Going Dark: Why Law Enforcement Hacking Is the New Surveillance Frontier
A provocative essay by cryptography engineer Matthew Green titled "Going Dark, and the era of law enforcement hacking" reached the Hacker News front page with 179 points and 109 comments. It argues that we're entering a new era of surveillance — one where encryption has won the debate over wiretaps, and law enforcement's response is to hack your devices instead.
The "Going Dark" Problem
For decades, law enforcement agencies have argued that encryption is creating a "going dark" problem — they can't intercept communications because end-to-end encryption (E2EE) means only the sender and recipient can read messages. The FBI, DOJ, and intelligence agencies worldwide have pushed for "exceptional access" — backdoors that would let them decrypt communications when they have a warrant.
The cryptography community has been nearly unanimous: you can't build a backdoor that only the "good guys" can use. Any weakness you build into encryption for law enforcement will eventually be exploited by criminals, foreign intelligence services, and hostile actors.
