16 ms·

Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

471 points by pera 4y ago

jMyles 4y ago
> ...at the EU-US Senior Officials Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs, held in Stockholm on 16 and 17 March, the minutes of which are now available. The delegations “… concurred on the need to mirror privacy by design with lawful access by design…,” apparent code language for mandating the undermining or removal of strong encryption practices. What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such scheme?
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Leadership positions (especially those in government) attract some of the worst people.
- reaperman 4y ago
  Most of our leaders are much less bright and much more self-centered than almost anyone would imagine. The evidence repeatedly validates this, but we're reluctant to believe it. Many do come from relatively elite backgrounds but their knowledge and morality have surprising gaps.
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    They are overwhelmingly self servicing to the point that intelligence is not even worth commenting on. Smart or dumb, they are just in it to gain power.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    Experiments show that groups of humans pick as their leader the loudest and most confident of the bunch. You can imagine how this quirk of psychology affects power at all levels in our society.
- medellin 4y ago
  “Lawful access” is the new soundbite for putting backdoors in all our software and hardware.
- newZWhoDis 4y ago
  They’re malicious. It’s not that they don’t understand, or that some well worded essay will ever give them their “aha” moment. They want power over you, and this is just another means to that end.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    It's not even power over you. It's mostly power over their political opponents. You can read up on how Polish government used their access to Pegassus.
    - jruohonen 4y ago
      The PEGA committee reports are "hilarious" reading. The "best" situation seems to have been in Greece where ordinary politicians have spied other ordinary politicians and ordinary civil servants other ordinary civil servants. Must be fun to work in such a state apparatus.
- jmclnx 4y ago
  Power I guess, only because they can. But if you communicate by Cell Phone (txt, email...), encryption can be stopped by law only because they are closed systems. But I tend to believe Cell Phones already come with a backdoor, so laws do not really matter for those. If using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good luck stopping that.
  - codedokode 4y ago
    There is no need to ban encryption in client-server protocols like HTTPS. Just require that servers logs all session keys for future lawful access.
    - kevviiinn 4y ago
      That's a great way to have a central point of failure for bad actors to target
      - genewitch 4y ago
        "But it's already illegal to steal data from someone else's computers!"
  - jruohonen 4y ago
    Same I here: I don't really mind because I've never assumed smartphones to be secure. But maybe I have been wrong because they do seem to have problems in decryption of things like Signal or even the Meta's stuff. As for serious transnational crime, I really doubt whether these proposals will make any difference. After EncroChat, serious criminals have probably gone back to pencil and paper and whispering.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good luck stopping that They won't engage us on those terms. They'll use their authority to pass laws saying use of cryptography strong enough to defeat them is evidence of guilt. Judges will instruct juries to assume there's CSAM in your encrypted hard drive.
- kingkawn 4y ago
  In part because they have full access to the classified info about the threats that are being disrupted regularly
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    I find this much more likely than others' explanation that they're evil, that it's just about power, that there is a conspiracy among world leaders, etc.
  - justinclift 4y ago
    That's the excuse they use. Unfortunately, they've often been shown to also be lying bastards in other matters, so why would we believe them for this situation?
    - kingkawn 4y ago
      I didn't say anything about believing them Or their other behavior Just that its easy to imagine being in that role, being privy to some insane shit that barely gets stopped, and never again thinking twice about violating all these rules just to prevent that kind of thing. Doesn't mean what they're advocating for isn't messed up. But its not hard to think through how they get there.
      - justinclift 3y ago
        > privy to some insane shit that barely gets stopped Hmmm, sounds more like fantasy thinking (to me). :/
  - Zak 4y ago
    If they're trying to influence public opinion and there really are a bunch of successes from surveillance programs that can be defeated with consumer-grade encryption, they could find ways to declassify statistics. I suppose there's the concern that a statement like "we prosecuted 2387 child molesters based on surveillance of unencrypted chat" would cause future offenders to stop using unencrypted chat, but I think that's a red herring. Any reasonably clever criminal would not be sending felonious content unencrypted today.
- pa7x1 4y ago
  Well, if you were to ask in this very same forum if the trade-offs of private and permissionless communication, as granted by cryptography, should apply to money. You would get a much different answer. So either a large part of HN has already been co-opted by this public campaign, or is uneducated/obtuse, or is able to trace a very different set of weights for what you can do with your expression but not your money.
  - flotzam 4y ago
    The disconnect is wild. Spending magic money online can already feel like instant messaging, e.g. Zcash with its encrypted memo field for text messages is basically as if Bitmessage had an optional monetary payload
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    You won't get a different answer from me at least. KYC/AML is just the financial version of global surveillance and should be fought just as vigorously. Maybe HN just hates cryptocurrencies.
    - account42 4y ago
      > Maybe HN just hates cryptocurrencies. Or more specifically, all the endless scams and grift that orbit around cryptocurrencies, the failure of cryptocurrencies to actually solve any problems of the existing financial system (because you need to inevitably bridge the two) as well as the negative externalities that cryptocurrencies have on the environment and hardware availability.
- deleted 4y ago
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- waboremo 4y ago
  Part of the benefit that comes from being well traveled is sharing stories and experiences with locals, leaders don't do any of that. Generously, most of them are too busy to do so, and instead spend most of their time in a building that could be anywhere in the world in a similar looking conference room. Although you are right, it does take a certain level of intelligence to recognize when one is outside of their element and to seek proper expertise. Assuming no malicious intent.
- HopenHeyHi 4y ago
  Ah, you sort of accidentally stumbled upon the very heart of the matter. For example: https://www.youtube.com/@OxfordUnion/videos https://www.youtube.com/@OxfordUnion/videos The Oxford Union is the world's most prestigious debating society with a tradition of hosting internationally prominent individuals across politics, academia, and popular culture. Founded in 1823 at a time when The University of Oxford restricted students from discussing certain topics, The Union continues to uphold the principle of free speech through the exchange and debate of a wide range of ideas and opinions, presented by a diverse range of speakers - some inspiring, others controversial. As we celebrate 200 years of free speech during our Bicentenary year of 2023, we reaffirm our commitment to our integral values and also our belief that the discussion of complex topics should not only be encouraged but is an essential element of any free society. Now, click around a few of the videos, and observe if the above description, an honest self-image of the best and the brightest, I'm sure, comports with the actual reality on display. Make special note of the attitudes displayed by these bright young minds and the questions put to the speakers. Heck, might even notice the ever increasing pop-culture nature of the proceedings. I guess hearing from PSY about Gangam style is one of the most of all time. In short, a large chunk of these "elites" who go into politics are nepo babies governed by fashionable group think no different from their less monied peers. iPhones are the great equalizer. Everybody is equally cringy. It is a different caliber of person now from the heyday and naturally trends towards authoritarianism. The exceptionalism is gone a long time ago already. It was perfectly lampooned half a century ago in shows like 'Yes Minister'. Lofty ideals, duty, intellectual curiosity, honesty, a sense of decency, long ago succumbed to mediocrity and farce. And that was the 80s. We are way past that stage where there was still a sense of shame, past the age of spin, hurling into cynical ambivalence now and soon complete forgetfulness. In short, the West really is in decline and has been for a long time. People who have a clue about why this is a bad idea are nowhere near the halls of power. And I don't mean intricate technical knowledge, these subjects go back centuries, the relevant ideas and ideals are at the very core of what made these societies great in the first place. Poof. You know why this is wrong instinctually, at your core, because you paid attention to the ship of state and still give a shit about something bigger than yourself. They don't. There's nothing outright wrong with them, they are just basic ordinary consumers. And the lessons of the past will have to be re-learned if we don't accidentally find ourselves this time in an unescapable permanent dystopia.
- layer8 4y ago
  I believe it’s difficult for nontechnical people to fully grasp the consequences of having so-called backdoors in the digital realm. It’s different from the physical world, where something like a master key or the possibility of forceful entry isn’t unreasonable. They probably think it must necessarily be possible to have something equivalent for electronic communication.
- codedokode 4y ago
  There is nothing wrong with these people. Those in the power always want to have more power. There will be no implications if encryption is banned. People have been using unencrypted wired phones and unencrypted bank cards for a long time and the world hasn't collapsed. Also, there is no need to ban any encryption, client-server encryption protocols like HTTPS can stay, provided that the server would log all session keys for future lawful access.
- hulitu 4y ago
  If China (as the US claims ) does it, why not the US ? They don't want to lose the lead in this field. /s
- indymike 4y ago
  > What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such scheme? Never underestimate the appeal of making one's job easier.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  They don't actually fucking know what they are doing. They get these righteous ideas into their heads and convince themselves they're doing what's good for us. They ignore the consequences even when it affects them, reacting with a literal child-like entitlement and self-importance "you can't read my messages, just the other people's messages, I'm a special class of person, this is outrageous". There are people here on HN who say they actually met at least one of these politicians. Check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656323 These are the people imposing their silly laws on us. It's a joke. I wanted to respect them enough to think it's all some sort of master plan to oppress us more efficiently but could very well be that they are dumb enough to back this without understanding what encryption even is.
shmerl 4y ago
May be encryption can be declared as a right to privacy and then this issue will be gone for good.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  At least in the U.S., it's already covered: 1A: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." 4A: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
  - codedokode 4y ago
    What about banning end-to-end encryption while keeping client-server encryption (like Telegram or Apple does)? If people are not allowed to transfer money anonymously, why allow them communicate anonymously?
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      People are allowed to transfer money anonymously, vis-a-vis cash. Banks belonging to the Federal Reserve system are of course subject to a number of arbitrary regulations that are certainly debatable, but also not outside the realm of ordinary government regulation of interstate/international commerce. Wholesale banning of anonymous money transfers would also, in my opinion, be a violation of 1st and 4th amendments. But banning encrypted speech & communication altogether (or compelling an open-access backdoor) is clearly a violation of 1st & 4th amendment.
      - genewitch 4y ago
        it wouldn't be too terribly hard to make "cash" less anonymous, for instance, serial number scanners in cash registers - like banks have those safes that are computer controlled and pop out the exact bills and counts you request, just replace all cash registers with either cashless self checkout or those vault style dispensers and receivers. If every point-of-sale has the serial scanner, cash is now no longer anonymous. They'll know who got it, and if someone else gets it scanned then they know that there's a link between you and that person. there's already enough cameras to capture every angle - including the ones at registers that clearly are there just to capture your face. The only reason i can see for a cashless society is: someone is going to make shedloads of money on the microtransactions. Visa, MC, AmEx, JP Morgan, etc.
exabrial 4y ago
I've come to the conclusion that Taxes are incompatible with Encryption and Free Speech. If we're ever going to progress as a civilization, something other than ancient and frankly barbaric practice Taxes has to designed and implemented. Every justification for usage or backdoor encryption is eventually rooted in monitoring financial transactions, or preserving the means in which a state can collect them. The "War on Terror" and "War on Drugs" are perfect examples of this.
- cdiamand 4y ago
  Can you speak more to why you think taxes are barbaric? Is there an alternative? They strike me as one of the cornerstones of civilization. I.e. the state builds things that are for the common good using those resources.
- fleventynine 4y ago
  Income tax is the problem. I wish governments solely relied on property taxes and user fees for funding, even if they had to increase them a lot to make up for the loss of income tax revenue.
  - alphanullmeric 4y ago
    But that would mean the “pay your fair share” people would actually have to pay their fair share, which they will never support. We all know that the fair share is a percentage of someone else’s income you feel entitled to and not a fee proportional to the amount of state services you use.
    - fleventynine 4y ago
      You wouldn't necessarily need to shut down social programs. Rich people and their companies own lots of property, spectrum, water rights, intellectual property, etc, and the funding from these taxes can still be used to fund a social safety net. As a bonus, if property taxes (or better yet, land value taxes) were 5x what they are, we probably would fix the housing crisis as all the property hoarders unload their underutilized property onto the market.
leoh 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
- masswerk 4y ago
  Mind that we made one-time pads (like TAN sheets) pretty much a thing of the past, in favor of 2FA…
  - leoh 4y ago
    If one reads the linked Wikipedia entry, one would learn that OTP is the only uncrackable form of encryption. It’s not something a government can easily block nor decrypt regardless of technology.
    - masswerk 4y ago
      However, for whatever reasons, we have decided that OTPs (as in TANs) are insecure. (Hint: 2FA is much easier and less costly to administrate.)
      - leoh 3y ago
        Good grief. How is OTP unsafe?
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CrampusDestrus 4y ago
I have no problem with the police hacking into devices. They have the right to use bugs and find exploits just like they have the right to pick a safe of force a door. But backdoors and unacceptable, that's like mandating that every house have microphones in every room connected to the police center
- totetsu 4y ago
  I was thinking about this today. Like we watch a moive about cold war times and see the gmen or the stasi doing some unbelievable intrusive surveillance and think wow what times they would have been to live in, and at the same time my every movement for the past 10 years when I had a cellphone in my pocket is in a database somewhere and I barely think about it.
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    I think the difference is that in those situations the people had no say in what was and wasn't acceptable and some of the things we take for granted as basic freedoms may have been outlawed and targeted. This is why you can feel comfortable with it but they could not: there's not a huge disparity between what you want to do or say and what you're allowed to do or say, and you feel the punishment for doing or saying as you shouldn't is acceptable.
  - ulnarkressty 4y ago
    Or, we watch a movie like 24 where the protagonist is asking his agency buddies to hack random computers while straight up torturing people to get information - and we cheer for him.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    "The Lives of Others" is a great movie about this. Apparently they used authentic early-80's-era spying gear in that movie.
- sroussey 4y ago
  It’s like having a computer in every car, connected to the internet. And the police asking who was speeding yesterday.
fatcat500 4y ago
Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. There exists an entire subject in political science dealing with how to increase compliance with the schemes of regulators (see Nudge Theory). The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these kinds of tactics to increase compliance. For example, running talking points on the MSM works well. They run the talking points and in the next days, everyone is parroting what they heard on the news, as if it's their own views. But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with these tactics, such that they will become less effective (e.g. waning trust in the media). They are burning through the cultural & social capital which sustain these institutions (like the MSM or academia), and don't realize that once it runs out, they will no longer have these levers and buttons at their disposal. At that point, the only way to increase compliance is with force. And once you go down that road, it becomes extremely clear to those wielding that force, just how precarious their situation is (e.g. Maduro assassination attempts). That is how totalitarianism takes root, fear of the people.
- hulitu 4y ago
  > Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. Someone called it "Manufacturing consent". I think this name describes it pretty good. What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those law may turn against them at a later point in time.
  - jruohonen 4y ago
    Securitization is a common one too.
  - nickstinemates 4y ago
    Today it is their problem. Tomorrow it's someone else's. That's basically how the US has been operating for at least my lifetime.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    or instantly. politicians are people and I'm pretty sure they use phones. if a backdoor is added it will almost instantly be used against them I'm sure. even well meaning apps are hacked.
alphanullmeric 4y ago
Love how supposed privacy advocates will use patriot act arguments to justify violating financial privacy, then immediately turn around and play the other side when the same talking points are used against any other kinds of privacy.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Did these organizations do that?
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > supposed privacy advocates will use patriot act arguments to justify violating financial privacy What are you talking about? I've never seen this. As far as I'm concerned, AML/KYS is just the financial arm of global mass surveillance.
kibwen 4y ago
The logical conclusion to the war on general purpose computing (as currently perpetrated in the large by Apple, and spun even by people here as a worthwhile tradeoff for "security") is that computers will be replaced with appliances that can only run government-sanctioned, closed-source software. That is the only way these laws could be enforced.
- stametseater 4y ago
  Even if "normal computers" are left free, anti-encryption legislation could be enormously effective at the level of the general population even if it only manages to twist the arm of Apple, Google and force them to remove such software from their appstores. "Bad guys" could still use encryption of course, but the government would gain the ability to easily surveil most people, which is what they're really after.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > computers will be replaced with appliances that can only run government-sanctioned, closed-source software this is lacking imagination Most items around us will be smart withing 10 years. There are coffe machines that stop working without internet, dishwashers and washing machines that have wifi. You cant buy a TV and a Car without internet connectivity. Mac OS won't run an executable withour connecting to an apple server. All of them phone home. The government just needs to tap into the datastores assembled by these companies. Datastores in centralised datacenters, which are large regulated installations. They don't need to do any extra work. The police doesnt need to raid every house.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > as currently perpetrated in the large by Apple, and spun even by people here as a worthwhile tradeoff for "security" See this misses the more nuanced point. I bet my last cent that everyone who doesn't want Apple's ability to meaningfully control their platform eroded would change their tune immediately if we had a regulatory environment that had any teeth whatsoever when it comes to policing malicious software. People are currently backed into a corner where the only not incompetent regulatory body for software is Apple right now. I would love for iOS to be completely open but maligned actors who would use that against my interests need to be stopped and Apple being closed doesn't get in the way all that much. * You must be able to cancel subscriptions in one click with no human interaction and users must be able to choose an immediate cancel for a pro-rated refund even if they paid "yearly." * You must allow opt-out of all tracking and data collection without providing any disincentive for doing so. * All free trails must not require a CC and can only be continued after explicitly done so by the user. * Delete the concept of implied consent. By existing you consent to.. fuck off. * Establish a legal definition of dark pattern and make them illegal and reportable by users for a cut of the fine. * You must be allowed to purchase a completely ad free experience. * You cannot sell OS features like notifications or running in the background. * All digital goods must be able to be returned within x days of purchase. My wishlist could go on.
Animats 4y ago
This is worth taking up with the congressional committees looking for overreach by the Biden Administration. Fill out this form, to start. [1] https://oversight.house.gov/whistle/ https://oversight.house.gov/whistle/
- rektide 4y ago
  Nice of the White House to set up such a convenient reporting system.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  If you think Republicans are against eroding privacy I have a bridge to sell you.
  - redblacktree 4y ago
    Indeed, the Patriot Act passed under a Republican House and Presidency. Where there was opposition, it came from Democrats in the House.[0] [0]: https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      I wouldn't however consider that enough evidence to say Democrats "opposed" the Patriot Act. They aren't "Both sides the same", but on this issue, Democrat politicians largely buy into the law enforcement POV that "bad people" are doing things and there must be an easy way to stop them, instead of making cops do actual work to solve crimes.
      - genewitch 4y ago
        When was the last time you saw a cobbler? Law Enforcement can't just be out wasting that shoe leather anymore.
  - Animats 4y ago
    You just have to mention how this could be used to find out who's talking about guns and what lobbyists are saying to elected officials.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> media reports state that senior government officials in the US and EU agreed to cooperate on measures I’m having trouble with the link. How substantive is this allegation?
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dsign 4y ago
Here is the plan of our elected representatives: - Erode what resistance to total surveillance remains. - Practice total surveillance. Here is my plan to oppose that plan: - Rekindle Orwell's 1984 as a full literary/movie/video-game genre, where awful things happen to people when the government or an associated non-knocking variant of the Spanish Inquisition shows up because somebody committed wrong-think. I'm a little afraid that if we don't succeed in bringing this problem to the general's public attention via their binging habits, as a sort of social vaccine, we will end up with the disease.
- abdela 4y ago
  Absolutely, this fight needs to be fought on the cultural/political battlefield. It can never be just a technological arms race or solution, because technology usually favors the rich. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and mass culture of movies and video games is really the most effective way to teach the broader audience about these issues. Black mirror did a great job with some episoses, and also handmaid's tale has had a big impact in thinking about women's rights.
yafbum 4y ago
Contrarian opinion ahead. We live in a very unique period of history - a bubble really - in which governments are not able to intercept certain communications or decrypt certain records, even with the full force of the law behind them. While I recognize and appreciate, on a personal level, the freedom that this provides me, freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into anarchy. I'm afraid it's not going to be hard, over the years, to find enough pedophiles and terrorists to make a compellingly popular case for more regulation of encryption.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  This view doesn't seem to reflect the reality that Gov/LEO have access vastly more (direct and up-to-date) personal information about us than at any time in history. I find I am not in a hurry to hand over what little space is left.
- edrxty 4y ago
  There's nothing inherently wrong with anarchy, but there are plenty of things inherently wrong with totalitarianism. I really don't care how many pedophiles we catch if we continue to expand the definition of pedophiles to "everyone we don't like". Similarly, I don't care how many terrorists we catch if we motivate everyone to become a "terrorist" in the process.
  - yafbum 4y ago
    False dichotomy. Every restriction on freedom does not have to be reduced to totalitarianist encroachment.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      That's what they say every time - "it's just to catch the REALLY bad guys, pinky promise". Then five years later we find out that it's routinely used for other things. And ten years later, when the law needs to be renewed or whatever, the same politicians who originally argued that it was a very narrowly tailored measure claim that it became such an important tool in law enforcement arsenal that sky would literally fall if we don't allow them to keep it.
pmarreck 4y ago
Relevant: Martin Fowler's essay "Privacy Protects Bothersome People": https://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html
FredPret 4y ago
Only technological innovation can stop this. Too many people really want to know everything about you. Only mathematical impossibility will stop them.
bdg 4y ago
Can we force politicans to put their money in the first unencrypted bank for the first year as a dry-run of some wakened encryption future?
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
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rodolphoarruda 4y ago
I finished reading 1984 (the novel) yesterday, so my comments are under some influence. This global movement against encryption -- against citizen's privacy, really -- is all about power maintenance. Power groups want to have access to our conversations so when the election period approaches, they will be able to run sentiment analysis on the data collected from our conversations, and then fine tune their election campaigns accordingly. All the current excuses about fighting organized crime, violence to children etc. are well known excuses used for many years within different context to roll out surveillance bills.
- 93po 4y ago
  I'd disagree. Democracy in the US is already extremely well controlled. You only have two realistic options, and the primary that led to those two options is fairly undemocratic. Between gerrymandering, citizens united, private control over corporate news, and a million other things, meaningful democracy may as well be dead (or perhaps never existed). Control over encryption is overwhelmingly about those in power keeping others out of power. If you have access to all of your opponent's communications because you're already the president, there's really nothing the opponent can do to balance things out. Any grassroots movement to displace you and your government would never get off the ground - they'd be arrested before they could even organize, since the entirety of your comms is available to the establishment.
  - lovecg 4y ago
    The cool thing about technology is it works both ways. If backdoors are mandated it’s only a matter of time until all texts, location history, etc. etc. of those in power become public - we already learned that those people don’t have the strongest opsec to begin with. This will lead to a backlash and an equilibrium of sorts.
    - ok_dad 4y ago
      Those in power will be allowed to use encryption due to "state security" or something stupid like that. Only us plebeians will be forced to reveal our dirty laundry to the world.
noelsusman 4y ago
>As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement while keeping it strong for others. I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion. Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant. They could post it on GitHub and it wouldn't matter because iPhones would refuse to run the code if it had been modified by somebody other than Apple to run on any device. You would need Apple's internal code signing keys to actually do any damage. Currently, the security of your iPhone is dependent on Apple's internal security. If that gets compromised then your phone can be compromised. In a world where law enforcement can get a warrant to force Apple to unlock a specific iPhone, the security of your phone is still dependent on Apple's internal security. Nothing changes for anyone not targeted by a warrant. You don't need to give law enforcement a universal backdoor key to enable them to execute warrants on devices. What am I missing?
- lovecg 4y ago
  In the current world Apple is not actually able to compromise your iPhone, warrant or not, by design (remember the whole FBI debacle?). Encryption is done through separate hardware on the phone that they can’t remotely bypass. In the world you’re proposing they would have to be legally compelled to engineer a weaker system. That’s the problem.
  - noelsusman 4y ago
    I could be wrong but I don't remember Apple claiming it was literally impossible for them to open an iPhone. If that were true then Apple wouldn't have had to fight them at all. The government can't force you to do impossible things. Apple objected to being compelled to create the tooling to bypass an iPhone's security. That implies they can do it whenever they want, they just choose not to.
    - rekoil 4y ago
      They could create a build with unlock attempts removed, making it possible to brute-force weaker unlock schemes. That's what they didn't want to do because if they created something like that they would lose a lot of customers.
rektide 4y ago
So, governments are actively colluding to obstruct Democratic ways of life. They're now in the actively propogandize phase, where they outlaw talking to other people in privacy. Weaponizing tech against the coremost nature of Democracy. And so are the tech bossess! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35653867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35653867 https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-tech-bosses-are-letting-dictators-censor-what-americans-see https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-tech-bosses-are-lett... The tech-empires are letting whichever country wants to come in & start dictating terms, step all over people. We no longer even have the spine to call out journalism done in un-Free areas, we've decided Government-sponsored is too risky to even inform people about. https://rsf.org/en/index https://rsf.org/en/index With online platforms being cajouled every which way, one would hope the US Government could find some scant resemblance of a soul & do the right thing, which would be to help wage this culture war for a moral & ethical cause, to actually help our Democratic values, instead of psychological assaults on them. The government should be pushing back, demanding more encryption, more privacy, especially more privacy, privacy that even the tech bossess can't access much less the government. Alas instead of helping fight the good fight, here we see the US-EU is playing the jealous rival, trying to steal some of the same advantages the data-slurping panopticon totalistic information-societies. We need legal stands from governments to protect & advancing freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of ideas, freedom to think. We ought recognize & attend to open society & other essential liberty. It's been such a ride. A lot of people are pretty grimdark on what Social Media is & means & the fate of interconnectivity, but my word, how can anyone feel so jaded & old at this point? We are so young, we have explored so few & such narrow options for how we might gather & share & communicate across the internet & it's many sites. I can acknowledge that folks are unhappy, that we are scared of what lies beyond the now tarnishing gilded Creator age, and you're all right, but man, the internet is so phenomenal. This is such an amazing creative ability to create & connect, to explore thought, expands the Rhizomatic / Assembly theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(philosophy)) view of the world so deeply. There is so much to learn & figure out. If we can keep this democracy. If we can maintain a vector where we can keep creating new interconnection, new people-figuring-out-what-protocols-people-want-to-use between us. We can combat so much shallowness by owning our speech, by owning our relays, by opting into being our own more selctive amplifiers, picking for ourselves what is signal and what is noise, calling out the short fun & what has real lasting value. Keep making the world more seen, keep sharing & thinking ourselves out loud, in public. And together in private.
babypuncher 4y ago
I don't understand the crusade against encryption. No ban has any chance of actually being effective at stopping criminals, they will just continue using open source software. All you end up doing is exposing law abiding citizens and corporations to an incredible amount of risk, because suddenly all their critical private data is secured with a common backdoor that can be abused by anyone who finds it. Adding backdoors to commercial encryption is practically handing the Kremlin or CCP the keys to all our critical infrastructure.
musicale 4y ago
> We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are okay with that. Dark pattern checklist: √ Emotional manipulation √ Implicit "consent" rather than opt-in √ No opt out button Right then. Great to know what they're advocating.
- account42 4y ago
  It is pretty frightening how normalized this has become so that even organizations that should have the user's interests in mind won't even think before pulling this kind of shit.

471 points by pera 4y ago

> ...at the EU-US Senior Officials Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs, held in Stockholm on 16 and 17 March, the minutes of which are now available. The delegations “… concurred on the need to mirror privacy by design with lawful access by design…,” apparent code language for mandating the undermining or removal of strong encryption practices. What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such scheme?

CameronNemo 4y ago
Leadership positions (especially those in government) attract some of the worst people.
reaperman 4y ago
Most of our leaders are much less bright and much more self-centered than almost anyone would imagine. The evidence repeatedly validates this, but we're reluctant to believe it. Many do come from relatively elite backgrounds but their knowledge and morality have surprising gaps.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  They are overwhelmingly self servicing to the point that intelligence is not even worth commenting on. Smart or dumb, they are just in it to gain power.
- scotty79 4y ago
  Experiments show that groups of humans pick as their leader the loudest and most confident of the bunch. You can imagine how this quirk of psychology affects power at all levels in our society.
medellin 4y ago
“Lawful access” is the new soundbite for putting backdoors in all our software and hardware.
newZWhoDis 4y ago
They’re malicious. It’s not that they don’t understand, or that some well worded essay will ever give them their “aha” moment. They want power over you, and this is just another means to that end.
- scotty79 4y ago
  It's not even power over you. It's mostly power over their political opponents. You can read up on how Polish government used their access to Pegassus.
  - jruohonen 4y ago
    The PEGA committee reports are "hilarious" reading. The "best" situation seems to have been in Greece where ordinary politicians have spied other ordinary politicians and ordinary civil servants other ordinary civil servants. Must be fun to work in such a state apparatus.
jmclnx 4y ago
Power I guess, only because they can. But if you communicate by Cell Phone (txt, email...), encryption can be stopped by law only because they are closed systems. But I tend to believe Cell Phones already come with a backdoor, so laws do not really matter for those. If using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good luck stopping that.
- codedokode 4y ago
  There is no need to ban encryption in client-server protocols like HTTPS. Just require that servers logs all session keys for future lawful access.
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    That's a great way to have a central point of failure for bad actors to target
    - genewitch 4y ago
      "But it's already illegal to steal data from someone else's computers!"
- jruohonen 4y ago
  Same I here: I don't really mind because I've never assumed smartphones to be secure. But maybe I have been wrong because they do seem to have problems in decryption of things like Signal or even the Meta's stuff. As for serious transnational crime, I really doubt whether these proposals will make any difference. After EncroChat, serious criminals have probably gone back to pencil and paper and whispering.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good luck stopping that They won't engage us on those terms. They'll use their authority to pass laws saying use of cryptography strong enough to defeat them is evidence of guilt. Judges will instruct juries to assume there's CSAM in your encrypted hard drive.
kingkawn 4y ago
In part because they have full access to the classified info about the threats that are being disrupted regularly
- barbazoo 4y ago
  I find this much more likely than others' explanation that they're evil, that it's just about power, that there is a conspiracy among world leaders, etc.
- justinclift 4y ago
  That's the excuse they use. Unfortunately, they've often been shown to also be lying bastards in other matters, so why would we believe them for this situation?
  - kingkawn 4y ago
    I didn't say anything about believing them Or their other behavior Just that its easy to imagine being in that role, being privy to some insane shit that barely gets stopped, and never again thinking twice about violating all these rules just to prevent that kind of thing. Doesn't mean what they're advocating for isn't messed up. But its not hard to think through how they get there.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      > privy to some insane shit that barely gets stopped Hmmm, sounds more like fantasy thinking (to me). :/
- Zak 4y ago
  If they're trying to influence public opinion and there really are a bunch of successes from surveillance programs that can be defeated with consumer-grade encryption, they could find ways to declassify statistics. I suppose there's the concern that a statement like "we prosecuted 2387 child molesters based on surveillance of unencrypted chat" would cause future offenders to stop using unencrypted chat, but I think that's a red herring. Any reasonably clever criminal would not be sending felonious content unencrypted today.
pa7x1 4y ago
Well, if you were to ask in this very same forum if the trade-offs of private and permissionless communication, as granted by cryptography, should apply to money. You would get a much different answer. So either a large part of HN has already been co-opted by this public campaign, or is uneducated/obtuse, or is able to trace a very different set of weights for what you can do with your expression but not your money.
- flotzam 4y ago
  The disconnect is wild. Spending magic money online can already feel like instant messaging, e.g. Zcash with its encrypted memo field for text messages is basically as if Bitmessage had an optional monetary payload
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  You won't get a different answer from me at least. KYC/AML is just the financial version of global surveillance and should be fought just as vigorously. Maybe HN just hates cryptocurrencies.
  - account42 4y ago
    > Maybe HN just hates cryptocurrencies. Or more specifically, all the endless scams and grift that orbit around cryptocurrencies, the failure of cryptocurrencies to actually solve any problems of the existing financial system (because you need to inevitably bridge the two) as well as the negative externalities that cryptocurrencies have on the environment and hardware availability.
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waboremo 4y ago
Part of the benefit that comes from being well traveled is sharing stories and experiences with locals, leaders don't do any of that. Generously, most of them are too busy to do so, and instead spend most of their time in a building that could be anywhere in the world in a similar looking conference room. Although you are right, it does take a certain level of intelligence to recognize when one is outside of their element and to seek proper expertise. Assuming no malicious intent.
HopenHeyHi 4y ago
Ah, you sort of accidentally stumbled upon the very heart of the matter. For example: https://www.youtube.com/@OxfordUnion/videos https://www.youtube.com/@OxfordUnion/videos The Oxford Union is the world's most prestigious debating society with a tradition of hosting internationally prominent individuals across politics, academia, and popular culture. Founded in 1823 at a time when The University of Oxford restricted students from discussing certain topics, The Union continues to uphold the principle of free speech through the exchange and debate of a wide range of ideas and opinions, presented by a diverse range of speakers - some inspiring, others controversial. As we celebrate 200 years of free speech during our Bicentenary year of 2023, we reaffirm our commitment to our integral values and also our belief that the discussion of complex topics should not only be encouraged but is an essential element of any free society. Now, click around a few of the videos, and observe if the above description, an honest self-image of the best and the brightest, I'm sure, comports with the actual reality on display. Make special note of the attitudes displayed by these bright young minds and the questions put to the speakers. Heck, might even notice the ever increasing pop-culture nature of the proceedings. I guess hearing from PSY about Gangam style is one of the most of all time. In short, a large chunk of these "elites" who go into politics are nepo babies governed by fashionable group think no different from their less monied peers. iPhones are the great equalizer. Everybody is equally cringy. It is a different caliber of person now from the heyday and naturally trends towards authoritarianism. The exceptionalism is gone a long time ago already. It was perfectly lampooned half a century ago in shows like 'Yes Minister'. Lofty ideals, duty, intellectual curiosity, honesty, a sense of decency, long ago succumbed to mediocrity and farce. And that was the 80s. We are way past that stage where there was still a sense of shame, past the age of spin, hurling into cynical ambivalence now and soon complete forgetfulness. In short, the West really is in decline and has been for a long time. People who have a clue about why this is a bad idea are nowhere near the halls of power. And I don't mean intricate technical knowledge, these subjects go back centuries, the relevant ideas and ideals are at the very core of what made these societies great in the first place. Poof. You know why this is wrong instinctually, at your core, because you paid attention to the ship of state and still give a shit about something bigger than yourself. They don't. There's nothing outright wrong with them, they are just basic ordinary consumers. And the lessons of the past will have to be re-learned if we don't accidentally find ourselves this time in an unescapable permanent dystopia.
layer8 4y ago
I believe it’s difficult for nontechnical people to fully grasp the consequences of having so-called backdoors in the digital realm. It’s different from the physical world, where something like a master key or the possibility of forceful entry isn’t unreasonable. They probably think it must necessarily be possible to have something equivalent for electronic communication.
codedokode 4y ago
There is nothing wrong with these people. Those in the power always want to have more power. There will be no implications if encryption is banned. People have been using unencrypted wired phones and unencrypted bank cards for a long time and the world hasn't collapsed. Also, there is no need to ban any encryption, client-server encryption protocols like HTTPS can stay, provided that the server would log all session keys for future lawful access.
hulitu 4y ago
If China (as the US claims ) does it, why not the US ? They don't want to lose the lead in this field. /s
indymike 4y ago
> What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such scheme? Never underestimate the appeal of making one's job easier.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
They don't actually fucking know what they are doing. They get these righteous ideas into their heads and convince themselves they're doing what's good for us. They ignore the consequences even when it affects them, reacting with a literal child-like entitlement and self-importance "you can't read my messages, just the other people's messages, I'm a special class of person, this is outrageous". There are people here on HN who say they actually met at least one of these politicians. Check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656323 These are the people imposing their silly laws on us. It's a joke. I wanted to respect them enough to think it's all some sort of master plan to oppress us more efficiently but could very well be that they are dumb enough to back this without understanding what encryption even is.

shmerl 4y ago

May be encryption can be declared as a right to privacy and then this issue will be gone for good.

chrisco255 4y ago
At least in the U.S., it's already covered: 1A: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." 4A: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
- codedokode 4y ago
  What about banning end-to-end encryption while keeping client-server encryption (like Telegram or Apple does)? If people are not allowed to transfer money anonymously, why allow them communicate anonymously?
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    People are allowed to transfer money anonymously, vis-a-vis cash. Banks belonging to the Federal Reserve system are of course subject to a number of arbitrary regulations that are certainly debatable, but also not outside the realm of ordinary government regulation of interstate/international commerce. Wholesale banning of anonymous money transfers would also, in my opinion, be a violation of 1st and 4th amendments. But banning encrypted speech & communication altogether (or compelling an open-access backdoor) is clearly a violation of 1st & 4th amendment.
    - genewitch 4y ago
      it wouldn't be too terribly hard to make "cash" less anonymous, for instance, serial number scanners in cash registers - like banks have those safes that are computer controlled and pop out the exact bills and counts you request, just replace all cash registers with either cashless self checkout or those vault style dispensers and receivers. If every point-of-sale has the serial scanner, cash is now no longer anonymous. They'll know who got it, and if someone else gets it scanned then they know that there's a link between you and that person. there's already enough cameras to capture every angle - including the ones at registers that clearly are there just to capture your face. The only reason i can see for a cashless society is: someone is going to make shedloads of money on the microtransactions. Visa, MC, AmEx, JP Morgan, etc.

exabrial 4y ago

I've come to the conclusion that Taxes are incompatible with Encryption and Free Speech. If we're ever going to progress as a civilization, something other than ancient and frankly barbaric practice Taxes has to designed and implemented. Every justification for usage or backdoor encryption is eventually rooted in monitoring financial transactions, or preserving the means in which a state can collect them. The "War on Terror" and "War on Drugs" are perfect examples of this.

cdiamand 4y ago
Can you speak more to why you think taxes are barbaric? Is there an alternative? They strike me as one of the cornerstones of civilization. I.e. the state builds things that are for the common good using those resources.
fleventynine 4y ago
Income tax is the problem. I wish governments solely relied on property taxes and user fees for funding, even if they had to increase them a lot to make up for the loss of income tax revenue.
- alphanullmeric 4y ago
  But that would mean the “pay your fair share” people would actually have to pay their fair share, which they will never support. We all know that the fair share is a percentage of someone else’s income you feel entitled to and not a fee proportional to the amount of state services you use.
  - fleventynine 4y ago
    You wouldn't necessarily need to shut down social programs. Rich people and their companies own lots of property, spectrum, water rights, intellectual property, etc, and the funding from these taxes can still be used to fund a social safety net. As a bonus, if property taxes (or better yet, land value taxes) were 5x what they are, we probably would fix the housing crisis as all the property hoarders unload their underutilized property onto the market.

leoh 4y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

masswerk 4y ago
Mind that we made one-time pads (like TAN sheets) pretty much a thing of the past, in favor of 2FA…
- leoh 4y ago
  If one reads the linked Wikipedia entry, one would learn that OTP is the only uncrackable form of encryption. It’s not something a government can easily block nor decrypt regardless of technology.
  - masswerk 4y ago
    However, for whatever reasons, we have decided that OTPs (as in TANs) are insecure. (Hint: 2FA is much easier and less costly to administrate.)
    - leoh 3y ago
      Good grief. How is OTP unsafe?
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CrampusDestrus 4y ago

I have no problem with the police hacking into devices. They have the right to use bugs and find exploits just like they have the right to pick a safe of force a door. But backdoors and unacceptable, that's like mandating that every house have microphones in every room connected to the police center

totetsu 4y ago
I was thinking about this today. Like we watch a moive about cold war times and see the gmen or the stasi doing some unbelievable intrusive surveillance and think wow what times they would have been to live in, and at the same time my every movement for the past 10 years when I had a cellphone in my pocket is in a database somewhere and I barely think about it.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  I think the difference is that in those situations the people had no say in what was and wasn't acceptable and some of the things we take for granted as basic freedoms may have been outlawed and targeted. This is why you can feel comfortable with it but they could not: there's not a huge disparity between what you want to do or say and what you're allowed to do or say, and you feel the punishment for doing or saying as you shouldn't is acceptable.
- ulnarkressty 4y ago
  Or, we watch a movie like 24 where the protagonist is asking his agency buddies to hack random computers while straight up torturing people to get information - and we cheer for him.
- pmarreck 4y ago
  "The Lives of Others" is a great movie about this. Apparently they used authentic early-80's-era spying gear in that movie.
sroussey 4y ago
It’s like having a computer in every car, connected to the internet. And the police asking who was speeding yesterday.

fatcat500 4y ago

Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. There exists an entire subject in political science dealing with how to increase compliance with the schemes of regulators (see Nudge Theory). The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these kinds of tactics to increase compliance. For example, running talking points on the MSM works well. They run the talking points and in the next days, everyone is parroting what they heard on the news, as if it's their own views. But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with these tactics, such that they will become less effective (e.g. waning trust in the media). They are burning through the cultural & social capital which sustain these institutions (like the MSM or academia), and don't realize that once it runs out, they will no longer have these levers and buttons at their disposal. At that point, the only way to increase compliance is with force. And once you go down that road, it becomes extremely clear to those wielding that force, just how precarious their situation is (e.g. Maduro assassination attempts). That is how totalitarianism takes root, fear of the people.

hulitu 4y ago
> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. Someone called it "Manufacturing consent". I think this name describes it pretty good. What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those law may turn against them at a later point in time.
- jruohonen 4y ago
  Securitization is a common one too.
- nickstinemates 4y ago
  Today it is their problem. Tomorrow it's someone else's. That's basically how the US has been operating for at least my lifetime.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  or instantly. politicians are people and I'm pretty sure they use phones. if a backdoor is added it will almost instantly be used against them I'm sure. even well meaning apps are hacked.

alphanullmeric 4y ago

Love how supposed privacy advocates will use patriot act arguments to justify violating financial privacy, then immediately turn around and play the other side when the same talking points are used against any other kinds of privacy.

chrisco255 4y ago
Did these organizations do that?
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> supposed privacy advocates will use patriot act arguments to justify violating financial privacy What are you talking about? I've never seen this. As far as I'm concerned, AML/KYS is just the financial arm of global mass surveillance.

kibwen 4y ago

The logical conclusion to the war on general purpose computing (as currently perpetrated in the large by Apple, and spun even by people here as a worthwhile tradeoff for "security") is that computers will be replaced with appliances that can only run government-sanctioned, closed-source software. That is the only way these laws could be enforced.

stametseater 4y ago
Even if "normal computers" are left free, anti-encryption legislation could be enormously effective at the level of the general population even if it only manages to twist the arm of Apple, Google and force them to remove such software from their appstores. "Bad guys" could still use encryption of course, but the government would gain the ability to easily surveil most people, which is what they're really after.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> computers will be replaced with appliances that can only run government-sanctioned, closed-source software this is lacking imagination Most items around us will be smart withing 10 years. There are coffe machines that stop working without internet, dishwashers and washing machines that have wifi. You cant buy a TV and a Car without internet connectivity. Mac OS won't run an executable withour connecting to an apple server. All of them phone home. The government just needs to tap into the datastores assembled by these companies. Datastores in centralised datacenters, which are large regulated installations. They don't need to do any extra work. The police doesnt need to raid every house.
Spivak 4y ago
> as currently perpetrated in the large by Apple, and spun even by people here as a worthwhile tradeoff for "security" See this misses the more nuanced point. I bet my last cent that everyone who doesn't want Apple's ability to meaningfully control their platform eroded would change their tune immediately if we had a regulatory environment that had any teeth whatsoever when it comes to policing malicious software. People are currently backed into a corner where the only not incompetent regulatory body for software is Apple right now. I would love for iOS to be completely open but maligned actors who would use that against my interests need to be stopped and Apple being closed doesn't get in the way all that much. * You must be able to cancel subscriptions in one click with no human interaction and users must be able to choose an immediate cancel for a pro-rated refund even if they paid "yearly." * You must allow opt-out of all tracking and data collection without providing any disincentive for doing so. * All free trails must not require a CC and can only be continued after explicitly done so by the user. * Delete the concept of implied consent. By existing you consent to.. fuck off. * Establish a legal definition of dark pattern and make them illegal and reportable by users for a cut of the fine. * You must be allowed to purchase a completely ad free experience. * You cannot sell OS features like notifications or running in the background. * All digital goods must be able to be returned within x days of purchase. My wishlist could go on.

Animats 4y ago

This is worth taking up with the congressional committees looking for overreach by the Biden Administration. Fill out this form, to start. [1] https://oversight.house.gov/whistle/ https://oversight.house.gov/whistle/

rektide 4y ago
Nice of the White House to set up such a convenient reporting system.
mrguyorama 4y ago
If you think Republicans are against eroding privacy I have a bridge to sell you.
- redblacktree 4y ago
  Indeed, the Patriot Act passed under a Republican House and Presidency. Where there was opposition, it came from Democrats in the House.[0] [0]: https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    I wouldn't however consider that enough evidence to say Democrats "opposed" the Patriot Act. They aren't "Both sides the same", but on this issue, Democrat politicians largely buy into the law enforcement POV that "bad people" are doing things and there must be an easy way to stop them, instead of making cops do actual work to solve crimes.
    - genewitch 4y ago
      When was the last time you saw a cobbler? Law Enforcement can't just be out wasting that shoe leather anymore.
- Animats 4y ago
  You just have to mention how this could be used to find out who's talking about guns and what lobbyists are saying to elected officials.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> media reports state that senior government officials in the US and EU agreed to cooperate on measures I’m having trouble with the link. How substantive is this allegation?

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dsign 4y ago

Here is the plan of our elected representatives: - Erode what resistance to total surveillance remains. - Practice total surveillance. Here is my plan to oppose that plan: - Rekindle Orwell's 1984 as a full literary/movie/video-game genre, where awful things happen to people when the government or an associated non-knocking variant of the Spanish Inquisition shows up because somebody committed wrong-think. I'm a little afraid that if we don't succeed in bringing this problem to the general's public attention via their binging habits, as a sort of social vaccine, we will end up with the disease.

abdela 4y ago
Absolutely, this fight needs to be fought on the cultural/political battlefield. It can never be just a technological arms race or solution, because technology usually favors the rich. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and mass culture of movies and video games is really the most effective way to teach the broader audience about these issues. Black mirror did a great job with some episoses, and also handmaid's tale has had a big impact in thinking about women's rights.

yafbum 4y ago

Contrarian opinion ahead. We live in a very unique period of history - a bubble really - in which governments are not able to intercept certain communications or decrypt certain records, even with the full force of the law behind them. While I recognize and appreciate, on a personal level, the freedom that this provides me, freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into anarchy. I'm afraid it's not going to be hard, over the years, to find enough pedophiles and terrorists to make a compellingly popular case for more regulation of encryption.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
This view doesn't seem to reflect the reality that Gov/LEO have access vastly more (direct and up-to-date) personal information about us than at any time in history. I find I am not in a hurry to hand over what little space is left.
edrxty 4y ago
There's nothing inherently wrong with anarchy, but there are plenty of things inherently wrong with totalitarianism. I really don't care how many pedophiles we catch if we continue to expand the definition of pedophiles to "everyone we don't like". Similarly, I don't care how many terrorists we catch if we motivate everyone to become a "terrorist" in the process.
- yafbum 4y ago
  False dichotomy. Every restriction on freedom does not have to be reduced to totalitarianist encroachment.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    That's what they say every time - "it's just to catch the REALLY bad guys, pinky promise". Then five years later we find out that it's routinely used for other things. And ten years later, when the law needs to be renewed or whatever, the same politicians who originally argued that it was a very narrowly tailored measure claim that it became such an important tool in law enforcement arsenal that sky would literally fall if we don't allow them to keep it.

pmarreck 4y ago

Relevant: Martin Fowler's essay "Privacy Protects Bothersome People": https://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html

FredPret 4y ago

Only technological innovation can stop this. Too many people really want to know everything about you. Only mathematical impossibility will stop them.

bdg 4y ago

Can we force politicans to put their money in the first unencrypted bank for the first year as a dry-run of some wakened encryption future?

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

[dead]

rodolphoarruda 4y ago

I finished reading 1984 (the novel) yesterday, so my comments are under some influence. This global movement against encryption -- against citizen's privacy, really -- is all about power maintenance. Power groups want to have access to our conversations so when the election period approaches, they will be able to run sentiment analysis on the data collected from our conversations, and then fine tune their election campaigns accordingly. All the current excuses about fighting organized crime, violence to children etc. are well known excuses used for many years within different context to roll out surveillance bills.

93po 4y ago
I'd disagree. Democracy in the US is already extremely well controlled. You only have two realistic options, and the primary that led to those two options is fairly undemocratic. Between gerrymandering, citizens united, private control over corporate news, and a million other things, meaningful democracy may as well be dead (or perhaps never existed). Control over encryption is overwhelmingly about those in power keeping others out of power. If you have access to all of your opponent's communications because you're already the president, there's really nothing the opponent can do to balance things out. Any grassroots movement to displace you and your government would never get off the ground - they'd be arrested before they could even organize, since the entirety of your comms is available to the establishment.
- lovecg 4y ago
  The cool thing about technology is it works both ways. If backdoors are mandated it’s only a matter of time until all texts, location history, etc. etc. of those in power become public - we already learned that those people don’t have the strongest opsec to begin with. This will lead to a backlash and an equilibrium of sorts.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    Those in power will be allowed to use encryption due to "state security" or something stupid like that. Only us plebeians will be forced to reveal our dirty laundry to the world.

noelsusman 4y ago

>As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement while keeping it strong for others. I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion. Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant. They could post it on GitHub and it wouldn't matter because iPhones would refuse to run the code if it had been modified by somebody other than Apple to run on any device. You would need Apple's internal code signing keys to actually do any damage. Currently, the security of your iPhone is dependent on Apple's internal security. If that gets compromised then your phone can be compromised. In a world where law enforcement can get a warrant to force Apple to unlock a specific iPhone, the security of your phone is still dependent on Apple's internal security. Nothing changes for anyone not targeted by a warrant. You don't need to give law enforcement a universal backdoor key to enable them to execute warrants on devices. What am I missing?

lovecg 4y ago
In the current world Apple is not actually able to compromise your iPhone, warrant or not, by design (remember the whole FBI debacle?). Encryption is done through separate hardware on the phone that they can’t remotely bypass. In the world you’re proposing they would have to be legally compelled to engineer a weaker system. That’s the problem.
- noelsusman 4y ago
  I could be wrong but I don't remember Apple claiming it was literally impossible for them to open an iPhone. If that were true then Apple wouldn't have had to fight them at all. The government can't force you to do impossible things. Apple objected to being compelled to create the tooling to bypass an iPhone's security. That implies they can do it whenever they want, they just choose not to.
  - rekoil 4y ago
    They could create a build with unlock attempts removed, making it possible to brute-force weaker unlock schemes. That's what they didn't want to do because if they created something like that they would lose a lot of customers.

rektide 4y ago

So, governments are actively colluding to obstruct Democratic ways of life. They're now in the actively propogandize phase, where they outlaw talking to other people in privacy. Weaponizing tech against the coremost nature of Democracy. And so are the tech bossess! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35653867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35653867 https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-tech-bosses-are-letting-dictators-censor-what-americans-see https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-tech-bosses-are-lett... The tech-empires are letting whichever country wants to come in & start dictating terms, step all over people. We no longer even have the spine to call out journalism done in un-Free areas, we've decided Government-sponsored is too risky to even inform people about. https://rsf.org/en/index https://rsf.org/en/index With online platforms being cajouled every which way, one would hope the US Government could find some scant resemblance of a soul & do the right thing, which would be to help wage this culture war for a moral & ethical cause, to actually help our Democratic values, instead of psychological assaults on them. The government should be pushing back, demanding more encryption, more privacy, especially more privacy, privacy that even the tech bossess can't access much less the government. Alas instead of helping fight the good fight, here we see the US-EU is playing the jealous rival, trying to steal some of the same advantages the data-slurping panopticon totalistic information-societies. We need legal stands from governments to protect & advancing freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of ideas, freedom to think. We ought recognize & attend to open society & other essential liberty. It's been such a ride. A lot of people are pretty grimdark on what Social Media is & means & the fate of interconnectivity, but my word, how can anyone feel so jaded & old at this point? We are so young, we have explored so few & such narrow options for how we might gather & share & communicate across the internet & it's many sites. I can acknowledge that folks are unhappy, that we are scared of what lies beyond the now tarnishing gilded Creator age, and you're all right, but man, the internet is so phenomenal. This is such an amazing creative ability to create & connect, to explore thought, expands the Rhizomatic / Assembly theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(philosophy)) view of the world so deeply. There is so much to learn & figure out. If we can keep this democracy. If we can maintain a vector where we can keep creating new interconnection, new people-figuring-out-what-protocols-people-want-to-use between us. We can combat so much shallowness by owning our speech, by owning our relays, by opting into being our own more selctive amplifiers, picking for ourselves what is signal and what is noise, calling out the short fun & what has real lasting value. Keep making the world more seen, keep sharing & thinking ourselves out loud, in public. And together in private.

babypuncher 4y ago

I don't understand the crusade against encryption. No ban has any chance of actually being effective at stopping criminals, they will just continue using open source software. All you end up doing is exposing law abiding citizens and corporations to an incredible amount of risk, because suddenly all their critical private data is secured with a common backdoor that can be abused by anyone who finds it. Adding backdoors to commercial encryption is practically handing the Kremlin or CCP the keys to all our critical infrastructure.

musicale 4y ago

> We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are okay with that. Dark pattern checklist: √ Emotional manipulation √ Implicit "consent" rather than opt-in √ No opt out button Right then. Great to know what they're advocating.

account42 4y ago
It is pretty frightening how normalized this has become so that even organizations that should have the user's interests in mind won't even think before pulling this kind of shit.