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Do they want everyone to switch en masse to end-to-end encrypted communications? Because this is how you encourage that.
by jude- 5y ago
Do they want everyone to switch en masse to end-to-end encrypted communications? Because this is how you encourage that.
- vnchr 5y agoSeems like the same legal body that made these laws would outlaw that activity.
- SllX 5y agoYeah, but how sustainable is the EU really, in the long term? I’m still convinced it will either dissolve or devolve into a rump organization within my lifetime.
- thatguy0900 5y agoWell, I'm assuming that's one of the things that total pervasive surveillance and control of communication is meant to address.
- SllX 5y agoSeems like acting with that intent with this power is an easy way to accelerate the EU’s own dissolution. The Warsaw Pact, the Cold War, the Iron Curtain across Europe and the Berlin Wall, as well as the communist surveillance States that still-living Europeans lived within and remember well enough was not that long ago.
- thatguy0900 5y agoThey probably make the argument to themselves that none of those people had anywhere near the amount of data they will have. I guess it remains to be seen how long an intelligence agency can hold a country together when they have access to a large portion of every private conversation between citizens.
- rich_sasha 5y agoEU gets a lot of stick but deep below, the boring stuff keeps it together. Brexit showed just the enormous depth of high quality glue keeping all remaining countries together. So I don’t think the EU will be collapsing any time soon, certainly not for rational reasons.
- SllX 5y agoYeah, but how much of that boring stuff requires the full matter of what the EU has become? That’s why I could see a rump sticking around or getting folded into some other institutions, if full dissolution never quite happens.
- rich_sasha 5y agoAgain, Brexit shows, imho, that you can’t have the boring stuff without the tight integration. There are no duties because taxes are harmonised. There are no import/export controls because norms are identical pan-EU. The UK wanted to drop the tight integration and acceptance of common goals, but keep all the tax and trade benefits. But the logical hurdles turned out to be insurmountable. Want to sell fish tax-free? Well let us fish in your waters. Want to sell frictionless to our markets? Accept our standards. So what should the common ground be for digital services? Initiatives like this, good or bad, represent the EU’s drive to combat big issues facing the world, and again need to be tackled for the EU to remain relevant; it can’t just stick to subsidising farming, that is so 1950s. I spoke once to a senior economist (can’t remember the name sadly) who made a good point: EU is often compared to national governments, and looks sluggish by comparison. But the real comparisons would be to other enormous bureaucracies: US federal government, China, UN etc. And when you make this comparison, it is in fact quite favourable for the EU. Basically, scaling is hard, and the EU is not bad at it.
- krona 5y ago> Basically, scaling is hard, and the EU is not bad at it. It's not scaling economically though, is it?
- sneak 5y agoI don't think that's true. Most people use Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp; privacy isn't really a selling point for the majority of people. "I've nothing to hide" is the common response.
- graeme 5y agoWhatsapp is end to end encrypted.
- BelenusMordred 5y agoThe metadata hosted on Facebook's servers is worth more than the actual content.
- cvwright 5y agoPeople keep repeating this trope about metadata being worth more than content. Where does this come from? I can understand that metadata is valuable -- of course it is. You can learn a lot from metadata. But more valuable than the actual content? Give me a break. Something can be bad without being literally the worst thing ever. Pointless exaggeration like this does nothing for the cause of privacy.
- Scandiravian 5y agoI think it's important to consider scale when discussing metadata vs raw content Getting high precision is difficult when done on "all content", especially considering the multitude of languages and dialects in Europe. At a certain point, more data does not result in better output, sometimes it's actually detrimental The patterns that arise from metadata are much more generalisable and there's less of it, so it's easier to search through
- novok 5y agoMetadata interesting lets you hone in on what you want to inspect full content on. It's definitely an upgrade
- sergimansilla 5y agoIt mentions in the article that even apps like Signal would have to install backdoors that they can use.
- swiley 5y agoCrypto is just about worthless without personal computing.
- netr0ute 5y agoThat can't happen with open-source, whether it's "free" or not.
- jtmarmon 5y agoit can if you don't compile the source yourself, a la the app store
- 7373737373 5y agoThat's not how this works in practice
- BitwiseFool 5y agoWhile true, an adversarial government can pass new laws to restrict access or installation of software it deems dangerous. Politicians, uh, find a way.
- netr0ute 5y agoIn the US, forcibly including certain code in your program would be a 1st amendment violation.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI can envision all sorts of workarounds to this constitutional issue. And, Congress does this sort of thing all the time.
- 5y ago
- tick_tock_tick 5y agoYou think Europe will allow end-to-end for much longer?
- Dah00n 5y agoYes. Saying otherwise is hyperbolic. The European Commission uses and recommends Signal themselves. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/signal-messaging-service https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observato...
- agilob 5y agoIn recent months they also promised to strengthen law and access to privacy and anonymity, make it a human right. Talk is cheap.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago> ...has already announced a follow-up regulation to make chat control mandatory for all email and messaging providers. Previously secure end-to-end encrypted messenger services such as Whatsapp or Signal would be forced to install a backdoor. It's easy to recommend "end-to-end" when you're about to force a backdoor into it.
- Dah00n 5y ago>It's easy to recommend "end-to-end" when you're about to force a backdoor into it. I'm not surprised that HN readers think politicians are all so dumb that they recommend their own staff use Signal and then recommend to break Signal. This kind of news pop up all the time and in almost all instances it turns out it isn't what is actually happening. Discussing it on HN -especially when it is the EU, Russia or China- is a complete waste of time as almost every single comment is low effort or trolling. We all know that the EU won't have backdoored Signal any more today than the next ten times this gets discussed on HN. It's all smoke and mirrors.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
- teawrecks 5y agoIf I hand something in plaintext to another private party, I already assumed they are legally within their rights to read it. It's on me to encrypt if I don't want it read.
- dekrg 5y agoMore end to end encryption use only means more laws banning encryption faster. Or do you really think that when for example DoH gains wider adoption all the countries using DNS based blocking will go "Oh well guess the techies got us".
- yarg 5y agoGood luck with that - the genie's out of the bottle. End to end encryption is vital to the operations of modern businesses, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
- coding123 5y agoYou'd be surprised then how fast things bend and eventually break under government rule.
- throwawayboise 5y agoAgreed. Most people, when confronted with the choice of jail vs. doing what they are told, will do what they are told.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoThis works best if the individuals or companies doing this have a meaningful presence in your country and/or consider it a sufficiently relevant market. If they don't, your critical infrastructure (Internet) just stops working until you conform to the standards set by those who write the software.
- ben_w 5y agoSure, and then the governments are forced to tell the intelligence agencies they can no longer afford all the we-told-you-so consequential successful hacks that happened because of the back doors they demanded. And the competent criminals will still be able to roll their own encrypted communications from existing open source libraries.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
- beders 5y agoDoesn't help if you don't control the ends of the end-to-end part. We don't control iOS nor Android on most devices. In general this holds: There's no privacy on the internet.
- fsflover 5y agoIf you care about it, switch to Librem 5 or Pinephone.
- rrix2 5y agoNeither of these can access the financial services provided by my bank nor the infrastructure provided by my city
- Cosmin_C 5y agoThis is worrying. I always thought about this since I have long-standing user experience with privacy-related stuffs and the more you block, the less you can use. But being unable to access financial services or city infrastructure provided by your city makes me think that either these services are terrible or the privacy phones are breaking something. Case in which I am most curious to find out what exactly are they breaking and how are those things both essential and privacy related? - I'm unsure if my sentence makes sense, English is not my first language.
- silon42 5y agoRemoval of KEYGEN feature from Firefox and other browsers was a major mistake in this regard. My bank(s) used password+client certificate, but now they have switched to proprietary mobile OTP apps. (also due to some directives). For some stuff, SMS codes are used. Also, I've seen CA's simply deliver the .P12/.PFX file now instead of securely generating the key on the client and then signing it.
- fsflover 5y agoSeems like your government supports the duopoly, which you should fight against.
- trainsplanes 5y agoThe vast majority of people do not care. Politicians will say this is to stop pedophiles, and if you speak up against surveillance, you’re labeled as a pedophile and ignored. Plus, let’s be real, end to end encryption doesn’t exist if you’re using any sort of pre-built app. It’s encrypted-looking to most people, but the people who matter always get back door access.
- pydry 5y agoDon't care or don't perceive the threat clearly?
- ben_w 5y agoI’ve seen both when trying to advocate against the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act.
- feanaro 5y ago> Plus, let’s be real, end to end encryption doesn’t exist if you’re using any sort of pre-built app. It’s encrypted-looking to most people, but the people who matter always get back door access. Why do you think this is the case? I know for a fact (with a reasonably high level of confidence) this is not so.
- zackees 5y agoProtonmail is already compromised. You’ll have to send coded messages with manual encryption if you want something secret.
- dahfizz 5y agoIsn't the EU fighting against encryption as well?
- latexr 5y agoFrom the article: > The European Commission has already announced a follow-up regulation to make chat control mandatory for all email and messaging providers. Previously secure end-to-end encrypted messenger services such as Whatsapp or Signal would be forced to install a backdoor.