Without public pressure it is not going to happen. German politicians have been positive towards this move recently (althought without mentioning it is already in progress). Sadly politics think it is the easiest solution to counter torrorism.
While at the same time these governments fail to properly use the information they have and are able to gather through traditional intelligence work properly to avoid the type of attacks they claim putting up backdoors will prevent.
Most recently last weeks attack in Austria could have been avoided if the information the authorities received from a neighboring country of an attempt to purchase weapons by the attacker would have lead to actions. (I’ll try to find a link, apparently they had months to process and act)
So I think this makes the situation more unsafe in two ways - back doors will lead to all sorts of issues from leaking private communication to impersonation and authorities still don’t take responsibility and fix their processes so they can do their jobs.
Too late to edit my previous post, but here is the article:
"Fejzulai is also believed to have travelled to neighbouring Slovakia in July accompanied by another man, where he attempted to buy ammunition suited to the weapons he used in the attack, but the sale reportedly fell through after he failed to produce a firearms licence.
Slovakian authorities are said to have informed their Austrian counterparts at the time. The men travelled in a car registered in the name of the mother of an Islamist known to police."
They are either stupid or they don't care about terrorism. It's very easy to develop simple encryption scheme. It could be implemented by any half-competent developer. And I'm sure that global terrorists have enough money and people to make it happen. So terrorists won't care about this law. They'll switch from Telegram to Terrorgram and that's about it. But global spying over citizens will be achieved. I'm sure that politicians are just envy over China and want to replicate their measures. Many countries already replicate Great Firewall to some extent. Now they want to implement a global surveillance to strengthen their powers and prevent any kind of riots. That's terrorists they care about.
> I'm sure that politicians are just envy over China and want to replicate their measures.
China has the same goal as the Western powers have: to be able to keep spying on anyone they deem enemy of the state.
The difference is who they define as enemy of the state. In China, that includes pretty much anyone that criticises the Government, as well as what they see as hostile nations (probably the USA, maybe UK, which openly call China their enemies mostly without real provocation, and perhaps Japan due to its closeness to the US and its past of barbarities committed during the occupation of nearly half of the Chinese territory).
In most western democracies, the enemy would be terrorists (they claim) and, as we now know, pretty much any other Government, ally or not... and that's what we currently know, there is probably a much wider reach still that we may never know for sure... the Snowden leaks show that they will collect mass surveillance not only on foreign heads of state, but on their own populations without any restrictions, just in case they need it later. Given that, I am not even sure China actually has more surveillance in place than the USA and the UK, for example. It's a huge disappointment for anyone thinking the western world holds the moral ground, we who live here need to get our Governments understand we will not accept this!
Europe and some developing countries did not really react when it was revealed the US was mass-spying on its Government officials because they obviously are doing the same, they just didn't get caught in the same way yet. The people behind all this spying believe they are doing good as they're keeping world peace. I think they do the opposite: because other governments' counter-intelligence probably know more or less who is doing what against them, they're kept in a constant state of readiness for conflict. True world peace can only come when there's mutual trust between countries... While everyone spies on everyone else, we'll continue to live in a world on the brink of WW3. You think WW3 is impossible? Well, read about WW1 and how basically no one expected it at all. Circumstances today are even more heated than at the time WW1 broke out. Funnily enough, the only thing that's holding WW3 back is the nukes behind the big armies which make full-on conflict a very uncomfortable prospect indeed.
Public pressure rarely materialises spontaneously, out of a vacuum. For it to materialize, someone has to rally for it. A manifesto needs to be written, the goals written down and elaborated. It has to be pushed into the media.
It's not easy, but it's the only thing that will work.
