(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


End to End Encryption: Political Timing is Everything / HT: @radioproducer

2023-05-24 08:05:41+00:00

I am in a brief period between nappy changes for the toddler, so I will have to make this really concise because that situation could change at any moment so I’ll try a bullet-point-list format:

So where are we now?

As far as I am aware the Messenger Encryption features are all being enabled and deployed piecemeal, for instance in voice and video calls, and in places where people are particularly at risk.

And the UK Government? They are doing this:

Let’s consider this in context:

Facebook as a platform is “dead” to kids, because (apart from using it to log into a few games) they are all on Tiktok instead. There is already encryption in WhatsApp and it’s not going to be removed. Messenger is largely used by adults, and adults are assumed able to use “reporting” mechanisms to deal with abuse. In the meantime: an entire other platform (Twitter) has developed and its own launched end-to-end encryption — which we’ll graciously assume will improve over time — and there are so many other E2EE apps that India has started banning them en-masse, including Matrix and Briar.



And yet the UK Government are still obsessed with Messenger?

There’s more than a hint of Ahab’s obsession with Moby Dick in this; deployment of E2EE for Facebook has taken so long that new competition has arisen and E2EE has normalised in this space, but Tugendhat — and more importantly, his office peers — are bent upon trying to “send a message”[2] by taking Zuckerberg (or: Clegg?) down.

Please: Get over it, people. The market has already shifted, and the symbolic exercise of authority you were attempting to exercise in 2019, is meaningless if done today.

[1] My preferred metaphor: a shepherd who does not tend to their sheep, is a bad shepherd. Yes, people will rail against being compared to “sheep”, but at least they are cared for in return for being part of the flock and gaining the advantages of that.

[2] Pun unintended, but apt.
[END]

[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/68759
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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