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Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

469 points by gasull 3y ago

laserstrahl 3y ago
Nice read
nine_k 3y ago
In short: since the EU is trying to introduce legislation to monitor private communication, the author states that it's a moral duty of everyone to start encrypting their communications (instant messaging in particular), as a form of civil disobedience. It works when many (preferably most) people disobey.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > the author states that it's a moral duty of everyone to start encrypting their communications as a form of civil disobedience. It works when many (preferably most) people disobey. I'd certainly support it. What he's calling for - it's similar to the dominant spirit in the US after the Edward Snowden revelations. It resulted in a lot of ethical and beneficial stuff happening in a relatively short amount of time. Not just in tech, even news orgs lost much of their aversion to covering surveillance abuses. At least for a time.
- judge2020 3y ago
  Unfortunately this doesn't work because a _lot_ of will people legitimately will tell you they "have nothing to hide" and would tell you they'd let 3-letter agencies in the U.S. go through their phone with a fine-tooth comb (at least, until they're actually being faced with that reality and try to get out of it). The only reason we currently have any message encryption is because a few tech companies have made the decision to protect as many as possible by releasing products which enable it (iOS, Whatsapp, and now texts via Google Messages). Not everyone who uses these products knows they're protected and not everyone will care if they were to turn off E2EE tomorrow.
  - WolfeReader 3y ago
    "The only reason we currently have any message encryption is because a few tech companies have made the decision to protect as many as possible by releasing products which enable it (iOS, Whatsapp, and now texts via Google Messages)." Completely false. Phil Zimmerman gave us PGP for free in 1991, and numerous open encryption standards now belong to the general public. Giving credit to Apple, Meta, and Google for this isn't just blatanly incorrect; it erases the hard work of genuinely good people, and shifts the credit to user-hostile mass surveillance corporations.
    - judge2020 3y ago
      PGP et al is basically irrelevant given how few people use PGP compared to the >2.5 billion users that use Whatsapp and >1B using iMessage. My wording wasn't exact; other encryption programs have enabled secure messaging, but without big players it would've been outlawed by now because it would've been easier to say "only criminals" use encrypted communication. As for the "numerous open encryption standards", these are fairly irrelevant since the foremost goal is not encrypted messaging, but mostly for creating a secure way for business to interface with customers (can't run a startup or Fortune 500 business without being able to trust requests and responses). Getting people to use encrypted communications is the hard part, not designing the encryption or even implementing it.
      - geraldhh 3y ago
        iirc moxie built double-ratched in the same spirit as zimmerman built pgp and gave it away for free. thou he even went as far as integrating it into a mass-market product (wa) to twart the "only criminals" thing that seriously held back adoption of the latter throu export controls. didn't help as much as they hoped, as there are no trustworthy platforms to run any of it.
    - saulrh 3y ago
      A technology being published does not mean that it is available, especially for technologies that require uptake by the general public. And, well, PGP and GPG have reputations for such awful usability that they _might as well not exist_ as far as the general public is concerned. As another comment here mentions, just look at its uptake numbers! There are probalby more people qualified to do open-head neurosurgery than there are people who are qualified to use PGP. It's no more "available" than the C64 demoscene, orbital rocketry, or quantum physics. Signal and Apple and Google aren't being credited for developing the core tech, they're being credited for refining it until they can wrap it up in a package that's so user-friendly and low-friction that _every single person on the planet_ can use it.
prmoustache 3y ago
Latest news is Gerard Darmanin, french minister of the interior, is trying to use the latest attack in a french school to ban encryption or at least force encrypted messaging vendors to add backdoors for governments: https://www.numerama.com/tech/1533652-attaque-a-arras-darmanin-vise-les-messageries-et-leur-chiffrement.html https://www.numerama.com/tech/1533652-attaque-a-arras-darman...
- blackhaz 3y ago
  Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.
  - croes 3y ago
    If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. I'm Spartacus.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      > If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. I'm not sure if we're mindful of this but Gov's only ethical purpose is to serve us. Past that, it has lost it's way.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. So far as I know, the only way to do that is to leave whichever country is doing this, which — trust me on this as one who has done so for slightly messier reasons — is a right PITA even when going somewhere else that has a functioning society. I don't think there's any other way to make yourself an "outlaw" in the old-fashioned sense of the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw
        3y ago
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> you would be morally obliged to disobey In days of yore my CS law module was taught by a QC - that's a high ranking barrister in the UK - who explained the world of difference between the "The Rule of Law" and "the law" in a class called "jurisprudence". Rule of Law (capitalised conceptual) is there as permanent ground truth in contrast to the ephemeral du-jure laws. At times I still struggle with that profound counter-intuitive idea; that if one deeply, passionately believes in the necessity of The Law and all of society's institutions, one must with equal passion break laws and throw rocks at the police when they are tools of tyrants, idiots and dumb laws. Indeed today I think that opposition to technological tyranny has become the mark of the true conservative, and that defenders of common sense and simple human dignity are forced to assume the "radical" position. High ideals are very expensive.
- uoaei 3y ago
  Some may wince at the use of the word conservative given its connotations. But small-c conservative tendencies are what temper small-p progressive initiatives from quickly entering dangerous waters, just as progressive tendencies counter conservative initiatives when they are sinking us deeper into harmful ruts.
- qsort 3y ago
  > if one deeply, passionately believes in the necessity of The Law and all of society's institutions, one must with equal passion break laws "-- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
  - dylan604 3y ago
    [dead]
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Of course, the idea that there is any kind of "permanent ground truth" around morals/laws is very much up for debate. Some philosophers think it exists (usually called "natural law" [1]), while many others think it's nonsense. I would guess that most anthropologists, for instance, would say it's rubbish -- people who have studied the exceedingly wide variation in what is considered moral or immoral across cultures. A duty in one community may very well be a prohibition in another. But you don't need to believe in any kind of "permanent ground truth" law in order to "break laws and throw rocks at the police". You merely have to believe that the current laws/administration are acting unjustly according to the local morals of the time and place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
jessenaser 3y ago
The easiest way to combat "you have nothing to hide" is if you were in a country taken over by dictators or terrorists, those leaders don't care and cannot be reasoned with. They will use the backdoor at any time to punish dissent or any misalignment with their rules. And if people say, "but our country is free", tell them that if your country was not, how would you get back to freedom? Is your software and hardware free and open so that you could do this? If the E.U. really made Chat Control, it would require a DRM that would restrict non-signed OS from running. How would you install freedom software under this situation? The only way is to prevent the implementation of locked hardware in the first place.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > If the E.U. really made Chat Control, it would require a DRM that would restrict non-signed OS from running I have seen this claim, but I don’t believe it is necessarily true. If EU legislation limits encryption on WhatsApp and other messengers offered on the Play Store, then that already implements the law for the vast majority of the population. Us nerds might be able to run whatever OSs we want, but we and even non-nerd sideloaders are nearly a rounding error.
  - jessenaser 3y ago
    This is still true. Since most Android phones and all iPhones cannot install freedom software, they don't have to explicitly put a DRM at the hardware level, because it is already there from Apple or most Android manufactures. Apple devices can only install software from a signed key. Most Android phones can only install Android from the device manufacture signed key (unless Google Pixel for example). However, Android allows installing apps from not just the Play Store on most devices, so either the Android OS would need an update, or the hardware would need an update.
- eviks 3y ago
  How often does this easiest way win you an argument?
  - 3y ago
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
The author advocates using encryption as an ethical duty, OK. But it would not be an effective form of civil disobedience. This is unrealistic: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros. This is not anything the general public, for whom today their mobile phones with Play Services are the default device and things like WhatsApp their means of communication, is going to do. All the state needs to do is force weaker encryption on the common apps offered on the Play Store, and that covers the vast, vast majority of the population.
- tripu 3y ago
  Author here. (Thank you for all the comments!) Yes, I know SSH tunnelling and compiling your own Android are tall orders for the average user. Here I'm just hinting at some examples that are well-known among us geeks, but there are easier to use alternatives to all that. I suspect Protonmail is as easy to use as GMail. VPNs are so easy to use nowadays. The UX on Signal isn't particularly challenging to the average user of WhatsApp. There is a lot we techies can do to educate normies and respectfully push them in the right direction, but we keep on neglecting that responsibility under the excuses of bad usability, lack of features, or convenience for users. On an earlier draft I also had a sentence like: “a big effort in usability and outreach is needed”. Definitely so. My point is not that we can get all EU citizens to switch to SSH tunnelling and Purism, but that we IT professionals should spend more time and effort educating a fraction of the population to move the deal in the right direction and avert catastrophe.
  - iggldiggl 3y ago
    > I suspect Protonmail is as easy to use as GMail. End-to-end encryption without a trusted server makes multi-device usage rather complicated within a number of contexts. Full-text search for example then requires all your e-mails to be indexed on each individual device you're using for accessing Protonmail, and you need to keep that index permanently unless you want to re-download all messages and re-index them again the next time you need to search something. I don't very frequently use full-text search from my phone for example, but when I need it, I do need it, so neither proposition (permanently occupying valuable space on my mobile phone with a search index I only occasionally need, or else wasting a noticeable amount of time and data volume to re-index all mails every time I want to search something) sounds really enticing.
_Algernon_ 3y ago
A bit of a tangent, but I followed the link at the bottom to https://stopchatcontrol.eu/ https://stopchatcontrol.eu/ and while I want to take the site seriously and agree with the message, I can't with that silly usage of emojis (scroll down). Seems more like a joke website than a serious piece of advocacy it purports to be. The original blog post is good though.
- seanw444 3y ago
  Wow yeah, that's bad. I don't get the "end every sentence/paragraph with a relevant emoji" thing.
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    I think because keyboards on Android etc. suggest an emoji by default based on the last word, and people seem to think it "softens" a sentence, especially when mentioning something embarrassing, like sex.
    - Chabsff 3y ago
      > The EU Data Protection Board, the European Parliament’s Research Service and the EU Council’s Legal Service say they are warning of chat controls. Ursula von der Leyen is not interested in these opinions <clown and red flag emojis> This is straight up crass and off-putting. These shitposting emojis do not belong in a serious pitch.
      - _Algernon_ 3y ago
        Yes, that particular example was especially off-putting.
  - dhimes 3y ago
    I wonder if it's effective for their intended audience, though?
TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
I take issue with the phrasing. No one can force upon me their moral obligations. It’s my choice alone.
- Radim 3y ago
  Especially with these gems in the text: > (Norway) the most robust democracy in the world (which also happens to be a EU member state) Norway is not in the EU. > Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression (“flawed democracies”) Coming from a Spaniard? Go fuck yourself. Like tripu, I am strongly and vocally in favour of privacy and individual agency. But some of the ideological drip in this piece left a bad taste in my mouth.
  - tripu 3y ago
    > Norway is not in the EU. You are right, thank you! I just fixed that. > Coming from a Spaniard? Go fuck yourself. I was already fixing the error, and writing in my head the kind answer above. I hadn't seen this nasty comment. Why the ad hominem? I'm ranking governments — not individuals — according to international reports I've seen. Those classifications are debatable, of course. There might be bias, or nuances I'm missing. But why do you presume malice on my part? How on Earth is it relevant that I'm a Spaniard?
    - mbork_pl 3y ago
      > How on Earth is it relevant that I'm a Spaniard? He probably can't trust you because _he's known too many Spaniards_. (Sorry for being off-topic, but I really could resist making that reference to the greatest movie of all time;-).) More on topic: > Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression I don't know what reports you've read, but I don't think we have any "political repression" here in Poland. Mind you, we had a huge demonstration opposing the ruling party 2 weeks ago (and many more in earlier months/years), and I haven't heard about any nasty consequences for people taking part in them. Though there is a lot of propaganda, both in the country and abroad, painting the government (which, by the way, was more or less voted out two days in an election) as some kind of evil empire, but that is just that - propaganda. That said, I understand that (almost) nobody has time to study politics of 50+ (or more) countries just to write a blog post or something, so it's not like I blame you.
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willhackett 3y ago
Legislation in favour of the consumer is almost starting to seem detrimental to the startup founder. The number of barriers, prerequisites, requirements, etc that a founder needs to consider pre-launch is bordering on insurmountable. This might just be me feeling like this, but even considering geo-residency in some of my early prototype designs feels very odd. I was optimistically hoping PaaS providers would catch up and fill in the middle ground. But seemingly for every Enterprise customer I'm manually filling out a document declaring our data residency, our vendors residency and how we use certain data. I'm an advocate for privacy, but f* me this is getting to be overwhelming.
- uoaei 3y ago
  The culture and politics around what startups are and can be seem to have avoided these questions too long. Now that we're evaluating these concerns more in earnest I think it is worth a little soul-searching to determine if it really is worth the money to follow the herd and invest one's time and effort into such applications of technology.
- cultureswitch 3y ago
  You don't need all of that stuff if your business respects people's privacy by design. It's like complaining that the GDPR is causing cookie banners on every site. That's only half the reason. The real reason is that the websites need one's opt-in to do something they shouldn't be doing. Obviously the law should have been crafted with an automatic system to reject all non-necessary cookies in mind, but the fault for the cookie banners still lies with the website.
  - Chabsff 3y ago
    If your system has the notion of users at all, then most of that red tape is unavoidable, no matter how privacy-respecting you are being. Either a solid and affordable PaaS solution or at the very least a single global international standard is sorely needed here. The current model is barely sustainable as it is, and it's getting worse, even for privacy-respecting endeavors.
- darkclouds 3y ago
lacoolj 3y ago
cool now just make my congressman agree so this stupid EARN-IT bill gets dropped
crazygringo 3y ago
I can sympathize with the general notion that more encryption is better, even if I wouldn't go to the extreme of declaring it a duty. But the author just completely lost me at: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros... Those tools and techniques should cease to be arcane nice-to-haves for nerds: we must get more non-technical people onboard. This is so unrealistic and impractical as a moral "duty" for "all", it undercuts my ability to take the rest of the piece seriously. It's not any kind of seriously considered ethical analysis, weighing the pros and cons of what's actually best or most effective in the real world -- it's a pipe dream.
- Citizen_Lame 3y ago
  I don't see it as unrealistic, as for your comprehension ability, that's debatable. For this to work on everything, it needs to be hardware implemented (security chip/SOC), to avoid taxing the CPU and rest of the system. Software engineering has been lax for so long, but paradigm is changing and it should be security first.
  - high_5 3y ago
    It's not unrealistic in technological but sociological terms.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      That's not unrealistic then, it's just a lack of will.
      - nemo 3y ago
        No, it's simply unrealistic. Effort is besides the point.
      - high_5 3y ago
        Mostly not a lack of will but much more local and urgent priorities than figuring out SSH and PGP, like jobs and chores for example.
rdm_blackhole 3y ago
I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime where all our conversations/messages/photos need to be dissected, catalogued and approved by un-elected bureaucrats. I mean you can literally go to eastern Europe to see the vestiges of the Stasi where they used to listen to the conversations of their citizens while trying to find dissidents among them. This isn't some kind of distant past, this is almost like yesterday and yet here we are again. How come we end up here again? Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? And then to turn around and seeing the EU wanting to give lessons of democracy to China or NK? What a joke. The future is grim and to be honest I would just rather they came out in the open and acknowledged the fact that democracy and privacy as we know it is dead. Then each and everyone can decide to accept this fact or fight back. Instead we get this grandstanding about civil liberties but in the background they are ever so working on diminishing our individual freedoms.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
  > Then each and everyone can decide to accept this fact or fight back. That’s exactly what they want to avoid. Problem/reaction/solution or manufactured consent is much easier.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  The "how" is simple: because it could be done with relative ease now. So those charged with preventing crimes can push for it and pushing back against crime fighting is a tough stance to take. Also, assuming high levels of privacy in the days of old might be in error, depending on what you were doing.
  - mnw21cam 3y ago
    I think in this case the "how" became the "why". Because it is now easy.
- rakoo 3y ago
  > I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime > How come we end up here again? Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? You need to read more anarchist/communist literature that explains the situation as it has always been: the presence of a State, as an entity, implies that the population has never been in control. The State has always been. Yes, sure, sometimes the State gives a facade of openness, but it's always been a facade. Whatever the "free" era we think happened, that era was still definitely not free for a part of the population: marginalized people, non-obedient people, people with an identity considered deviant, .... It wasn't "free", it was just "free for me"
hsn915 3y ago
Communications is NOT like having things in your homes. It's like economic transactions, which the state already tracks.
high_5 3y ago
> Those tools and techniques should cease to be arcane nice-to-haves for nerds: we must get more non-technical people onboard. I'm having a feeling that the OP either had a lot of luck at persuading and educating non-techie people or hasn't yet had many such encounters with the general population.
gavinhoward 3y ago
I absolutely agree with the article. I moved my wife and I to a Matrix server that I control, with disk encryption on top of the Matrix encryption. Signal was great for us, for a long time, but it was time to move on. I've even set up a Matrix chat server for my business for "office hours." The governments of the world have no right to see my comms with my (future) customers. And as soon as I can (when I have customers), I will be donating to the people who run Matrix. I'll probably set up a support contract. If you can set up a Matrix server for friends and family, do it. Also, I believe we as programmers have more duties to stop this tide of authoritarianism. I'm writing a blog post now called "Your Loved Ones Are Prisoners, and You Made the Chains" because yes, this is partially our fault. So we need to step up and do more to stop this.
- landemva 3y ago
  Consider explaining to my loved ones how TSA full body scans are voluntary opt-in chains. Like encryption back doors, if people having nothing to hide why not consent to voluntary full body scans? Am looking forward to your blog post!
  - gavinhoward 3y ago
    I have a list of links to read and reread as I write it. Your comment is now on the list. If it fits, I'll put something like that in. Thank you.
- gatekempt 3y ago
  What client do you use? Just started looking into Matrix because of your comment.
  - gavinhoward 3y ago
    I use the browser, Element, and Neochat.
talent_deprived 3y ago
My take away is, England made a smart moving getting out of the crazy EU.
- jkbbwr 3y ago
  Not in the slightest, we have an even more strict version of this bill currently being drafted for enforcement. It's already law here.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  Maybe. But on the other hand, the UK loves to play Big Brother too. See for example the omnipresent CCTV cameras over there.
- rc_mob 3y ago
  spoken like a true illiterate
avodonosov 3y ago
If you suddenly die, would you want your family or heirs to access your data (photos, writings, communicatinos, projects, documents, whatever)? If yes, how to achieve that without compromising the security of encryption of all your data?
- phito 3y ago
  You share your private key with them. Either before dying (that requires a lot of trust, I wouldn't recommend it), or after being dead through a will.
  - avodonosov 3y ago
    Not secure to have the key printed in ones will.
    - extraduder_ire 3y ago
      Secure is relative here. In this case, it would exist in one additional place (besides your possession) if the whole key was stored on the document. You can also break up keys into multiple parts, such that you need N pieces of M total to recover the key. e.g. N = 2, M = 3: you derive three subkeys, two of which are needed to recover the key. Or, you could require the key stored in the will, plus any number of other keys for recovery. Cryptographers have spent a long time doing math to make these kinds of key systems possible. I've gone down many a wikipedia rabbithole in the past about such problems.
    - phito 3y ago
      Neither is it secure to leave your data on your computer without encryption and password
gizmo 3y ago
I don't want to be overly inflammatory but the core issue here is that Europe very badly wants to be a technocratic police state. Free speech is a joke in Europe (despite loud denials from Europeans who insist free speech exists in Europe and the restrictions are /necessary/ in the war against misinformation). The right to protest is slowly getting strangled. How are Europeans OK with protests requiring /permission/ from the police? Government transparency? Zero to none. You'll get stonewalled or ignored when you ask for information. Don't be so difficult. Just believe the government has the /best intentions/. Surveillance cameras on every street corner. No store accepts cash money anymore. Your car and phone track and store your every move. This crackdown on encryption is just another domino about to fall.
qweqwe14 3y ago
Lots of comments here mention that the vast majority of people won't use PGP, Linux and other things to protect their privacy, because they don't care/are dumb/have more important things to do/whatever. The bottom line though is that people that are more tech savvy and more knowledgeable will always have better privacy no matter what, unless you literally enforce Linux and all that on everyone, which is just not gonna work. And even if it does, you'll then have to ensure they actually use it properly without screwing things up and compromising their privacy, by which point you'd need every person to know a good amount about networks, security, operating systems etc, which is even harder. The best course of action is making privacy tools easier to use, so that more people can use them. But without some massive change initiated by corporations or governments, it's infeasible that everyone suddenly gains privacy. YOU have to put the work in to protect yourself, not someone else. And most people don't care. And that's fine. Most people suck anyways! It's easy enough to become aware of privacy issues in the modern world, don't pretend like people don't know about them. If people care about them, they will learn how to solve them for themselves, there's plenty of info. If they don't, there's literally nothing you can do.
- Condition1952 3y ago
  It is actually a tragedy that privacy is so inconvenient and complicated
  - geraldhh 3y ago
    moxie tried, but there are no trustworthy ends for the encryption. hence privacy is still mostly for criminals.
- dublinben 3y ago
  >Most people don't care. Most people aren't given the choice. When they are actually presented an equally simple decision between more privacy and less privacy, nearly everyone chooses privacy.[0] Making privacy just as easy as not-privacy is exactly what needs to happen, and that is likely to only happen through regulation. We can already see how hard companies work to avoid complying with GDPR and the cookie law. [0] https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restricted-app-tracking-transparency-worldwide-us-daily-latest-update/ https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restric...
Roark66 3y ago
>Some of its member states, like Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression (“flawed democracies”). Seriously? You must be reading the media that push the narrative a country is democratic if allies of EPP(the largest EU party) win the elections there consistently otherwise it is a horrible autocracy. Imagine people actually voting for who they want for and these people than rule, without asking Brussels for permission! What audacity! They even had the audacity to veto ACTA (remember that)! It is extremely funny the ruling party that is called "undemocratic" after ruling for 8 years in Poland has now(last Sunday) essentially lost power in democratic elections with the highest voter turnover ever. If this is what happens in a "flawed democracy" I'd not want to live in an "unflawed one". Also, you seem to be against the overtly autocratic laws proposed by the EU commission like this monitoring law. Perhaps you don't know the party that just has won the election in Poland (the so called "democratic opposition", why democratic? Because democracy is only when they win of course.) is led by Donald Tusk, who was the leader of the previous EU council and is/was the deputy of EPP, the biggest party in Europe (guys that want to pass the law you're so much against). So where did these "undemocratic" claims come from? In Hungary allegedly there are some curbs on freedom of speech etc. But in Poland? No, the biggest proof is that there are plenty of opposing media (that's why the opposition won). So why? Well. The EPP-aligned Po party in Poland when they miserably failed the elections in 2015 immediately started claiming the now ruling party is "undemocratic" (*both parties actually broke the constitution regarding the highest court so there was a typical "pot calling kettle black" situation - that wasn't even the biggest argument, the biggest argument was that they were "power hungry" by rightfully and legally taking power in a country where the majority voted for them by electing their own officials into various state enterprises etc - stuff every single party did before and will do after). Time has passed, the ruling party has made stupid mistakes, they pissed lots of people by being too religious and pushing their worldview on everyone including myself(for example the high court members elected by them made a ruling you can't abort a pregnancy just because the foetus has a deadly disease, it has always been legal to abort if the mother is in danger) on everyone, but what they also did is they actually fulfilled a number of promises they made prior to the elections. Perhaps that is normal where you live, but it Poland it wasn't. It was normal not just to completely forget all your promises, but to pass laws directly opposing them. They were the only party that actually did what they said they will, also they found and stopped corruption and vat fraud that amounted to 50% more money in the budget during their rule, huge number of roads, motorways etc were built. Also they (called "far right in the west, funny again" increased child benefits essentially getting rid of child poverty). So they won the next election. They continued doing what they did before, but then covid happened and they made stupid mistakes, they were suspicions of corruption on buying respirators etc. Then Russia and Belarus started picking up tens of thousands of people from middle east and africa, flying them to Belarus (for between $5k and $50k per head depending on "class of travel") and forcing these people to attack the polish border in hope Poland will take them in, they will cause mayhem like everywhere else in Europe unconstrained illegal immigration happened turning Poles anti-immigration (guess why, they were hoping well close the borders on Ukrainians). These were people from mild climate countries being dropped in a middle of a forested area with bogs, rivers etc in winter. They were told if they want to get to Germany they have to attack Polish border guards and they did and still do. Why don't they just ask for asylum in Poland, asking the first border guard they meet? Because they want to go to Germany and asking for asylum in Poland means they would be sent back to Poland by the Germans. Until now Polish border guards have saved over 200 people that were stuck in swamps, or having hypothermia etc. They got free heathcare in Polish hospitals. How many if them claimed asylum in Poland? Less than 50. What happened to the rest? They preferred to be dropped of on Belarusian side of the border hoping to try again to cross illegally later. In this environment the opposition started making baseless claims about "the forest service building mass graves pits" and other bullshit(despite there being lots of humanitarian organisations there illegally), the government instead said they'll build a 180km border wall in 6 months. The opposition said it will never happen, then the wall was built. Then the war in Ukraine started and specially in the beginning they handled it very well too. Not only Ukrainians were given the same heathcare and rights to work and run businesses like Polish people, but they got the same benefits. Every single government service in Poland has been translated into Ukrainian. 250k Ukrainian kids went to Polish schools. Poland led by that party was the first country to send 200 tanks to Ukraine, anti helicopter rockets, electricity via a new 500kV interconnector and the government did everything in its power to shame pro-Russian countries like Germany and France to help until they did start helping. Then the inflation happened, still thanks to good economic policy Poland survived it with one of smallest unemployment rates in Europe. Now the inflation is dropping and people forget about such things when times are better. However, this "undemocratic" ruling party that won the elections twice (not in a landslide - 90% Erdoğan's Turkey style, but in difficult coalitions both times) seemed to became tiered. The campaign focused only on how Tusk was a horrible corrupt prime minister before, that he was openly Pro Putin's Russia until it wasn't possible anymore and that his first party was funded illegally by German CDU (it is illegal for foreign organisations to fund parties). Younger people didn't remember his rule and the crapoy campaign from the "undemocratic" ruling party in connection with that it is unlikely to win for the third time meant they lost. They, as a single party, got the most votes, but the "democratic" opposition has more votes together so they basically lost. As for the stupid claims of spying on "opposition and some journalists" the only proof is that pegasus was found on their phones and one of these people was being investigated at the time (in connection with illegal party funding). How do you know it was Polish police that used Pegasus and not Russia, Israel or any number of other countries? And if they did, what proof is there for it being done illegally? If it happened it required court order and if it did well know everything about it now that the "undemocratic" government lost power in democratic elections.
Joel_Mckay 3y ago
"Despotism" ( 1946 PSA ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaWSqboZr1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaWSqboZr1w Hardly a new problem, but certainly a recurring theme in history. It is hypocrisy and lunacy that take over fundamental respect for individual privacy. It is inescapable in the current global exchange. Have a gloriously wonderful day =)
stainablesteel 3y ago
i'd like to shoutout to this really interesting youtube channel, exurb1a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzhkwyoe5vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzhkwyoe5vI ^he has a video on this topic, its a rather philosophical channel, and this is a rather philosophical video ie, legitimate political opposition to the "only the state can see all of your secrets" is actually "let everyone's secrets be out in the open, those of politicians too" if opposition starts using the logical endpoint of this line of reasoning, perhaps these constant attempts at removing our freedoms might diminish in quantity
charcircuit 3y ago
>If you don't have something to hide someone else might have something to hide I don't find it ethical to fight for the privacy just to protect criminals.
- esafak 3y ago
  It is not criminal to want privacy, any more than it is to want a firearm.
  - bonton89 3y ago
    Or to have a miscarriage in the state of Texas.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    There is a difference between standard privacy where your information is not accessible anyone you know or anyone in the public versus a level of privacy where not even the legal system with a court order can get the information.
- kevdev 3y ago
  Your argument assumes a just state that will not outlaw things like dissent against the government, being LGBTQ, etc. Plus, having something to hide does not automatically mean you are doing something criminal. I do nothing criminal, but I still have things to hide.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >Your argument assumes a just state that will not outlaw things... No, once things are outlawed you should stop doing them. Any prior messages don't matter since the law can't apply retroactively. I am assuming ex post facto laws are prohibited. >Plus, having something to hide does not automatically mean you are doing something criminal. If you the reasoning for hiding is because you don't want the government to see it then it is likely criminal.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> We should switch to Protonmail or similar webmail Doesn't Protonmail decrypt at the server? That is, can't Protonmail read your encrypted messages? And don't they have form for grassing people up? I'm not sure about those two claims. But that's the point - it's difficult for even a techie to use crypto(graphy) safely. If you want to use it as an impediment to snoopers, or as some kind of statement, cool. But if you let the server decrypt your messages, you aren't really safe. Signal disloses your phone number. I think I understand the limitations of PGP/GPG; I'd use that, if my correspondents had ever heard of it (and if I were sure that they weren't going to forward/reply-to my messages in plain, or store the plaintext on some Google server). But at the moment, the state of end-user encrypted messaging software doesn't look very safe to me. What I would like to see is an end-to-end scheme that can't be used unsafely, even if the user is an idiot, and that is used more-or-less universally. Otherwise I'm reluctant to SHOUT my secrets over the internet.
- iggldiggl 3y ago
  > Doesn't Protonmail decrypt at the server? That is, can't Protonmail read your encrypted messages? It doesn't decrypt them server-side, but since they're the ones serving you up with the webmail interface, you still need to trust them that the webmail code doesn't do anything nasty it shouldn't actually do.
ysnp 3y ago
[dead]
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Post-ACID for stateful services -> DHC: Durability*, hygiene**, and confidentiality***. * Superset of bare metal recovery readiness, proven backups, monitoring, availability, and warm storage integrity. ** Superset of consistency, isolation, referential integrity, and data hygiene. *** Superset of authenticated, G4+ FHE, and/or zero-knowledge encryption at rest and in-flight, elimination of side-channels, least privilege access control of metadata and data, removing plaintext paths, reducing privacy-liability metadata, and eliminating bleed-through of internal metadata externally.
ploum 3y ago
always has been
mvanbaak 3y ago
Lot of valid points, too bad all of that is thrown away by telling everyone should support crypto.

469 points by gasull 3y ago

Nice read

In short: since the EU is trying to introduce legislation to monitor private communication, the author states that it's a moral duty of everyone to start encrypting their communications (instant messaging in particular), as a form of civil disobedience. It works when many (preferably most) people disobey.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> the author states that it's a moral duty of everyone to start encrypting their communications as a form of civil disobedience. It works when many (preferably most) people disobey. I'd certainly support it. What he's calling for - it's similar to the dominant spirit in the US after the Edward Snowden revelations. It resulted in a lot of ethical and beneficial stuff happening in a relatively short amount of time. Not just in tech, even news orgs lost much of their aversion to covering surveillance abuses. At least for a time.
judge2020 3y ago
Unfortunately this doesn't work because a _lot_ of will people legitimately will tell you they "have nothing to hide" and would tell you they'd let 3-letter agencies in the U.S. go through their phone with a fine-tooth comb (at least, until they're actually being faced with that reality and try to get out of it). The only reason we currently have any message encryption is because a few tech companies have made the decision to protect as many as possible by releasing products which enable it (iOS, Whatsapp, and now texts via Google Messages). Not everyone who uses these products knows they're protected and not everyone will care if they were to turn off E2EE tomorrow.
- WolfeReader 3y ago
  "The only reason we currently have any message encryption is because a few tech companies have made the decision to protect as many as possible by releasing products which enable it (iOS, Whatsapp, and now texts via Google Messages)." Completely false. Phil Zimmerman gave us PGP for free in 1991, and numerous open encryption standards now belong to the general public. Giving credit to Apple, Meta, and Google for this isn't just blatanly incorrect; it erases the hard work of genuinely good people, and shifts the credit to user-hostile mass surveillance corporations.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    PGP et al is basically irrelevant given how few people use PGP compared to the >2.5 billion users that use Whatsapp and >1B using iMessage. My wording wasn't exact; other encryption programs have enabled secure messaging, but without big players it would've been outlawed by now because it would've been easier to say "only criminals" use encrypted communication. As for the "numerous open encryption standards", these are fairly irrelevant since the foremost goal is not encrypted messaging, but mostly for creating a secure way for business to interface with customers (can't run a startup or Fortune 500 business without being able to trust requests and responses). Getting people to use encrypted communications is the hard part, not designing the encryption or even implementing it.
    - geraldhh 3y ago
      iirc moxie built double-ratched in the same spirit as zimmerman built pgp and gave it away for free. thou he even went as far as integrating it into a mass-market product (wa) to twart the "only criminals" thing that seriously held back adoption of the latter throu export controls. didn't help as much as they hoped, as there are no trustworthy platforms to run any of it.
  - saulrh 3y ago
    A technology being published does not mean that it is available, especially for technologies that require uptake by the general public. And, well, PGP and GPG have reputations for such awful usability that they _might as well not exist_ as far as the general public is concerned. As another comment here mentions, just look at its uptake numbers! There are probalby more people qualified to do open-head neurosurgery than there are people who are qualified to use PGP. It's no more "available" than the C64 demoscene, orbital rocketry, or quantum physics. Signal and Apple and Google aren't being credited for developing the core tech, they're being credited for refining it until they can wrap it up in a package that's so user-friendly and low-friction that _every single person on the planet_ can use it.

prmoustache 3y ago

Latest news is Gerard Darmanin, french minister of the interior, is trying to use the latest attack in a french school to ban encryption or at least force encrypted messaging vendors to add backdoors for governments: https://www.numerama.com/tech/1533652-attaque-a-arras-darmanin-vise-les-messageries-et-leur-chiffrement.html https://www.numerama.com/tech/1533652-attaque-a-arras-darman...

blackhaz 3y ago
Right. If everyone hides in encryption, they'll outlaw encryption.
- croes 3y ago
  If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. I'm Spartacus.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > If they outlaw encryption but everyone encrypts, they can either do nothing or arrest everyone. Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. I'm not sure if we're mindful of this but Gov's only ethical purpose is to serve us. Past that, it has lost it's way.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > Whatever protection I'm getting from non-consensual surveillance, I am declining it. So far as I know, the only way to do that is to leave whichever country is doing this, which — trust me on this as one who has done so for slightly messier reasons — is a right PITA even when going somewhere else that has a functioning society. I don't think there's any other way to make yourself an "outlaw" in the old-fashioned sense of the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw
      - 3y ago

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> you would be morally obliged to disobey In days of yore my CS law module was taught by a QC - that's a high ranking barrister in the UK - who explained the world of difference between the "The Rule of Law" and "the law" in a class called "jurisprudence". Rule of Law (capitalised conceptual) is there as permanent ground truth in contrast to the ephemeral du-jure laws. At times I still struggle with that profound counter-intuitive idea; that if one deeply, passionately believes in the necessity of The Law and all of society's institutions, one must with equal passion break laws and throw rocks at the police when they are tools of tyrants, idiots and dumb laws. Indeed today I think that opposition to technological tyranny has become the mark of the true conservative, and that defenders of common sense and simple human dignity are forced to assume the "radical" position. High ideals are very expensive.

uoaei 3y ago
Some may wince at the use of the word conservative given its connotations. But small-c conservative tendencies are what temper small-p progressive initiatives from quickly entering dangerous waters, just as progressive tendencies counter conservative initiatives when they are sinking us deeper into harmful ruts.
qsort 3y ago
> if one deeply, passionately believes in the necessity of The Law and all of society's institutions, one must with equal passion break laws "-- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
- dylan604 3y ago
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crazygringo 3y ago
Of course, the idea that there is any kind of "permanent ground truth" around morals/laws is very much up for debate. Some philosophers think it exists (usually called "natural law" [1]), while many others think it's nonsense. I would guess that most anthropologists, for instance, would say it's rubbish -- people who have studied the exceedingly wide variation in what is considered moral or immoral across cultures. A duty in one community may very well be a prohibition in another. But you don't need to believe in any kind of "permanent ground truth" law in order to "break laws and throw rocks at the police". You merely have to believe that the current laws/administration are acting unjustly according to the local morals of the time and place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

jessenaser 3y ago

The easiest way to combat "you have nothing to hide" is if you were in a country taken over by dictators or terrorists, those leaders don't care and cannot be reasoned with. They will use the backdoor at any time to punish dissent or any misalignment with their rules. And if people say, "but our country is free", tell them that if your country was not, how would you get back to freedom? Is your software and hardware free and open so that you could do this? If the E.U. really made Chat Control, it would require a DRM that would restrict non-signed OS from running. How would you install freedom software under this situation? The only way is to prevent the implementation of locked hardware in the first place.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> If the E.U. really made Chat Control, it would require a DRM that would restrict non-signed OS from running I have seen this claim, but I don’t believe it is necessarily true. If EU legislation limits encryption on WhatsApp and other messengers offered on the Play Store, then that already implements the law for the vast majority of the population. Us nerds might be able to run whatever OSs we want, but we and even non-nerd sideloaders are nearly a rounding error.
- jessenaser 3y ago
  This is still true. Since most Android phones and all iPhones cannot install freedom software, they don't have to explicitly put a DRM at the hardware level, because it is already there from Apple or most Android manufactures. Apple devices can only install software from a signed key. Most Android phones can only install Android from the device manufacture signed key (unless Google Pixel for example). However, Android allows installing apps from not just the Play Store on most devices, so either the Android OS would need an update, or the hardware would need an update.
eviks 3y ago
How often does this easiest way win you an argument?
- 3y ago

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

The author advocates using encryption as an ethical duty, OK. But it would not be an effective form of civil disobedience. This is unrealistic: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros. This is not anything the general public, for whom today their mobile phones with Play Services are the default device and things like WhatsApp their means of communication, is going to do. All the state needs to do is force weaker encryption on the common apps offered on the Play Store, and that covers the vast, vast majority of the population.

tripu 3y ago
Author here. (Thank you for all the comments!) Yes, I know SSH tunnelling and compiling your own Android are tall orders for the average user. Here I'm just hinting at some examples that are well-known among us geeks, but there are easier to use alternatives to all that. I suspect Protonmail is as easy to use as GMail. VPNs are so easy to use nowadays. The UX on Signal isn't particularly challenging to the average user of WhatsApp. There is a lot we techies can do to educate normies and respectfully push them in the right direction, but we keep on neglecting that responsibility under the excuses of bad usability, lack of features, or convenience for users. On an earlier draft I also had a sentence like: “a big effort in usability and outreach is needed”. Definitely so. My point is not that we can get all EU citizens to switch to SSH tunnelling and Purism, but that we IT professionals should spend more time and effort educating a fraction of the population to move the deal in the right direction and avert catastrophe.
- iggldiggl 3y ago
  > I suspect Protonmail is as easy to use as GMail. End-to-end encryption without a trusted server makes multi-device usage rather complicated within a number of contexts. Full-text search for example then requires all your e-mails to be indexed on each individual device you're using for accessing Protonmail, and you need to keep that index permanently unless you want to re-download all messages and re-index them again the next time you need to search something. I don't very frequently use full-text search from my phone for example, but when I need it, I do need it, so neither proposition (permanently occupying valuable space on my mobile phone with a search index I only occasionally need, or else wasting a noticeable amount of time and data volume to re-index all mails every time I want to search something) sounds really enticing.

_Algernon_ 3y ago

A bit of a tangent, but I followed the link at the bottom to https://stopchatcontrol.eu/ https://stopchatcontrol.eu/ and while I want to take the site seriously and agree with the message, I can't with that silly usage of emojis (scroll down). Seems more like a joke website than a serious piece of advocacy it purports to be. The original blog post is good though.

seanw444 3y ago
Wow yeah, that's bad. I don't get the "end every sentence/paragraph with a relevant emoji" thing.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  I think because keyboards on Android etc. suggest an emoji by default based on the last word, and people seem to think it "softens" a sentence, especially when mentioning something embarrassing, like sex.
  - Chabsff 3y ago
    > The EU Data Protection Board, the European Parliament’s Research Service and the EU Council’s Legal Service say they are warning of chat controls. Ursula von der Leyen is not interested in these opinions <clown and red flag emojis> This is straight up crass and off-putting. These shitposting emojis do not belong in a serious pitch.
    - _Algernon_ 3y ago
      Yes, that particular example was especially off-putting.
- dhimes 3y ago
  I wonder if it's effective for their intended audience, though?

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago

I take issue with the phrasing. No one can force upon me their moral obligations. It’s my choice alone.

Radim 3y ago
Especially with these gems in the text: > (Norway) the most robust democracy in the world (which also happens to be a EU member state) Norway is not in the EU. > Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression (“flawed democracies”) Coming from a Spaniard? Go fuck yourself. Like tripu, I am strongly and vocally in favour of privacy and individual agency. But some of the ideological drip in this piece left a bad taste in my mouth.
- tripu 3y ago
  > Norway is not in the EU. You are right, thank you! I just fixed that. > Coming from a Spaniard? Go fuck yourself. I was already fixing the error, and writing in my head the kind answer above. I hadn't seen this nasty comment. Why the ad hominem? I'm ranking governments — not individuals — according to international reports I've seen. Those classifications are debatable, of course. There might be bias, or nuances I'm missing. But why do you presume malice on my part? How on Earth is it relevant that I'm a Spaniard?
  - mbork_pl 3y ago
    > How on Earth is it relevant that I'm a Spaniard? He probably can't trust you because _he's known too many Spaniards_. (Sorry for being off-topic, but I really could resist making that reference to the greatest movie of all time;-).) More on topic: > Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression I don't know what reports you've read, but I don't think we have any "political repression" here in Poland. Mind you, we had a huge demonstration opposing the ruling party 2 weeks ago (and many more in earlier months/years), and I haven't heard about any nasty consequences for people taking part in them. Though there is a lot of propaganda, both in the country and abroad, painting the government (which, by the way, was more or less voted out two days in an election) as some kind of evil empire, but that is just that - propaganda. That said, I understand that (almost) nobody has time to study politics of 50+ (or more) countries just to write a blog post or something, so it's not like I blame you.

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willhackett 3y ago

Legislation in favour of the consumer is almost starting to seem detrimental to the startup founder. The number of barriers, prerequisites, requirements, etc that a founder needs to consider pre-launch is bordering on insurmountable. This might just be me feeling like this, but even considering geo-residency in some of my early prototype designs feels very odd. I was optimistically hoping PaaS providers would catch up and fill in the middle ground. But seemingly for every Enterprise customer I'm manually filling out a document declaring our data residency, our vendors residency and how we use certain data. I'm an advocate for privacy, but f* me this is getting to be overwhelming.

uoaei 3y ago
The culture and politics around what startups are and can be seem to have avoided these questions too long. Now that we're evaluating these concerns more in earnest I think it is worth a little soul-searching to determine if it really is worth the money to follow the herd and invest one's time and effort into such applications of technology.
cultureswitch 3y ago
You don't need all of that stuff if your business respects people's privacy by design. It's like complaining that the GDPR is causing cookie banners on every site. That's only half the reason. The real reason is that the websites need one's opt-in to do something they shouldn't be doing. Obviously the law should have been crafted with an automatic system to reject all non-necessary cookies in mind, but the fault for the cookie banners still lies with the website.
- Chabsff 3y ago
  If your system has the notion of users at all, then most of that red tape is unavoidable, no matter how privacy-respecting you are being. Either a solid and affordable PaaS solution or at the very least a single global international standard is sorely needed here. The current model is barely sustainable as it is, and it's getting worse, even for privacy-respecting endeavors.
darkclouds 3y ago

lacoolj 3y ago

cool now just make my congressman agree so this stupid EARN-IT bill gets dropped

crazygringo 3y ago

I can sympathize with the general notion that more encryption is better, even if I wouldn't go to the extreme of declaring it a duty. But the author just completely lost me at: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros... Those tools and techniques should cease to be arcane nice-to-haves for nerds: we must get more non-technical people onboard. This is so unrealistic and impractical as a moral "duty" for "all", it undercuts my ability to take the rest of the piece seriously. It's not any kind of seriously considered ethical analysis, weighing the pros and cons of what's actually best or most effective in the real world -- it's a pipe dream.

Citizen_Lame 3y ago
I don't see it as unrealistic, as for your comprehension ability, that's debatable. For this to work on everything, it needs to be hardware implemented (security chip/SOC), to avoid taxing the CPU and rest of the system. Software engineering has been lax for so long, but paradigm is changing and it should be security first.
- high_5 3y ago
  It's not unrealistic in technological but sociological terms.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    That's not unrealistic then, it's just a lack of will.
    - nemo 3y ago
      No, it's simply unrealistic. Effort is besides the point.
    - high_5 3y ago
      Mostly not a lack of will but much more local and urgent priorities than figuring out SSH and PGP, like jobs and chores for example.

rdm_blackhole 3y ago

I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime where all our conversations/messages/photos need to be dissected, catalogued and approved by un-elected bureaucrats. I mean you can literally go to eastern Europe to see the vestiges of the Stasi where they used to listen to the conversations of their citizens while trying to find dissidents among them. This isn't some kind of distant past, this is almost like yesterday and yet here we are again. How come we end up here again? Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? And then to turn around and seeing the EU wanting to give lessons of democracy to China or NK? What a joke. The future is grim and to be honest I would just rather they came out in the open and acknowledged the fact that democracy and privacy as we know it is dead. Then each and everyone can decide to accept this fact or fight back. Instead we get this grandstanding about civil liberties but in the background they are ever so working on diminishing our individual freedoms.

phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
> Then each and everyone can decide to accept this fact or fight back. That’s exactly what they want to avoid. Problem/reaction/solution or manufactured consent is much easier.
RandomLensman 3y ago
The "how" is simple: because it could be done with relative ease now. So those charged with preventing crimes can push for it and pushing back against crime fighting is a tough stance to take. Also, assuming high levels of privacy in the days of old might be in error, depending on what you were doing.
- mnw21cam 3y ago
  I think in this case the "how" became the "why". Because it is now easy.
rakoo 3y ago
> I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime > How come we end up here again? Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? You need to read more anarchist/communist literature that explains the situation as it has always been: the presence of a State, as an entity, implies that the population has never been in control. The State has always been. Yes, sure, sometimes the State gives a facade of openness, but it's always been a facade. Whatever the "free" era we think happened, that era was still definitely not free for a part of the population: marginalized people, non-obedient people, people with an identity considered deviant, .... It wasn't "free", it was just "free for me"

hsn915 3y ago

Communications is NOT like having things in your homes. It's like economic transactions, which the state already tracks.

high_5 3y ago

> Those tools and techniques should cease to be arcane nice-to-haves for nerds: we must get more non-technical people onboard. I'm having a feeling that the OP either had a lot of luck at persuading and educating non-techie people or hasn't yet had many such encounters with the general population.

gavinhoward 3y ago

I absolutely agree with the article. I moved my wife and I to a Matrix server that I control, with disk encryption on top of the Matrix encryption. Signal was great for us, for a long time, but it was time to move on. I've even set up a Matrix chat server for my business for "office hours." The governments of the world have no right to see my comms with my (future) customers. And as soon as I can (when I have customers), I will be donating to the people who run Matrix. I'll probably set up a support contract. If you can set up a Matrix server for friends and family, do it. Also, I believe we as programmers have more duties to stop this tide of authoritarianism. I'm writing a blog post now called "Your Loved Ones Are Prisoners, and You Made the Chains" because yes, this is partially our fault. So we need to step up and do more to stop this.

landemva 3y ago
Consider explaining to my loved ones how TSA full body scans are voluntary opt-in chains. Like encryption back doors, if people having nothing to hide why not consent to voluntary full body scans? Am looking forward to your blog post!
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  I have a list of links to read and reread as I write it. Your comment is now on the list. If it fits, I'll put something like that in. Thank you.
gatekempt 3y ago
What client do you use? Just started looking into Matrix because of your comment.
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  I use the browser, Element, and Neochat.

talent_deprived 3y ago

My take away is, England made a smart moving getting out of the crazy EU.

jkbbwr 3y ago
Not in the slightest, we have an even more strict version of this bill currently being drafted for enforcement. It's already law here.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
Maybe. But on the other hand, the UK loves to play Big Brother too. See for example the omnipresent CCTV cameras over there.
rc_mob 3y ago
spoken like a true illiterate

avodonosov 3y ago

If you suddenly die, would you want your family or heirs to access your data (photos, writings, communicatinos, projects, documents, whatever)? If yes, how to achieve that without compromising the security of encryption of all your data?

phito 3y ago
You share your private key with them. Either before dying (that requires a lot of trust, I wouldn't recommend it), or after being dead through a will.
- avodonosov 3y ago
  Not secure to have the key printed in ones will.
  - extraduder_ire 3y ago
    Secure is relative here. In this case, it would exist in one additional place (besides your possession) if the whole key was stored on the document. You can also break up keys into multiple parts, such that you need N pieces of M total to recover the key. e.g. N = 2, M = 3: you derive three subkeys, two of which are needed to recover the key. Or, you could require the key stored in the will, plus any number of other keys for recovery. Cryptographers have spent a long time doing math to make these kinds of key systems possible. I've gone down many a wikipedia rabbithole in the past about such problems.
  - phito 3y ago
    Neither is it secure to leave your data on your computer without encryption and password

gizmo 3y ago

I don't want to be overly inflammatory but the core issue here is that Europe very badly wants to be a technocratic police state. Free speech is a joke in Europe (despite loud denials from Europeans who insist free speech exists in Europe and the restrictions are /necessary/ in the war against misinformation). The right to protest is slowly getting strangled. How are Europeans OK with protests requiring /permission/ from the police? Government transparency? Zero to none. You'll get stonewalled or ignored when you ask for information. Don't be so difficult. Just believe the government has the /best intentions/. Surveillance cameras on every street corner. No store accepts cash money anymore. Your car and phone track and store your every move. This crackdown on encryption is just another domino about to fall.

qweqwe14 3y ago

Lots of comments here mention that the vast majority of people won't use PGP, Linux and other things to protect their privacy, because they don't care/are dumb/have more important things to do/whatever. The bottom line though is that people that are more tech savvy and more knowledgeable will always have better privacy no matter what, unless you literally enforce Linux and all that on everyone, which is just not gonna work. And even if it does, you'll then have to ensure they actually use it properly without screwing things up and compromising their privacy, by which point you'd need every person to know a good amount about networks, security, operating systems etc, which is even harder. The best course of action is making privacy tools easier to use, so that more people can use them. But without some massive change initiated by corporations or governments, it's infeasible that everyone suddenly gains privacy. YOU have to put the work in to protect yourself, not someone else. And most people don't care. And that's fine. Most people suck anyways! It's easy enough to become aware of privacy issues in the modern world, don't pretend like people don't know about them. If people care about them, they will learn how to solve them for themselves, there's plenty of info. If they don't, there's literally nothing you can do.

Condition1952 3y ago
It is actually a tragedy that privacy is so inconvenient and complicated
- geraldhh 3y ago
  moxie tried, but there are no trustworthy ends for the encryption. hence privacy is still mostly for criminals.
dublinben 3y ago
>Most people don't care. Most people aren't given the choice. When they are actually presented an equally simple decision between more privacy and less privacy, nearly everyone chooses privacy.[0] Making privacy just as easy as not-privacy is exactly what needs to happen, and that is likely to only happen through regulation. We can already see how hard companies work to avoid complying with GDPR and the cookie law. [0] https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restricted-app-tracking-transparency-worldwide-us-daily-latest-update/ https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restric...

Roark66 3y ago

>Some of its member states, like Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression (“flawed democracies”). Seriously? You must be reading the media that push the narrative a country is democratic if allies of EPP(the largest EU party) win the elections there consistently otherwise it is a horrible autocracy. Imagine people actually voting for who they want for and these people than rule, without asking Brussels for permission! What audacity! They even had the audacity to veto ACTA (remember that)! It is extremely funny the ruling party that is called "undemocratic" after ruling for 8 years in Poland has now(last Sunday) essentially lost power in democratic elections with the highest voter turnover ever. If this is what happens in a "flawed democracy" I'd not want to live in an "unflawed one". Also, you seem to be against the overtly autocratic laws proposed by the EU commission like this monitoring law. Perhaps you don't know the party that just has won the election in Poland (the so called "democratic opposition", why democratic? Because democracy is only when they win of course.) is led by Donald Tusk, who was the leader of the previous EU council and is/was the deputy of EPP, the biggest party in Europe (guys that want to pass the law you're so much against). So where did these "undemocratic" claims come from? In Hungary allegedly there are some curbs on freedom of speech etc. But in Poland? No, the biggest proof is that there are plenty of opposing media (that's why the opposition won). So why? Well. The EPP-aligned Po party in Poland when they miserably failed the elections in 2015 immediately started claiming the now ruling party is "undemocratic" (*both parties actually broke the constitution regarding the highest court so there was a typical "pot calling kettle black" situation - that wasn't even the biggest argument, the biggest argument was that they were "power hungry" by rightfully and legally taking power in a country where the majority voted for them by electing their own officials into various state enterprises etc - stuff every single party did before and will do after). Time has passed, the ruling party has made stupid mistakes, they pissed lots of people by being too religious and pushing their worldview on everyone including myself(for example the high court members elected by them made a ruling you can't abort a pregnancy just because the foetus has a deadly disease, it has always been legal to abort if the mother is in danger) on everyone, but what they also did is they actually fulfilled a number of promises they made prior to the elections. Perhaps that is normal where you live, but it Poland it wasn't. It was normal not just to completely forget all your promises, but to pass laws directly opposing them. They were the only party that actually did what they said they will, also they found and stopped corruption and vat fraud that amounted to 50% more money in the budget during their rule, huge number of roads, motorways etc were built. Also they (called "far right in the west, funny again" increased child benefits essentially getting rid of child poverty). So they won the next election. They continued doing what they did before, but then covid happened and they made stupid mistakes, they were suspicions of corruption on buying respirators etc. Then Russia and Belarus started picking up tens of thousands of people from middle east and africa, flying them to Belarus (for between $5k and $50k per head depending on "class of travel") and forcing these people to attack the polish border in hope Poland will take them in, they will cause mayhem like everywhere else in Europe unconstrained illegal immigration happened turning Poles anti-immigration (guess why, they were hoping well close the borders on Ukrainians). These were people from mild climate countries being dropped in a middle of a forested area with bogs, rivers etc in winter. They were told if they want to get to Germany they have to attack Polish border guards and they did and still do. Why don't they just ask for asylum in Poland, asking the first border guard they meet? Because they want to go to Germany and asking for asylum in Poland means they would be sent back to Poland by the Germans. Until now Polish border guards have saved over 200 people that were stuck in swamps, or having hypothermia etc. They got free heathcare in Polish hospitals. How many if them claimed asylum in Poland? Less than 50. What happened to the rest? They preferred to be dropped of on Belarusian side of the border hoping to try again to cross illegally later. In this environment the opposition started making baseless claims about "the forest service building mass graves pits" and other bullshit(despite there being lots of humanitarian organisations there illegally), the government instead said they'll build a 180km border wall in 6 months. The opposition said it will never happen, then the wall was built. Then the war in Ukraine started and specially in the beginning they handled it very well too. Not only Ukrainians were given the same heathcare and rights to work and run businesses like Polish people, but they got the same benefits. Every single government service in Poland has been translated into Ukrainian. 250k Ukrainian kids went to Polish schools. Poland led by that party was the first country to send 200 tanks to Ukraine, anti helicopter rockets, electricity via a new 500kV interconnector and the government did everything in its power to shame pro-Russian countries like Germany and France to help until they did start helping. Then the inflation happened, still thanks to good economic policy Poland survived it with one of smallest unemployment rates in Europe. Now the inflation is dropping and people forget about such things when times are better. However, this "undemocratic" ruling party that won the elections twice (not in a landslide - 90% Erdoğan's Turkey style, but in difficult coalitions both times) seemed to became tiered. The campaign focused only on how Tusk was a horrible corrupt prime minister before, that he was openly Pro Putin's Russia until it wasn't possible anymore and that his first party was funded illegally by German CDU (it is illegal for foreign organisations to fund parties). Younger people didn't remember his rule and the crapoy campaign from the "undemocratic" ruling party in connection with that it is unlikely to win for the third time meant they lost. They, as a single party, got the most votes, but the "democratic" opposition has more votes together so they basically lost. As for the stupid claims of spying on "opposition and some journalists" the only proof is that pegasus was found on their phones and one of these people was being investigated at the time (in connection with illegal party funding). How do you know it was Polish police that used Pegasus and not Russia, Israel or any number of other countries? And if they did, what proof is there for it being done illegally? If it happened it required court order and if it did well know everything about it now that the "undemocratic" government lost power in democratic elections.

Joel_Mckay 3y ago

"Despotism" ( 1946 PSA ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaWSqboZr1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaWSqboZr1w Hardly a new problem, but certainly a recurring theme in history. It is hypocrisy and lunacy that take over fundamental respect for individual privacy. It is inescapable in the current global exchange. Have a gloriously wonderful day =)

stainablesteel 3y ago

i'd like to shoutout to this really interesting youtube channel, exurb1a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzhkwyoe5vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzhkwyoe5vI ^he has a video on this topic, its a rather philosophical channel, and this is a rather philosophical video ie, legitimate political opposition to the "only the state can see all of your secrets" is actually "let everyone's secrets be out in the open, those of politicians too" if opposition starts using the logical endpoint of this line of reasoning, perhaps these constant attempts at removing our freedoms might diminish in quantity

charcircuit 3y ago

>If you don't have something to hide someone else might have something to hide I don't find it ethical to fight for the privacy just to protect criminals.

esafak 3y ago
It is not criminal to want privacy, any more than it is to want a firearm.
- bonton89 3y ago
  Or to have a miscarriage in the state of Texas.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  There is a difference between standard privacy where your information is not accessible anyone you know or anyone in the public versus a level of privacy where not even the legal system with a court order can get the information.
kevdev 3y ago
Your argument assumes a just state that will not outlaw things like dissent against the government, being LGBTQ, etc. Plus, having something to hide does not automatically mean you are doing something criminal. I do nothing criminal, but I still have things to hide.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Your argument assumes a just state that will not outlaw things... No, once things are outlawed you should stop doing them. Any prior messages don't matter since the law can't apply retroactively. I am assuming ex post facto laws are prohibited. >Plus, having something to hide does not automatically mean you are doing something criminal. If you the reasoning for hiding is because you don't want the government to see it then it is likely criminal.

denton-scratch 3y ago

> We should switch to Protonmail or similar webmail Doesn't Protonmail decrypt at the server? That is, can't Protonmail read your encrypted messages? And don't they have form for grassing people up? I'm not sure about those two claims. But that's the point - it's difficult for even a techie to use crypto(graphy) safely. If you want to use it as an impediment to snoopers, or as some kind of statement, cool. But if you let the server decrypt your messages, you aren't really safe. Signal disloses your phone number. I think I understand the limitations of PGP/GPG; I'd use that, if my correspondents had ever heard of it (and if I were sure that they weren't going to forward/reply-to my messages in plain, or store the plaintext on some Google server). But at the moment, the state of end-user encrypted messaging software doesn't look very safe to me. What I would like to see is an end-to-end scheme that can't be used unsafely, even if the user is an idiot, and that is used more-or-less universally. Otherwise I'm reluctant to SHOUT my secrets over the internet.

iggldiggl 3y ago
> Doesn't Protonmail decrypt at the server? That is, can't Protonmail read your encrypted messages? It doesn't decrypt them server-side, but since they're the ones serving you up with the webmail interface, you still need to trust them that the webmail code doesn't do anything nasty it shouldn't actually do.

ysnp 3y ago

[dead]

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Post-ACID for stateful services -> DHC: Durability*, hygiene**, and confidentiality***. * Superset of bare metal recovery readiness, proven backups, monitoring, availability, and warm storage integrity. ** Superset of consistency, isolation, referential integrity, and data hygiene. *** Superset of authenticated, G4+ FHE, and/or zero-knowledge encryption at rest and in-flight, elimination of side-channels, least privilege access control of metadata and data, removing plaintext paths, reducing privacy-liability metadata, and eliminating bleed-through of internal metadata externally.

ploum 3y ago

always has been

mvanbaak 3y ago

Lot of valid points, too bad all of that is thrown away by telling everyone should support crypto.