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The minute your system depends on good behavior from any of the parties involved, you've failed as a designer.

It's like nobody learned anything from Snowden's revelations. The second those backdoors are available, they're going to be surrendered in secret to various three letter agencies in the name of national security. That's going to happen on day one. On day two they'll be breached by foreign intelligence services.



>The minute your system depends on good behavior from any of the parties involved, you've failed as a designer.

Everyone is bad designers then. All of them rely on operating system providers not stealing your messages. Some with the people providing the chat application. Since they have to be able to display messages they are able to log them somewhere.

Society needs trust to function.


> All of them rely on operating system providers not stealing your messages.

You can compile your own operating system and control your hardware supply chain - you don't have to rely entirely on trust for those components.

> Since they have to be able to display messages they are able to log them somewhere.

If they're end-to-end encrypted, no, the people providing the chat application can't log anything except noise. That's what we're talking about outlawing here.

Regardless of the above, when I say 'system' I'm referring to a cryptosystem, not the other parts of the software stack.


Ken Thompson has something to say about trusting the compiler you use for that OS, or even the microcode the CPU running said compiler is using. It’s functionally impossible to not trust an outside vendor for something on a modern computer

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...


All the more reason for open firmware for everything.


>You can compile your own operating system and control your hardware supply chain

It's unrealistic for everyone to audit their operating system and hardware.

>If they're end-to-end encrypted, no, the people providing the chat application can't log anything except noise.

Yes, they can. If you used a comprimised Element app your encrypted Matrix messages can be stolen.


You’re getting distracted by unrelated concerns. Hint: pay attention to the part where I say

> Regardless of the above, when I say 'system' I'm referring to a cryptosystem, not the other parts of the software stack.

If your cryptosystem is compromised nothing else matters. Your argument seems to be “we shouldn’t worry about secure cryptosystems because these other unrelated things could go wrong,” which I’m not interested in debating with you.




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