The Big Tech Show
00:00:00 · S0, Joe Molloy, S2, S3, Barry Ward
[00:00:00] S0: We get it. Global IT can be a headache. Deal IT handles hardware, software, and access across 130 plus countries in one system. Companies like ElevenLabs are already scaling their IT operations with Deal. No juggling vendors, no lost orders, no access revocation failures. Build your global team with Deal. Visit deal.com/bigtech and start expanding your business today. [00:00:30] S1: Hey there. We are Indo Sport with me, Joe Lloyd, and [00:00:32] S2: we have things like this. How do you support the IRA when they [00:00:35] S3: can't I... No. It's just I... The support the IRA's caused the end British rule in Ireland, and I still believe there shouldn't be British rule in Ireland as an Irish person. Yeah. What I don't support and will never support is the killing of innocent lives on... No matter where. I just don't... I don't agree with that, and I will never agree with that. This is an Irish Independent production. [00:01:08] S4: You're balancing the right to privacy of an individual against the right of society to be safe or children to be safe or whichever group
00:01:15 · Adrian Weckler
[00:01:15] S5: Well, in that case then, why don't we... And I... This is not a facetious question. Why don't we have cameras in domestic homes? Because we know, for example, that, for example, domestic violence is a terrible crime. Murder is a terrible crime. We know that, we would be able to cut a lot of that out. If we had more surveillance and more cameras, why don't we do that? You're listening to The Big Tech Show with Adrian Weckler sponsored by Deal. Deal lets you hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Visit deel.com/bigtech. Hello, and you're welcome to The Big Tech Show with me, Weckler. Now should the state have a secret backdoor key or some other way of bypassing encrypted messaging service like WhatsApp? And what if that was the strongest way to fight crimes such as child sexual abuse or terrorism? Well, after years of championing privacy, the EU may now be diluting its enthusiasm for it. A new law was proposed which would see messaging networks become more responsible for monitoring texts and chats to see if there's anything criminal happening. And here in Ireland, the government says it wants to harden the law or update it so that modern communications will be subject to interception as older form communications used to be under laws until now, and that possibly puts the state and our idea of privacy on a collision course. So what's going to happen? Like, when it comes down to it, what is more important, Security or privacy? Because there are trade offs to be made. Well, joining me to discuss this is Barry Ward, Fine Gael TD for Dún Laoghaire. Barry, can I ask, from a general perspective, is it ever justifiable for the state to seek to dilute encryption to fight crime?
00:03:08 · Barry Ward
[00:03:08] S4: Yes. I think it is sometimes justifiable. I hold privacy as something that's really, really important, but I don't think anybody has the right to expect absolute privacy just as you don't in the context even of your home. And your home is protected by the constitution, but there are circumstances in which the state can get a warrant to search your home, for example. That currently covers computers and phones as well. And the old legislation from 1993, the interception of postal packets is out of date. No two ways about it. And so, yes, there are circumstances, and it is for the... It is for a general good, and it is it is one of those circumstances where that common good outweighs your personal right to absolute privacy. That said, I would not want to see some of the stuff you see going on in America going on here where you have whole scale scanning of, Internet traffic or communications traffic, searching for keywords, then identifying people who might be problematic for one reason or another without the benefit of an intervention force to actually monitor whether that's necessary or not because that is a wholesale and, I think, unwarranted invasion
00:04:12 · Adrian Weckler, Barry Ward
[00:04:12] S5: of people. So the argument that is put forward for not breaking encryption is that once you dilute it or break or break it, it's kind of a binary thing. That once you break it, it opens the door for bad guys to get in. We're now potentially on the wave of AI hacking, to to come. And we've had this idea in Europe where privacy has been a sacrosanct thing. We've championed it for for a long while. Wouldn't it be a huge risk to break encryption? Like, we're talking about services like WhatsApp and iMessage here. [00:04:47] S4: Well, firstly, I don't agree that it's a binary thing that you either can break encrypt or you you can't. You can allow certain services to intercept communications, break encryption, and read the information that's in there under very controlled circumstances.
00:04:47 · Barry Ward, Adrian Weckler
[00:04:47] S4: Well, firstly, I don't agree that it's a binary thing that you either can break encrypt or you you can't. You can allow certain services to intercept communications, break encryption, and read the information that's in there under very controlled circumstances. [00:05:03] S5: Can we just clarify what we're talking about here? Because under the proposed EU law, which has been changed recently in recent recent months. The idea there was essentially that, networks like WhatsApp would have an obligation to do more monitoring of their own traffic, and that would include encrypted content on on messages. Now WhatsApp and iMessage and all these have long said they cannot actually see the content of those message because they're encrypted. You... They can see things like who sent a message, that type of metadata. But if you break the encryption, then you're essentially handing backdoor keys to somebody else. Now maybe what you're talking about is the right, for example, to hack a phone so that maybe you you get the credentials, the password, and the username. They do that. That happens all the time. That happens in The States. That happens in The UK. I think it's happened in Ireland, before. But are you saying that you think that if the guards presented a case that encryption itself, as The UK has done, as The US has done, this has been a long running battle between states and tech companies, that you still would think that the general principle of encryption should be... It shouldn't be absolute. Well,
00:06:26 · Barry Ward, Adrian Weckler
[00:06:26] S4: the first thing is that I do have faith in the ability of the state and the state actors, be it the guards or a security service, whatever it might be, to act within the law and to act responsibly. Now I think the law has been diluted so much when you talk about America. The, you know, the whole land security legislation that was passed in America is, I think, absolutely anathema to the notion the state acts responsible... Responsibility, but that doesn't happen here. The EU discussion around the the chat control proposal, I think so they call it, which I think is a really unfortunate name because it's not about controlling chat. It is about identifying where certain criminality is being facilitated through certain communications. Now if you say, for example, if we break encryption, then everybody can look at everybody's messages. It doesn't have to go there. And one of the issues that I have is that the approach to this so far has been about putting the obligation onto the platform owners like Signal. I mean, I mean, you listen to to Meredith Whittaker talking. [00:07:26] S5: President of Signal. [00:07:26] S4: Yeah. And I totally understand why she doesn't want it because it goes to the root of what their product is. But you can't place the obligation for national security on corporate interests because those two things don't always align.