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Creating apps like Signal or WhatsApp could be 'hostile activity,' claims UK watchdog
(www.techradar.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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Remember how, before the internet, intelligence agencies by default didn't know what anyone was saying to anyone else face to face or by mail, and had to actually work to find out? The country didn't fall apart. Why is the standard now that everything must be handed to them on a plate? Did they just get lazy?
You'll love this!
I deployed an open-source chat system at work, just for convenience. Boss was concerned that it didn't do any logging and we couldn't tell who said what.
"You don't have any records of what we say verbally. What's the difference?"
"...Oh. Well, you're right."
He was coming from a legit concern. We didn't point fingers when someone screwed up, zero blame, but we needed to know exactly what happened so we could fix it.
They cut costs by firing the people doing the legwork and passed the savings along to billionaires who promised sustainable models. Now they can't hire people to do real legwork anymore because, "no one wants to work anymore for their grandparents' wage in an economy and society designed to turn people into voluntary slaves and the only way to escape is to become homeless and go off the grid, but the laws are being molded to prevent anyone from escaping the system."
I'm pretty sure that's how the old adage goes.
I'm not disagreeing with you but what would happen back then is that they simply wouldn't stop the crime.
At some point we need to decide if giving up all semblance of personal privacy is worth stopping some of that. I vote no enthusiastically. We just have to accept that some of that crime won't be stopped and law enforcement will have to work harder.
They don't even stop significantly more crime now... They simply invent new "crimes" and jerk each other off for keeping the streets safe from that minority eating their lunch or going for a walk.
If our countries could stop doing things that give people a reason to commit terroristic acts, Maybe that would solve some of it and we could be more secure in our papers and possessions without unlawful interference and undue search and seizures but that’s apparently none of my business
The elite know what's coming. There isn't enough to keep economic growth going and sacrifices will have to be made, and that's not going to be the top. That means something is needed to detect and remove "problems" before they get big.
Ok but that is a separate discussion.
This isn't a new concept by any means. The argument of crime prevention has been used since governments existed to strip rights
Sure, and we've always compromised on the 2 as a society. But we continually trend more and more towards prevention rather than privacy and sovereignty.
I would give up privacy only under one condition: everyone gives up all privacy. No exceptions.
That they can is what has changed. They didn't have sufficient information to put pressure.
They still had microphones and inquiry drugs, including those causing memory loss. So they knew plenty of what people were saying to each other.
Anyway. Everything has changed a lot, not just technology, and one can't really make a chain of causation to all this. There are plenty of feedback loops.
The rules now are "we are stronger, so we are forbidding everything we don't want". Losing leverage does that.
Until you learn of some way to hit them back, such questions are no good, because not answering them doesn't cost anything.
I think its a mixture of lazy and inexperience.
I believe if someone in a position of authority who understands how vital E2EE is in order for the internet to work, this suggestion wouldn't even be on the table.
its a case of just kicking destroying E2EE down the road for another generation to deal with, I believe. not sure what the solution is, either
That might be an illusion. You might be perceiving the world without normalized E2EE as something too horrible to consider. But it would be a stable system, functional for the taste of those people.
Lawmakers will make exceptions to allow E2EE for their own communications and those of the very wealthy.