Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "Online Safety Bill debate: Could it lead to ‘unprecedented paradigm-shifting surveillance’?" video.

This is a really simple equation. You either allow E2E encryption and understand that in allowing genuine E2E, no one not even the service provider can know what's being sent. That service provides of such products can't meaningfully enforce their terms of service which ultimately exist only to cover the organisation offering the product from legal culpability. OR we can say E2E isn't something we want and actually we want communications providers to spy on behalf of government on the off chance someone sends CP. Of course whilst they're spying for CP they'll also have a legal obligation to report any other crimes they happen to become aware of. Those are the choices. They're the only choices. If you want your communications to be actually private, then you have to accept that the communications of criminals will likewise be just as private. It is then law enforcements duty to do their jobs instead of asking private companies to hand them cases on a silver platter.
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@dondoodatUntrue. I know several senior members of royal mail, including one I'm related to. The main is scanned for it's contents. They can not physically open the mail without a court order, but how do you think they get one in the first place? They scan the contents with different sensors and anything that flags gets investigated by a human. Anything still suspicious can then have a warrant application applied. The snowden leaks told us that the decades long running prism and keystone programs which have continued under new names are mass surveillance programs undertaken by 5 eyes countries on their own populations and include the gathering and mass telephony surveillance, including meta data, contents and gps coordinates matched to identifying profiles. The UK is the lead 5 eyes country. Australia, another 5 eyes country already has these mandatory backdoors requirements for E2E IM, which includes signal. Indeed the Australian government via the AFP are a funding source for signal. So the fact of the matter is that signal is already compromised, a fact Meredith slips up on at 8:25 when under pressure. To investigate an account you need to break E2E. She has disclosed that signal have already done so and that's further disclosed in Australia with signals submission to ACMA. That's not really the point however, and I think we both agree on the fundamental importance of E2EE as a last bastion of private communications. You are right that the proposal is like bugging everyone's phone or checking every piece of mail. My point is simply that they already do those things which is why they think it's ok to do this to E2EE and why it's so important that they don't. If E2EE is gone then that's it, game completely over on privacy, democracy over too because authoritarianism inevitably follows. Amendment 205 is a sensible amendment.
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@dondoodat Pretty sure royal mail already do that, and thanks the the 5 eyes prism/keystone program so do the phone companies with every call and sms.
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@ChangesOneTim The enforceability of a private companies terms of service (a private contract between a user and said company)is not now, nor has it ever been the central issue of any law, regulation, act or government concern. Whether E2EE is involve or not is entirely irrelevant. These are private parties making an agreement between themselves. It is in effect legally no different than you making an agreement with your kids that if they don't clean up their rooms there won't be pudding after dinner, and then the government arguing they have to start assigning government workers to follow you around and watch your every move, otherwise how will they know if you kept your word to your kids. That's not government concerned with private entities enforcing their agreements, it's government overreach into removing civil liberties and damaging democracy. This is government trying to spy on us to better control the population and telling us it's for our own good. Democracy dies when freedom of speech does, and how can you ever have freedom of speech if big brother is always listening? It's always very telling of the intent of a law when politicians claim it has to do with stopping CP. Politicians ONLY ever stand up and start making arguments about CP and "won't someone think of the children " when they have a bill that would erode civil liberties and strip rights. Listen, to spread a thing one inevitably needs to expose themselves publicly. Heck, there's been tons of t openly here on YouTube for years and despite thousands of complaints to authorities it remains. If government really wanted to clean up CP it could without changing any laws. The fact of the matter is those dealing in CP are often themselves politically connected. You'd need more than two hands to count the number of politically connected individuals posthumously exposed as kiddie fiddlers in the UK in recent years. It's never about cleaning up CP, it's only about trying to silence critics because who would ever stand up and say they don't want to help exploited children? The vast majority of companies, of all sizes and not just tech companies, have boiler plate clauses in their terms of service which they either have no means to enforce or no intention of ever doing so. Such clauses exist only to mitigate legal liabilities. In the case of signal they don't even have an enforcement issue because their terms of service only claims that you must not do xyz and there is never talk of penalties or enforcement. It's just legalise to shift liability from signal solely to the user. There is no "back door" in encryption. You either have an encrypted service or you don't. If one outside entity can decrypt, all can. That's the entire point of E2EE, to ensure only those parties involved can decrypt. So, we either want privacy from government or we don't. It's binary and there is no dichotomy.
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