alt Hacker News" that it requires an entire legal framework, evidence of potential wrongdoing, proof that there is no other method to achieve the goal of validating guilt"
No it doesn't.
Life is no Reddit, lawyers and technicalities.
It's made up of regular people in communities.
If you see some guy creeping on 10 year-olds, you can notify the police and Facebook will do that as well - for the same reason.
It may not at all need to involve 'state surveillance', and Meta can probably hand over whatever they want to the police in that circumstance.
The police can make a decision as to how to proceed.
A bit like if someone was harassing someone on the street.
Or if an unknown person starts hanging out outside by a schoolyard in a way that seems inappropriate.
We don't want to transgress people's rights but we also are going to look at 'negative signals'.
Replies
You've quoted out of context, eliminating:
"The state has no business listening in on private citizen's communication."
So yes, the concept of privacy is so primary that the it requires an entire legal framework for the state to listen in.
--
In terms of the rest of your post, even though you quoted out of context, what you're saying is fine. But the people noticing things on the street, have nothing to do with those who maintain the roads. You really don't want corporations to have algorithms which mean they have to report trigger words to the police or state.
Instead, as I said, empower the parents. Legal guardians. It's their job to watch.
With e2e encryption, the signals you have are pretty minimal.
Let's say a 40 y/o man finds a phone on the ground, sees a name stuck on it, googles "name + town" and finds the facebook of a 12 y/o girl, and messages "Hey I found this phone, do you recognize it? <photo>"
With e2e encryption, you can't easily tell the difference between that and a creep.
This thread is advocating that exactly that case should result in a police visit with the assumption of guilt.