Hi Victorio, At 01:17 AM 18-12-2023, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
I would also add that, while human rights were conceived to be universal, their interpretation varies significantly across the world. What the IAB is advocating is one specific view of human rights where the emphasis is put on a few individual freedoms. There are counterbalancing parts of the UDHR which other countries use to support their view that their own laws, which include lawful interception under judiciary review or even blanket interception with no guarantees, are fully in line with human rights. So, just saying "don't intercept people because this breaks human rights" is already somewhat controversial, and unlikely to be well received when coming from an organization which has neither purview nor competence on human rights and international law, and is usually expected not to step into policy matters.
I agree with you that the interpretation of the freedoms are country-specific. The view on how those rights (re freedoms) are implemented may be skewed by the ground truths which IAB members have access to.
I don't think that "don't intercept because that violates human rights" would be a convincing argument. In addition, an engineer (using the terms published on the web site) would be expected to make technical arguments.
Also, as an employee of an open source software maker, I think that the reference to interception "restrict[ing] use of open-source software" would have needed, as a minimum, some explanation. Of course, the problem with any mandated legal control in open source software is that anyone can take the code and remove it, but that's always the case: one can modify open source code to do a number of other illegal actions, such as cracking systems or running a scam. Of course, this would break the law and thus is forbidden, but this has never been qualified as "restricting use of open-source software", just like any law forbidding you from running over someone with a car to kill them is not generally considered as a restriction on the use of cars, nor has stifled the adoption of cars.
I agree with your point about the user having the ability of the user to remove the offending code. I am okay if a government makes open source illegal to disable that open source feature.
Regards, S. Moonesamy
