I don’t have an answer, but a slightly different perspective. Many different segments have a deep interest in using highly secure encrypted communications: politicians working on deals within/between governments (that should be auditable, but many try to avoid that), whistleblowers, organizers operating in adverse governments, dissidents, terrorists, pedophiles with a lot to lose (similar to Epstein’s network), healthcare professionals trying to talk to patients or other doctors in a hippa world, illegal transaction networks, attorneys with clients, VCs trying to debate the future of the world, companies trying to preserve trade secrets, you name it. It takes one of the egregious bad actors using the system to commit a crime worthy of public attention before the entire system is justifiably unpacked, banned, or considered a signal of bad intentions.
How can a system be made decentralized, but able to self-police against legitimately, publicly agreed upon bad behavior? If the system is able agree upon and exclude legitimately bad behavior automatically, the governments would not have a claim upon needing to police it and regular users would probably find it beneficial as well.
How could the self policing possibly happen?
Maybe you have a blockchain of anonymized encrypted messages that is read by open source scanning bots - if enough independent bots flag a message, then a group of anonymous judges can adjudicate to ban those user accounts?
Encryption is one challenge, but if you want true ubiquitous privacy, you need to deliver internal safety to prevent the need for external policing of activity. Social creatures of any species from dolphins to macaques have evolved some kind of internal behavior policing mechanism or trust is lost, and as such the system of value exchange grinds to a halt.
This is the same way of thinking many politicians subscribe to: "There has been one terrorist attack, which killed 20 people, quickly now, surveilance everyone and everything! Think of the dangers!"
Throwing out the baby with the bathing water (does this proverb exist in English?) is not going to do society much good. Just because there some bad actors, one does not need to discard the whole idea of encryption.
Also the dehumanized way of checking for bad content will not help. Bad actors can pre-encrypt or disguise content, whatever you do. Furthermore when the bots have the key to decryption, then the backdoor is built into the system. Bad actors and politicians will try to make use of that.
> It takes one of the egregious bad actors using the system to commit a crime worthy of public attention before the entire system is justifiably unpacked, banned, or considered a signal of bad intentions.
Banning encryption because bad actors use it is not justifiable.
The ideal solution will not throw away encryption, but enable self-policing. It's the difference between HN and 4Chan. AI with safety vs Pure AI unleashed.
As much as I don't like Epstein's network, it is better for him to go free than to live in an authoritarian state with locked down protocols which control what someone can and can't do.
Someone like Epstein could easily communicate with coded messages. Or send someone to convey messages in person.
How can a system be made decentralized, but able to self-police against legitimately, publicly agreed upon bad behavior? If the system is able agree upon and exclude legitimately bad behavior automatically, the governments would not have a claim upon needing to police it and regular users would probably find it beneficial as well.
How could the self policing possibly happen?
Maybe you have a blockchain of anonymized encrypted messages that is read by open source scanning bots - if enough independent bots flag a message, then a group of anonymous judges can adjudicate to ban those user accounts?
Encryption is one challenge, but if you want true ubiquitous privacy, you need to deliver internal safety to prevent the need for external policing of activity. Social creatures of any species from dolphins to macaques have evolved some kind of internal behavior policing mechanism or trust is lost, and as such the system of value exchange grinds to a halt.