captain red dog wrote:It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages, there are functions within the law to intercept mail for example but it is authorised using warrants etc. I believe the police should probably be able to view encrypted messages where there is a reasonable suspicion and it has passed the usual tests of obtaining court authorisation.
But I'm guessing this refers to a more wholesale approach and mass monitoring, which should be absolutely rigorously opposed.
It isn't complicated it is simple, you do not snoop on people, and people deserve privacy.
Encryption protects everything by putting in holes for law enforcement you are just adding holes for hackers to find and exploit, it is effectively building in security risk.
If people are going to be banana splits they will be, if you say all public IM gooseberry fool needs to be monitored they will do it themselves or find other ways.
This isn't about terrorists or catching bad guys, it is about furthering a right wing arsehole agenda to monitor everyone "just in case", it is about going "yeah we have have cut the police and inteligence services, but by monitoring everyone we can just "search" that for people and hope we find them.
This is the start of a dangerous slope, first it is "we will monitor and onyl pull data for the people we suspect", soon it will be "we have automated searches of all pull data to find people that are doing stuff wrong".
Very quickly everyone is monitored for everything and you live in a police state where you can't say or do anything in case "they" take offence to it.
It is wrong, and it shouldn't happen!