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I don't follow your logic. It seems to be a circular way of downplaying the laws potential for harm. I am sure you are right, harmful laws have been passed, an

I don't follow your logic. It seems to be a circular way of downplaying the laws potential for harm. I am sure you are right, harmful laws have been passed, and then on the basis of their harm, repealed. But if we are to be reassured that since the law is harmful it will be repealed, that is an illusionary reassurance. Clearly not all harmful laws are repealed, even if some are. And even repealed harmful laws are likely not repealed until the harm they cause is very evident. Meaning great harm has been done.

jacquesm 3y ago
That's not how I read the law with the supplied context. It basically reads like this - translation/interpretation errors are mine: Any machine that is compromised by a hacker and that leads to other machines that are also compromised by this hacker are fair game in the process of an investigation. This ensures that the typical chain of wrapped connections can be pierced, even if some of those systems may well be compromised outside of the owners knowledge. Yes, they are also victims, but their unsecured systems and accounts that are currently under the control of the hacker makes them a part of the investigation. It's no secret that hackers tend to use many layers of obfuscation in order to reach their ultimate target and this attempts to put a stop to that, with the nice side benefit that if one of the machines en-route is a communications server that other accounts found there are fair game (such as what happened with EncroChat, but there are also other examples). From what I can see this is all relatively straightforward, and as long as the usual safeguards are in place I do not see a problem with it. Investigators are often laughed at for their lack of digital chops, this doesn't match my own experience, the thing I do see is that they are almost always outmatched because of the constraints placed on their ability to investigate when it comes to digital crime. Some balance should be found here and given a relatively careful weighing of the interests of society and law enforcement I think this proposal really does its best to achieve such a balance. If and when it is abused I fully expect that abuse to be smacked down, as has happened numerous times. There always will be a tension between LE on the one side and society on the other, LE only has as much power as we collectively grant them and oversight is the ultimate arbiter of what is and what isn't permissible. As for the context: this is NL we're talking about where such oversight really seems to work well, in other countries that may be a completely different story.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  Removing huge legal safeguards, vastly expanding law enforcement's legal freedom, without adding back more nuanced safeguards, makes no sense. The history of good behavior of NL law enforcement took place, itself, under legal safeguards! What would have been abuses today, will no longer be abuses. So LE can now act in good faith in a far more pervasive manner. Unless you think the previous safeguards were superfluous, because of LE good sense, there should still be legal safeguards. More nuanced safeguards of course, that take into account the new LE freedoms. But still explicit legal safeguards. Otherwise, we are not just depending on LE to act in good faith, but to define good faith. Which is not a good system, or the system before, when safeguards were explicit.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    This all presupposes that LE is acting in bad faith, which - so far - has not been my experience. There definitely have been exceptions and those have rightfully been smacked down, both AIVD and the regular police forces have seen judgments against them for trying to expand the envelope to the point that it was clear that was not the intent of the law. Those 'huge legal safeguards' in practice work out to a fairly loosely specified set of laws that are then interpreted as widely as possible by LE and subsequently tested in court whenever a party feels that they have overstepped the line. This method seems to work well enough that it has become standard procedure and of course new laws will be tested in a similar way. The current investigative process is often very dynamic, far more dynamic than the usual warrant process provides for and in that sense I can see the frustration about seeing a crime in progress and not being able to something about it as something that would need addressing. The international nature of the net and the speed with which these situations develop would mean that the online equivalent of 'skipping state lines' would be enough for a perp to always get away with it. This is an undesirable situation. It is also undesirable that law enforcement would be handed tools that give them too much leeway. Whether this tool is one of those or not will depend very much on how it plays out, given what I know about how the oversight system here works I have very good confidence that if there is abuse that it will be stopped. Dutch LE has learned a lot from various incidents in the past, which led to various backlashes. So they stand to lose as much as they stand to gain here.

jacquesm 3y ago

That's not how I read the law with the supplied context. It basically reads like this - translation/interpretation errors are mine: Any machine that is compromised by a hacker and that leads to other machines that are also compromised by this hacker are fair game in the process of an investigation. This ensures that the typical chain of wrapped connections can be pierced, even if some of those systems may well be compromised outside of the owners knowledge. Yes, they are also victims, but their unsecured systems and accounts that are currently under the control of the hacker makes them a part of the investigation. It's no secret that hackers tend to use many layers of obfuscation in order to reach their ultimate target and this attempts to put a stop to that, with the nice side benefit that if one of the machines en-route is a communications server that other accounts found there are fair game (such as what happened with EncroChat, but there are also other examples). From what I can see this is all relatively straightforward, and as long as the usual safeguards are in place I do not see a problem with it. Investigators are often laughed at for their lack of digital chops, this doesn't match my own experience, the thing I do see is that they are almost always outmatched because of the constraints placed on their ability to investigate when it comes to digital crime. Some balance should be found here and given a relatively careful weighing of the interests of society and law enforcement I think this proposal really does its best to achieve such a balance. If and when it is abused I fully expect that abuse to be smacked down, as has happened numerous times. There always will be a tension between LE on the one side and society on the other, LE only has as much power as we collectively grant them and oversight is the ultimate arbiter of what is and what isn't permissible. As for the context: this is NL we're talking about where such oversight really seems to work well, in other countries that may be a completely different story.

Nevermark 3y ago
Removing huge legal safeguards, vastly expanding law enforcement's legal freedom, without adding back more nuanced safeguards, makes no sense. The history of good behavior of NL law enforcement took place, itself, under legal safeguards! What would have been abuses today, will no longer be abuses. So LE can now act in good faith in a far more pervasive manner. Unless you think the previous safeguards were superfluous, because of LE good sense, there should still be legal safeguards. More nuanced safeguards of course, that take into account the new LE freedoms. But still explicit legal safeguards. Otherwise, we are not just depending on LE to act in good faith, but to define good faith. Which is not a good system, or the system before, when safeguards were explicit.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  This all presupposes that LE is acting in bad faith, which - so far - has not been my experience. There definitely have been exceptions and those have rightfully been smacked down, both AIVD and the regular police forces have seen judgments against them for trying to expand the envelope to the point that it was clear that was not the intent of the law. Those 'huge legal safeguards' in practice work out to a fairly loosely specified set of laws that are then interpreted as widely as possible by LE and subsequently tested in court whenever a party feels that they have overstepped the line. This method seems to work well enough that it has become standard procedure and of course new laws will be tested in a similar way. The current investigative process is often very dynamic, far more dynamic than the usual warrant process provides for and in that sense I can see the frustration about seeing a crime in progress and not being able to something about it as something that would need addressing. The international nature of the net and the speed with which these situations develop would mean that the online equivalent of 'skipping state lines' would be enough for a perp to always get away with it. This is an undesirable situation. It is also undesirable that law enforcement would be handed tools that give them too much leeway. Whether this tool is one of those or not will depend very much on how it plays out, given what I know about how the oversight system here works I have very good confidence that if there is abuse that it will be stopped. Dutch LE has learned a lot from various incidents in the past, which led to various backlashes. So they stand to lose as much as they stand to gain here.