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Going Dark: The war on encryption is on the rise

421 points by janandonly 2y ago

beej71 2y ago
Think of the children growing up in totalitarian dictatorships with zero privacy.
zzo38computer 2y ago
What is needing is rather than "end-to-end-encryption", is user-defined encryption; i.e. you can use your own software for encryption, instead of (or in addition to) using whatever the service provides. This encrypts the messages regardless of what the communication services are doing (or are claiming to do). HTTPS will only prevent spies observing or altering your communications; it does not prevent the service that you are communicating with (or whoever owns them now) from adding malware, etc.
99catmaster 2y ago
Genuine question: why should I care about my data being encrypted and private?
croes 2y ago
And in the end everyone is amazed why hostile hackers could read confidential messages.
- balder1991 2y ago
  We might need a huge leak to open people’s eyes.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    The only leak I can imagine impacting this would be a giant dump of politician’s personal communications and they are exempt from encryption bans in this particular bill.
    - balder1991 2y ago
      IDK there are powerful people in society aside from politicians that can influence public opinion too.
      - reaperman 2y ago
        Very good point. I should think more deeply before commenting and not rush out off-the-cuff remarks.
      - FpUser 2y ago
        Well it'll still be a start. A very good one I think
  - ranger_danger 2y ago
    Tons of data leaks all the time but surprisingly nothing seems to happen with it. Not only are companies not being held liable, but for some reason nobody is weaponizing that leaked data either. Imagine framing somebody with manipulated leak data, nobody even questions if it was ever real in the first place!
    - croes 2y ago
      It's a software problem, nothing we can do about it. For leaks the hackers are always to blame, never the poor security of the companies.
      - riku_iki 2y ago
        > It's a software problem, nothing we can do about it. there can be standards/requirements developed how to handle important data, and it will harden system.
        ranger_danger 2y ago
        but enforcing those standards takes away from muh freedoms
        riku_iki 2y ago
        Using up to date software with all known patches applied, and encrypt all data using some approved OSS infra(I am not expert on this, so not sure what it would be) takes only from freedom of negligence.
- lolc 2y ago
  Quote from the article: > Stefan Hector, a representative of the Swedish Police Authority, said that “a society cannot accept that criminals today have a space to communicate safely in order to commit serious crimes.”[0] A week later, it was revealed that the Swedish police had been infiltrated and were leaking information to criminals.[1] [0] https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/nationell/2024/april/europas-polischefer-gar-samman-mot-grov-brottslighet-i-en-digital-varld/ https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/nationell/2024/april/eur... [1] https://www.svd.se/a/8qwGbx/granskning-poliser-lacker-till-gangen https://www.svd.se/a/8qwGbx/granskning-poliser-lacker-till-g...
gala8y 2y ago
Knowledge is a deadly friend If no one sets the rules The fate of all mankind, I see Is in the hands of fools _King Crimson - Epitaph_
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  But knowledge prevents that the fate of mankind is in the hands of fools. Knowledge and information need no rules, but humans do.
miohtama 2y ago
Here is the latest. The bill could not be passed on Spain’s presidency. The presidency is now on Belgium and Stasi-fans are trying to get this bill passed again, hoping not to cause too much noise this time. The text of the bill was modified a bit, and this time they added an exception, though - Politicians and police are not subject to monitoring, only ordinal citizens messages’ should be wiretapped https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves/ https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-wan...
- Teever 2y ago
  Ugh. Imagine living in a Bizarro world where the law said that private citizens could not be tapped without a warrant and probable cause but politicians and police must be surveilled to mitigate corruption.
  - gpvos 2y ago
    You'd have to pay politicians and police a lot more then.
    - andy_ppp 2y ago
      Maybe you’d just get better people becoming politicians, ones that couldn’t be corrupted?
      - moffkalast 2y ago
        Those people don't want to be politicians.
        squarefoot 2y ago
        This. We should never give power to those who are after it; the mere desire for power is a good clue that said power will be abused. Maybe not always, but it's often the case. Now, how do we vote someone who doesn't run for a seat? Heh, good question!
_mlbt 2y ago
The war on personal freedom in general is on the rise.
- coldtea 2y ago
  It's for your own good. Democracy is under danger, especially by the voters /s
  - vundercind 2y ago
    To be fair, death-by-voter is a fairly common way for democracies to die, so—putting aside what that may or may not justify from a policy perspective, the sentiment isn’t silly. Voters really are one of the greatest dangers to democracy, that’s just true.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      >To be fair, death-by-voter is a fairly common way for democracies to die, so—putting aside what that may or may not justify from a policy perspective, the sentiment isn’t silly. Voters really are one of the greatest dangers to democracy, that’s just true. This judgement requires assuming an external position that "knows better", which is inherently incompatible with democracy. Voters can't be a danger to democracy by definition, even if they vote to end democracy and elect a strongman, well, that was their democratic wish. I think democracies usually die because of the incompetence of party leaders, policy advisors, and primarily elites. Often the public tries to pivot away from that incompetence by voting, but always get politicians backtracking on their promises (and have no resource, given most not-exactly-direct-democratic election systems, to punish them until the next elections, and not for the things they backtracked or failed on - they had to do it for everything).
    - nojvek 2y ago
      Well, we vote for representatives, not for the policies. And there isn't much choice in representatives. Wish we had more choice than Trump or Biden but here we are again after 4 years. There is little churn in Senate as well. Supreme court justice positions are for life. We're not that far from the ways of Monarchs. The powerful will guard their power.
rasengan 2y ago
This article reads weird to me. Definitely appreciate the depth of this - thorough research was definitely done. Secondly, I’m definitely quick to blame the US policies for a lot of things. However, this article is mostly about casting shade on the US about the EU’s mass surveillance. I don’t think anyone is to blame for what the EU does other than the EU, and for sure attacking the US isn’t going to prevent the EU from doing this. I wonder if there is a better way to go about bringing awareness and taking action?
- coldtea 2y ago
  >I don’t think anyone is to blame for what the EU does other than the EU Well, some charade aside, the US usually says jump and EU politicians say "how high?" - the EU population be damned
  - klabb3 2y ago
    I think the EU has been better in that regard than individual European countries. The Wikileaks diplomatic cables in particular showed US coercion on a country by country basis. In Sweden, Wikileaks showed US diplomats gave a list of laws and executive actions (at the time around IP - the Pirate Bay was based there), with veiled threats about getting gray-listed as a “partner” which can affect trade etc, and they said how high. Now to be fair, at least Sweden was unofficially a NATO/US intel/security collaborator. But EU is in a different position, mostly oriented around trade, and notably lacking in security and military bodies. But the EU has absolutely stood up against US interests, especially their predatory corporations. However, if the EU is collaborating or even aligning with the US on intel gathering, it’s pretty far outside their openly stated mandate, afaik. Especially since the UK left, who were the most hawkish on mass surveillance, it’s creepy to think there are clandestine efforts to push for aggressive monitoring and even worse aligning with the US without oversight. If Mullvad is right, it’s also an absolute failure of MSM to not properly cover such geopolitically crucial issues. > the EU population be damned For sure it’s a concern, but overall many/most Europeans think the EU is a net positive today. Things have changed a lot since the crises of Greece etc. And with increasing geo-political tensions (Russia in the short term and China in the medium term), there’s an argument to establish stronger security and military efforts independent of US-led NATO, which have quite different goals.
varispeed 2y ago
Can't help but think these laws are pushed by pervs who would love to be hired as moderators for such filtering systems to watch, store and sell the content the system has fished out for them.
andersa 2y ago
I thought Chat Control was dead. Is it coming back? The article is far too long.
- noutella 2y ago
  Yes, basically it's back under another name after having been knocked off.
nonrandomstring 2y ago
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williamcotton 2y ago
The underlying tension here is the expectation of privacy for signals broadcast outside of one’s property and into the commons. We don’t yet have a firm grasp on how to handle the issue of extending privacy into these shared spaces. There just seems to be two unreconcilable polar extremes at the current moment without a clear path forward. At least in the United States it could mean needing an amendment to the constitution as the 4th doesn’t properly cover these protections.
- strix_varius 2y ago
  Fundamentally, the tension is between the universal laws of mathematics on which encryption is based and the politicians and police who don't understand them. This quote from the article brings that into stark relief: "we do not accept that there need be a binary choice between cyber security or privacy on the one hand and public safety on the other. Absolutism on either side is not helpful" Clearly, Europol misunderstands the fundamental, mathematically binary, nature of encryption as man-made "absolutism" that could be dispelled with just enough laws and warrants and wiretaps.
  - williamcotton 2y ago
    The laws of math and physics have very little to do with the determinations of the laws of people. You can’t ban the chemistry of creating alcohol from homegrown grapes but you can ban and enforce against the practice well enough to limit bootlegging. The average person buys from the state regulated dispenser regardless of the possibility of doing otherwise. The same COULD (uh oh, about to be misread and downvoted into oblivion) be said for cryptography, where bans of consumer friendly and easily available messaging applications would be similar to curbing bootlegging. Of course the practice would continue for those who are capable but with consequences. These are issues that must be reconciled. Hiding behind numbers will not work, as we are seeing play out in front of us, so we need constitutional protections.
    - strix_varius 2y ago
      > The laws of math and physics have very little to do with the determinations of the laws of people. This cannot be true, as we've seen time and again with cryptography. Wherever the laws of people collide with the laws of mathematics, the laws of mathematics win.
andy_ppp 2y ago
Are these people absolutely stupid, we could end up in a potentially catastrophic cyber war at some point and we need to be looking at better more secure systems than making even further holes in what we have!
- hoseja 2y ago
  What they actually want is to lose that war. Very badly. Or, their sponsors do.
- jeltz 2y ago
  Kinda. My guess is that they are very narrowly focused and miss th bigger picture. They worry about organized crime and the war on drugs while forgetting the bigger picture.
unburned 2y ago
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sjducb 2y ago
The debate is framed as privacy vs security. Really it’s internal threat security vs external threat security. Measures to reduce personal security also reduce the security of the traditional armed forces. 1) The armed forces use most of the same networking software and hardware as civilians. They also rely on the same protocols. 2) In a total war scenario, like Ukraine, civilian communication infrastructure becomes military communication infrastructure. See soldiers relying on phones for communication and apps to aim artillery. 3) The vulnerabilities that get built into civilian communications are obvious cyber warfare targets. The framing of privacy vs security tricks the traditional armed forces into thinking that they have the same interests as the NSA.
- maga_2020 2y ago
  Famous quote by Benjamin Franklin (from 1755) : “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” ... "... Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance--and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former. ..." [0] [0] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-ben-franklin-really-said https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-ben-franklin-reall...
- npteljes 2y ago
  I think that using a secure layer on top of the insecure layer undermines this argument, similar to how HTTPS is secure while using HTTP with a twist, and using every underlying system in the same way. Or how GPS functionality is regulated for civilians. So especially "1)" won't be true. Yes, right now they may be using same or similar things, but then after the new regulation they would be using superior stuff, problem solved. "3)" is considerable because that's true, whatever difference there is in comms security, adversaries will have the same power over the civilian comms as their own government. Right now of course this is the case already, but especially after regulating it, will it become prevalent. I think governments are fine with this in general, though, which I deduct from the lack of countermeasures to it. In reality, encryption is power, and the more power individuals have, the less power those have who want to control individuals. Everything else is smoke and mirrors, like the classic "think of the children" argument.
amelius 2y ago
Can't they just put back doors in our silicon and be done with it?
- fsflover 2y ago
  See: Intel ME.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  You don't think this is already the case for years?
  - brokenmachine 2y ago
    They always want more so they can parallel construct cases without having to reveal those backdoors.
muzani 2y ago
The real danger is criminal profiling. Read a book on criminal profiling as done by the FBI. You hear things like "the suspect appeared nervous when his eyes saw the murder weapon" or "serial killers match two of three: cruelty to animals, obsession with fire-setting, and persistent bedwetting past the age of five" (aka Macdonald triad). Impulsive killers are in their teens or early 20s, while more careful killers will be at least in their 30s. I'm sure the motives were good - sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack, and it saved lives back then. But you have mass surveillance, you can go through every hay in the haystack. Yet likely they won't. They'll settle on a middle ground with these outdated methodologies, and combine it with AI/data, to create some form of data-driven astrology. Someone will be inspired by CSI to ask AI to blow up a blurry photo, and AI might just hallucinate it. There will be experts out there who would oppose this, and these could be shut down by their bosses, the politicians who don't understand how it all works. The Macdonald triad detects the worst criminals, sure, but it mainly detects victims of abuse. Privacy isn't important to the privileged groups; but it's a level of protection for the innocents who could be profiled wrongly.
- Shocka1 2y ago
  It's worth dropping the Danish film Riders of Justice in this thread for people who haven't seen it. In the film, a facial recognition algorithm is created, and after some tinkering with the accuracy they are able to find who they are looking for - I won't spoil it, but highly suggest the movie.
- m463 2y ago
  I'm reminded of "ruin my search history" which when clicked will have your browser search for not only "isis application" and "hotels syria" but things like "how to kill someone hypothetically" There could be one-click-implication on a target person.
- donmcronald 2y ago
  > some form of data-driven astrology That’s such an apt description of the junk science that’s going to get justified by AI.
- SXX 2y ago
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Anything involving secret backdoors, intentionally compromised crypto, not so secret master keys, etc. is doomed to leak to a hostile entities abusing this. The weakest part of the system becomes secret weaknesses staying secret. Intentionally compromised encryption is going to be enormously appreciated by North Korea, Iran, China, and all the others one would normally want to keep from looking at secret data related to finances, personal communication, military secrets, industrial R&D, etc. Countries need to get their priorities straight on national security. The enemy is outside of their country, not inside. And they don't play by the rules, generally.
- highcountess 2y ago
  It seems to me that you may be making a mistake in assuming these counties do no in fact have their priorities straight, only that those priorities do not align with most people's interests. The purpose of a system is what it does, not what it consistently and persistently fails to do. Far too long and far too much, people have assumed a good will of our governments because we have intenionlaly been conditioned to accept with blind faith that "democracy" is a universal "good", never asking oneself why the tiny psychopathic ruling class would be such vehement proponents and rabid advocates of "Our Democracy"™, a supposed rule by majority. It appears that not everyone gets as suspicious of things that contain inherent fundamental contradictions.
  - jillesvangurp 2y ago
    I'm not sure what you are on about. Plain and simple, countries like Australia are throwing away the baby with the bathwater by basically giving up on decent crypto. They are making it easier for the likes of China to spy on them who can and will abuse any informational advantage they can get. This long term puts them at a disadvantage internationally. I doubt this is in any way intentional. That would be stupid. The type of politics that drives this is older, technically challenged politicians (aka. idiots) responding to pressure from minority groups whining about pornography and other things they don't like. The priorities seem to be appeasing groups like that in order to secure the next election cycle. By essentially sacrificing security, which they clearly have a limited understanding off. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Some countries don't get their priorities straight because they are being led by idiots. It's indeed a system failure. The solution is wielding a giant clue bat and causing relevant stakeholders (military, financial sector, etc.) to wake up and push back and doing something about it. The reason cryptography is still legal in most civilized places is that we've had a few rounds of that over the past decades.
bloopernova 2y ago
They really said they had a foolproof way to read encrypted content to determine if it was "bad"? I'm still flabbergasted that anyone supported danny masterson. That the head of an anti-csam org did it is just astonishing to me.
deleted 2y ago
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NeutralForest 2y ago
This is terribly depressing. How can we, as citizens, protect ourselves and vote with our best interest in mind?
- fsflover 2y ago
  Support https://edri.org https://edri.org
  - NeutralForest 2y ago
    Thank you!
vasergen 2y ago
Sorry for off-topic, just wanted to say that the price page on mullvad.net is the best one I saw comparing to other SaaS. Everything simple and straight forward!
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  The way they generate account numbers is also perfectly and beautifully simplistic.
Nevermark 2y ago
Wide surveillance that aids the government in creating portfolios of “incriminating” circumstantial ”evidence” greatly increases the risk to the innocent, especially the under privileged, if it isn’t counter balanced by an increase in stronger protections for the innocent. Unfortunately, in the US there is no bottom line constitutional protection for the (actually or credibly) innocent. Procedure pre-empts innocence. This impacts everything from permanent property confiscation based on subjective declarations of “suspicion” without any criminal indictment [0], general crime [1], to execution of the likely innocent [2]. Without a fundamental right for the innocent to have convictions vacated, after they are revealed to be highly suspect, procedure pre-empts information, even when the case for innocence is widely considered credible. Executing the (credibly) innocent can even become a strategic politically advantageous performance. [3]. Constitutional protection of the incident would compel the courts to address catch 22 problems for the credibly innocent directly, providing a mechanism for relief when the gears of formal justice otherwise create no balanced recourse. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/10/363102433/police-can-seize-and-sell-assets-even-when-the-owner-broke-no-law https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/10/363102433... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Nathaniel_Woods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Nathaniel_Woods [3] https://www.endfmrnow.org/arkansas-governor-denies-clemency-to-innocent-man#:~:text=Sanders%20denies%20clemency%20to%20Charlie,%2C%22%20at%20the%20Arkansas%20Times https://www.endfmrnow.org/arkansas-governor-denies-clemency-.... —- Telling: what government is also pushing for all internal deliberations, materials and search queries, databases and algorithms leading up to prosecutions to be archived for the defense? Or to open up comprehensive surveillance systems search to the defense team? Centralizing power and information in a way that supports convictions, but not defense, is a recipe for increased motivated, convenient, and incidental injustice.
- FpUser 2y ago
  [3] is total madness. I think that highest level politicians who allow it to continue after being made aware should fucking rot in jail.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
paganel 2y ago
> But Ylva stood by her claim. She came back to the same argument over and over again. She avoided answering the questions (she obviously didn’t understand how the technology worked) but instead turned the direction of the discussion, saying, for example, that a court order would be required to carry out scanning, which in itself was deliberately misleading. Is there currently a way for us, EU citizens, to vote those Brussels ghouls out of power? No, or at least none that I know of. Is this how a democracy is supposed to work? Certainly not. Which is to say that events like this one should make most of the people see that the EU and the European Commission are certainly not democratic and they certainly do not represent the European electorate, because, as a matter of fact, the European electorate has no power over those people. But the propaganda still coming from those circles is too powerful, so, here we are.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
The one thing that makes sick to my stomach is that all around Europe there are criminals committing actual crimes and getting a slap on the wrist from heavily politicized judges. There have been rapists freed because "in their culture it's different" (these are documented facts: it happened in several countries, more than once... For example in the UK because an 18 y/o muslim raped a teenager after his religious teacher taught him that "women are worthless" the judge relaxed him). It's not about protecting the children. They actually love it when children and teenagers are sexually assaulted: that gives more fuel to put in place a totalitarian state, using the pretext of protecting the kids. It's the same everywhere. In France many crimes are committed by people Macron promised to deport: illegal migrants already caught for a crime. He said, before being elected, that he'd deport 100% of the illegal migrants committing crimes. Instead of that socialist judges are constantly releasing these dangerous criminals in the street. But the actual victims? And victims' families? Zero concern. None. And if a victim dares to fight back and should hurt the illegal migrants: then the whole power of the state falls upon him and he'll get an incredibly harsh sentence. The world is upside down: politicians do not get to have their communication monitored, victims are sent to jail if they dare to defend themselves. And why do they want to wage their war on encryption? To fight me. Because I hate the EU I live in and they want to silence me. And all those like me. The tyranny of the government is a very real thing and anyone longing for more government and more government spending should look deep down in his heart and conscience and wonder if it ever did any good for a country to have ever more government. Meanwhile people shall hate on the libertarians, calling them names ("ladder pullers"), but I'll tell you this... Libertarians would never ever vote complete and total surveillance of citizens, while protecting the politicians. But do not worry: the world you deserve for hating on libertarians is coming to you soon enough.
- npteljes 2y ago
  The world is exactly there as it ever was, power structures and power struggles. Two major differences to the past is that there is more people than ever, and that we currently have near-instant global communication. I'm with you on the "think of the children" argument. That is 100% what's happening, and I think that it boils down to how the human mind works, particularly on how putting out a fire feels much better than preventing the same fire. "Libertarian" means a lot of things, so it's hard to criticize, I especially struggle with the closing thought. Who are these libertarians that we should support, in order to have a better world?
palata 2y ago
I believe decision makers really need to understand 3 basic points: 1. End-to-end encryption does exist today (and it is deployed at scale). There is no going back. 2. There is no middle ground: either it is end-to-end encrypted, or it is not. "Sniffing" encrypted messages is not a thing, period. 3. Make all the laws you want, criminals will always be able to use end-to-end encryption. Those laws will only prevent honest people from protecting their communications.
- filleokus 2y ago
  I strongly agree with 2) and 3), but sadly I think 1) is overplaying our collective hand. I would guess that the largest deployments of end-to-end-encryption today is Whatsapp and iMessage by a quite large margin. E2EE for "real people" is provided by the grace of two massive publicly traded companies who have to follow local regulation. If Apple complies [1] with dubious requirements in China, I wouldn't bet against them doing it elsewhere either. Sure, we have Signal, but how many normal users would start delving into side loading if the application simply was banned and not allowed on the marketplaces? We can always use PGP-over-whatever, but that's an argument for 3) - not 1). I think politicians / police (and honestly many normal people) believe that the government have the right to do lawful interception of private communication and see E2EE as a step to far. The US has been wiretapping phones for a century already. We as privacy arguers have a pedagogical challenge of explaining why regulation like this is bad and not equivalent to 1930's style phone wiretapping. [1]: Chinese iOS users have their iCloud data (that for the vast majority includes the decryption keys) on Chinese servers, subject to the Chinese legal system. For the rest of the world the situation is the same, but s/China/U.S, which is arguably problematic as well.
  - tga_d 2y ago
    I don't think their first point meant to say that there is no going back on deployed e2ee at scale, I believe they were just providing ground for connecting the next two points: it's so pervasive currently that, even if outlawed, criminals will always have no problem retaining access to it somehow. Even Signal, which relies on fairly centralized infrastructure, still has an open source server implementation that I suspect wouldn't be terribly difficult for a motivated criminal enterprise to deploy privately. Contrast with something like advanced weapon systems, where rarity makes it still viable to control and legislate.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
Executive Summary: "They", as in, whoever will have access to all this gathered information, will not know how to use it. Therefore, it is inevitable that this gathered data will not be used intelligently or responsibly. Law enforcement bodies in any country on the planet just do not possess the smarts to handle it. They don't know how to read, and these politicians want to give them more books. I've mentioned the below a few times on HN because, for me, it was a traumatic incident with an outcome that was essentially an unknown for 8 months of my life: My house was raided by police for suspicion of distribution of CSAM. Skip-to-the-end: They took about $10k worth of my homelab gear, had it for 8 months, and then I was told I could come and pick it up. No charges, no nothing. There are pages and pages of things I've written to document this incident, these are a couple of notables: They didn't know to expect there to be children in the house. At ~7am on a school day. That's the amount of additional investigation they do into the 'subject' prior to raiding their property. ie. Fucking None. I have two teenaged children that have impeccable school attendance and academic results that I'd assume would be easily accessible to law enforcement, had they cared to do any background research. This was a traumatic event for MY CHILDREN caused by quote-unquote Law Enforcement. They said the raid was based on information provided from an overseas (I'm assuming US-based, I'm in Australia) source (private company, law enforcement, intelligence, I have no idea) that identified my household's street address via an IP address, and this "evidence" was gathered over a number of years. They asked my eldest "does your dad use your computer", he replied "no" (truthfully), and they didn't take it, didn't even look at it. I pointed out a laptop on the breakfast table that I said was was my wife's (truthfully) and they didn't take, didn't even look at it (as far as I recall). I specifically asked if this was about "me, personally" (since they showed no interest in my wife's laptop), and they repeated their (what became somewhat of a mantra) of "this specific address, not your neighbour's address, this address". And yet they had no interest in computers identified as not belonging to me. One of the first things they asked me was "do you use a VPN?" I answered "no". Which was true then, and is sure-the-fuck not true now (split routing, the fucking works) - as a learning outcome, to protect myself from further blind police incompetence. As part of the phone call when I received the "good news" that I could come and pick my shit up (I guess they came out of their way to pick it up from my place, I had to return the favour), the detective in charge of the investigation gave me the impression that she thought that she / the system couldn't be wrong about me. She made a point to say the following three things: - Use of virtual machines is suspicious - MEGA is almost exclusively used for CSAM and they found evidence that I'd downloaded things from MEGA (I think I may have used MEGA to download android ROMs) - They found "TOR" installed on one of my computers The last one. Where do I start? It's so incorrect an understanding that it was a 'cherry on top' data point that I didn't really need to confirm how hopelessly out of their depth law enforcement is with technology. To repeat: They don't know how to read, and these politicians want to give them more books. One of the ironies is (because I've got this sort of sense of humour) if I was living in an actual panopticon, I'd have easily been exonerated as I'm far too boring a person without enough spare time to engage in any of that behaviour. In addition to the above, my better half is a teacher. Teachers in Australia have a "Mandatory Reporting" responsibility to report possible cases of child abuse based on their observations as a teacher. The suicidally depressing thing about it is, the organisations responsible for visiting the homes and families that have been reported are so under-staffed and under-funded that they only have the time to investigate cases where the child is in immediate life-threatening danger. Combine the two above anecdotes together and you've got a society that's gone wrong and is still applying increasing pressure to the accelerator. Politicians calling for laws against encryption who are not also calling for massively increased budgets to child protection organisations are pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with real, actual protection of children, and they should be called out.
Marcus_Ford 2y ago
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smarm52 2y ago
[flagged]

421 points by janandonly 2y ago

Think of the children growing up in totalitarian dictatorships with zero privacy.

What is needing is rather than "end-to-end-encryption", is user-defined encryption; i.e. you can use your own software for encryption, instead of (or in addition to) using whatever the service provides. This encrypts the messages regardless of what the communication services are doing (or are claiming to do). HTTPS will only prevent spies observing or altering your communications; it does not prevent the service that you are communicating with (or whoever owns them now) from adding malware, etc.

99catmaster 2y ago

Genuine question: why should I care about my data being encrypted and private?

croes 2y ago

And in the end everyone is amazed why hostile hackers could read confidential messages.

balder1991 2y ago
We might need a huge leak to open people’s eyes.
- reaperman 2y ago
  The only leak I can imagine impacting this would be a giant dump of politician’s personal communications and they are exempt from encryption bans in this particular bill.
  - balder1991 2y ago
    IDK there are powerful people in society aside from politicians that can influence public opinion too.
    - reaperman 2y ago
      Very good point. I should think more deeply before commenting and not rush out off-the-cuff remarks.
    - FpUser 2y ago
      Well it'll still be a start. A very good one I think
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  Tons of data leaks all the time but surprisingly nothing seems to happen with it. Not only are companies not being held liable, but for some reason nobody is weaponizing that leaked data either. Imagine framing somebody with manipulated leak data, nobody even questions if it was ever real in the first place!
  - croes 2y ago
    It's a software problem, nothing we can do about it. For leaks the hackers are always to blame, never the poor security of the companies.
    - riku_iki 2y ago
      > It's a software problem, nothing we can do about it. there can be standards/requirements developed how to handle important data, and it will harden system.
      - ranger_danger 2y ago
        but enforcing those standards takes away from muh freedoms
        riku_iki 2y ago
        Using up to date software with all known patches applied, and encrypt all data using some approved OSS infra(I am not expert on this, so not sure what it would be) takes only from freedom of negligence.
lolc 2y ago
Quote from the article: > Stefan Hector, a representative of the Swedish Police Authority, said that “a society cannot accept that criminals today have a space to communicate safely in order to commit serious crimes.”[0] A week later, it was revealed that the Swedish police had been infiltrated and were leaking information to criminals.[1] [0] https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/nationell/2024/april/europas-polischefer-gar-samman-mot-grov-brottslighet-i-en-digital-varld/ https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/nationell/2024/april/eur... [1] https://www.svd.se/a/8qwGbx/granskning-poliser-lacker-till-gangen https://www.svd.se/a/8qwGbx/granskning-poliser-lacker-till-g...

gala8y 2y ago

Knowledge is a deadly friend If no one sets the rules The fate of all mankind, I see Is in the hands of fools _King Crimson - Epitaph_

BSDobelix 2y ago
But knowledge prevents that the fate of mankind is in the hands of fools. Knowledge and information need no rules, but humans do.

miohtama 2y ago

Here is the latest. The bill could not be passed on Spain’s presidency. The presidency is now on Belgium and Stasi-fans are trying to get this bill passed again, hoping not to cause too much noise this time. The text of the bill was modified a bit, and this time they added an exception, though - Politicians and police are not subject to monitoring, only ordinal citizens messages’ should be wiretapped https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves/ https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-wan...

Teever 2y ago
Ugh. Imagine living in a Bizarro world where the law said that private citizens could not be tapped without a warrant and probable cause but politicians and police must be surveilled to mitigate corruption.
- gpvos 2y ago
  You'd have to pay politicians and police a lot more then.
  - andy_ppp 2y ago
    Maybe you’d just get better people becoming politicians, ones that couldn’t be corrupted?
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      Those people don't want to be politicians.
      - squarefoot 2y ago
        This. We should never give power to those who are after it; the mere desire for power is a good clue that said power will be abused. Maybe not always, but it's often the case. Now, how do we vote someone who doesn't run for a seat? Heh, good question!

_mlbt 2y ago

The war on personal freedom in general is on the rise.

coldtea 2y ago
It's for your own good. Democracy is under danger, especially by the voters /s
- vundercind 2y ago
  To be fair, death-by-voter is a fairly common way for democracies to die, so—putting aside what that may or may not justify from a policy perspective, the sentiment isn’t silly. Voters really are one of the greatest dangers to democracy, that’s just true.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >To be fair, death-by-voter is a fairly common way for democracies to die, so—putting aside what that may or may not justify from a policy perspective, the sentiment isn’t silly. Voters really are one of the greatest dangers to democracy, that’s just true. This judgement requires assuming an external position that "knows better", which is inherently incompatible with democracy. Voters can't be a danger to democracy by definition, even if they vote to end democracy and elect a strongman, well, that was their democratic wish. I think democracies usually die because of the incompetence of party leaders, policy advisors, and primarily elites. Often the public tries to pivot away from that incompetence by voting, but always get politicians backtracking on their promises (and have no resource, given most not-exactly-direct-democratic election systems, to punish them until the next elections, and not for the things they backtracked or failed on - they had to do it for everything).
  - nojvek 2y ago
    Well, we vote for representatives, not for the policies. And there isn't much choice in representatives. Wish we had more choice than Trump or Biden but here we are again after 4 years. There is little churn in Senate as well. Supreme court justice positions are for life. We're not that far from the ways of Monarchs. The powerful will guard their power.

rasengan 2y ago

This article reads weird to me. Definitely appreciate the depth of this - thorough research was definitely done. Secondly, I’m definitely quick to blame the US policies for a lot of things. However, this article is mostly about casting shade on the US about the EU’s mass surveillance. I don’t think anyone is to blame for what the EU does other than the EU, and for sure attacking the US isn’t going to prevent the EU from doing this. I wonder if there is a better way to go about bringing awareness and taking action?

coldtea 2y ago
>I don’t think anyone is to blame for what the EU does other than the EU Well, some charade aside, the US usually says jump and EU politicians say "how high?" - the EU population be damned
- klabb3 2y ago
  I think the EU has been better in that regard than individual European countries. The Wikileaks diplomatic cables in particular showed US coercion on a country by country basis. In Sweden, Wikileaks showed US diplomats gave a list of laws and executive actions (at the time around IP - the Pirate Bay was based there), with veiled threats about getting gray-listed as a “partner” which can affect trade etc, and they said how high. Now to be fair, at least Sweden was unofficially a NATO/US intel/security collaborator. But EU is in a different position, mostly oriented around trade, and notably lacking in security and military bodies. But the EU has absolutely stood up against US interests, especially their predatory corporations. However, if the EU is collaborating or even aligning with the US on intel gathering, it’s pretty far outside their openly stated mandate, afaik. Especially since the UK left, who were the most hawkish on mass surveillance, it’s creepy to think there are clandestine efforts to push for aggressive monitoring and even worse aligning with the US without oversight. If Mullvad is right, it’s also an absolute failure of MSM to not properly cover such geopolitically crucial issues. > the EU population be damned For sure it’s a concern, but overall many/most Europeans think the EU is a net positive today. Things have changed a lot since the crises of Greece etc. And with increasing geo-political tensions (Russia in the short term and China in the medium term), there’s an argument to establish stronger security and military efforts independent of US-led NATO, which have quite different goals.

varispeed 2y ago

Can't help but think these laws are pushed by pervs who would love to be hired as moderators for such filtering systems to watch, store and sell the content the system has fished out for them.

andersa 2y ago

I thought Chat Control was dead. Is it coming back? The article is far too long.

noutella 2y ago
Yes, basically it's back under another name after having been knocked off.

nonrandomstring 2y ago

[dead]

williamcotton 2y ago

The underlying tension here is the expectation of privacy for signals broadcast outside of one’s property and into the commons. We don’t yet have a firm grasp on how to handle the issue of extending privacy into these shared spaces. There just seems to be two unreconcilable polar extremes at the current moment without a clear path forward. At least in the United States it could mean needing an amendment to the constitution as the 4th doesn’t properly cover these protections.

strix_varius 2y ago
Fundamentally, the tension is between the universal laws of mathematics on which encryption is based and the politicians and police who don't understand them. This quote from the article brings that into stark relief: "we do not accept that there need be a binary choice between cyber security or privacy on the one hand and public safety on the other. Absolutism on either side is not helpful" Clearly, Europol misunderstands the fundamental, mathematically binary, nature of encryption as man-made "absolutism" that could be dispelled with just enough laws and warrants and wiretaps.
- williamcotton 2y ago
  The laws of math and physics have very little to do with the determinations of the laws of people. You can’t ban the chemistry of creating alcohol from homegrown grapes but you can ban and enforce against the practice well enough to limit bootlegging. The average person buys from the state regulated dispenser regardless of the possibility of doing otherwise. The same COULD (uh oh, about to be misread and downvoted into oblivion) be said for cryptography, where bans of consumer friendly and easily available messaging applications would be similar to curbing bootlegging. Of course the practice would continue for those who are capable but with consequences. These are issues that must be reconciled. Hiding behind numbers will not work, as we are seeing play out in front of us, so we need constitutional protections.
  - strix_varius 2y ago
    > The laws of math and physics have very little to do with the determinations of the laws of people. This cannot be true, as we've seen time and again with cryptography. Wherever the laws of people collide with the laws of mathematics, the laws of mathematics win.

andy_ppp 2y ago

Are these people absolutely stupid, we could end up in a potentially catastrophic cyber war at some point and we need to be looking at better more secure systems than making even further holes in what we have!

hoseja 2y ago
What they actually want is to lose that war. Very badly. Or, their sponsors do.
jeltz 2y ago
Kinda. My guess is that they are very narrowly focused and miss th bigger picture. They worry about organized crime and the war on drugs while forgetting the bigger picture.

unburned 2y ago

[dead]

sjducb 2y ago

The debate is framed as privacy vs security. Really it’s internal threat security vs external threat security. Measures to reduce personal security also reduce the security of the traditional armed forces. 1) The armed forces use most of the same networking software and hardware as civilians. They also rely on the same protocols. 2) In a total war scenario, like Ukraine, civilian communication infrastructure becomes military communication infrastructure. See soldiers relying on phones for communication and apps to aim artillery. 3) The vulnerabilities that get built into civilian communications are obvious cyber warfare targets. The framing of privacy vs security tricks the traditional armed forces into thinking that they have the same interests as the NSA.

maga_2020 2y ago
Famous quote by Benjamin Franklin (from 1755) : “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” ... "... Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance--and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former. ..." [0] [0] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-ben-franklin-really-said https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-ben-franklin-reall...
npteljes 2y ago
I think that using a secure layer on top of the insecure layer undermines this argument, similar to how HTTPS is secure while using HTTP with a twist, and using every underlying system in the same way. Or how GPS functionality is regulated for civilians. So especially "1)" won't be true. Yes, right now they may be using same or similar things, but then after the new regulation they would be using superior stuff, problem solved. "3)" is considerable because that's true, whatever difference there is in comms security, adversaries will have the same power over the civilian comms as their own government. Right now of course this is the case already, but especially after regulating it, will it become prevalent. I think governments are fine with this in general, though, which I deduct from the lack of countermeasures to it. In reality, encryption is power, and the more power individuals have, the less power those have who want to control individuals. Everything else is smoke and mirrors, like the classic "think of the children" argument.

amelius 2y ago

Can't they just put back doors in our silicon and be done with it?

fsflover 2y ago
See: Intel ME.
ranger_danger 2y ago
You don't think this is already the case for years?
- brokenmachine 2y ago
  They always want more so they can parallel construct cases without having to reveal those backdoors.

muzani 2y ago

The real danger is criminal profiling. Read a book on criminal profiling as done by the FBI. You hear things like "the suspect appeared nervous when his eyes saw the murder weapon" or "serial killers match two of three: cruelty to animals, obsession with fire-setting, and persistent bedwetting past the age of five" (aka Macdonald triad). Impulsive killers are in their teens or early 20s, while more careful killers will be at least in their 30s. I'm sure the motives were good - sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack, and it saved lives back then. But you have mass surveillance, you can go through every hay in the haystack. Yet likely they won't. They'll settle on a middle ground with these outdated methodologies, and combine it with AI/data, to create some form of data-driven astrology. Someone will be inspired by CSI to ask AI to blow up a blurry photo, and AI might just hallucinate it. There will be experts out there who would oppose this, and these could be shut down by their bosses, the politicians who don't understand how it all works. The Macdonald triad detects the worst criminals, sure, but it mainly detects victims of abuse. Privacy isn't important to the privileged groups; but it's a level of protection for the innocents who could be profiled wrongly.

Shocka1 2y ago
It's worth dropping the Danish film Riders of Justice in this thread for people who haven't seen it. In the film, a facial recognition algorithm is created, and after some tinkering with the accuracy they are able to find who they are looking for - I won't spoil it, but highly suggest the movie.
m463 2y ago
I'm reminded of "ruin my search history" which when clicked will have your browser search for not only "isis application" and "hotels syria" but things like "how to kill someone hypothetically" There could be one-click-implication on a target person.
donmcronald 2y ago
> some form of data-driven astrology That’s such an apt description of the junk science that’s going to get justified by AI.
SXX 2y ago

jillesvangurp 2y ago

Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Anything involving secret backdoors, intentionally compromised crypto, not so secret master keys, etc. is doomed to leak to a hostile entities abusing this. The weakest part of the system becomes secret weaknesses staying secret. Intentionally compromised encryption is going to be enormously appreciated by North Korea, Iran, China, and all the others one would normally want to keep from looking at secret data related to finances, personal communication, military secrets, industrial R&D, etc. Countries need to get their priorities straight on national security. The enemy is outside of their country, not inside. And they don't play by the rules, generally.

highcountess 2y ago
It seems to me that you may be making a mistake in assuming these counties do no in fact have their priorities straight, only that those priorities do not align with most people's interests. The purpose of a system is what it does, not what it consistently and persistently fails to do. Far too long and far too much, people have assumed a good will of our governments because we have intenionlaly been conditioned to accept with blind faith that "democracy" is a universal "good", never asking oneself why the tiny psychopathic ruling class would be such vehement proponents and rabid advocates of "Our Democracy"™, a supposed rule by majority. It appears that not everyone gets as suspicious of things that contain inherent fundamental contradictions.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you are on about. Plain and simple, countries like Australia are throwing away the baby with the bathwater by basically giving up on decent crypto. They are making it easier for the likes of China to spy on them who can and will abuse any informational advantage they can get. This long term puts them at a disadvantage internationally. I doubt this is in any way intentional. That would be stupid. The type of politics that drives this is older, technically challenged politicians (aka. idiots) responding to pressure from minority groups whining about pornography and other things they don't like. The priorities seem to be appeasing groups like that in order to secure the next election cycle. By essentially sacrificing security, which they clearly have a limited understanding off. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Some countries don't get their priorities straight because they are being led by idiots. It's indeed a system failure. The solution is wielding a giant clue bat and causing relevant stakeholders (military, financial sector, etc.) to wake up and push back and doing something about it. The reason cryptography is still legal in most civilized places is that we've had a few rounds of that over the past decades.

bloopernova 2y ago

They really said they had a foolproof way to read encrypted content to determine if it was "bad"? I'm still flabbergasted that anyone supported danny masterson. That the head of an anti-csam org did it is just astonishing to me.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

NeutralForest 2y ago

This is terribly depressing. How can we, as citizens, protect ourselves and vote with our best interest in mind?

fsflover 2y ago
Support https://edri.org https://edri.org
- NeutralForest 2y ago
  Thank you!

vasergen 2y ago

Sorry for off-topic, just wanted to say that the price page on mullvad.net is the best one I saw comparing to other SaaS. Everything simple and straight forward!

BLKNSLVR 2y ago
The way they generate account numbers is also perfectly and beautifully simplistic.

Nevermark 2y ago

Wide surveillance that aids the government in creating portfolios of “incriminating” circumstantial ”evidence” greatly increases the risk to the innocent, especially the under privileged, if it isn’t counter balanced by an increase in stronger protections for the innocent. Unfortunately, in the US there is no bottom line constitutional protection for the (actually or credibly) innocent. Procedure pre-empts innocence. This impacts everything from permanent property confiscation based on subjective declarations of “suspicion” without any criminal indictment [0], general crime [1], to execution of the likely innocent [2]. Without a fundamental right for the innocent to have convictions vacated, after they are revealed to be highly suspect, procedure pre-empts information, even when the case for innocence is widely considered credible. Executing the (credibly) innocent can even become a strategic politically advantageous performance. [3]. Constitutional protection of the incident would compel the courts to address catch 22 problems for the credibly innocent directly, providing a mechanism for relief when the gears of formal justice otherwise create no balanced recourse. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/10/363102433/police-can-seize-and-sell-assets-even-when-the-owner-broke-no-law https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/10/363102433... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Nathaniel_Woods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Nathaniel_Woods [3] https://www.endfmrnow.org/arkansas-governor-denies-clemency-to-innocent-man#:~:text=Sanders%20denies%20clemency%20to%20Charlie,%2C%22%20at%20the%20Arkansas%20Times https://www.endfmrnow.org/arkansas-governor-denies-clemency-.... —- Telling: what government is also pushing for all internal deliberations, materials and search queries, databases and algorithms leading up to prosecutions to be archived for the defense? Or to open up comprehensive surveillance systems search to the defense team? Centralizing power and information in a way that supports convictions, but not defense, is a recipe for increased motivated, convenient, and incidental injustice.

FpUser 2y ago
[3] is total madness. I think that highest level politicians who allow it to continue after being made aware should fucking rot in jail.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago

paganel 2y ago

> But Ylva stood by her claim. She came back to the same argument over and over again. She avoided answering the questions (she obviously didn’t understand how the technology worked) but instead turned the direction of the discussion, saying, for example, that a court order would be required to carry out scanning, which in itself was deliberately misleading. Is there currently a way for us, EU citizens, to vote those Brussels ghouls out of power? No, or at least none that I know of. Is this how a democracy is supposed to work? Certainly not. Which is to say that events like this one should make most of the people see that the EU and the European Commission are certainly not democratic and they certainly do not represent the European electorate, because, as a matter of fact, the European electorate has no power over those people. But the propaganda still coming from those circles is too powerful, so, here we are.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

The one thing that makes sick to my stomach is that all around Europe there are criminals committing actual crimes and getting a slap on the wrist from heavily politicized judges. There have been rapists freed because "in their culture it's different" (these are documented facts: it happened in several countries, more than once... For example in the UK because an 18 y/o muslim raped a teenager after his religious teacher taught him that "women are worthless" the judge relaxed him). It's not about protecting the children. They actually love it when children and teenagers are sexually assaulted: that gives more fuel to put in place a totalitarian state, using the pretext of protecting the kids. It's the same everywhere. In France many crimes are committed by people Macron promised to deport: illegal migrants already caught for a crime. He said, before being elected, that he'd deport 100% of the illegal migrants committing crimes. Instead of that socialist judges are constantly releasing these dangerous criminals in the street. But the actual victims? And victims' families? Zero concern. None. And if a victim dares to fight back and should hurt the illegal migrants: then the whole power of the state falls upon him and he'll get an incredibly harsh sentence. The world is upside down: politicians do not get to have their communication monitored, victims are sent to jail if they dare to defend themselves. And why do they want to wage their war on encryption? To fight me. Because I hate the EU I live in and they want to silence me. And all those like me. The tyranny of the government is a very real thing and anyone longing for more government and more government spending should look deep down in his heart and conscience and wonder if it ever did any good for a country to have ever more government. Meanwhile people shall hate on the libertarians, calling them names ("ladder pullers"), but I'll tell you this... Libertarians would never ever vote complete and total surveillance of citizens, while protecting the politicians. But do not worry: the world you deserve for hating on libertarians is coming to you soon enough.

npteljes 2y ago
The world is exactly there as it ever was, power structures and power struggles. Two major differences to the past is that there is more people than ever, and that we currently have near-instant global communication. I'm with you on the "think of the children" argument. That is 100% what's happening, and I think that it boils down to how the human mind works, particularly on how putting out a fire feels much better than preventing the same fire. "Libertarian" means a lot of things, so it's hard to criticize, I especially struggle with the closing thought. Who are these libertarians that we should support, in order to have a better world?

palata 2y ago

I believe decision makers really need to understand 3 basic points: 1. End-to-end encryption does exist today (and it is deployed at scale). There is no going back. 2. There is no middle ground: either it is end-to-end encrypted, or it is not. "Sniffing" encrypted messages is not a thing, period. 3. Make all the laws you want, criminals will always be able to use end-to-end encryption. Those laws will only prevent honest people from protecting their communications.

filleokus 2y ago
I strongly agree with 2) and 3), but sadly I think 1) is overplaying our collective hand. I would guess that the largest deployments of end-to-end-encryption today is Whatsapp and iMessage by a quite large margin. E2EE for "real people" is provided by the grace of two massive publicly traded companies who have to follow local regulation. If Apple complies [1] with dubious requirements in China, I wouldn't bet against them doing it elsewhere either. Sure, we have Signal, but how many normal users would start delving into side loading if the application simply was banned and not allowed on the marketplaces? We can always use PGP-over-whatever, but that's an argument for 3) - not 1). I think politicians / police (and honestly many normal people) believe that the government have the right to do lawful interception of private communication and see E2EE as a step to far. The US has been wiretapping phones for a century already. We as privacy arguers have a pedagogical challenge of explaining why regulation like this is bad and not equivalent to 1930's style phone wiretapping. [1]: Chinese iOS users have their iCloud data (that for the vast majority includes the decryption keys) on Chinese servers, subject to the Chinese legal system. For the rest of the world the situation is the same, but s/China/U.S, which is arguably problematic as well.
- tga_d 2y ago
  I don't think their first point meant to say that there is no going back on deployed e2ee at scale, I believe they were just providing ground for connecting the next two points: it's so pervasive currently that, even if outlawed, criminals will always have no problem retaining access to it somehow. Even Signal, which relies on fairly centralized infrastructure, still has an open source server implementation that I suspect wouldn't be terribly difficult for a motivated criminal enterprise to deploy privately. Contrast with something like advanced weapon systems, where rarity makes it still viable to control and legislate.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

Executive Summary: "They", as in, whoever will have access to all this gathered information, will not know how to use it. Therefore, it is inevitable that this gathered data will not be used intelligently or responsibly. Law enforcement bodies in any country on the planet just do not possess the smarts to handle it. They don't know how to read, and these politicians want to give them more books. I've mentioned the below a few times on HN because, for me, it was a traumatic incident with an outcome that was essentially an unknown for 8 months of my life: My house was raided by police for suspicion of distribution of CSAM. Skip-to-the-end: They took about $10k worth of my homelab gear, had it for 8 months, and then I was told I could come and pick it up. No charges, no nothing. There are pages and pages of things I've written to document this incident, these are a couple of notables: They didn't know to expect there to be children in the house. At ~7am on a school day. That's the amount of additional investigation they do into the 'subject' prior to raiding their property. ie. Fucking None. I have two teenaged children that have impeccable school attendance and academic results that I'd assume would be easily accessible to law enforcement, had they cared to do any background research. This was a traumatic event for MY CHILDREN caused by quote-unquote Law Enforcement. They said the raid was based on information provided from an overseas (I'm assuming US-based, I'm in Australia) source (private company, law enforcement, intelligence, I have no idea) that identified my household's street address via an IP address, and this "evidence" was gathered over a number of years. They asked my eldest "does your dad use your computer", he replied "no" (truthfully), and they didn't take it, didn't even look at it. I pointed out a laptop on the breakfast table that I said was was my wife's (truthfully) and they didn't take, didn't even look at it (as far as I recall). I specifically asked if this was about "me, personally" (since they showed no interest in my wife's laptop), and they repeated their (what became somewhat of a mantra) of "this specific address, not your neighbour's address, this address". And yet they had no interest in computers identified as not belonging to me. One of the first things they asked me was "do you use a VPN?" I answered "no". Which was true then, and is sure-the-fuck not true now (split routing, the fucking works) - as a learning outcome, to protect myself from further blind police incompetence. As part of the phone call when I received the "good news" that I could come and pick my shit up (I guess they came out of their way to pick it up from my place, I had to return the favour), the detective in charge of the investigation gave me the impression that she thought that she / the system couldn't be wrong about me. She made a point to say the following three things: - Use of virtual machines is suspicious - MEGA is almost exclusively used for CSAM and they found evidence that I'd downloaded things from MEGA (I think I may have used MEGA to download android ROMs) - They found "TOR" installed on one of my computers The last one. Where do I start? It's so incorrect an understanding that it was a 'cherry on top' data point that I didn't really need to confirm how hopelessly out of their depth law enforcement is with technology. To repeat: They don't know how to read, and these politicians want to give them more books. One of the ironies is (because I've got this sort of sense of humour) if I was living in an actual panopticon, I'd have easily been exonerated as I'm far too boring a person without enough spare time to engage in any of that behaviour. In addition to the above, my better half is a teacher. Teachers in Australia have a "Mandatory Reporting" responsibility to report possible cases of child abuse based on their observations as a teacher. The suicidally depressing thing about it is, the organisations responsible for visiting the homes and families that have been reported are so under-staffed and under-funded that they only have the time to investigate cases where the child is in immediate life-threatening danger. Combine the two above anecdotes together and you've got a society that's gone wrong and is still applying increasing pressure to the accelerator. Politicians calling for laws against encryption who are not also calling for massively increased budgets to child protection organisations are pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with real, actual protection of children, and they should be called out.

Marcus_Ford 2y ago

[dead]

smarm52 2y ago

[flagged]