6 ms·

strange, they choose signal to communicate https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/24/21150918/european-commission-signal-encrypted-messaging https://www.theverge.com/2

• jsiepkes 6y ago
  These things usually boil down to: You must not do as I do, you must do what I tell you to.
  • treis 6y ago
    This is silly. Governments have all sorts of things like machine guns, tanks, and battleships that (rightfully) aren't allowed for the general public.
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > Governments have all sorts of things like machine guns, tanks, and battleships that (rightfully) aren't allowed for the general public. You have listed three things which are all really the same thing. There is no objection to private ownership of motor vehicles or ships. You object to the weaponry. But we can put aside the whole right to bear arms debate in this case because there is an obvious way to distinguish it. Encryption is a purely defensive technology. It is totally illegitimate for a government to prohibit things like armor and electromagnetic shielding, even if some of them do, because these things only defend, they do not attack.
      • treis 6y ago
        Secure communication is not a purely defensive technology. It allows you to safely coordinate an attack.
        • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
          By this logic home ownership is an offensive technology because it allows you to safely coordinate an attack.
          • treis 6y ago
            And indeed it would be. Conversely, if you only used a gun to defend your self it would be a defensive technology. Seems like classifying technology as either offensive or defensive is a fool's errand. Perhaps you should try a different argument.
            • dane-pgp 6y ago
              One could maybe play silly rhetorical games like "It wasn't the gun that killed him, it was the bullet", but to say "It wasn't the gun that killed him, it was the house that the killer lived in while she thought about committing the crime" is beyond ridiculous. I feel quite comfortable classifying encrypted messaging apps in the same category as houses and chain mail, even if the US government has historically disagreed.
            • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
              > And indeed it would be. Only if that logic is sane, which it isn't. There is an difference between doing something directly and indirectly. Anything can do anything given enough indirection. There is no plausible way in which your ordinary use of encryption or body armor could directly harm anybody else. There are some immediately obvious ways that your ordinary use of a howitzer could directly harm somebody else. And the right to defend yourself using indirect offensive measures has no inherent symmetry with the right of government (or lack thereof) to prevent you from defending yourself using direct defensive measures.
              • wizzwizz4 6y ago
                Ransomware uses encryption to harm people.
                • 6y ago
        • wizzwizz4 6y ago
          Being alive allows you to safely coordinate an attack.
    • m4rtink 6y ago
      Sadly, no one actually has any battleships these days, not even the governments... :-(
      • BlueTemplar 6y ago
        Because these days a battleship is mostly a very expensive missile practice target.
        • m4rtink 6y ago
          And there were times countries had lines of battle of these missile targets spanning the horizon - imagine that! :) Somehow these just look so much more elegant than just spamming more bombers and nukes. Maybe because they usually only caused death of the sailors crewing them and other warships in battle rather than city populations like bombers and nukes often do ? (Well, unless you live in Yarmouth or on the River Plate.)
      • jcranmer 6y ago
        We call them "destroyers" nowadays. (The Zumwalt-class destroyer displaces ~15,000 tons, which is too large to be considered a cruiser under the terms of the inter-war naval treaties, and is roughly the displacement of a 1910s-era South Carolina-class battleship).
        • m4rtink 6y ago
          Thats still less than a half of the displacement of Warspite, third of the Iowas, let alone monsters like the Yamato class. And unlike Zumwalt, all of those had working guns. ;-) On a more serious note a modern destroyer could sink any of those with long range missiles long before the batlleship could ever get into a range for a proper gun duel. Not counting modern aircraft with yet more standoof missiles or even the anti/ship ICBMs that are being talked about. Oh well, battleships were an elegant weapon for a more civilized age...
  • romanoderoma 6y ago
    Disclaimer: I've made - very minor - contributions to the 2017 proposal to enforce mandatory E2E encryption (as a technical consultant, I have no political role of any kind) How does that follow? I am as free as anybody else in the EU to use any chat software I want. This is just a proposal and ha no value in itself until it is approved and ratified by the single parliaments in the EU countries. EU is not some tirannic state, or some hegemonic super power where when the president loses the elections they refuse to leave. It's a very complex political institution, that works through official channels. the proposal is public, there will be a discussion, years of debates, they did not hide it under the carpet, it's in the open so that anyone is aware of what it entails and can react by supporting it or opposing to it. Nothing to be scared about. And if the citizen of Europe through their elected members of the EU parliament will approve it, so be it. It's the democratic process at work.
    • intricatedetail 6y ago
      They literally are proposing to kill the freedom to communicate and you say there is nothing to worry about?
      • notreallytrue 6y ago
        Overreacting is equally dangerous, I could argue that if they were really killing the freedom to communicate we should fight them as we would fight an enemy, possibly going to war, armed. That's not what's happening here. It might be useful to remember that our communications have never been encrypted before a few years ago and they haven't been less free. Also: encrypted communication but clear text metadata kinda defeat the purpose of encrypted communication. If I know where, when and who was involved in a call, I can easily tell that two people chatting and ending up in the same place every time both their partners phones are away from home, could be cheating If I call an ambulance at the same time and place where an accident happened but the ambulance doesn't report a second vehicle, guess who probably didn't report an accident? Privacy and secrecy are a broader subject, it's good we discuss about it, it's not good to blindly trust WhatsApp or Facebook with our data. Bad as it might be, I have more control and trust more my state than a private company on the other side of the World.
• Kim_Bruning 6y ago
  So that's a good argument to use when you call your MEP. The EC would be hoisting themselves on their own petard indeed!