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The fact that proposals like this get this far, without anyone checking with the defence department and actual experts is really weird. It's not just Sweden, th

The fact that proposals like this get this far, without anyone checking with the defence department and actual experts is really weird. It's not just Sweden, this is clearly a problem in many other countries. I'd really like to know why it's so hard for politicians and police forces to understand that backdoors are dangerous.

mjburgess 2y ago
It will be waring factions within government (which is never unitary in any country) --- here these laws/proposals/etc. probably come from domestic spying agencies and police forces in most countries. I suspect that signals intelligence agencies and offensive forces have probably mostly moved to "encryption is good" stance given the number of foreign attacks upon domestic assets (gov, biz, etc.). However, we shouldn't underestimate the desire for foreign intelligence agencies to bait one's own domestic agencies into "spying for them". So i imagine there's some pressure from, eg., the US sigint agencies to have the EU compromise EU citizens in ways that even those very agencies may today not wish to compromise their own. At a complete guess, I wouldnt be supried if, eg., the NSA (, CIA, et al.) were goading EUROPOL which was demanding domestic anti-encryption laws. As an empirical matter, encryption makes agencies like EUROPOL's jobs extremely difficult -- i imagine also because they probably struggle to get coop from domestic police forces, so cannot easily do "the physical police work necessary" to get device access. In the end, I imagine we'll have china to thank for the end to this nonesense -- since any backdoor will immediately be a means of mass corp/gov espionage.
- genewitch 2y ago
  > At a complete guess, I wouldnt be supried if, eg., the NSA (, CIA, et al.) were goading EUROPOL which was demanding domestic anti-encryption laws. The exact purpose of Five Eyes? I'm shocked, shocked! there's gambling going in here!
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    It's not the purpose of five eyes, it's a noted tactic. But at the same time countries realise they are under attack economically and political from hostile cyber warefare... and so there's something self-defeating about this tactic now whereas perhaps 10-20 years ago there wasnt. It's hard to imagine a US-China war (say by proxy in TW) or a EU-Russia war (eg., esp., by proxy in UA) "going well" under conditions of broken domestic encryption. Eg., back when the UK mass surveillance law was passed in 2016, I imagine sigint agencies were more on-board... today I wonder if that law would now be "quietly opposed" on grounds of national defence
codesforhugs 2y ago
I think it's part ignorance, part exceptionalism. Backdoors sound simple, and if you're thinking about physical backdoors people are generally pretty good at protecting them. That this is largely because they have a lot of characteristics not shared by digital backdoors is easily lost on most people. These folks also tend to believe that THEY will be perfect stewards of backdoors, and anybody who loses control of them is just less competent.

mjburgess 2y ago

It will be waring factions within government (which is never unitary in any country) --- here these laws/proposals/etc. probably come from domestic spying agencies and police forces in most countries. I suspect that signals intelligence agencies and offensive forces have probably mostly moved to "encryption is good" stance given the number of foreign attacks upon domestic assets (gov, biz, etc.). However, we shouldn't underestimate the desire for foreign intelligence agencies to bait one's own domestic agencies into "spying for them". So i imagine there's some pressure from, eg., the US sigint agencies to have the EU compromise EU citizens in ways that even those very agencies may today not wish to compromise their own. At a complete guess, I wouldnt be supried if, eg., the NSA (, CIA, et al.) were goading EUROPOL which was demanding domestic anti-encryption laws. As an empirical matter, encryption makes agencies like EUROPOL's jobs extremely difficult -- i imagine also because they probably struggle to get coop from domestic police forces, so cannot easily do "the physical police work necessary" to get device access. In the end, I imagine we'll have china to thank for the end to this nonesense -- since any backdoor will immediately be a means of mass corp/gov espionage.

genewitch 2y ago
> At a complete guess, I wouldnt be supried if, eg., the NSA (, CIA, et al.) were goading EUROPOL which was demanding domestic anti-encryption laws. The exact purpose of Five Eyes? I'm shocked, shocked! there's gambling going in here!
- mjburgess 2y ago
  It's not the purpose of five eyes, it's a noted tactic. But at the same time countries realise they are under attack economically and political from hostile cyber warefare... and so there's something self-defeating about this tactic now whereas perhaps 10-20 years ago there wasnt. It's hard to imagine a US-China war (say by proxy in TW) or a EU-Russia war (eg., esp., by proxy in UA) "going well" under conditions of broken domestic encryption. Eg., back when the UK mass surveillance law was passed in 2016, I imagine sigint agencies were more on-board... today I wonder if that law would now be "quietly opposed" on grounds of national defence

codesforhugs 2y ago

I think it's part ignorance, part exceptionalism. Backdoors sound simple, and if you're thinking about physical backdoors people are generally pretty good at protecting them. That this is largely because they have a lot of characteristics not shared by digital backdoors is easily lost on most people. These folks also tend to believe that THEY will be perfect stewards of backdoors, and anybody who loses control of them is just less competent.