FTC warns tech giants not to bow to foreign pressure on encryption

General
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Politic aside, abit ironic considering FTC is a US federal agency and considering Edward Snowden, CIA, NSA happened but i guess bygones are bygones?

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Remember that there is a difference between protecting the interests of American tech companies and having an affirmative stance towards digital privacy rights.

The whole point of the Edward Snowden disclosures is that the government has partnerships with American companies like Google and AT&T to facilitate bulk metadata collection through a program like PRISM. It is in their best interests to maintain these partnerships through some form of protection racket. For example, the US government will ensure that Meta and Google will not face substantial difficulties abroad in exchange for some intel sharing on foreign individuals.

Regardless of past opinions (i.e. the 1990s Clipper Chip proposal), even the FBI emphasizes encryption due to increased cyberattacks over the past decade or so.

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I read it as double ironic, regardless of motive to weaken encryption they’re basically saying encryption are only for me not for thee. Similar to eu politician trying to exempt themselves from the proposed mandatory chat control.

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This is the most infuriating part. They need to dogfood their own bad proposals. If it’s not good enough for them it’s not good enough for us.

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Those EU politicians who like Chat Control better not enrage the Trump regime. :smiling_face_with_horns:

Well, I can’t believe I just said that, but we live in the Onion world, so anything goes, I guess.

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The dogfood argument assumes governments serve the people. In reality, governments seek power. IIRC Edward Snowden called this “state supremacy” in reference to terms like “national security.” Viewed through that lens, it makes perfect sense why the Chat Control proposal exempts governments.

This distinction between national/economic interests and human rights is an important one.

The FTC warning looks analogous to EU governments protecting Europeans from US spying while maintaining their own power to spy on Europeans, Chat Control just to name one.

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