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The commission does not seek to break encryption Okay. Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/cri

The commission does not seek to break encryption Okay. Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals No. It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption is actually there to protect us from you! The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html

medv 4y ago
Well. Nothing is just white or black.
- mayoi 4y ago
  That's right, everything is gray and black instead.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Some of it is a weird shade of red.
7373737373 4y ago
They are traitors against the spirit of the constitution. Article 10 of the Basic Law: (1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  Well there is also (2) Restriction to this are only permitted if required by law. Which is used to force postal operators to report and investigate suspicious letters that might contain drugs.
  - djbebs 4y ago
    Yeah I always laugh at those clauses that totally override all that came before
ho_schi 4y ago
Before I miss it. Here are the "good guys" at work (paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... We can see "AI" at work. And even if a human checks it you are doomed, because you don't fit in the business plan. Therefore never upload private data on a strangers computer. The cloud is by definition a strangers computer! It is nice that you can find your lost phone with their website but you shall not store any private data on the computer of someone else. If you want keep data in sync across multiple devices multiple providers providers and tools allow for that: * https://syncthing.net/ (recommend: everyone) * https://git-scm.com/ (recommend: it-professionals) * https://mailbox.org (recommend: everyone, including mail, calendar, contacts, notes) * https://posteo.de/ (see above) * https://nextcloud.com (recommend: hobby and it-professionals) The situation changes somewhat if you pay with money for service instead with data. Now you are the customer and not the people working with your data. Shared-Hosting usually comes with readily usable E-Mail and other stuff, sometimes with automatic setup of nextcloud or similiar. Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"?
- mayoi 4y ago
  > Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"? Buy a refurbished server rack and mount it anywhere in US, install and configure email software with everything else that you need. > The situation changes somewhat if you pay with money for service instead with data Yeah, now company is profiting not only from your data, but from your bank account aswell, that's the difference.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    > > Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"? > Buy a refurbished server rack and mount it anywhere in US Not anywhere. You won't get very far trying to host an email server on a residential Internet connection.
    - 4y ago
capableweb 4y ago
I'm for E2E encryption wherever it's applicable, and for individuals having the ability to be fully anonymous online, but it's not useful to claim it doesn't have drawbacks as well. Yes, it's true that it might it harder to arrest criminals because of encryption, but the alternative that nothing can be 100% private is so much worse.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  It was hard to arrest criminals before digital communication as well, I’m sure we’ll deal.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    But each improvement in communications tech (landlines, mobile phones, internet) have enabled new, faster, easier, better communication methods. Medieval criminals would have to physically meet to coordinate a coach robbery; nowadays a terrorist attack can be coordinated fully remotely and anonymously. There is no point in denying the facts - that encryption and the ease of use of the Internet enable criminals to coordinate more easily. Sweeping it under the rug won't change it, and it will be a part in the reasoning for limiting encryption. It should be fought with numbers and the gravity and the tradeoffs, not "people used to be able to communicate with pidgeons so there is no issue here".
    - nix23 4y ago
      Encrytion was used since forever and birds as a fast transportation too. Nothing changed. And btw if i where a terrorist i would use birds to communicate. What do we learn? Criminals will always find a way, instantly.
    - tetris11 4y ago
      Can't the authorities do what they've always done since time immemorial: monitor these activities from afar (without needing to know specifically what was said), and plant people in these organizations. Compromising everyone's security to target a few seems backwards.
mrtksn 4y ago
Well, encryption is in fact used by offensive military forces too so it definitely can be a part of the "bad guys" arsenal but I don't think this is the real motivation behind the push for breaking encryption. It's not just EU but UK, USA, China and every single entity that collects intelligence for their goals. They all would love to have encryption braked in their favor because we created vast communication networks with enormous data stored that can be reached at instant but they can't reach those due to encryption. Consider that you are in charge of defending your community against straight out criminals and foreign influence or actors who have other goals than you do. How amazing would be for you to be able to check out each and every citizen or each and every device relevant to you at click of a button, right? It's the ultimate society debugger, you will be able to do your job so much more easily. The problem with that is, we as a society, don't have a definitive good or bad or truth or allies or enemies and we constantly change our minds on all these things and this is not a bug but a feature. Let's say some kind of anomaly happens and the encryption is removed and government officials have total access and none of them are corrupt and they do their jobs perfectly. Instantly you removed progress in the society and everything will stay the way it is, good luck if you are on the wrong side of things because the only way anything changes from now on will be possible only through discussion from within the community of those who happened to be in control when the encryption no longer worked. I don't want this to happen because I don't live in country where the mainstream policies are aligned with my ideas on how the world should work. What about criminals you say? Well, catch them through police work and other means - it doesn't have to be completely effortless for you to do your job.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgsQNNYurWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgsQNNYurWo Demolition Man called this. How did the police catch criminals before bio-engineered trackers were attached to every citizen? "We worked for a living, this fascist crap makes me want to puke".
hn_throwaway_69 4y ago
>No. Assume for sake of argument that it were possible to develop an encryption regime which protected bona fide users, but did not protect criminals. That would be a good thing. As a matter of public policy, criminals shouldn't be given the right to communicate for the sake of furthering criminal activity without the possibility of lawful interception. It's here that some technologists lose sight of the real world. In the real world, society expects that authorities be able to fight crime using proportionate means. The real issue is that you can't separate the two from each other - weakening encryption for criminals means weakening it for everyone.
- etherael 4y ago
  You sure you want to deprive anybody who has ever been allocated the tag "criminal" the right to private communications? You might want to think long and hard about the members of that class, and what fate they are subject to when they are laid bound at the feet of their prosecutors in the state, who were also the party responsible for defining who they are, sometimes for no offense more complex or voluntary than being born. And then if that still doesn't dissuade you, you want to think again even from a position of pure self interest, because you are very likely technically a criminal yourself. (https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279295536&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...) Be very, very careful about handing power to the state, there's a reason they're the largest cause of non natural death in the past century, and it's not their innate benevolence.
- nix23 4y ago
  Exellent idea. We make a socialscore-system and just people above a certain score can buy stuff with working encrytion.
- megous 4y ago
  There is a possibility of lawful interception at the endpoints of the end-to-end encryption. Does it mean the problem is solved?
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  > Assume for sake of argument that it were possible to develop an encryption regime which protected bona fide users, but did not protect criminals. That would be a good thing. [...] The real issue is that you can't separate the two from each other - weakening encryption for criminals means weakening it for everyone. Even if such a hypothetical encryption scheme was not intrinsically weaker, it still requires two very strong assumptions: 1. Not a single individual with legal access to the interception system will ever abuse it for their own purposes, or in exchange for a significant bribe or under the threat of blackmail from a powerful and wealthy malignant actor. 2. A future government (democratically elected or not) will never decide that currently legal behaviour is now a crime which warrants interception—say possession of drugs for personal use, "deviant" sex, unpatriotic discourse, etc.
pelasaco 4y ago
> The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way. > https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html Weren't we Germans calling out Poland, because they decided that national law can take precedence over EU law? So I guess our GG < EU Law.
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  That's different, you got to understand. /s
  - pelasaco 4y ago
    The kids must be protected /s
- rndgermandude 4y ago
  No
  - pelasaco 4y ago
    Yes https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-germany-say-poland-must-abide-by-eu-rules-2021-10-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-germany-say-pola...
fnord123 4y ago
>The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way. Well, now we can counter "Think of the children" with "Think of the Ukrainians"
rjzzleep 4y ago
- leodriesch 4y ago
  > It specifically prohibits discrimination and welcomes people from other nations, both of which the average German does not actually like That’s an absolutely wild claim and I’d like to know where you got this impression from.
  - jeofken 4y ago
    Have you ever seen a poll of a European country where people wanted more immigration (from the 3rd world)?
    - mercy_dude 4y ago
      I am as sympathetic to the Germans who dont want racial diversity and as anti globalist as it gets. But here is the counter argument. Europe (if you don’t take the Slavs and the albenians into account) has a negative birth rate. There is no way to sustain current standard of living without immigration. The politicians in Bundestag who control the EU knows that. And if there is one thing that they are afraid of is to encounter the shortage of labour and have to increase wages that comes from that. As the crisis from Covid has shown us. I think the root cause of the decline of the national and cultural identity of Europe is not because of immigration but because of a local population that has mostly no interest in family formation.
      - davidro80 4y ago
      - FpUser 4y ago
        >"but because of a local population that has mostly no interest in family formation" I am in Canada so do not know what the trends are in Europe but I can clearly see that having kids here is quickly becoming a financial burden many people can not afford. Part of it because people want higher living standard while the other is our fucking politicians creating such conditions.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way repetita iuvant: secrecy is not privacy. encryption makes conversation private but not totally secret, WhatsApp knows if I write to the person named "dentist" on my address book only when the phone number connected to "wife" is out of town. Or if I dial the number of a tow truck service at 4 am after my phone has been for hours inside a club and my CC was used to pay for half a dozen alcoholic drinks. that's more than enough to imply what everyone is implying by reading this. no need to know the content. on that matter cheating was easier and safer before encryption was a common thing, nobody actually listened to our calls, and we did not leave around clues strong enough to rebuild our entire life in exchange for a messaging platform. Secondly, that article clearly states, as any other deliberation of the EU, that the law can override the right to secrecy and that's what happens all the time: the authorities ask the permission to a judge that can grant it or deny it. It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  > It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot. It's absolutely hilarious that you believe America is the only country that does this.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > It's absolutely hilarious that you believe America is the only country that does this. where did I say it's the only one? But would you deny that its the one spending more on it and with the most advanced technologies to do it? I don't know many other "free" countries that spied the political leaders of allied Nations.
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      Every country spies on their nominal allies. That part is not unusual or unexpected and has a long historical tradition. You can find story after story on this. “Allies” are only allies for reasons of national interest, not because they are genuinely friends, whatever that would mean between countries. Of course, there’s still outrage when they get caught. Here, for example, is Germany being outraged that the US spied on them. [1] And here’s Germany spying on France [2]. But they all know it’s going on. And here’s a good quote from French intelligence: > “If Hollande was genuinely shocked by these allegations, that would mean he wasn’t aware that this kind of thing is normal,” he said. “But of course he is aware. Hollande has to satisfy the feelings of the general public by expressing some indignation, but the truth is all countries spy on their friends and the only limitation is the means at their disposal. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-spying-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-... [2] https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-hollande-merkel-no-surprise https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-h...
ben_w 4y ago
> > Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals > No. Without going into whatever context the original quote has: doch — encryption does both. There is no technology so pure it only helps the "good guys", from fire to firearms[0] there are things we can't possibly survive without, and yet criminals can use them for crimes. I don't know the best way to handle this with crypto, mainly because the problem is much deeper than the crypto itself: even if absolutely everyone without exception or equivocation agrees everyone gets unbreakable cryptography, it is getting ever easier to just spy directly — laser microphones on drones, using software to repurpose a WiFi antenna as a wall-penetrating radar, IR cameras, using AI for gaze detection and 3D scene reconstruction to figure out who (or what) you were looking at when you blushed — that's all coming to a blackmailer near you. (Caveat: fake images and potentially at some point 3D bioprinted fake bodies will make the evidence invalid in courts of law, but that's a whole different discussion). The only thing I can even think to suggest is a radical liberalisation of almost every law and punishment such that we can as a society survive when everyone's crimes, misdemeanours, and administrative infractions/regulatory offences are cataloged and dealt with in real time. The only thing I am sure of is that the future can't look anything like the examples from history — while it might be much better or much worse, it won't be even close to the same. [0] I don't mean in the American 2nd amendment sense though, I mean an army with no firearms will loose to one that has them.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >Without going into whatever context the original quote has: doch — encryption does both. There is no technology so pure it only helps the "good guys", from fire to firearms[0] there are things we can't possibly survive without, and yet criminals can use them for crimes. So? Cars also help the bad guys escape from robberies faster, but we don't seem to ban those... Not to mention knives... those can be deadly if somebody stubs you with one. And what about clothes? Naked criminals would be much less effective... The thing is anything can assist criminals. Why single out encryption (besides the government wanting to snoop at will)?
  - ccvannorman 4y ago
PurpleRamen 4y ago
Pretty hard joke to point at the German constitution, after it displayed it hard failing in the last years. Protection from bad state-actors is necessary, but not for the price to also expose the citizens to non-state bad actors. Protecting the citizens is also a state's job, and somewhere they need to find balance between the different protections.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

medv 4y ago

Well. Nothing is just white or black.

mayoi 4y ago
That's right, everything is gray and black instead.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Some of it is a weird shade of red.

7373737373 4y ago

They are traitors against the spirit of the constitution. Article 10 of the Basic Law: (1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable.

pantalaimon 4y ago
Well there is also (2) Restriction to this are only permitted if required by law. Which is used to force postal operators to report and investigate suspicious letters that might contain drugs.
- djbebs 4y ago
  Yeah I always laugh at those clauses that totally override all that came before

ho_schi 4y ago

Before I miss it. Here are the "good guys" at work (paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... We can see "AI" at work. And even if a human checks it you are doomed, because you don't fit in the business plan. Therefore never upload private data on a strangers computer. The cloud is by definition a strangers computer! It is nice that you can find your lost phone with their website but you shall not store any private data on the computer of someone else. If you want keep data in sync across multiple devices multiple providers providers and tools allow for that: * https://syncthing.net/ (recommend: everyone) * https://git-scm.com/ (recommend: it-professionals) * https://mailbox.org (recommend: everyone, including mail, calendar, contacts, notes) * https://posteo.de/ (see above) * https://nextcloud.com (recommend: hobby and it-professionals) The situation changes somewhat if you pay with money for service instead with data. Now you are the customer and not the people working with your data. Shared-Hosting usually comes with readily usable E-Mail and other stuff, sometimes with automatic setup of nextcloud or similiar. Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"?

mayoi 4y ago
> Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"? Buy a refurbished server rack and mount it anywhere in US, install and configure email software with everything else that you need. > The situation changes somewhat if you pay with money for service instead with data Yeah, now company is profiting not only from your data, but from your bank account aswell, that's the difference.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  > > Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"? > Buy a refurbished server rack and mount it anywhere in US Not anywhere. You won't get very far trying to host an email server on a residential Internet connection.
  - 4y ago

capableweb 4y ago

I'm for E2E encryption wherever it's applicable, and for individuals having the ability to be fully anonymous online, but it's not useful to claim it doesn't have drawbacks as well. Yes, it's true that it might it harder to arrest criminals because of encryption, but the alternative that nothing can be 100% private is so much worse.

Aeolun 4y ago
It was hard to arrest criminals before digital communication as well, I’m sure we’ll deal.
- sofixa 4y ago
  But each improvement in communications tech (landlines, mobile phones, internet) have enabled new, faster, easier, better communication methods. Medieval criminals would have to physically meet to coordinate a coach robbery; nowadays a terrorist attack can be coordinated fully remotely and anonymously. There is no point in denying the facts - that encryption and the ease of use of the Internet enable criminals to coordinate more easily. Sweeping it under the rug won't change it, and it will be a part in the reasoning for limiting encryption. It should be fought with numbers and the gravity and the tradeoffs, not "people used to be able to communicate with pidgeons so there is no issue here".
  - nix23 4y ago
    Encrytion was used since forever and birds as a fast transportation too. Nothing changed. And btw if i where a terrorist i would use birds to communicate. What do we learn? Criminals will always find a way, instantly.
  - tetris11 4y ago
    Can't the authorities do what they've always done since time immemorial: monitor these activities from afar (without needing to know specifically what was said), and plant people in these organizations. Compromising everyone's security to target a few seems backwards.

mrtksn 4y ago

Well, encryption is in fact used by offensive military forces too so it definitely can be a part of the "bad guys" arsenal but I don't think this is the real motivation behind the push for breaking encryption. It's not just EU but UK, USA, China and every single entity that collects intelligence for their goals. They all would love to have encryption braked in their favor because we created vast communication networks with enormous data stored that can be reached at instant but they can't reach those due to encryption. Consider that you are in charge of defending your community against straight out criminals and foreign influence or actors who have other goals than you do. How amazing would be for you to be able to check out each and every citizen or each and every device relevant to you at click of a button, right? It's the ultimate society debugger, you will be able to do your job so much more easily. The problem with that is, we as a society, don't have a definitive good or bad or truth or allies or enemies and we constantly change our minds on all these things and this is not a bug but a feature. Let's say some kind of anomaly happens and the encryption is removed and government officials have total access and none of them are corrupt and they do their jobs perfectly. Instantly you removed progress in the society and everything will stay the way it is, good luck if you are on the wrong side of things because the only way anything changes from now on will be possible only through discussion from within the community of those who happened to be in control when the encryption no longer worked. I don't want this to happen because I don't live in country where the mainstream policies are aligned with my ideas on how the world should work. What about criminals you say? Well, catch them through police work and other means - it doesn't have to be completely effortless for you to do your job.

HeckFeck 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgsQNNYurWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgsQNNYurWo Demolition Man called this. How did the police catch criminals before bio-engineered trackers were attached to every citizen? "We worked for a living, this fascist crap makes me want to puke".

hn_throwaway_69 4y ago

>No. Assume for sake of argument that it were possible to develop an encryption regime which protected bona fide users, but did not protect criminals. That would be a good thing. As a matter of public policy, criminals shouldn't be given the right to communicate for the sake of furthering criminal activity without the possibility of lawful interception. It's here that some technologists lose sight of the real world. In the real world, society expects that authorities be able to fight crime using proportionate means. The real issue is that you can't separate the two from each other - weakening encryption for criminals means weakening it for everyone.

etherael 4y ago
You sure you want to deprive anybody who has ever been allocated the tag "criminal" the right to private communications? You might want to think long and hard about the members of that class, and what fate they are subject to when they are laid bound at the feet of their prosecutors in the state, who were also the party responsible for defining who they are, sometimes for no offense more complex or voluntary than being born. And then if that still doesn't dissuade you, you want to think again even from a position of pure self interest, because you are very likely technically a criminal yourself. (https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279295536&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...) Be very, very careful about handing power to the state, there's a reason they're the largest cause of non natural death in the past century, and it's not their innate benevolence.
nix23 4y ago
Exellent idea. We make a socialscore-system and just people above a certain score can buy stuff with working encrytion.
megous 4y ago
There is a possibility of lawful interception at the endpoints of the end-to-end encryption. Does it mean the problem is solved?
Mordisquitos 4y ago
> Assume for sake of argument that it were possible to develop an encryption regime which protected bona fide users, but did not protect criminals. That would be a good thing. [...] The real issue is that you can't separate the two from each other - weakening encryption for criminals means weakening it for everyone. Even if such a hypothetical encryption scheme was not intrinsically weaker, it still requires two very strong assumptions: 1. Not a single individual with legal access to the interception system will ever abuse it for their own purposes, or in exchange for a significant bribe or under the threat of blackmail from a powerful and wealthy malignant actor. 2. A future government (democratically elected or not) will never decide that currently legal behaviour is now a crime which warrants interception—say possession of drugs for personal use, "deviant" sex, unpatriotic discourse, etc.

pelasaco 4y ago

> The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way. > https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html Weren't we Germans calling out Poland, because they decided that national law can take precedence over EU law? So I guess our GG < EU Law.

Joker_vD 4y ago
That's different, you got to understand. /s
- pelasaco 4y ago
  The kids must be protected /s
rndgermandude 4y ago
No
- pelasaco 4y ago
  Yes https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-germany-say-poland-must-abide-by-eu-rules-2021-10-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-germany-say-pola...

fnord123 4y ago

>The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way. Well, now we can counter "Think of the children" with "Think of the Ukrainians"

rjzzleep 4y ago

leodriesch 4y ago
> It specifically prohibits discrimination and welcomes people from other nations, both of which the average German does not actually like That’s an absolutely wild claim and I’d like to know where you got this impression from.
- jeofken 4y ago
  Have you ever seen a poll of a European country where people wanted more immigration (from the 3rd world)?
  - mercy_dude 4y ago
    I am as sympathetic to the Germans who dont want racial diversity and as anti globalist as it gets. But here is the counter argument. Europe (if you don’t take the Slavs and the albenians into account) has a negative birth rate. There is no way to sustain current standard of living without immigration. The politicians in Bundestag who control the EU knows that. And if there is one thing that they are afraid of is to encounter the shortage of labour and have to increase wages that comes from that. As the crisis from Covid has shown us. I think the root cause of the decline of the national and cultural identity of Europe is not because of immigration but because of a local population that has mostly no interest in family formation.
    - davidro80 4y ago
    - FpUser 4y ago
      >"but because of a local population that has mostly no interest in family formation" I am in Canada so do not know what the trends are in Europe but I can clearly see that having kids here is quickly becoming a financial burden many people can not afford. Part of it because people want higher living standard while the other is our fucking politicians creating such conditions.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way repetita iuvant: secrecy is not privacy. encryption makes conversation private but not totally secret, WhatsApp knows if I write to the person named "dentist" on my address book only when the phone number connected to "wife" is out of town. Or if I dial the number of a tow truck service at 4 am after my phone has been for hours inside a club and my CC was used to pay for half a dozen alcoholic drinks. that's more than enough to imply what everyone is implying by reading this. no need to know the content. on that matter cheating was easier and safer before encryption was a common thing, nobody actually listened to our calls, and we did not leave around clues strong enough to rebuild our entire life in exchange for a messaging platform. Secondly, that article clearly states, as any other deliberation of the EU, that the law can override the right to secrecy and that's what happens all the time: the authorities ask the permission to a judge that can grant it or deny it. It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot.

jaywalk 4y ago
> It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot. It's absolutely hilarious that you believe America is the only country that does this.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > It's absolutely hilarious that you believe America is the only country that does this. where did I say it's the only one? But would you deny that its the one spending more on it and with the most advanced technologies to do it? I don't know many other "free" countries that spied the political leaders of allied Nations.
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    Every country spies on their nominal allies. That part is not unusual or unexpected and has a long historical tradition. You can find story after story on this. “Allies” are only allies for reasons of national interest, not because they are genuinely friends, whatever that would mean between countries. Of course, there’s still outrage when they get caught. Here, for example, is Germany being outraged that the US spied on them. [1] And here’s Germany spying on France [2]. But they all know it’s going on. And here’s a good quote from French intelligence: > “If Hollande was genuinely shocked by these allegations, that would mean he wasn’t aware that this kind of thing is normal,” he said. “But of course he is aware. Hollande has to satisfy the feelings of the general public by expressing some indignation, but the truth is all countries spy on their friends and the only limitation is the means at their disposal. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-spying-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-... [2] https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-hollande-merkel-no-surprise https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-h...

ben_w 4y ago

> > Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals > No. Without going into whatever context the original quote has: doch — encryption does both. There is no technology so pure it only helps the "good guys", from fire to firearms[0] there are things we can't possibly survive without, and yet criminals can use them for crimes. I don't know the best way to handle this with crypto, mainly because the problem is much deeper than the crypto itself: even if absolutely everyone without exception or equivocation agrees everyone gets unbreakable cryptography, it is getting ever easier to just spy directly — laser microphones on drones, using software to repurpose a WiFi antenna as a wall-penetrating radar, IR cameras, using AI for gaze detection and 3D scene reconstruction to figure out who (or what) you were looking at when you blushed — that's all coming to a blackmailer near you. (Caveat: fake images and potentially at some point 3D bioprinted fake bodies will make the evidence invalid in courts of law, but that's a whole different discussion). The only thing I can even think to suggest is a radical liberalisation of almost every law and punishment such that we can as a society survive when everyone's crimes, misdemeanours, and administrative infractions/regulatory offences are cataloged and dealt with in real time. The only thing I am sure of is that the future can't look anything like the examples from history — while it might be much better or much worse, it won't be even close to the same. [0] I don't mean in the American 2nd amendment sense though, I mean an army with no firearms will loose to one that has them.

coldtea 4y ago
>Without going into whatever context the original quote has: doch — encryption does both. There is no technology so pure it only helps the "good guys", from fire to firearms[0] there are things we can't possibly survive without, and yet criminals can use them for crimes. So? Cars also help the bad guys escape from robberies faster, but we don't seem to ban those... Not to mention knives... those can be deadly if somebody stubs you with one. And what about clothes? Naked criminals would be much less effective... The thing is anything can assist criminals. Why single out encryption (besides the government wanting to snoop at will)?
- ccvannorman 4y ago

PurpleRamen 4y ago

Pretty hard joke to point at the German constitution, after it displayed it hard failing in the last years. Protection from bad state-actors is necessary, but not for the price to also expose the citizens to non-state bad actors. Protecting the citizens is also a state's job, and somewhere they need to find balance between the different protections.

deleted 4y ago

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