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It is surprising. Even here, in Russia, we don't have such laws working yet. And I wonder, what Austrian authorities are going to do with foreign platforms like

• coldtea 8y ago
  >This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to foreign platforms that don't require identification. Doesn't really matter, as those things move the Overton window. Tomorrow, when the US, China, and EU adopt similar laws, there wont be any "foreign services" to use.
  • kdme 8y ago
    What a scary idea. I want to say that its unlikely to happen but with the political climate right not... Anybody got an ideas, on what we are supposed to do when that happens
    • coldtea 8y ago
      Well, the old ideas still work: revolt or submit.
    • snazz 8y ago
      Start a “counterculture network” of onion-routed hidden services (not necessarily Tor, but something akin). Some element of steganography would likely be required to prevent government-controlled ISPs from simply dropping encrypted traffic, most likely. It would be hard and would likely attract only technically-minded individuals to use.
      • liotier 8y ago
        > It would be hard and would likely attract only technically-minded individuals ... and police forces: a nice feature of leaving a few gaps that motivated users can use is that the police can focus its limited resources on the those interesting targets.
      • mirimir 8y ago
        Better than that, build an anonymity network with both mixing and onion routing, and full padding with chaff. And implement it as drive-by malware, with worm capability. Like WannaCry. It'd be basically a huge botnet. And it would use a covert channel in HD video, which would provide enough bandwidth for text, at least, and maybe images. That way, participation by servers and clients would be plausibly compulsory. Both because it would evade protection, and because sympathetic admins and users could "accidentally" let it install. And that would provide plausible deniability. A plausibly deniable user interface would be the hardest part. It'd probably need to self install, and then securely delete itself after use.
    • snaky 8y ago
      People are very adaptable and will consider all that things new normal. XIX century Americans would consider an income tax in a peacetime grossly inappropriate, creepy and a violation of their dignity after all.
      • gph 8y ago
        And the more or less permanent state of war we find ourselves in could also be considered a new normal we've adapted to that XIX century Americans would find creepy and grossly inappropriate.
        • ameister14 8y ago
          No, the US was at war for essentially the entirety of the 19th century.
          • mirimir 8y ago
            Pretty much, the US has always been at war. I mean, they used to have a War Department, which got renamed Defense Department for PR.
            • walshemj 8y ago
              Not really that's OTT hyperbole
              • vraivroo 8y ago
                Uh, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Wa...
              • ameister14 8y ago
                No, it's pretty accurate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
    • DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
      > Anybody got an ideas, on what we are supposed to do when that happens only few things you can do (in that order depending on how bad it escalates), 0) start to learn about prepping and live a more unplugged live 1) flee and take refuge in a place that others call "backward" 2) take up arms and defend yourself #2 will get you labeled a terrorist (though so was Count Stauffenberg)
      • coding123 8y ago
        Well and more specifically in places like Colorado that would be enough to take away your guns.
        • gowld 8y ago
          ATF is a federal agency. No state is protected against military action against gun holders.
          • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
            Due to a sad trilogy of events at the end of last century (specifically Episode 2: Texas BBQ) the ATF of this century mostly conducts stings and information based enforcement (i.e. nabbing people for buying Glock switches online). Were they to go back to kicking down doors of people who are generally considered normal patriotic Americans they would A) be more likely to get shot back at than any other agency (much easier to justify and mentally prepare yourself to shoot back at career snake steppers than your local PD) and B) have some really, really bad optics to contend with. If you're worried about someone taking your guns be worried about the state police.
            • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
              Edit. I should mention that that "Texas BBQ" happened 26yr ago today. God damn that shit makes my blood boil.
        • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
          Who's gonna take them? Remember that couple in Houston that put the hurt on a swat team. It doesn't take many events like that to really dampen the enthusiasm for kicking down doors (especially when you're doing it to simply confiscate property). The cops are subject to the same risk calculations as any other home invaders.
    • Silhouette 8y ago
      Anybody got an ideas, on what we are supposed to do when that happens Move to the next of the four boxes, though ideally before it happens. We need to advocate for important civil liberties and reasonable limits on the power of the state, but we do also need to then act according to that advocacy ourselves, for example by voting for people who take these issues seriously or funding legal actions to challenge excesses. A lack of public awareness of these issues and the potential implications for normal people's everyday lives is a big part of the problem, and as coldtea suggested above, shifting the Overton window is going to be crucial to improving the situation. It just needs to shift the other way from where a lot of the authoritarians in power today are trying to push it...
    • rifung 8y ago
      This is going to be an unpopular opinion but I'm hoping someone can explain why I'm wrong. I actually would really welcome online activities no longer being anonymous. I feel like a large part of why people on the internet are so terrible to one another is that there's really no accountability because of the anonymity. This is true in many areas including hate speech or posting illegal/inappropriate material. I suppose I don't know if I think it should be LAW that requires everyone be deanonymized, but I do wish people on the internet would treat each other closer to the way they do in real life.
      • AdrianB1 8y ago
        "I'm hoping someone can explain why I'm wrong." The answer is in your own words: " I suppose I don't know if I think it should be LAW". I suppose you are right: you don't know. Many people know for sure that they think this is a bad idea to put in place such a law.
      • reitanqild 8y ago
        > I feel like a large part of why people on the internet are so terrible to one another is that there's really no accountability because of the anonymity. Sounds plausible until you consider that many of the worst comments are written by real people logged in using their real Facebook accounts - ... and some of the best forums online don't demand anything but a username and password like here. IMO real name policies are way less effective than some people want you to think, and they'll effectively prevent certain minorities from participating in online debates.
  • ameister14 8y ago
    Yeah, the US will never adopt a law like that. Anonymity is extremely protected by the Supreme Court, because the founders wrote and distributed pamphlets anonymously in support of the Revolution.
    • coldtea 8y ago
      >Anonymity is extremely protected by the Supreme Court And yet the US has all kinds of surveillance apparatus to de-anonymize internet users...
      • ameister14 8y ago
        Not American internet users, for the most part. Note that those are at least justified by being connected to foreign actors, and that some of those surveillance apparatus are illegal.
      • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        And if that apparatus was used to prosecute US citizens for non-major crimes with any frequency it would come under scrutiny very quickly and you'd have politicians jockeying to legislate it out of existence and take credit. Even if you take the parallel construction angle, no politician except maybe a dinosaur that is super-secure in their position (on the federal level that would be people like Pelosi, Fienstien, etc.) is going to tolerate that because if the other side can prove you knew then you're not going to have a job after the next election. Obviously we need to remain vigilant but there are existing feedback mechanisms that generally prevent wide spread abuse.
        • 50656E6973 8y ago
          Isn't the advantage of parallel construction that it's extremely difficult, often impossible to detect and thus scrutinize?
          • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
            To do parallel construction at scale you'd need to get the information into the hands of law enforcement in a plausibly deniable way. Doing that at scale would either have a predictable pattern (if every agency starts getting "anonymous tips" then questions are going to start getting asked) or would need to involve many people in order to plant the information in a more varied manner. Involving the recipient agencies themselves is not going to happen because two people can only keep a secret if one of them is dead so a cool million is going to be a non-starter.
  • toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    It’s common, but disingenuous to talk about the Overton window as though it was some immutable, one-way thermodynamic process. The truth of course is that it goes both ways, that discussion and dissent do exist. History, American and otherwise, is full of examples of overreach that doesn’t lead to the desired result, but the opposite.
    • GordonS 8y ago
      In theory it works both ways - but once politicians and government agencies gain power, they will not lose them easily.
  • rolph 8y ago
    "This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to foreign platforms that don't require identification." But in the meantime --Your ISP has informed that a foreign social media provider has connected to your account, identify yourself and provide your alias used on said social platform, or [insert consequences here]
• aasasd 8y ago
  Telegram already authenticates by the phone number, which setup was successfully used by Russian forces to hijack accounts of opposition. Amazing how people are completely blind to this gaping misfeature despite infosec experts complaining about it the entire time.
  • wyldfire 8y ago
    > Telegram already authenticates by the phone number, which setup was successfully used by Russian forces to hijack accounts of opposition. While this is bad, IIRC if it has PFS this means that the phone number rerouting cannot be used to recover messages sent before this intercept. And also IIRC this phone number could only be used to trigger re-keying, which is detectable.
    • aasasd 8y ago
      > IIRC this phone number could only be used to trigger re-keying, which is detectable Dunno about currently, but afaik at the time this went down nothing was detectable, you just log into a user's account and read the history since e2e conversations aren't the default. > The default method of authentication that Telegram uses for logins is SMS-based single-factor authentication. All that is needed in order to log into an account and gain access to that user's cloud-based messages is a one-time passcode that is sent via SMS to the user's phone number. These login SMS messages are known to have been intercepted in Iran, Russia and Germany, possibly in coordination with phone companies.
• jpollock 8y ago
  Russia requires foreign owned services to host data about Russian users inside of Russia. That way the data can be retrieved by the government and used to de-anonymize users. [1] Data localisation is an up and coming regulatory thing, and more countries are picking it up. [2] Having a handle doesn't make you anonymous. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/russia-tries-to-force-facebook-and-twitter-to-relocate-servers-to-russia/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/russia-tries-to-... [2] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/india-s-data-localization-efforts-could-do-more-harm-than-good https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/india-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_localization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_localization
  • codedokode 8y ago
    Although this requirement has been in effect for 3 years, foreign services ingore it. For example, recently, Facebook was fined for an amount equivalent to about 50 dollars for not providing information about users' data localization and now has 9 more months to solve this problem [1]. In Facebook's case it is easier to pay the fine than transfer the data into Russia. LinkedIn is blocked under the same law though. Telegram is officially blocked in Russia (for not providing access to users' messages), but it works without any special setup. > That way the data can be retrieved by the government and used to de-anonymize users. That was probably the intention of lawmakers but there is no requirement to keep the data unencrypted. [1] https://www.apnews.com/5db72dfa04e401ffec784c8a18ce9b7a https://www.apnews.com/5db72dfa04e401ffec784c8a18ce9b7a