20 ms·

The Belgian government has removed ‘backdoor requirement’ from new law

433 points by Sami_Lehtinen 5y ago

1337shadow 5y ago
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Yep, I'm fine with this.
  - 1337shadow 5y ago
    Meanwhile, Belgium has a thriving terrorist community.
    - darkwizard42 5y ago
      You keep making this point across the thread about actual harm being invoked. The tools available to governments today should be sufficient to stop a number of crimes. Yet time and time again we see that increased surveillance doesn't really correlate to the elimination of crime. Why not push this energy into making your government agencies more efficient with what resources they have? The UK has tons of CC TVs in public -- still seems to have a high issue with shoplifting, pickpocketing, and other crime in public places. Doesn't it alarm you to keep giving an inefficient potentially malicious actor more tools it can abuse?
      - 1337shadow 5y ago
        CC TVs are taken down. When a 15 years old dealer does not take it down on his own: https://www.letelegramme.fr/bretagne/a-vannes-le-dealer-de-15-ans-sort-la-disqueuse-et-tronconne-un-mat-de-camera-de-surveillance-26-05-2020-12557362.php https://www.letelegramme.fr/bretagne/a-vannes-le-dealer-de-1... Then it's the mafia taking them all down: https://www.leparisien.fr/seine-et-marne-77/chelles-77500/chelles-les-cameras-toutes-neuves-decoupees-a-la-disqueuse-30-07-2015-4980389.php https://www.leparisien.fr/seine-et-marne-77/chelles-77500/ch... But it's actually pretty common: https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/status/1450086680204038147?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1450086680204038147%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fdesouche.com%2F2021%2F10%2F18%2Foyonnax-01-des-cameras-de-surveillance-detruites-a-la-disqueuse%2F https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/status/145008668020403814... https://www.lyonmag.com/article/118297/bron-ils-scient-le-mat-d-une-camera-de-surveillance-a-l-aide-d-une-disqueuse https://www.lyonmag.com/article/118297/bron-ils-scient-le-ma... https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/dijon-ils-decoupent-a-la-disqueuse-un-poteau-avec-une-camera-de-surveillance-1581428524 https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/dijon-i... But that's fine because they are "defending our privacy" ? Or, do you want to try to make another suggestion ? Meanwhile, criminality is thriving and we are powerless against it. Maybe we should try planting more trees and developing more socio cultural activities ? Anyway, shouldn't you be against CCTVs because "if the state can see them streams then it means a hacker can see them too" ? I mean, I think that's the whole point being made here against this bill.
        blowfish721 5y ago
        The problem with banning encryption or e2e encryption is that it doesn’t solve anything. Criminals/terrorists will move to a chat app/service that offers e2e encryption no matter if it’s legal or not. It just means that the major players such as facebook, microsoft, google, apple etc can’t offer it so the only one left hanging is the law abiding masses.
        1337shadow 5y ago
        But there is never going to be a silver bullet, it's always going to be a cat and mouse chase, does that mean we should quit playing at all?
        inkblotuniverse 5y ago
        There's no 'we' here.
        1337shadow 5y ago
        Maybe that's the problem.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Be wary of whether or not you and the state share the same definition of “criminal” and “victim”.
  - 1337shadow 5y ago
    A democratic state is elected by the majority, as such, the state should share the same definition as the majority. That's the deal we're taking when we decide to live in a democracy: that we will abide by the law of the majority. This doesn't mean we have to agree: it means we have to convince the majority if we want a change. But a state that can't defend the majority because of an open letter signed by a hundred crypto anarchists seems pretty bad to have indeed!
    - vasco 5y ago
      If you wrote "think of the children" it'd have been less characters.
      - 1337shadow 5y ago
        I think this reply was meant for another comment?
    - ttybird2 5y ago
      "A democratic state is elected by the majority, as such, the state should share the same definition as the majority." Despite that * They often don't do what the majority wants or is best for them. * In most european states the government doesn't actually have >50% of the votes. * There are things that are moral that the majority wants to be illegal (such as homosexual relationships until a few years ago). * The retraction of this requirement actually serves the interests of the majority.
      - 1337shadow 5y ago
        > They often don't do what the majority wants or is best for them. "The majority" doesn't want exactly the same things, they agreed on some thing or two that was prioritary and deserved the vote. > * In most european states the government doesn't actually have >50% of the votes. Really? How is that? > There are things that are moral that the majority wants to be illegal (such as homosexual relationships until a few years ago). That is simply not true, the majority just wants that puberty blockers don't be provided to children. Didn't understand your last point sorry (non native)
- champagnois 5y ago
  We see new technologies emerge that make our day jobs easier as they get more and more automated. I understand the desire of people in gov agencies to have more access to backdoors than they currently have, but think for a moment the risks that such powers pose to the public when the government itself turns authoritarian. Unthinkable in our current climate, maybe. To the left and right of you -- at the NSA or FBI -- everyone is a non-partisan patriot who wants a color blind utopia of freedom and democracy. I would argue two points: (1) That an apparratus has already been built that is beyond the wildest dreams of prior authoritarian states. (2) Democracies are historically rare and notoriously short lived. They do not last. With points (1) & (2), we can conclude thus that the powers of such government agencies WILL one day be used by an authoritarian regime. It is a question of when, not if. Let us not build the authoritarian tools so as to not tempt a future would-be tyrant. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance...
  - 1337shadow 5y ago
    I disagree, I only master French democracy, and of that one I can say it is irreversible. As such, I disagree with your conclusion, even more so when it boils down to "let's leave some criminals running around just in case one day our democracy turns into an authoritarian regime like in scifi". I am affected by the damage caused in the present reality, not by hypothetical damage in an highly unlikely reality, as such, I base my political opinion on facts that happen in the present, factual reality.
    - champagnois 5y ago
      I admire your enthusiasm and conviction. I do not doubt that you and your pro-democracy patriotic brothers and sisters at what ever group are probably the right people for the job, currently. In the United States presently, I am concerned about the health of democracy itself. I assume authoritarian forces from abroad (RU / NK / CN / Iran / others) are abusing our open social media networks to radicalize the public. The infection here is to a point where a very small minority of people even understand there is an infection -- most people don't look at problems from this sort of meta perspective, and they instead hail from either side of the divide, and are begging for a one-party takeover of the system. I do not see the 1337 folks doing much to fix this. Going to hack some routers, spoof some DNS, send people firmware viruses, break their servers, collect information? That doesn't fix it. Authoritarian attacks on the American mind are mostly succeeding and this is blatantly evidenced by the radicalism that is becoming so popular in our politics. If it can happen here, it can happen in France. I'm wondering if the only remedy is a government firewall of social media / comment sections / etc to keep conversations limited to real citizens, rather than foreign information warriors. But hey, what do I know?
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  If the "forced companies to decrypt encrypted data upon request" required companies to store all encrypted transmissions and have some way to decrypt it, it's effectively the same thing as banning encryption. It's a forced backdoor. Though, I'm not familiar enough with this law to know if this was the intent.
  - 1337shadow 5y ago
    It's not "all encrypted transmissions" that were at stake here.
    - NineStarPoint 5y ago
      All electronic communication means essentially any words going over the internet. All transmissions would have to be stored in a form where they could be decrypted by someone other than the end users. The law wasn’t saying “You have to be able to flip a switch on a person, and all things they send from that point on must be able to be decrypted”, it was saying “All communication must be able to be decrypted whenever the government asks you for it.” All information being stored in a way that is meant to be decrypted for government use means the encryption is inherently untrustworthy.
      - 1337shadow 5y ago
        The law was maybe saying that, but that doesn't change what I'm saying. Which boils down to "I disagree with the response we have given, we should have been negociating rather than just saying no". Should I go ahead with a disclamer that says which open source encryption products used by governments that I'm involved into? Not sure, my point is: we have their attention, why use it to just say no when we could negociate and make outdoors security a feature in addition too online security.
- nopcode 5y ago
  It is explicitly banning e2e encrypted services or devices.
  - 1337shadow 5y ago
    What makes you think that?
    - nopcode 5y ago
      Because I read the draft. > ... it is prohibited to provide a device or service that hinders the following: ... eavesdropping and recording of non-public communications.
      - 1337shadow 5y ago
        "by the state"! Which can also, have a cryptographic key, not with 123password
        nopcode 5y ago
        Yes, encryption is not banned, but e2e encryption is. e2e encryption with a gov decryption key is not e2e.
        1337shadow 5y ago
        It's still encryption on both ends how do you call it
    - ttybird2 5y ago
      We talked about this already https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29639005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29639005
siwyd 5y ago
Wouldn't a company such as WhatsApp (Facebook) drop the Belgian user base in a heartbeat if they would actually be confronted with a law like this? My guess is they would much rather lose a few million users than having to deal with the bad publicity and the intrusive technical challenges that come with a requirement such as this.
- nopcode 5y ago
  Belgium isn't as small as people think. Both in total GDP and GDP per capita it is around top 20 country globally. Facebook isn't allowed to track non-Facebook users in Belgium. As a response, all Facebook pages are now behind a login wall in Belgium. Lootboxes (random rewards in videogames) are not allowed in Belgium, games no longer provide "random" drops (EA, Valve, ...)
  - siwyd 5y ago
    I totally agree that it's probably worthwhile to implement some country specific logic for a user base of that size and ad revenue per user. But specifically with regards to this, I really can't imagine they would agree to do this. Suppose they do, it's probably not a bad guess that they would lose more users globally due to the bad publicity it would generate than they would lose by cutting off Belgium. On the technical front, your examples are good and valid, but they seem like features that are pretty straight forward to feature flag per country. Something like disabling end-to-end encryption looks a lot more intrusive to me (without being a subject matter, feel free to correct me). Whatever WhatsApp built, they built it to enable end-to-end encryption on a global scale, to enable anyone from around the globe to send an encrypted message around the globe. Poking a hole in that seems non-trivial.
    - nopcode 5y ago
      As a Belgian I guesstimate that WhatsApp has more than 80% of IM market share here. > it's probably not a bad guess that they would lose more users globally due to the bad publicity it would generate than they would lose by cutting off Belgium. But this is what all the tech companies do in China. I don't think its hard to "defend" complying with the Belgian government that faces a terrorist network and drug cartel problem bigger than any other 1st world country (in relative terms). > Poking a hole in that seems non-trivial. They operated without E2E for many years though. I doubt that non-encrypted chat is even revoked. And even if they pulled, there's many alternatives available. It's not like Belgium is worried about Meta's revenue.
nopcode 5y ago
I wish we would just come up with a strong, transparant legal decryption framework already. We moved our lives completely digital before e2e encryption came around, claiming that we cannot go without e2ee is false. The "new law" is actually an update of an existing law and it would've forced "apps" (e.g. WhatsApp) to provide the same kind of text logs on request like the telcos have been doing for call log/SMS/location.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  It took governments a while to catch up, and now they have. In the arms race between privacy and surveillance, E2E is the next shield against the weapon of mass surveillance. Governments have always had warrant requirements, until they decided they didn't need them. If you want my data, get a warrant. The US had it's own top secret database breached.. because they used a discount contractor. I choose to keep my data in higher regard. Bulk SMS/location is also a horrible failure of justice and it harms innocent people so that a few criminals may be caught. This is backwards. It is better that a criminal go unpunished than for a single innocent person to be harmed wrongfully by the government.
  - nopcode 5y ago
    > It is better that a criminal go unpunished than for a single innocent person to be harmed wrongfully by the government. That really depends on the number of criminals and the total harm they cause to our society versus the harm caused by the government. We've been having "liberty versus security" debates for centuries and the balance is always changing.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Tomorrow, we decide to re-instate the death penalty for people who commit murder. Our very well trained seers (who are always right) tell us that this will reduce murder by 90%.. but 1/20 people we execute will be innocent of the crime. Do we take the bargain?
      - 5y ago
qkhhly 5y ago
hmm... reading western news for a while you would think china is the only one that has back doors.
thecopy 5y ago
... for now. I am very pleased to see that the _current_ administration came to their senses and listened to reason. However, this is a fight i am afraid we will always have to fight over and over again unless right to encryption is codified in EU constitution or a similar document.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Even constitutions only offer very limited protection. There was a recent case in Germany where the government simply ignored the ruling of the supreme court (Federal Constitutional Court). And keep in mind that this is the government with leading influence on the EU. I don't know about everywhere else but at least in Europe rule of law isn't as strong as people assume.
  - throw10920 5y ago
    The US constitution also offers limited protection - it's subject to interpretation by judges, and re-interpretation by a growing body of people who think that it "needs to be updated" and "is a living document" and "is not absolute". Your fight for your rights will never end, as evil people will always be elected to office. Just because your officials are not literally Hitler doesn't mean that they won't be trying to infringe upon your rights.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      It’s normal for interpretation to change over time as the society within which we live changes. You’d likely be disappointed by the 18th century interpretation of the first amendment, for example.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      Since you (or realistically anyone) downvoted me rather than engaging, i feel like I should elaborate. Our modern understanding of rights is not wholesale received from the time that the constitution was written. The concept itself has evolved over time into what you cherish now. 200 years ago, the constitutional protections one received were far more limited than they are now.
1337shadow 5y ago
- cr3ative 5y ago
  This can't possibly be a good faith comment.
  - 1337shadow 5y ago
    Because we should all think like you? Not me, I'm dissident from your mainstream ideologies, but have been fighting on your side for ~15 years ;)
  - najqh 5y ago
    I disagree with him, but he makes a solid point, and many people think like him. HN is enough of an echo chamber as it is, don't make it worse.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      The article says: """The main criticism was that it is simply impossible to rule out that a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes. A lowering of the security level would immediately affect all users - and not just those who are the subject of a judicial investigation.""" The comment says: > I'm glad you're keeping safe dealers, pedophiles, and other criminals as well as their lawyers. This does not look like a solid point to me; it looks like rhetoric.
      - 1337shadow 5y ago
        Citing two different passages from the article: > This draft included a passage that would have forced companies such as WhatsApp and Signal to decrypt their encrypted chats upon request by the authorities for criminal investigation. > Belgian intellectuals like Professor Bart Preneel said that "by putting a backdoor into Whatsapp, you would make it less safe for everyone". This does not look like a solid point to me; it looks like rhetoric. Anyway: > a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes. If they can get their hands on a governmental private key, which is unlikely.
sebow 5y ago
Not to downplay this result, after all this was achieved in Belgium, home of Brussels & EU institutions, which probably have great influence over local politics. However it's still sad that we have to celebrate such small victories and we're not fighting towards establishing law that promote positive rights towards protecting privacy both against private and public entities. We're on the back foot here, and the general public is not even aware of this.I used to think this was about technological literacy but i don't think that's the case: most people don't know what's going on, they don't necessarily care how it happens, they just need to know the end "result", which they don't.Another issue is "law language" being hard to swallow, and politicians can always wrap this language as a candy and pretend it's to : protect the children, against terrorism, or some other minuscule reason that won't justify the abuse and also logistically can't be enforced in an online medium.
AdrianB1 5y ago
They fought against a law and changed one article. "They fought" but there were many others in that fight. The article is very poorly worded, I guess they contributed to a change in the law but not repealed the law (like the title suggests) and they were not the major contributor. They need a better writer.
- HanaShiratori 5y ago
  Well tutanota is a small company with around two handful employees afaik, I'd assume their budget for maintaining their blog is very limited. Obviously they use their own media channels to portrait themselves as positive as possible, nothing wrong with that in my eyes. It's not that they were spreading any lies or so
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xchip 5y ago
Thanks!
BlueTemplar 5y ago
Meanwhile there's a high likelihood that there's a backdoor in the Intel processors (and maybe now also AMD ones ?) that was put there by the NSA... and hardy anyone seems to care ? https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/10/27/x86_harmful.html https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/10/27/x86_harmful.html
- themitigating 5y ago
  This seems to be talking about bugs that could be exploited. If there was evidence for a backdoor then it would be global news. You might believe there's a backdoor but unless you can prove it what do you want people to do?
  - generalizations 5y ago
    > bugs that could be exploited That's how you hide a backdoor in open source software.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Those MINIX cores have been a subject of scrutiny for many years, just not by the people who you'd encounter in your day-to-day. There are definitely people who care, but they've basically started waving the white flag at this point. Pretty much every modern CPU (as well as the software running on it) has some degree of government oversight/intervention, trying to circumvent it is a hobbyist effort, and an often unsuccessful one at that.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  Intel's processor's ME does not have a backdoor and the chance there is a remotely exploitable vulnerability is minimal. Hardly anyone cares because it is mostly schizo people who fall for these conspiracy theories.
  - ttybird2 5y ago
    "Intel's processor's ME does not have a backdoor" Can you prove it? It would at least raise confidence if * It was open source. * It could be disabled. * NSA hadn't requested from intel for their own undocumented way to disable ME. "the chance there is a remotely exploitable vulnerability is minimal" https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000025619/software.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000... "Hardly anyone cares because it is mostly schizo people who fall for these conspiracy theories."* I can't appreciate the slur against people with schizophrenia. In addition to that, it feels like you would say the same about NSA spying before the Snowden revelations. Although I do wonder, if there was a backdoor in intel processors for the law enforcement to access, would you support it?

433 points by Sami_Lehtinen 5y ago

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Yep, I'm fine with this.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  Meanwhile, Belgium has a thriving terrorist community.
  - darkwizard42 5y ago
    You keep making this point across the thread about actual harm being invoked. The tools available to governments today should be sufficient to stop a number of crimes. Yet time and time again we see that increased surveillance doesn't really correlate to the elimination of crime. Why not push this energy into making your government agencies more efficient with what resources they have? The UK has tons of CC TVs in public -- still seems to have a high issue with shoplifting, pickpocketing, and other crime in public places. Doesn't it alarm you to keep giving an inefficient potentially malicious actor more tools it can abuse?
    - 1337shadow 5y ago
      CC TVs are taken down. When a 15 years old dealer does not take it down on his own: https://www.letelegramme.fr/bretagne/a-vannes-le-dealer-de-15-ans-sort-la-disqueuse-et-tronconne-un-mat-de-camera-de-surveillance-26-05-2020-12557362.php https://www.letelegramme.fr/bretagne/a-vannes-le-dealer-de-1... Then it's the mafia taking them all down: https://www.leparisien.fr/seine-et-marne-77/chelles-77500/chelles-les-cameras-toutes-neuves-decoupees-a-la-disqueuse-30-07-2015-4980389.php https://www.leparisien.fr/seine-et-marne-77/chelles-77500/ch... But it's actually pretty common: https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/status/1450086680204038147?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1450086680204038147%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fdesouche.com%2F2021%2F10%2F18%2Foyonnax-01-des-cameras-de-surveillance-detruites-a-la-disqueuse%2F https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/status/145008668020403814... https://www.lyonmag.com/article/118297/bron-ils-scient-le-mat-d-une-camera-de-surveillance-a-l-aide-d-une-disqueuse https://www.lyonmag.com/article/118297/bron-ils-scient-le-ma... https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/dijon-ils-decoupent-a-la-disqueuse-un-poteau-avec-une-camera-de-surveillance-1581428524 https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/dijon-i... But that's fine because they are "defending our privacy" ? Or, do you want to try to make another suggestion ? Meanwhile, criminality is thriving and we are powerless against it. Maybe we should try planting more trees and developing more socio cultural activities ? Anyway, shouldn't you be against CCTVs because "if the state can see them streams then it means a hacker can see them too" ? I mean, I think that's the whole point being made here against this bill.
      - blowfish721 5y ago
        The problem with banning encryption or e2e encryption is that it doesn’t solve anything. Criminals/terrorists will move to a chat app/service that offers e2e encryption no matter if it’s legal or not. It just means that the major players such as facebook, microsoft, google, apple etc can’t offer it so the only one left hanging is the law abiding masses.
        1337shadow 5y ago
        But there is never going to be a silver bullet, it's always going to be a cat and mouse chase, does that mean we should quit playing at all?
        inkblotuniverse 5y ago
        There's no 'we' here.
        1337shadow 5y ago
        Maybe that's the problem.
ashtonkem 5y ago
Be wary of whether or not you and the state share the same definition of “criminal” and “victim”.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  A democratic state is elected by the majority, as such, the state should share the same definition as the majority. That's the deal we're taking when we decide to live in a democracy: that we will abide by the law of the majority. This doesn't mean we have to agree: it means we have to convince the majority if we want a change. But a state that can't defend the majority because of an open letter signed by a hundred crypto anarchists seems pretty bad to have indeed!
  - vasco 5y ago
    If you wrote "think of the children" it'd have been less characters.
    - 1337shadow 5y ago
      I think this reply was meant for another comment?
  - ttybird2 5y ago
    "A democratic state is elected by the majority, as such, the state should share the same definition as the majority." Despite that * They often don't do what the majority wants or is best for them. * In most european states the government doesn't actually have >50% of the votes. * There are things that are moral that the majority wants to be illegal (such as homosexual relationships until a few years ago). * The retraction of this requirement actually serves the interests of the majority.
    - 1337shadow 5y ago
      > They often don't do what the majority wants or is best for them. "The majority" doesn't want exactly the same things, they agreed on some thing or two that was prioritary and deserved the vote. > * In most european states the government doesn't actually have >50% of the votes. Really? How is that? > There are things that are moral that the majority wants to be illegal (such as homosexual relationships until a few years ago). That is simply not true, the majority just wants that puberty blockers don't be provided to children. Didn't understand your last point sorry (non native)
champagnois 5y ago
We see new technologies emerge that make our day jobs easier as they get more and more automated. I understand the desire of people in gov agencies to have more access to backdoors than they currently have, but think for a moment the risks that such powers pose to the public when the government itself turns authoritarian. Unthinkable in our current climate, maybe. To the left and right of you -- at the NSA or FBI -- everyone is a non-partisan patriot who wants a color blind utopia of freedom and democracy. I would argue two points: (1) That an apparratus has already been built that is beyond the wildest dreams of prior authoritarian states. (2) Democracies are historically rare and notoriously short lived. They do not last. With points (1) & (2), we can conclude thus that the powers of such government agencies WILL one day be used by an authoritarian regime. It is a question of when, not if. Let us not build the authoritarian tools so as to not tempt a future would-be tyrant. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance...
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  I disagree, I only master French democracy, and of that one I can say it is irreversible. As such, I disagree with your conclusion, even more so when it boils down to "let's leave some criminals running around just in case one day our democracy turns into an authoritarian regime like in scifi". I am affected by the damage caused in the present reality, not by hypothetical damage in an highly unlikely reality, as such, I base my political opinion on facts that happen in the present, factual reality.
  - champagnois 5y ago
    I admire your enthusiasm and conviction. I do not doubt that you and your pro-democracy patriotic brothers and sisters at what ever group are probably the right people for the job, currently. In the United States presently, I am concerned about the health of democracy itself. I assume authoritarian forces from abroad (RU / NK / CN / Iran / others) are abusing our open social media networks to radicalize the public. The infection here is to a point where a very small minority of people even understand there is an infection -- most people don't look at problems from this sort of meta perspective, and they instead hail from either side of the divide, and are begging for a one-party takeover of the system. I do not see the 1337 folks doing much to fix this. Going to hack some routers, spoof some DNS, send people firmware viruses, break their servers, collect information? That doesn't fix it. Authoritarian attacks on the American mind are mostly succeeding and this is blatantly evidenced by the radicalism that is becoming so popular in our politics. If it can happen here, it can happen in France. I'm wondering if the only remedy is a government firewall of social media / comment sections / etc to keep conversations limited to real citizens, rather than foreign information warriors. But hey, what do I know?
xboxnolifes 5y ago
If the "forced companies to decrypt encrypted data upon request" required companies to store all encrypted transmissions and have some way to decrypt it, it's effectively the same thing as banning encryption. It's a forced backdoor. Though, I'm not familiar enough with this law to know if this was the intent.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  It's not "all encrypted transmissions" that were at stake here.
  - NineStarPoint 5y ago
    All electronic communication means essentially any words going over the internet. All transmissions would have to be stored in a form where they could be decrypted by someone other than the end users. The law wasn’t saying “You have to be able to flip a switch on a person, and all things they send from that point on must be able to be decrypted”, it was saying “All communication must be able to be decrypted whenever the government asks you for it.” All information being stored in a way that is meant to be decrypted for government use means the encryption is inherently untrustworthy.
    - 1337shadow 5y ago
      The law was maybe saying that, but that doesn't change what I'm saying. Which boils down to "I disagree with the response we have given, we should have been negociating rather than just saying no". Should I go ahead with a disclamer that says which open source encryption products used by governments that I'm involved into? Not sure, my point is: we have their attention, why use it to just say no when we could negociate and make outdoors security a feature in addition too online security.
nopcode 5y ago
It is explicitly banning e2e encrypted services or devices.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  What makes you think that?
  - nopcode 5y ago
    Because I read the draft. > ... it is prohibited to provide a device or service that hinders the following: ... eavesdropping and recording of non-public communications.
    - 1337shadow 5y ago
      "by the state"! Which can also, have a cryptographic key, not with 123password
      - nopcode 5y ago
        Yes, encryption is not banned, but e2e encryption is. e2e encryption with a gov decryption key is not e2e.
        1337shadow 5y ago
        It's still encryption on both ends how do you call it
  - ttybird2 5y ago
    We talked about this already https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29639005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29639005

Wouldn't a company such as WhatsApp (Facebook) drop the Belgian user base in a heartbeat if they would actually be confronted with a law like this? My guess is they would much rather lose a few million users than having to deal with the bad publicity and the intrusive technical challenges that come with a requirement such as this.

nopcode 5y ago
Belgium isn't as small as people think. Both in total GDP and GDP per capita it is around top 20 country globally. Facebook isn't allowed to track non-Facebook users in Belgium. As a response, all Facebook pages are now behind a login wall in Belgium. Lootboxes (random rewards in videogames) are not allowed in Belgium, games no longer provide "random" drops (EA, Valve, ...)
- siwyd 5y ago
  I totally agree that it's probably worthwhile to implement some country specific logic for a user base of that size and ad revenue per user. But specifically with regards to this, I really can't imagine they would agree to do this. Suppose they do, it's probably not a bad guess that they would lose more users globally due to the bad publicity it would generate than they would lose by cutting off Belgium. On the technical front, your examples are good and valid, but they seem like features that are pretty straight forward to feature flag per country. Something like disabling end-to-end encryption looks a lot more intrusive to me (without being a subject matter, feel free to correct me). Whatever WhatsApp built, they built it to enable end-to-end encryption on a global scale, to enable anyone from around the globe to send an encrypted message around the globe. Poking a hole in that seems non-trivial.
  - nopcode 5y ago
    As a Belgian I guesstimate that WhatsApp has more than 80% of IM market share here. > it's probably not a bad guess that they would lose more users globally due to the bad publicity it would generate than they would lose by cutting off Belgium. But this is what all the tech companies do in China. I don't think its hard to "defend" complying with the Belgian government that faces a terrorist network and drug cartel problem bigger than any other 1st world country (in relative terms). > Poking a hole in that seems non-trivial. They operated without E2E for many years though. I doubt that non-encrypted chat is even revoked. And even if they pulled, there's many alternatives available. It's not like Belgium is worried about Meta's revenue.

nopcode 5y ago

I wish we would just come up with a strong, transparant legal decryption framework already. We moved our lives completely digital before e2e encryption came around, claiming that we cannot go without e2ee is false. The "new law" is actually an update of an existing law and it would've forced "apps" (e.g. WhatsApp) to provide the same kind of text logs on request like the telcos have been doing for call log/SMS/location.

vorpalhex 5y ago
It took governments a while to catch up, and now they have. In the arms race between privacy and surveillance, E2E is the next shield against the weapon of mass surveillance. Governments have always had warrant requirements, until they decided they didn't need them. If you want my data, get a warrant. The US had it's own top secret database breached.. because they used a discount contractor. I choose to keep my data in higher regard. Bulk SMS/location is also a horrible failure of justice and it harms innocent people so that a few criminals may be caught. This is backwards. It is better that a criminal go unpunished than for a single innocent person to be harmed wrongfully by the government.
- nopcode 5y ago
  > It is better that a criminal go unpunished than for a single innocent person to be harmed wrongfully by the government. That really depends on the number of criminals and the total harm they cause to our society versus the harm caused by the government. We've been having "liberty versus security" debates for centuries and the balance is always changing.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Tomorrow, we decide to re-instate the death penalty for people who commit murder. Our very well trained seers (who are always right) tell us that this will reduce murder by 90%.. but 1/20 people we execute will be innocent of the crime. Do we take the bargain?
    - 5y ago

qkhhly 5y ago

hmm... reading western news for a while you would think china is the only one that has back doors.

thecopy 5y ago

... for now. I am very pleased to see that the _current_ administration came to their senses and listened to reason. However, this is a fight i am afraid we will always have to fight over and over again unless right to encryption is codified in EU constitution or a similar document.

trompetenaccoun 5y ago
Even constitutions only offer very limited protection. There was a recent case in Germany where the government simply ignored the ruling of the supreme court (Federal Constitutional Court). And keep in mind that this is the government with leading influence on the EU. I don't know about everywhere else but at least in Europe rule of law isn't as strong as people assume.
- throw10920 5y ago
  The US constitution also offers limited protection - it's subject to interpretation by judges, and re-interpretation by a growing body of people who think that it "needs to be updated" and "is a living document" and "is not absolute". Your fight for your rights will never end, as evil people will always be elected to office. Just because your officials are not literally Hitler doesn't mean that they won't be trying to infringe upon your rights.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    It’s normal for interpretation to change over time as the society within which we live changes. You’d likely be disappointed by the 18th century interpretation of the first amendment, for example.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    Since you (or realistically anyone) downvoted me rather than engaging, i feel like I should elaborate. Our modern understanding of rights is not wholesale received from the time that the constitution was written. The concept itself has evolved over time into what you cherish now. 200 years ago, the constitutional protections one received were far more limited than they are now.

1337shadow 5y ago

cr3ative 5y ago
This can't possibly be a good faith comment.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  Because we should all think like you? Not me, I'm dissident from your mainstream ideologies, but have been fighting on your side for ~15 years ;)
- najqh 5y ago
  I disagree with him, but he makes a solid point, and many people think like him. HN is enough of an echo chamber as it is, don't make it worse.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    The article says: """The main criticism was that it is simply impossible to rule out that a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes. A lowering of the security level would immediately affect all users - and not just those who are the subject of a judicial investigation.""" The comment says: > I'm glad you're keeping safe dealers, pedophiles, and other criminals as well as their lawyers. This does not look like a solid point to me; it looks like rhetoric.
    - 1337shadow 5y ago
      Citing two different passages from the article: > This draft included a passage that would have forced companies such as WhatsApp and Signal to decrypt their encrypted chats upon request by the authorities for criminal investigation. > Belgian intellectuals like Professor Bart Preneel said that "by putting a backdoor into Whatsapp, you would make it less safe for everyone". This does not look like a solid point to me; it looks like rhetoric. Anyway: > a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes. If they can get their hands on a governmental private key, which is unlikely.

sebow 5y ago

Not to downplay this result, after all this was achieved in Belgium, home of Brussels & EU institutions, which probably have great influence over local politics. However it's still sad that we have to celebrate such small victories and we're not fighting towards establishing law that promote positive rights towards protecting privacy both against private and public entities. We're on the back foot here, and the general public is not even aware of this.I used to think this was about technological literacy but i don't think that's the case: most people don't know what's going on, they don't necessarily care how it happens, they just need to know the end "result", which they don't.Another issue is "law language" being hard to swallow, and politicians can always wrap this language as a candy and pretend it's to : protect the children, against terrorism, or some other minuscule reason that won't justify the abuse and also logistically can't be enforced in an online medium.

AdrianB1 5y ago

They fought against a law and changed one article. "They fought" but there were many others in that fight. The article is very poorly worded, I guess they contributed to a change in the law but not repealed the law (like the title suggests) and they were not the major contributor. They need a better writer.

HanaShiratori 5y ago
Well tutanota is a small company with around two handful employees afaik, I'd assume their budget for maintaining their blog is very limited. Obviously they use their own media channels to portrait themselves as positive as possible, nothing wrong with that in my eyes. It's not that they were spreading any lies or so
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

xchip 5y ago

Thanks!

BlueTemplar 5y ago

Meanwhile there's a high likelihood that there's a backdoor in the Intel processors (and maybe now also AMD ones ?) that was put there by the NSA... and hardy anyone seems to care ? https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/10/27/x86_harmful.html https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/10/27/x86_harmful.html

themitigating 5y ago
This seems to be talking about bugs that could be exploited. If there was evidence for a backdoor then it would be global news. You might believe there's a backdoor but unless you can prove it what do you want people to do?
- generalizations 5y ago
  > bugs that could be exploited That's how you hide a backdoor in open source software.
smoldesu 5y ago
Those MINIX cores have been a subject of scrutiny for many years, just not by the people who you'd encounter in your day-to-day. There are definitely people who care, but they've basically started waving the white flag at this point. Pretty much every modern CPU (as well as the software running on it) has some degree of government oversight/intervention, trying to circumvent it is a hobbyist effort, and an often unsuccessful one at that.
charcircuit 5y ago
Intel's processor's ME does not have a backdoor and the chance there is a remotely exploitable vulnerability is minimal. Hardly anyone cares because it is mostly schizo people who fall for these conspiracy theories.
- ttybird2 5y ago
  "Intel's processor's ME does not have a backdoor" Can you prove it? It would at least raise confidence if * It was open source. * It could be disabled. * NSA hadn't requested from intel for their own undocumented way to disable ME. "the chance there is a remotely exploitable vulnerability is minimal" https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000025619/software.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000... "Hardly anyone cares because it is mostly schizo people who fall for these conspiracy theories."* I can't appreciate the slur against people with schizophrenia. In addition to that, it feels like you would say the same about NSA spying before the Snowden revelations. Although I do wonder, if there was a backdoor in intel processors for the law enforcement to access, would you support it?