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hyperpapeyesterday at 10:04 PM3 repliesview on HN

The reason why this might worry people who don't like the US/UK/Israeli governments is hidden in a secret place...a paragraph that is neither the first paragraph nor the last.


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turtletontineyesterday at 10:17 PM

Tl;dr the argument is if three letter agencies can’t buy or make exploits anymore because all vulnerabilities are patched, they will ramp up legal and legislative pressure to make vendors install backdoors. Which is bad and we should all worry about.

One of the author’s blind spots here is the concept of “digital sovereignty”. The US is continuing to ban more and more Chinese-made hardware out of fear that the Chinese govt has installed backdoors in them… which you could interpret as an admission that the US does exactly that with American made products. Globalized supply chains are, erm, complex, and few if any companies are really going to be able to achieve “digital sovereignty” with hardware. But with software it’s actually plausible, though obviously hard. Whether or not the feds have actually installed backdoors in Microsoft Outlook, foreign govts are rightly concerned that they have, and are increasingly pushing to avoid US made software for simple national security reasons.

colordropsyesterday at 10:07 PM

Which is to say that they will become more authoritarian and aggressive? That's not a good reason to be unhappy that they can no longer hack shit. They shouldn't do that either.

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