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Hungarian government briefly proposes to criminalize encrypted services
- lossolo 11y agoThis is what happens when someone that do not know anything about internet architecture tries to make something illegal. Good luck in enforcing this law.
- bandris 11y agoI fear that they have jailing opponents in mind.
- tankenmate 11y agoThey intend to jail anyone who uses GMail, WhatsApp, or any other encrypted service? Such a effort will fail, if only because there isn't enough space in the jails...
- eru 11y agoThey intend to jail anyone they don't like, not anyone who uses certain programs.
- pyvpx 11y agoThat assumes universal or consistent application of the law, which is very rarely the intention behind these kinds of laws
- boredpudding 11y agoClose borders. Country itself is the jail.
- ptaipale 11y agoIs that "close" as in an imperative ("close those Hungarians inside their borders") or as in a description that borders are "closed" ("the Hungarians have closed their borders")? I have seen a lot of Orban-bashing because he wants does not accept the uncontrolled immigration policies of EU (of people from outside EU, particularly Middle East) but there the "borders are closed" is for outsiders coming in, not for Hungarians leaving (which would actually make the country a jail). Two very different things. Right to emigrate out of a country is a fundamental human right, right to immigrate in to a particular country is not. People who advocate for the latter tend to (intentionally) confuse it with the former.
- boredpudding 11y agoI mean the first. If you want to jail everybody using encryption, you have to jail everybody. So, the best action for that is to close the borders so the Hungarians can't leave. It is a ridiculous solution for a ridiculous plan. > Right to emigrate out of a country is a fundamental human right Not if you're in jail.
- ptaipale 11y agoYes, obviously; being in jail means that some fundamental human rights (right of free movement) are removed. However, which do you mean, that others should lock Hungarians in a country-wide jail as a retaliation for having elected a leader you don't like, or that Hungarians themselves should do it for some reason even if they don't want to?
- boredpudding 10y agoI mean: If Hungary wants to jail everybody who uses encryption, and everybody uses encryption, it's "more efficient" to make the country itself the jail, because that many Hungarians don't fit inside the jails. It's a joke.
- 075 11y agoNo, they will jail anyone who they think have done something, but have no proof. This law will make them able to jail anyone without a reason.
- freehunter 11y agoIt's more common than you might think, even in the US. A common example I see is major cities where the freeway speed limit is 45 or 55, but everyone is doing 70 or 80mph, even the police officers. Most of the time that cop will drive right past you even if you're doing 20mph or 30mph over the speed limit, but if they want to pull you over, now they have a free reason to arrest you and impound your car. But if you're driving the speed limit while everyone else flies by you, you could be pulled over because driving too slow is suspicious. It seems that, given enough time, governments will find ways to implement enough contradictory laws that everyone is a criminal.
- arviewer 11y agoNot if they have the keys to decrypt the content. But apparently they've come to their senses and have abandonded this idea.
- bad_user 11y agoYou should beware, as GMail isn't an "encrypted service", only your communication with their servers is. This prevents MitM attacks from small adversaries, until the government forces their own root certificate on every citizen that is. But given Google has business and representation in Europe, they are susceptible to governmental requests for mass surveillance (especially because of the good cooperation the NSA has with foreign intelligence agencies), plus for individuals (like specific enemies of government) all it takes is a subpoena.
- tankenmate 11y agoEven if the Govt forces their own certificates on people it won't work with modern browsers because they support certificate pinning (and hence will refuse to visit a site with the wrong CA). So then they'd need to force Govt browsers on people while also trying to censor browsers from the rest of the world. None of the above is viable in the short, medium or long term.
- ryanlol 11y agoI don't think any browser implements certificate pinning in such a manner.
- fsloth 11y agoThe second interpretation is that the point is to create state power to imprison anyone they do not like while giving plausibly legal excuse for this. The pattern typically goes like this: 1. Create an inane law that no-one obeys 2. Do not enforce the law 3. People forget the law, and behave as they've always done 4. Now, to jail anyone you don't like, just set a police to watch over them and observe any number of the every day tasks declared illegal 5. Congratulations, you now have a seemingly legal mechanism to jail anyone you don't like. Good job! Lot's of legislation end up stupid because people are not perfect, but since silly all-encompassing laws have been used historically as a tool for oppression one should have as little as possible charity in the interpretation when a silly law is observed.
- runholm 11y agoGovernments don't need to be able to catch everyone with such a law. The fear is that it could be used to "get rid of" targeted people whom the government don't like for political or ideological reasons.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- adambrenecki 11y agoSo, does this make (for example) visiting a website over HTTPS illegal? Or does it compel Hungarian ISPs to MITM their customers? It seems to imply one in one sentence, then the other in the next.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zackkatz 11y agoPig Latin will be outlawed!
- dtf 11y agoIronically, parliament awarded CryptTalk an innovation award last week. http://budapestbeacon.com/economics/crypttalk-given-innovation-award-parliament-now-govt-plans-ban-app/33507 http://budapestbeacon.com/economics/crypttalk-given-innovati...
- venomsnake 11y agoI cannot open the page. Can some Hungarian provide context and explanation. A lot could be lost in translation. Or bias. The title suggest that it will run afoul of a thousand EU regulations. But it is hard to be alive in Europe and not run afoul of any EU regulation - but that is another topic.
- tremon 11y agoThey can't, as this forum auto-redirects to https.
- kowdermeister 11y agoI'm Hungarian. This is just another populist act of the Fidesz government. They recently went full retard with anti-terrorism and this is part of their action plan. I doubt they are serious, but it would be potentially used against the enemies of the state or it's perfect to distract the media so they could carry on stealing.
- aries1980 11y agoIndeed. These nonsense plans makes the journalists busy, so they don't have remaining resources to investigate and make as loud the things happening in the shadows.
- bonoboTP 11y agoYou need to know that Hungarian politics is often very low quality and caters to stupid people. They said that encrypted phone apps (specific apps designed for encrypted communication like CryptTalk) should be banned due to terror threat. Terror threat is a very new idea in Hungarian politics since the migration crisis and the recent Western European terror attacks. So now they also tried to say something big and bold like those ideas they read about in the newspapers. These politicians are mostly old people, most of whom studied law (or economics). They have no idea about technology. The prime minister is a digital illiterate. He doesn't use computers in his work, he writes pen on paper and reads everything printed. In 2007, he didn't even have a mobile phone. (He has one since he's prime minister again, a Nokia dumbphone) They truly didn't have a clue, when they proposed this. We are a small country and we have some incompetent politicians. It's not comparable to the US government stating something like this. They also tried to introduce an Internet tax based on gigabytes of traffic. They like to throw in ideas like this so the press has some bullshit to dwelve on. Then they back off. So news about what the Hungarian government plans to do should not be taken too seriously, because they like to drop topics around.
- negrit 11y agoI can't access the article right now. But I'm fairly certain that a couple of stupid deputies who don't understand anything about technology/cryptology want to introduce a law against it and everyone is going ape shit "Hungary want to criminalize the use of encrypted services". The same thing happens in France from time to time.
- reacweb 11y agoThe proposition to mandate backdoor is http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/amendements/3318/CION_LOIS/CL92.asp http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/amendements/3318/CION_L... . It was supported by Mme Kosciusko-Morizet, M. Martin-Lalande, M. Cinieri, Mme Duby-Muller, M. Sermier, Mme Rohfritsch, M. Straumann, M. Abad, M. Salen, M. Morel-A-L'Huissier, M. Ginesy, M. Mathis, M. Degallaix, M. Hetzel, Mme Grosskost, Mme Lacroute, Mme Genevard et M. Saddier. NKM is not ignorant in technology. IMHO, she is evil.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoThat's not stupid. That's chaotic evil, almost by definition: "let's just float this thing again and again, see if we can get away with it. If not, just pretend we didn't see it coming and retry sometime later. Repeat until law passes."
- pestaa 11y agoI'm Hungarian. This bullshit is actively being reverted. Originally there was a plan to put encryption app users in jail for up to two years. But not all communication apps would be treated equal: mainstream applications already using encryption, such as Skype or Viber, would be perfectly okay. Only using those applications specifically written to encrypt communication, primarily CryptTalk, would have been punishable. Edit: Our speculation is that this is the same strategy seen with the internet tax. Spreading FUD and stealing state wealth while everybody runs in circles. Edit 2: They did ban using CryptTalk and similar products (all communication services with encryption as their main selling point). No information on how they plan to enforce this decision: their only tool is to ask mobile app stores nicely to hide these apps from plain sight.
- Vivtek 11y agoSpeculation? Ha. But Fidesz does this with everything. I mean, look at the tobacco sales permit thing. It's just that threatening the Internet threatens one of the few industries where Hungary is actually making good money, so there's some pushback.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoThis should give everyone pause when choosing to use Skype.
- mhurron 11y agoPretty sure Microsoft never advertised Skype as something they couldn't intercept, so you probably shouldn't have been using it for anything you wouldn't say over the phone line in the first place.
- mtgx 11y agoI don't think it did, but when Microsoft bought it, Skype was still considered "hard to eavesdrop" due to its P2P architecture. Microsoft left everyone to believe that it's still secure even after it centralized its nodes and would constantly refuse to respond to questions about whether Skype can be intercepted. I remember at one point about 50 civil liberties groups sent an open letter to Microsoft about it, and it refused to answer it then, too. I also remember that some people were noticing that their https links would get blocked on Skype, which also meant Microsoft can MITM the Skype chats between users and it was no longer P2P (if I remember correctly Microsoft also tried to hide the fact that Skype was no longer P2P for quite a while, again leaving people to believe their chats could not be intercepted). Microsoft also killed TOM-Skype in China, which was specifically designed to allow interception and censorship that bypassed Skype's P2P architecture. At the time, everyone who was paying attention knew that this meant Skype could now be intercepted everywhere, otherwise Microsoft wouldn't have deprecated TOM-Skype for China. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/24/skype_urged_to_come_clean_on_eavesdropping_capabilities_and_policies_in.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/24/skype_urg... https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/nov/tom-skype-dead-long-live-microsoft-surveillance https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/nov/tom-skype-dead-long-l...
- Vivtek 11y agoThis appears to be a rather sensationalist headline for a move that is admittedly boneheaded on Orbán's part. To ensure the state's ability to surveil, the government had a plan to enforce the inclusion of backdoors. However, it appears that after some consultation with people that had a clue - of which Hungary actually has a large number - the government has decided that would be a Bad Idea and has tabled the plans. Source: Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (http://tasz.hu/en/news/hungarian-government-plans-enforce-encryption-backdoors http://tasz.hu/en/news/hungarian-government-plans-enforce-en...). This is actually very typical of Fidesz (Orbán Viktor's ruling party). They love making abrupt and sweeping changes to the law, then leaving everybody else to pick up the pieces. Occasionally, cooler heads prevail before the law is actually broken, but normally there's just a mess.
- Vivtek 11y agoAnd of course this was sold as an anti-terrorism feature: http://444.hu/2016/04/01/a-kormany-buntetne-a-titkositott-kommunikaciot-hasznalokat http://444.hu/2016/04/01/a-kormany-buntetne-a-titkositott-ko... As always.
- V-2 11y agoSame as with censorship :) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_VFA07WgAAv6Qa.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_VFA07WgAAv6Qa.jpg
- afandian 11y agoFor international readers, in US English 'table' means 'postpone', whereas in British English it means 'to present for discussion' which has almost the opposite meaning!
- toyg 11y agoI've never seen 'table' being used as 'postpone' by any American, either in literature or on the intertubes; is it some sort of professional / niche usage?
- SixSigma 11y agoIf you want to get technical, ASCII is a single-alphabet substitution cipher. Remember, lawyers have tried asserting that copying to RAM is copyright infringement. http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2008/08/20/ram-copying-an-issue-of-more-than-transitory-duration/ http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2008/08/20/ram-copying-an-i...
- imjustsaying 11y agoUTF8 is encryption for writing systems The International Phonetic Alphabet is encryption for human voices Language is encryption for ideas I suppose the irony here is that Hungarian, as a language, is intricately encrypted
- a_imho 11y agoI would say encryption is somewhat of a red herring. It is the introduction of similar surveillance policy that is quickly becoming widespread, I don't even think Hungary is an early adopter here. The sources even citing roughly 'granting powers other governments already have' and establishing an agency TIBEK with similar access to data (without warrant IIRC) as common 3 letter agencies. They even use the same terrorism/ISIS/Brussels/France reasoning. I guess in the end everyone can pick their surveillance point on the safety - freedom graph.
- Piskvorrr 11y ago"The sources even citing roughly 'granting powers other governments already have'" - do you think that government bullshits not? I do remember a similar way of reasoning "but Iraq has WMDs aplenty", coming from a Prime Minister or somesuch.
- jdalgetty 11y agoAre these governments really spending all day spying on us?
- Zigurd 11y agoThis case points out an interesting difference between Hungary and the US: In the US, surveillance is real, and when policy-makers get briefed about what the surveillance state wants, that's based on things they have, or plan on implementing. This law in Hungary appears to be based on a wish list. Otherwise they would have known what is practical and what isn't. So, DO governments spend all day spying on us? Only the ones that have the budget and technical means to make it real. The rest are just authoritarian wankers.
- IvanK_net 11y agoOk, so people in the government realised, that there exist encryption methods, which can not be "decrypted", and technology makes encryption accessible to everyone. When will they realise, that there is no way to detect, whether a message is encrypted or not-encrypted, and there may be multiple levels of "tunneling". It is not possible to find out the original form or the source (app) of information. Monitoring online communication is in not any simpler, than monitoring verbal communication between every 2 people.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoIn other words, now you can imprison anyone, while pretending to uphold the rule of the law.
- markhahn 11y agoStasi called and want their infamy back.
- vox_mollis 11y agoMeanwhile, the Burr-Feinstein draft dropped today and it's absolutely horrifying.
- haddr 11y agoSo.. no HTTPS for them? But the general question is this: would companies rather exit from such country and protect some values, or provide a non-encrypted version of their services to secure their userbase?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tobbyb 11y agoThere is a now a growing awareness of the unhealthy level of obsession governments have about citizens communications. This is in effect the same as the Burr-Feinstein encryption bill, one penalizes users, the other service providers. The bottom line is there is a lot of posturing about privacy but little commitment. All governments without exception are obsessed with your communications and data. It is unsettling and creepy. I really think some users will have to take 'secure communications' into their own hands depending on the level of need and address metadata exposures. If its remotely life threatening or impacting it would be foolish to depend on any service provider or technology. You can't win an encryption 'arms race' against state level actors with near endless resources, capabilities and the will. And the law and willingness to arm twist service providers and projects with secret courts, orders, intimidation, harassment. One can't help feeling current technologies however committed fall way short and are only lulling us into a false sense of privacy and complacency. A solution that does not acknowledge a state actors sheer range of capabilities and clearly articulate how it is addressed is not a solution. Perhaps something that completely randomizes metadata and makes it too expensive to break per user.
- gragas 11y agoJohn von Neumman is turning over in his grave!
- jkot 11y ago> anyone caught using encrypted software can be punished by 2 years of prison > The providers would be obliged to ensure access to the content of the encrypted messages I am not sure if users can be punished. I could only confirm that providers have obligation to provide data under penalty. European countries are pretty benevolent to end users, for example in some it is legal to download copyright protected music and videos for personal use. And providers already have obligation (by EU law) to provide information and archive it for some time.
- xufi 11y agoUrban really seems to be on tyrant mode for the pasty ear. Especially when he restricted the media laws and tried to censor opinions about government
- bonoboTP 11y agoOrban has no idea about any technology, let alone encryption. He probably can't even use email. Seriously, the guy only got a mobile phone in the last few years. He has no computers in his office.
- acbabis 11y agoDoes anyone know if the proposed Hungarian law considers a web browser to be an "application intended for encrypted communication"?
- pestaa 11y agoNo. The browser's main intention isn't to encrypt communication, so this law doesn't apply.