Oddbean new post about | logout
 I definitely see the benefits of these technologies, and I'm fully with you that they are needed, but I'm still worried about the future of free communication. I don't know if I'm missing some point, since everyone seems so convinced about these things, I hope you or someone else can clarify on the technical details:

1: ChatControl. This is on the table in the EU, may be approved in October if I understand it correctly, and means that either chat apps/services or operating systems, maybe both, are required to have client-side scanning. Will it be possible for a non-programmer to download software (OS) and use a web client/download a client (depending on circumstances and which of the technologies it's about), that's not compromised, and will it be possible to have a reasonable certainty that such is the case? Can't be sure unless you can check the code of course, but reasonably.

2: ISP:s. What prevents government from mandating ISP:s to block all encrypted traffic, unless it for example is going to whitelisted servers, or is signed by approved apps?

3: Extreme measures. Using a printing press was once punishable by death. Printing presses are physical objects without an online footprint, and this was in an era way before cameras and microphones existed, and today they are, obviously, legal. However, what prevents government from using a crisis and the media to condition people, and let ISP:s or other internet system actors, or intelligence agencies, look for traces of these tools being used, maybe even holding each subscriber accountable for what happens on their connection regardless who uses it, and put a few users of these technologies in prison for a long time, and use the mainstream media to make examples out of them?



Don't get me wrong: a world with these tools you mention is better than a world without them. What I wonder is whether it will be enough. If this battle is lost, these freedoms may very well be lost forever. Yet "bitcoiners" (TM) act like success is 100% certain. If I'm not wrong on all these points and more, and I hope I am, that stance is either dishonest or uninformed, and I dislike people of the former, and want the latter to learn. After all, the same people say that "bitcoin is truth".