Now that I think about it, sending malicious updates to a router might be one way they could be required to assist the authorities in their quest for lawful access...
I use a web-hosted email provider that offers e2e encryption (done client-side with a Java app I think.) I don't actually encrypt any emails in practice. But it would be defeating the entire purpose if a service like this could read my encrypted emails (for the authorities or anyone else).
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I don't understand how a service provider can be anything but a carrier if the traffic is E2E encrypted.
The confusion is understandable because the two are unrelated in any technical capacity, but the DoJ seeks to twist their arm by taking away an existing legal protection for not making law enforcement's job easier.
I do not see this. By definition content transmitted with end-to-end encryption cannot be moderated. How would anyone but the sender and receiver know that a given message contains "illegal content"?
(I put "illegal content" in quotes because it makes my skin crawl, even though in practice I think some content should be suppressed (but I also don't want to be the one to say which content should be suppressed with the force of law because that's hard-to-impossible, and my heart's not in it.) It's a little like anti-smoking laws: technically a gross violation of personal freedom, but one that I'm not prepared to vote down until smoking is a fringe fetish.)
In terms of platform vs. conduit it seems to me that e2ee forces the service provider into the "conduit" category.