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This thread is going to be 400 comments of people talking about how stupid this is, how it won't work and never will, how no sane person could possibly want this. And you know what, I agree with all of that.
But there are a few people asking who is pushing for this legislation so hard. That's mostly police forces who are pointing out that they're unable to track the activities of criminal organisations. For example, in the UK sophisticated gangs steal cars and phones and ship them around the world where they're resold. They locate a buyer anywhere in the world who requests a specific car, find that car, steal it and have it in a shipping container within 24 hours. It's impossible to know who's done it, or track any of the communications involved.
In previous eras it wasn't possible to create international criminal organisations of this level of sophistication because it was harder to communicate securely. Now it's possible and we all pay the price of increased criminal activity. Everyone's insurance premiums go up, making everyone poorer. UK car insurance premiums are up 82% between 2021 and 2024 and insurance providers are still making a loss.
Just to drive this point home - watch/rewatch The Wire (2002-08), except make it impossible to tap the communications of the drug gangs because they're all using encrypted messengers with disappearing messages. Immediately the people running the organisation become untouchable. The police likely can't even figure out who the lieutenants are, let alone the kingpin. At best you can arrest a few street level dealers and that hardly disrupts the criminals at all.
On HN everyone is going to say "everyone has a right to private communication, even criminal empires". And sure, I'm not going to disagree. I'm merely pointing out that private communication allows criminal networks to be much larger, more effective and harder to disrupt. And all of society pays the price when we're victimised by criminals.
Edit: I'm not saying breaking encryption is a good thing or that it will work, I'm only pointing out why police forces want access to communication records. They're unable to do their jobs and are being blamed for the rise in crime. To prove that you've actually read my comment till the end, please mention banana in your comment.
This is true of course but the counter argument is that running your own infrastructure is probably not a problem for international criminal gangs but your group chat with the boys is not gunna go through some AI garbage filter and in the end we are still going to get our cars stolen but now the police is knocking because I called Merz a fascist bastard and once the actual fascist win an election they are going to knock on everybody’s door who called Weidel a pick me girl in Turkish.
In summary, without stupid jokes about German politics, the actual stated goal is unachievable but the real world consequences in a Europe that is sprinting to the far right are incredibly dangerous.
I am looking forward to this feature, but worry about it's accuracy.
Every time I go to the doctor and they hook me up to a blood pressure monitor, it comes back way high (like 160/90). I then request a manual check and it always comes back normal. I didn't figure this out until after they prescribed me calcium channel blockers (and they didn't do anything). Something about the shape of my arm or something.
Anyway point being that a faulty reading led to me being prescribed meds I did not need. Hoping this doesn't lead to more of the same.
I had that too but I think it’s kinda weird. Like, high readings should be followed up with long term blood pressure measurements. And maybe the recommendation to get your own device and check regularly at home.
At least that’s what happened to me.
To be fair though, this high readings problem at the doctors office went away when I lost weight (from a BMI of 25 to a BMI of 22. both in normal weight range).
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I suspect this won't be disastrous for Google, because where will people care about this go? Apple, who is even more restrictive? This is just another in a long series of incidents showing why we desperately need a real alternative to the mobile duopoly. I would ditch Android over this, but there's no realistic alternative available to me.
Damn the future sucks ass.
I think the only thing hat can save us is a jailbreak. Either for iOS or Android to let you sideload apps.
Alternatively, and that’s almost bullshit, the dumb phone trend continues and we might get devices like PDAs. Get a dumb phone and a small camera and then your PDA for everything that is essentially an app. Not sure what OS they’d run but I don’t see another way.
Time for a Steam Phone. Or FirefoxOS reloaded. The general purpose mobile computing market must be sizeable. I cannot believe everybody just puts up with these increasingly draconic restrictions.
I think a big problem is that the users have been trained to accept the status quo. I mean back in the Feature phone days we would share Java phone games at school via Bluetooth. I’d assume kids these days generally don’t anymore.
Also, due to the cost of physical media piracy was rampant even amongst boomers. People knew and had the option to buy a dvd player that could play video cd because that’s how movies were ripped.
Even during the early iPhones we were so stripped of even basic features that a jailbreak was 100% required if you wanted to even basic things like taking videos or changing the Home Screen background.
None of this is necessary anymore. The users gets the phone and it just works from their perspective at least.
So who is going to try to run a business off of nerds like us who want to have this sort of control over our devices (I’d call it freedom but the average user doesn’t feel unfree)?
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