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IT companies warn in open letter: EU wants to ban encryption
- smoldesu 6y ago"Banning encryption" is such a dumb premise. If I lived in some future, hellish Europe, I'd simply mail USB drives with GPG keys on them to the people I love. Costs $15 if you buy the drives in bulk. After that, chat away using PGP encrypted messages. Good luck, EU.
- geek_at 6y agothe problem is not that you won't be able to use encryption (software), it's that if the police suspect you of anything and you have encrypted data that you're not willing to unlock you'll be punished by full extend of the law. But I think that could lead to better encryption software with plausible deniability like Veracrypt has
- intricatedetail 6y agoThis already is a law in the UK. It is 5 years for not disclosing password.
- beckman466 6y agowow that is scary.
- atat7024 6y ago"Politics doesn't affect me" is unfortunately not true these days.
- oarsinsync 6y agoWhere “these days” is “the last two decades”, as far as RIPA goes.
- luxuryballs 6y agodang so that means 5 years for forgetting your password too
- CameronNemo 6y agoCut to LE carrying around encrypted thumb drives to plant as evidence.
- colejohnson66 6y agoDoesn’t even need to be encrypted; It could just be random data. Sufficient encryption is indistinguishable from random noise.
- fastball 6y agoDamn thank god for the 1st amendment.
- gerdesj 6y agoThe Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents It's a bit of a beast.
- Tenoke 6y ago>But I think that could lead to better encryption software with plausible deniability like Veracrypt has That works for encrypted drives and whatnot but it doesn't look especially applicable for any real-time communication.
- SCHiM 6y agoExcept it is. IS used facebook for a lot of their communication. Imagine a code like: "Ten camels drink from the water at $some oasis". Meaning: "Attack $city at 10 AM tomorrow" Or "Meet at $place at 10 tomorrow". This has been documented extensively. All was perfectly legible by whoever can read conversations on facebook, but the meaning is lost.
- Tenoke 6y agoOkay, yes sure but it does seem limiting.
- akira2501 6y ago> it's that if the police suspect you of anything and you have encrypted data So, back to steganography, then?
- mullingitover 6y agoOne time pads are pretty great. Unbreakable with brute force attacks, indistinguishable from random numbers so you have plausible deniability about whether you're actually storing encrypted data.
- candiodari 6y agoAre they unbreakable by the technique actually used by the average EU country though ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law Generally it goes like this 1) you get a notice either from a judge or the police to provide unspecified assistance with an investigation (you are not told even 5 minutes in advance WHAT assistance, and there is a default gag order: if you inform a customer or ... that you handed over their info, you go to jail) 2) if you refuse to do something they charge you with a crime, not providing encryption keys is such a crime 3) look like EU "average" sentence is 2 to 5 years prison, plus 50k euros One time pads are obviously encrypted, meaning if you see one you know they're a key to something, so if you refuse to decrypt what is encrypted with them (or can't, let's not pretend these people know or care about what is and isn't possible beyond obvious cases like whatsapp), and a police officer cares, you may very well have a choice: decode or face 2 years prison. JUST for not giving a police officer full access, for example, to your phone, nothing else.
- mullingitover 6y ago> One time pads are obviously encrypted Not obviously - you could have a 1GB blob of encrypted data, or a 1GB blob of random numbers, so there is plausible deniability. You're right that they're vulnerable to a rubber hose attack, but it's not a slam dunk case in court.
- 6y ago
- nness 6y agoIt seems more than a few countries already treat refusing to reveal your password or keys as contempt of the court or a breach in its own right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law
- Jenk 6y agoIt's not that. You can already be charged with obstruction of justice in many countries if you refuse to provide keys for encrypted drives. This is about prohibiting encrypted messaging in the first place. WhatsApp et al will be denied market access, app/play store entries for all encrypted chat apps will be removed or have versions shipped without encryption etc. The average HNer won't be that affected but the general public will. Access to encryption will be greatly reduced and most people won't even care or notice.
- upofadown 6y agoJust use an email server outside the EU that will not respond to EU warrants. Almost all email transfers are protected by TLS these days. So the authorities won't know you are using encryption in the first place. If they suspect you of something they would have to come to you to get your IMAP password to check if your email is encrypted. PGP is, as before, a technical counterargument to this sort of oppression. Perhaps the powers that be need to be again reminded of its existence. After all, the proposal is to backdoor all encryption software. That is simply impossible.
- mnd999 6y agoIf they make it illegal they can just kick down your front door, arrest you and take your computer and your encryption keys.
- StreamBright 6y agoFirst off PGP is not a great security tool, second of all the EU can just stop the GPG encrypted messages at the service provider level. The ultimate solution against government stupidity like this is a full mesh based “internet” that is based on connections between homes without using an ISP. It is not going to happen for obvious reasons (90% of population is non-technical for starting).
- turnerc 6y ago> service provider level I think the parent comment was going to mail such drives, and good luck getting the EU to agree on blocking anything on their independent providers level.
- Tenoke 6y agoThey've been pretty good at banning things at the provider level. Sites in the UK seemingly get banned by everyone as soon as the government requests it. Similar in Germany, and they go out of their way to analyze most or enough torrent data going through I believe all ISPs to detect what you pirate. Doing the same for detecting encryption doesn't seem farfetched.
- turnerc 6y ago> Sites in the UK seemingly get banned by everyone as soon as the government requests it I live in the UK this is not correct, these are voluntary agreements by ISP's and you can opt out of the default filtering. I think the only time something has been blocked here it was due to a Court Order: https://www.virginmedia.com/help/list-of-court-orders https://www.virginmedia.com/help/list-of-court-orders
- Tenoke 6y agoI mean that's still a fair amount of sites. I recognize and have used plenty of those.
- prepend 6y ago
- dharmab 6y agoA classic: https://xkcd.com/538 https://xkcd.com/538 Replace the drugs with a warrant and the wrench with the threat of criminal punishment and expense of lawyer and court fees.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- st_goliath 6y agoThis kind of response saddens me every time I get it. Every time governments start scaring people about pedo-terrorists behind every corner and start demanding censorship/mass surveillance/back doors, the standard response from fellow people in tech fields seems to be "this doesn't concern me, I will just do $CIRCUMVENTION". It utterly misses the point. The issue here isn't a technical one. If a law is proposed that you can see as morally, ethically flawed and outright dangerous to society, the response definitely shouldn't be to laugh it off and pretend it doesn't concern you.
- yoz-y 6y agoWhat are they going to do anyways? Jail everyone? Ban the browser? Encryption can be developed on top of any communication protocol anyways.
- roywiggins 6y agoRequire backdoors in apps available in the Apple and Google App stores. That will steer loads of people away from using e2ee encryption.
- ajmadesc 6y agoWhat are they gonna do, round up ALL the Jews. C'mon it's 1932, nothing like that could happen in less than 10 years!
- pradn 6y agoIt's ironic how the very expertise that makes us technologists able to solve these problem for laypeople, can blind us to the issues that come with having this technical world-view. We shouldn't expect computing to be at the top of people's minds, because they often, rightly, have more dear things to worry about.
- brokenmachine 6y ago>If a law is proposed that you can see as morally, ethically flawed and outright dangerous to society, the response definitely shouldn't be to laugh it off and pretend it doesn't concern you. Especially when we are the experts who are best equipped to argue against it.
- estaseuropano 6y agoThat future is not going to happen. Read the underlying documents and this lobby article just misrepresents what is in the actual legal/policy documents
- nix23 6y agoFeather-net for the win, no need for mail company. Just buy some pigeons...and train them: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/pigeonbased-feathernet-still-wingsdown-fastest-way-of-transferring-lots-of-data https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/pigeo...
- brokenmachine 6y agoUsing PGP is illegal now. Checkmate.
- gaius_baltar 6y agoRemember: every time a government cites child pornography or terrorism as the reason ban cryptography or otherwise limit human rights, they are just using an excuse.
- CameronNemo 6y agoIt's like banning assault rifles to prevent mobsters from getting hold of them. Except in this case the good being banned is just some well known and distributed, cheap to copy, easy to build, easy to use software.
- Jenk 6y ago> It's like banning assault rifles to prevent mobsters from getting hold of them. Obvious bait is obvious but whatever, I'm in... Is it the same, though? Is it really? On one side we have literal implements of death responsible for countless accidental and/or illegal deaths, and the other we have some encryption software.
- CameronNemo 6y agoNever said same! Just has some resemblances. As well as major hilarious contrasts (hence why I chose the subject, instead of cats and cat lovers). I don't think a gun and cryptography should have the same treatment.
- robcohen 6y agoCountless doesn’t seem totally accurate. Last I checked the FBI census a few years back showed 318 deaths over a year due to long guns in the United States. That includes shotgun, rifle, and scary “assault” weapons. Handguns on the other hand kill 100x-200x the same amount of people. Seems like if gun control proponents wanted to reduce harm, they’d focus on handguns first.
- Jenk 6y ago318 > 0. So yeah.. ban all guns then.
- agilob 6y ago>In the fight against child pornography Can't we simply ban cameras?
- booleandilemma 6y agoBan child making itself, I say!
- ngngngng 6y agoBring back the Shaking Quakers
- doomroot 6y agoThis always stops people in their tracks.
- bob1029 6y agoOr children if we are being really serious about the whole problem.
- dekerta 6y agoAs crazy as that would be, it's actually a much better solution. Heck, it would even be better if they wanted to ban all images on the internet. But of course, banning encryption isn't actually about protecting children
- anthk 6y agoEuropean here. It wont happen.
- vages 6y agoI’ve thought about this since last year, and I can’t understand how this proposal has been able to survive this long. First of all, the EU is very pro-business, which means it should be pro-encryption. Second, the structures of its governing bodies does not make it very prone to populism. Based on what I know from this Kurzgesagt video: https://youtu.be/h4Uu5eyN6VU https://youtu.be/h4Uu5eyN6VU Is this all some hidden plot to turn the EU into a totalitarian state? I’m (half) joking, but I really can’t see the motivation.
- Hiopl 6y agoI don't understand how it's in any way feasible. Do none of these people own laptops with sensitive business or political information? How do they think they're going to protect any of it without strong encryption? Or all the sensitive data on their phones or other mobile devices? How do you secure anything ever against espionage without strong encryption? Have these people not put any thought into this?
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoI imagine exceptions will be built into the laws exempting certain government agencies and businesses or types of business.
- SOMA_BOFH 6y agoThey don't think the rules will apply to them.
- AnssiH 6y agoAFAICS no one is trying to literally ban encryption, the headline seems very exaggerated to me. Looking at some of the EU documents linked, I don't see any real intention to ban E2E encrypted communications - at most the documents are saying that child abusers using E2EE is a problem, or explaining various technical possibilities to try to catch them (with or without breaking E2EE). I'll be concerned when there is an actual proposal mandating backdoors or banning encryption.
- spullara 6y ago
- 1123456789 6y agoEverybody prepare your wireshark to get the CC details for FREE. God bless "smart" PPL
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoEvery time Russian government introduced new measures to restrict freedom of internet users, they have launched a campaign explaining that it is necessary to protect the children!!! Don't you want to protect the children, you monsters??!!!
- always_left 6y agoI know we don't like when people cite child pornography as a reason, but child pornography is a real issue. It is spread via any and every kind of social media. Kids are groomed into sending their photos online. Enforcing encryption will make it harder to detect these kinds of distribution. What is the answer?
- o_p 6y agoDont let your kid videochat on the internet? Maybe?
- jedberg 6y agoBetter programs for kids to learn what grooming is. Better training for teachers and other people who work with kids a lot to see the signs of abuse. Better enforcement of child pornography laws. More money for investigating child pornography and trafficking. But not banning encryption. Encryption is a tiny piece of the child pornography puzzle and will have little effect whether it exists or not.
- prepend 6y agoSmarter kids to prevent grooming and sending pics (btw, in most states this turns kids into child porn producers a more serious crime than child porn viewer). To stop the adults abusing kids it’s hard like any other crime.
- o_p 6y ago
- ant6n 6y agoSo how will online banking work with encryption?
- 1123456789 6y agoYou won't need. Everything will be 123 hackable
- bscanlan 6y ago> Under the EU Internet Forum, the Commission has launched an expert process with industry to map and preliminarily assess, by the end of 2020, possible technical solutions to detect and report child sexual abuse in end-to-end encrypted electronic communications, and to address regulatory and operational challenges and opportunities in the fight against these crimes. It is a spectacular overreaction to equate this to "EU wants to ban encryption". This will never happen.
- vages 6y agoIf you search for the word “encrypt” in this document, you’ll see that they are against Facebook end-to-end encrypting messenger: https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/default/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-security/20200724_com-2020-607-commission-communication_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/default/files/what-w... I don’t think this is an overreaction.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hvdijk 6y agoThe bit about Facebook's planned end-to-end encryption ends with: > One of the specific initiatives under the EU Internet Forum in 2020 is the creation of a technical expert process to map and assess possible solutions which could allow companies to detect and report child sexual abuse in end-to-end encrypted electronic communications, in full respect of fundamental rights and without creating new vulnerabilities criminals could exploit. Technical experts from academia, industry, public authorities and civil society organisations will examine possible solutions focused on the device, the server and the encryption protocol that could ensure the privacy and security of electronic communications and the protection of children from sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. I read this as "Okay, fine, we can't ban end-to-end encryption and we cannot backdoor it. What can we do?" If that is what they mean, it seems a reasonable enough question to ask.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
- o_p 6y agoLets ban children
- africanboy 6y agoWhy this old news-not-news reappear every few months? > Is Europe about to ban E2E Encryption? > No. https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/whats-all-this-about-europe-wanting-crypto-backdoors/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/whats...
- Tylerian 6y agoC'mon... as if banning cryptographic messagery services would end criminals from encrypting their messages and sending the payload in plain text like they were doing since internet's inception
- sebyx07 6y agoBan HTTPS, just must be joking. Or ban books or our minds from reimplementing it? Descentralization must happen before this
- jmull 6y ago> But in the fight against child pornography, domestic politicians and legislators have identified [end-to-end encryption] as the core problem and would prefer to ban it. There's no logic to this. These people already access banned child pornography. They aren't going to hesitate to use encryption to do so, banned or not. The encryption tech already exists and is widely and freely available and a ban doesn't change that. A ban could keep good encryption out of popular, high-profile platforms. But these people are already seeking out the dirty, dark corners of the web, and I'm sure will have less trouble adjusting to this than almost anyone else. My random guess is they will be communicating and sharing images via encrypted blockchains that are ostensibly (or even mainly) for something else, or some such.
- prepend 6y agoI view it differently in that even if breaking encryption allows for the arrest and wiping out of all child pornography, the damage to the non-porners is too great to warrant. Similar to how a jury trial requires unanimous agreement among 12. This leads to some true criminals not being convicted, but it provides the benefit of many more innocents not being wrongfully convicted. I think the “criminals will break the law anyway” is a dead end as it bypasses the moral decision that society needs to make of whether privacy is worth some tiny percent of evil doing. One day we’ll have the ability to have mental implants that block bad things. Similarly, we’ll need to decide whether that is worth implementing if it means bad trade offs. The argument isn’t that criminals will skip the implants, I think the important argument is whether putting implants in all the non-criminals is worth the effort.
- estaseuropano 6y agoThere's no logic in it as the article misstates the acural legislation and intention. Read the linked documents and its pretty obvious (I left a longer comment below).
- jmull 6y agoFrom your linked document: > The Commission announced that it will propose the necessary legislation to tackle child sexual abuse online effectively including by requiring relevant online services providers to detect known child sexual abuse material and oblige them to report that material to public authorities by the second quarter of 2021. The announced legislation will be intended to replace this Regulation, by putting in place mandatory measures to detect and report child sexual abuse, in order to bring more clarity and certainty to the work of both law enforcement and relevant actors in the private sector to tackle online abuse, while ensuring respect of the fundamental rights of the users, including in particular the right to freedom of expression and opinion, protection of personal data and privacy, and providing for mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency. If the measures to detect certain kinds of content are "required" and "mandatory", that rules out end-to-end encryption. Sure, they promise to use their powers to snoop only for good. Perhaps this commission means it, too. Just not sure why it would only be used for good, though. I see multiple posts in this thread that seem to have the same generous reading of this that you have. But I don't see where that is coming from. They seem to be clearly calling for regulations that will not for allow end-to-end encryption.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- o_p 6y agoThis violates my human right to send random garbage messgages to my friends
- lenkite 6y agoWhat on earth is it with modern governments wanting to control every aspect of citizen lives ? Why can't they just leave stuff well alone. I think first world politicians and bureaucrats (and second world too now) have far too much copious amounts of free time in the Internet era. This is always the problem with Big Govt.
- estaseuropano 6y agoA bit disappointed about the blind commenting here. I have just read the Commission Communication (pdf linked at the top of the article) and can't find anything on prohibiting encryption. They write a few times about how increasing default encryption will make law enforcement more difficult but the only action proposed on encryption is: > One of the specific initiatives under the EU Internet Forum in 2020 is the creation of a technical expert process to map and assess possible solutions which could allow companies to detect and report child sexual abuse in end-to-end encrypted electronic communications, in full respect of fundamental rights and without creating new vulnerabilities criminals could exploit. Technical experts from academia, industry, public authorities and civil society organisations will examine possible solutions focused on the device, the server and the encryption protocol that could ensure the privacy and security of electronic communications and the protection of children from sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. So they want to see what can be done without breaking encryption, I guess this could be e.g. hash checks or things like that. The rest of the Communication is about prevention, victim support and rehabilitation, so really about pedophilia/child abuse, not encryption as a main issue. There is also a 3-layer-deep link[1] to a proposed new regulation (=eu-wide law) which puts an obligation on providers to detect and report or delete child abuse materials. No mention of encryption and its just four articles if you scroll down to the end, so look for yourself if that sounds problematic. The intro page [2] says it actually just provides a legal base for providers to scan data as another regulation that already allowed this is running out. I have no specific expertise on the matter but assuming that that does not seem problematic? The issue seems to be that police/ courts/NGOs/... basically have no chance to police as thesr networks are inaccessible and extremely complex to pursue anything. Seems obvious that the onus must be on the providers to do their duty - we all know what a cesspit the internet can be. If Telegram doesn't delete CP (or say beheading videos, calls for lynching, rape videos, ...) then who could possibly do it? So the legislation here is intended to give providers the legal right to check content. What's the alternative? Should the internet simply be lawless? 1. https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=69213 https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=69213 2. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/fighting-child-sexual-abuse-commission-proposes-interim-legislation-enable-communications https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/fighting-...
- fossuser 6y agoAfter reading the source material, this HN post sounds like political spin bullshit that's arguing in bad faith - but it would take more time than I have right now to figure out the truth. Edit: Here's the actual regulation in question: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/interim-regulation-processing-personal-and-other-data-purpose-combatting-child-sexual-abuse https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/interim-reg... I haven't read it yet - but I'd guess my comment below that I made without reading it is probably not understanding what it actually proposes. Edit2: Skimming it - it's not even clear to me it's about encryption at all? But about allowing creating laws around getting companies to participate in blocking child abuse imagery (that many are already doing voluntarily)? Am I missing something? I don't see anything about requiring unencrypted communications of these companies. It sounds like it's even just allowing certain practices that may have already been in place prior to some other EU privacy law? --- Child abuse imagery is a real problem and though I'm sympathetic to the difficulty fighting it, encryption ban is not the right tradeoff. FB has actually implemented something good here, basically encrypted communication but users can report imagery (so a user can choose to send an encrypted log of a chat to FB for review). I have a friend at whatsapp and a lot of work goes into shutting down groups sharing child abuse imagery and clever ways to detect them even though they're encrypted (sometimes you don't even need to be that clever really). See this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-... It's possible to see this as an enormous societal problem that deserves attention, and think that an encryption ban is still a bad idea for all the reasons technical people think it is. Like most things, the policy argument here is nuanced. Just because banning encryption is the wrong thing to do does not mean that the child abuse imagery concern is false or misplaced. I think the argument in favor of encryption becomes stronger when conceding the severity of the child abuse imagery issue. Dismissing it out of hand is simplistic.
- mxscho 6y agoIn times where one of the biggest messaging application providers is able to leak hundreds of millions of personal records, I'd rather don't want governments to make laws to expand that risk to all of my private conversations as well.
- oh-4-fucks-sake 6y agoPlease forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the scope of the proposal, but without a modifier "Ban E2E Encryption" would mean: * Any party who is the exclusive holder of the private key of an asymmetric key (and uses it) is basically in violation of the proposed law(s)? * So, literally, someone who uses an SSH-only server (given all data-in-transit is also encrypted) is in violation of the laws (given they aren't willing to provide the private key when asked)? * No more end-to-end encrypted communication with your attorney or physician? * A student project that implements a one-time-pad is illegal now too? * What about encryption that is e2e for all intents and purposes, but is briefly decrypted, then re-encrypted on a zero-log private (proxy) server as one of its hops in the round-trip? * Does this mean quantum encryption is completely banned now? * By that measure, quantum internet is completely illegal, no? * What about the fact this means governments will have to go through hoops to get a special blessing to use it--meaning they'll use it less often in practice (humans)--meaning more of their confidential data will be snooped. How about the fact that traffic that looks like e2e is probably now gov. traffic--making all of that traffic a more identifiable target? I'm obviously preaching to the choir here...the problems abound--would love to hear more y'all hypotheticals that illustrate how garbage this is.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AnssiH 6y agoThere is no real proposal to ban encryption - the title is hyperbole. They are looking for possible solutions to reduce child abuse with the industry, not proposing anything. It could still be they'll arrive at some problematic proposal later on, but from my reading of the linked documents straight-out breaking/banning E2E encryption is not really on the table.
- oh-4-fucks-sake 6y agoAh, got it, thanks.
- game_the0ry 6y agoI have some dumb questions - how do you ban encryption? How do you ban open source tools that implement encryption? Do you fine and jail people who have the code on their devices? How do you implement the policy of banning certain types of code? How about SSH? Are corporations and banks included in the ban? I don't think you can. Its like banning bitcoin - you can't unless you ban the internet altogether. Western lawmakers really don't understand tech or the second order consequences of their actions. Do they think they get to keep encryption for "national security" for themselves while the citizens don't? Hello, do you realize the signal protocol is open source? My prediction - EU and US lawmakers die of old age before writing even one definitive line of policy that would regulate encryption. Or regulation fails completely, like how the EU tried to regulate data collection via GDPR but we got annoying pop ups instead. And btw, criminals use tor, not i-message. SMH.
- Threeve303 6y agoTaken to an extreme, banning encryption is like criminalizing math.
- Quarrelsome 6y ago> Western lawmakers really don't understand tech or the second order consequences of their actions our political systems blow in terms of getting people that know this stuff to legislate on it. Closest we've had to the US throne was Yang (?) and I've heard him talk and I don't think he's fam.
- kawsper 6y agoYou don't ban the tools, but you hold up dissidents that refuse to hand over their keys in prison as contempt of court, that is what happens in the UK at the moment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...
- game_the0ry 6y agoThat is interesting, I did not know that.
- prof-dr-ir 6y agothe main claim of the letter reads: "the European Union plans to abolish the digital privacy of correspondence." to which I can only say: [citation needed] In fact, as far as I know there is only a discussion piece circulating with perhaps some debatable wording, but there is no proposed legislation whatsoever to justify this claim. (Feel free to correct me, authors of the letter or others.) I would think that meaningful contributions to any discussion do not begin with outrageous claims.
- jeffbee 6y agoWhat the EU actually proposes to do is self-contradictory. It's like appointing a panel of physicists to study creation of a perpetual motion machine. If there are any actual experts appointed, they've vote to disband the panel immediately. """Under the EU Internet Forum, the Commission has launched an expert process with industry to map and preliminarily assess, by the end of 2020, possible technical solutions to detect and report child sexual abuse in end-to-end encrypted electronic communications, and to address regulatory and operational challenges and opportunities in the fight against these crimes."""
- dmje 6y agoCan someone explain to me exactly how the EU plans to ban encryption? Like, what's the mechanism to stop an EU citizen hosting their (whatever) in a country that does support E2E? Or how, practically, you stop anyone from using X service which provides strong encryption on their computer or servers at home? I'm naive about such matters but from where I'm standing I can't see how this is even vaguely enforceable?
- IanCal 6y ago> Can someone explain to me exactly how the EU plans to ban encryption? They aren't, that's the simple answer.
- tines 6y agoIf this ever happened/happens anywhere, a great pastime would be to start sending streams of random data to people across the internet. Since random data is indistinguishable (theoretically) from encrypted data, I'm sure you'd waste a lot of the regulators' time. You'd almost force them to ban anything that _looks like_ random data, or give up on enforcing the ban on cryptography altogether.
- dane-pgp 6y agoSurely you'd need the recipient to actually save the random data (unless you think that regulators are going to be breaking every TLS connection and checking the contents of every packet). I think people already make efforts to avoid being swamped with unwanted data, so anti-spam and anti-DDOS systems would probably block you and delete your streams without any human noticing.
- notwedtm 6y agoEvery time I see this I realize just how little people realize what makes the world run around them. Do they not realize that their worlds would cease to function without encryption?
- eointierney 6y agoGood luck with that EU, it's dead on arrival. The day a politician tells a mathematician what to think is the day a mathematician instructs a politician on how to think. Real criminals have good opsec, it's part of the job. Non-criminals want provable privacy and security. Deluded and ignorant politicians want a PR stunt with good optics. If I, as a relatively mathematical individual, employ mathematical methods of communication there is literally nothing any government can do about it. I can even obfuscate. Judge in court tells me what for? I tell judge in court what for. Contempt of court? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. Qualms? Zero. I've no dependants. Fallout of jailing someone for defending their privacy? All the way up to revolution. Jailing 80% of a population because they know how to use a one-time-pad, or a free, libre, and open source solution such as Matrix? Sure. Let me know how that works out. Telephone/email/registered post your representatives today if an EU citizen. Tell them to study http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon... Otherwise ignore this pathetic grandstanding by vacuous vainglorious amadáns.
- silasdavis 6y agoThere is a longstanding thread of political thought in the UK about banning encryption https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-encryption-whatsapp-amber-rudd https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-encryption-whatsapp-amber...
- someonehere 6y agoThey’ll find ways around these like mailing each other material. I honestly always see these overreaches as those in power want to stay ahead of money making news/tips they can take advantage of for their portfolios. Or even better, know what their enemies are talking about in regards to them. Even if it’s voters who don’t like them.
- mjgs 6y agoI think there is too much focus on child molestation. When this happens it’s terrible and should of course be stopped. But I think the bigger problem, which is arguably worse because it can last so much longer, is child exploitation. Is it easier for an exploited child to escape the exploitation in a world with encryption, or a world without encryption? It’s not an easy question to answer.
- hda2 6y agoI'm worried that this would be used to combat things other than child abuse. A system they're after will likely be easily extendable to detect and report anything the authorities decide is wrong. And of course, it's almost certainly going to be an opaque blob that users can't truly understand, despite any assurances given to the contrary.
- Jiocus 6y agoIf you are an EU resident, you can lookup representatives of your country at "Members of the European Parliament[1]". Send them an email, give them your thoughts, or just bookmark their MEP profile, for now, if it seems too daunting. This advice applies to both anti and pro-encryption voices (and unrelated political topics even). Also, If the topic applies to your industry and profession (probably a few here on HN) - maybe you have the insights, resources or industry reputation required to find solutions to the stated dilemma of (i)security/privacy vs (ii)child safety/law enforcement e.g. [2]. [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home [2] https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Crimes-against-children https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Crimes-against-children
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