WhatsApp threatened to leave the Netherlands due to controversial backdoor law

&gt; Grapperhaus wanted to prevent the distribution of photos of the sexual abuse of children<p>Ah yes, the &quot;think about the children&quot; narrative again.<p>This argument is as valid as banning knives because some percentage of knife owners commit crimes with them.<p>I&#x27;m really getting tired of this and hope larger groups of population start seeing through this bullshit.

[opinion] I will eat my shoe in a tvshow if there&#x27;s any evidence to confirm Whatsapp&#x2F;Meta did this for privacy&#x2F;moral reasons. They simply fear this would lead people to leaving Whatsapp and turn to alternative ways of private communication which would mean less users and thus revenue. [&#x2F;opinion]

&gt;Grapperhaus wanted to prevent the distribution of photos of the sexual abuse of children<p>and if someone gets arrested for a thoughtcrime or hatespeak offense, the evidence obtained from their chat logs will be inadmissible in court, right? :)

Translation of the original Dutch article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-nrc-nl.translate.goog&#x2F;nieuws&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;whatsapp-dreigde-te-vertrekken-om-aftapplicht-a4132175?_x_tr_sl=nl&amp;_x_tr_tl=en&amp;_x_tr_hl=en-US&amp;_x_tr_pto=wapp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-nrc-nl.translate.goog&#x2F;nieuws&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;whatsapp...</a>

Wonder what they will do with <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chatcontrol.eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chatcontrol.eu</a> then.

Wow this is amazing. How did whatsapp react to that Australian law about backdoors?

English translation: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-nrc-nl.translate.goog&#x2F;nieuws&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;whatsapp-dreigde-te-vertrekken-om-aftapplicht-a4132175?_x_tr_sl=auto&amp;_x_tr_tl=en&amp;_x_tr_hl=en&amp;_x_tr_pto=wapp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-nrc-nl.translate.goog&#x2F;nieuws&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;whatsapp...</a>

Can they leave UK aswell?

Can a government demand the same from Telegram and Signal? And if that is the case, how easy would be to circumvent an IP block without users having to use VPNs or tunelling?

Is the server hugged to death? The moment I tap it says can&#x27;t connect to the server, immediately.<p>Any archive links?

This is a PR plant that Meta (and its acolytes) routinely stress the importance of &quot;E2EE&quot; - while skimming off the generated metadata which reveals even more. E2EE is closed source implementation and it is hard to determine what happens in the background. I am not denouncing E2EE- just WhatsApp.

Good<p>They were right to do this<p>It is a bit naive of some companies to think all they need is to &quot;pay or comply&quot; with some regulations and not push back when it is merited. It might come back later to bite them

Do it

I realised recently China has a population of 1 billion and 400 million. That&#x27;s more than a billion more people than the U.S.<p>And they dont have democracy. They cant french revolution on their CCP thing. Im no expert but this is mostly due to surveillance right? Dont say culture please, nobody prefer autocracy to democracy but the autocrate.<p>This convinced me surveillance is bad.<p><i>Edit: some of you disagree. Id like the opportunity to convince you. I get it that many chinese are just happy with the regime. And actually, I dont judge that. Its certainly a cool regime in some ways. But democracy grows like weed, there is no stopping it. But with surveillance. Remove surveillance, there is democracy in China tomorrow.</i>

This is why decentralised apps and protocols like Tox and Jami have to be pushed forward.<p>They can’t “leave” a country.

What&#x27;s most disturbing to me is that these people without any technical knowledge are pushing for these things while largely ignoring expert opinions.<p>Imo it&#x27;s fine to explore such options as you should consider everything, but just give up, accept reality, and go look for alternative options when literally everyone with knowledge about the topic says it&#x27;s a bad idea and impossible to do in a secure way.<p>They should spend that time on finding solutions that actually work.

A law enforcement backdoor into encrypted messaging is a good thing for society overall, and it&#x27;s not unreasonable for Dutch lawmakers such as Grapperhaus to push for this as a long-term solution.<p>Fortunately, there are plenty of alternative approaches to this right now that effectively give law enforcement the equivalent of backdoor access, often not just to encrypted messaging applications like WhatsApp but the entire device too.<p>Reading between the lines, this is likely why plans to legislate for encrypted messaging backdoors were quietly shelved, for now. But it&#x27;s coming eventually.