled by anyone in either of them.

In a situation where an accused criminal used Whatsapp and decrypting it is needed to view the content which may or not lead to a conviction. This ridiculous idea that law enforcement knows people are guilty and it is these pesky rights that keep getting in the way is just false. Police regularly and consistently abuse their power to railroad people and take the easiest path to convicting someone.

Even in situations where citizen rights do “get in the way” of convicting the guilt, that is the price we pay to not be thrown in jail for crimes we didn’t commit. Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said “It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” He also said “Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order... and the like.”

This seems so obvious and logical. Why cant we live in a world where everyone understands this.

It's easy to construct a reasonable scenario. You catch a guy doing something bad. You know he's a part of a big organized crime organisation, because you already caught some of the other conspirators. And you could bring the whole thing down based on documents / chats etc which are encrypted.

I'm not saying, based on that, you throw away privacy rules. But to not even acknowledge that there is a conflict is IMO insane.

Reading through this thread, I get the sense that the desire for absolute privacy stems from a perception of the government as basically another mafia - a ruthless, unprincipled organisation that will exploit any weakness in you, just because. Maybe that's the root of the difference. I'm lucky enough to have never lived in such a country. Sure, I care about government accountability, there will always be bad actors, and governments in general aren't always super-competent, but I believe fundamentally, governments in places I have lived are not evil. They aren't another mafia I need a firewall against.

>You catch a guy doing something bad

If you have evidence that he was doing something bad, prosecute him. You must have evidence, because you couldn’t know he was doing something bad based off these chats you can’t read.

>You know he's a part of a big organized crime organisation, because you already caught some of the other conspirators.

So charge them with conspiracy or RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations).

>you could bring the whole thing down based on documents / chats etc which are encrypted.

How can you possibly know that? If you have evidence of crimes, use that to prosecute. If you don’t have evidence, then you don’t know crimes were committed. Regardless, you don’t even know if these encrypted chats contain anything incriminating.

Government is not another mafia, they are a group of people who are flawed. “Good” governments have laws protecting the rights of citizens against individuals within government. That is like saying that we don’t need defense attorneys because prosecutors are good people and wouldn’t bring a case against an innocent person, or would never bend/break the rules to get a conviction. We have them to protect the rights of the innocent and the guilty.

Because the latter are fucking pathological liars who maintain a rachet stealing away rights. They earned their reflexsive distrust.

Something something ounce of freedom something something safety something something deserves neither