6 ms·

> it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. That's a very gullible take and kind of apolog

by csomar 2y ago

> it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. That's a very gullible take and kind of apologetic for the politicians. If you are implementing a backdoor to crypto-systems, you probably know exactly what you are doing. That, and this has been re-surfacing time and again under different pretenses make this a deliberate attack on freedom of expression. The politicians know exactly what they are doing.

Spivak 2y ago
I'm sure some of them do but encryption is pretty unusual as a lock that police can't break. If a judge orders a search of your house and the incriminating evidence is in a safe they will break it open if you refuse to open it for them. Governments aren't exactly happy that for digital assets there's ready made mass-market systems where the response to any search warrant will be to pound sand. When law enforcement tells you that they're being hindered by the fact that even unsophisticated criminals have E2EE messaging and that's their biggest source of evidence (pulling text records) then asking for back doors starts to sound reasonable. It isn't of course because it defeats the whole point but it doesn't have to be a crusade against speech or whatever.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Governments aren't exactly happy that for digital assets there's ready made mass-market systems where the response to any search warrant will be to pound sand. Which is to say they understand the situation perfectly and are acting with a firm intellectual grasp of what is going on. The issue isn't that they don't understand encryption, it is that they reject citizens having any sort of power to resist the state. Which is cool and all, authoritarianism is always with us to some extent. But at its core they see this from the viewpoint that the state is fundamentally in control and sometimes it grants people the privilege of privacy because it doesn't think what they are saying is important and therefore they can be humoured. They'll pretend technical ignorance if it gets the liberals off their backs, but the only people they are fooling are the credulous.
  - palata 2y ago
    > it is that they reject citizens having any sort of power to resist the state But by doing that, they make it easier for adversaries to spy on their own citizen, which is a national security issue. That's why it sounds like ignorance to me: I understand that they really want a backdoor just for themselves "because they are the good guys" and "for national security", but they don't understand that if they have a backdoor, then their adversaries will eventually have it, too.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      It isn't even that complex an idea, you laid it out in 1 sentence. "If they have a backdoor, then their adversaries will eventually have it, too". They understand that just fine. If anything, you're the one who doesn't understand although I'd not push the point because the rules around political debate are weird and you might be humouring them. The people in government have a hierarchy of threats. Social challenges from within their own nation always higher than those from foreign countries. Most politicians are perfectly happy to sacrifice national security to be able to see what their citizens are saying, they just won't articulate it in plain language because it sounds bad. We can tell this because they're signing off on narratives around being "the good guys". Anyone pushing that sort of narrative spin isn't a good guy. That isn't how law enforcement works in practice and anyone in high political power knows it if they have even a shred of intellectual honesty; they've seen how the sausage is made and are well aware that the real world is all various shades of what happens when a family breaks down and siblings start fighting with each other.
- pca006132 2y ago
  The issue is that something like this will not affect the criminals, they can just use something with encryption.
bambax 2y ago
Listening to the debates in the lower chamber (Assemblée Nationale) and the arguments of those arguing in favor of backdoors clearly show they do not have a clue how any of this works. They are not clever players doing double-bluffs. They are ignorant stooges.
- csomar 2y ago
  First, the constituents on the chamber are supposed to vote along the party lines. Yes, they do not understand what is going on but that does not obviate their responsibility. Negligence can be criminal. I am specifically talking about the people pushing this (as in planning, writing, orchestrating its ascent to become law and then enforcing).
- Agingcoder 2y ago
  Why do they need to understand how encryption works ? They’re mostly interested in the goal ( a lock that can be broken by law enforcement, and allow wiretapping), and will tell you that these things are already possible in the physical world today. In other words they’re fine with intruding upon citizens privacy - this doesn’t require any understanding of encryption I think ( and if encryption prevents that, their answer would be ‘ban encryption’)
  - computerthings 2y ago
    [dead]
  - skummetmaelk 2y ago
    This is incorrect. They will quite often claim that it is possible to do without breaking encryption, as required for banking and such. They do believe it is possible to have a backdoor that will _only_ be accessible to the government. Completely ignorant of how quickly that backdoor will be found by hostile state actors.
    - Agingcoder 2y ago
      Well, hostile state actors can ( and do!) already wiretap lots of things in the physical world, in theory wiretapping / surveillance is only possible for governments etc. And the NSA semi-successfully inserted a backdoor through carefully chosen elliptic curves a few years ago ( DUAL_EC_DRBG ) by convincing folks to use a weak PRNG. I’d say that the problem isn’t so much related to encryption, but to the fact that anything digital can be industrialized very quickly, and that the ‘if it goes wrong’ scenario can go really wrong if ( and when) your backdoor falls into the wrong hands. From a lawmaker’s perspective, it’s just a different kind of risk, which they may or may not be assessing properly. In some ways I see it as closer to people misunderstanding how easy and how bad it is to lose large amounts of data : it’s not related to the inner workings of computers , but rather to the leverage that computers provide. The same is true with weak crypto : everything is great until suddenly everything is in the clear all at the same time, and read by people you don’t want.
regularjack 2y ago
That is a very cynical take.
throwaway290 2y ago
This is the line of Russian propaganda. But don't try to explain by malice if it can be perfectly explained by incompetence.
- orbital-decay 2y ago
  Unbelievable. What does Russian propaganda of all damn things has to do with this? Especially considering that the power takeover in Russia happened much in the same way - people assumed the politicians are dumb and naive, which I'm telling you as someone who tried to resist that takeover. Yes, your politicians - all politicians, regardless of the country - would have been happy to have more power over you and need to be kept in check. They are never naive, only you can be naive by assuming that. If you forget this for a second, you're done. This is not some kind of controversial issue all of a sudden, that's basic democracy.
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    > What does Russian propaganda of all damn things has to do with this? They welcome Europeans thinking their government is out to get them > Especially considering that the power takeover in Russia happened much in the same way - people assumed the politicians are dumb and naive People in Russia did the opposite of that. People in Russia were conditioned by decades of violent dictatorship and were either afraid to make a noise or actively wanted the strongman fascist rule. And the guy in power is actual ex KGB. There's a difference > your politicians Putin? > need to be kept in check. Keeping in check != assuming the worst. Assuming the worst from everybody is how no one would get anything done. e2ee, like any tech not bad or good inherently helps both goodies and baddies. Not turning blind eye on this is important first step. Even if your gov doesn't get a backdoor now they will keep at it until they find a way because voters who are not extremist libertarian techbros want them to. Your way out is to help them find a good enough way witg a compromise.
    - orbital-decay 2y ago
      > People in Russia did the opposite of that. People in Russia were conditioned by decades of violent dictatorship and were either afraid to make a noise or actively wanted the strongman fascist rule. And the guy in power is actual ex KGB. There's a difference I'm sorry if I'm blunt or rude but you have zero idea what you're talking about, and judging by this answer you're unlikely to even attempt to find out. It saddens me that people who have actual chance to avoid neo-feudalism learn nothing from the experience of my own country (Russia), because hey that's Eastasia and we've always been at war with Eastasia so it can be discarded, "we" are not like that, surely "we" are not "them" and can do better, it can never happen here. Well, good luck! You'll need it.
unification_fan 2y ago
What I don't understand is this: Whether they are gullible, corrupt, or simply pieces of shit and sociopaths... Why are they allowed to keep their job? And how can we fix democracy to make sure that they are held accountable? Let's be clear about one thing: Hanlon's razor is bullshit. Globally, only about ~30% of humans think that "people are generally trustworthy". Even fewer think that "strangers can be trusted". So it fucking IS malice, and people are not trusting because they know that it is malice. In fairness you can look at nord-european countries for some counter-examples, but 30% is a good approximation. I don't even care if politicians are stupid or malicious. They're probably both anyway because they're human. But what I care about is that they don't fuck with my hard earned civil liberties. So much blood was shed to get where we are... have we learned nothing at all?

by csomar 2y ago

Spivak 2y ago

I'm sure some of them do but encryption is pretty unusual as a lock that police can't break. If a judge orders a search of your house and the incriminating evidence is in a safe they will break it open if you refuse to open it for them. Governments aren't exactly happy that for digital assets there's ready made mass-market systems where the response to any search warrant will be to pound sand. When law enforcement tells you that they're being hindered by the fact that even unsophisticated criminals have E2EE messaging and that's their biggest source of evidence (pulling text records) then asking for back doors starts to sound reasonable. It isn't of course because it defeats the whole point but it doesn't have to be a crusade against speech or whatever.

roenxi 2y ago
> Governments aren't exactly happy that for digital assets there's ready made mass-market systems where the response to any search warrant will be to pound sand. Which is to say they understand the situation perfectly and are acting with a firm intellectual grasp of what is going on. The issue isn't that they don't understand encryption, it is that they reject citizens having any sort of power to resist the state. Which is cool and all, authoritarianism is always with us to some extent. But at its core they see this from the viewpoint that the state is fundamentally in control and sometimes it grants people the privilege of privacy because it doesn't think what they are saying is important and therefore they can be humoured. They'll pretend technical ignorance if it gets the liberals off their backs, but the only people they are fooling are the credulous.
- palata 2y ago
  > it is that they reject citizens having any sort of power to resist the state But by doing that, they make it easier for adversaries to spy on their own citizen, which is a national security issue. That's why it sounds like ignorance to me: I understand that they really want a backdoor just for themselves "because they are the good guys" and "for national security", but they don't understand that if they have a backdoor, then their adversaries will eventually have it, too.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    It isn't even that complex an idea, you laid it out in 1 sentence. "If they have a backdoor, then their adversaries will eventually have it, too". They understand that just fine. If anything, you're the one who doesn't understand although I'd not push the point because the rules around political debate are weird and you might be humouring them. The people in government have a hierarchy of threats. Social challenges from within their own nation always higher than those from foreign countries. Most politicians are perfectly happy to sacrifice national security to be able to see what their citizens are saying, they just won't articulate it in plain language because it sounds bad. We can tell this because they're signing off on narratives around being "the good guys". Anyone pushing that sort of narrative spin isn't a good guy. That isn't how law enforcement works in practice and anyone in high political power knows it if they have even a shred of intellectual honesty; they've seen how the sausage is made and are well aware that the real world is all various shades of what happens when a family breaks down and siblings start fighting with each other.
pca006132 2y ago
The issue is that something like this will not affect the criminals, they can just use something with encryption.

bambax 2y ago

Listening to the debates in the lower chamber (Assemblée Nationale) and the arguments of those arguing in favor of backdoors clearly show they do not have a clue how any of this works. They are not clever players doing double-bluffs. They are ignorant stooges.

csomar 2y ago
First, the constituents on the chamber are supposed to vote along the party lines. Yes, they do not understand what is going on but that does not obviate their responsibility. Negligence can be criminal. I am specifically talking about the people pushing this (as in planning, writing, orchestrating its ascent to become law and then enforcing).
Agingcoder 2y ago
Why do they need to understand how encryption works ? They’re mostly interested in the goal ( a lock that can be broken by law enforcement, and allow wiretapping), and will tell you that these things are already possible in the physical world today. In other words they’re fine with intruding upon citizens privacy - this doesn’t require any understanding of encryption I think ( and if encryption prevents that, their answer would be ‘ban encryption’)
- computerthings 2y ago
  [dead]
- skummetmaelk 2y ago
  This is incorrect. They will quite often claim that it is possible to do without breaking encryption, as required for banking and such. They do believe it is possible to have a backdoor that will _only_ be accessible to the government. Completely ignorant of how quickly that backdoor will be found by hostile state actors.
  - Agingcoder 2y ago
    Well, hostile state actors can ( and do!) already wiretap lots of things in the physical world, in theory wiretapping / surveillance is only possible for governments etc. And the NSA semi-successfully inserted a backdoor through carefully chosen elliptic curves a few years ago ( DUAL_EC_DRBG ) by convincing folks to use a weak PRNG. I’d say that the problem isn’t so much related to encryption, but to the fact that anything digital can be industrialized very quickly, and that the ‘if it goes wrong’ scenario can go really wrong if ( and when) your backdoor falls into the wrong hands. From a lawmaker’s perspective, it’s just a different kind of risk, which they may or may not be assessing properly. In some ways I see it as closer to people misunderstanding how easy and how bad it is to lose large amounts of data : it’s not related to the inner workings of computers , but rather to the leverage that computers provide. The same is true with weak crypto : everything is great until suddenly everything is in the clear all at the same time, and read by people you don’t want.

regularjack 2y ago

That is a very cynical take.

throwaway290 2y ago

This is the line of Russian propaganda. But don't try to explain by malice if it can be perfectly explained by incompetence.

orbital-decay 2y ago
Unbelievable. What does Russian propaganda of all damn things has to do with this? Especially considering that the power takeover in Russia happened much in the same way - people assumed the politicians are dumb and naive, which I'm telling you as someone who tried to resist that takeover. Yes, your politicians - all politicians, regardless of the country - would have been happy to have more power over you and need to be kept in check. They are never naive, only you can be naive by assuming that. If you forget this for a second, you're done. This is not some kind of controversial issue all of a sudden, that's basic democracy.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  > What does Russian propaganda of all damn things has to do with this? They welcome Europeans thinking their government is out to get them > Especially considering that the power takeover in Russia happened much in the same way - people assumed the politicians are dumb and naive People in Russia did the opposite of that. People in Russia were conditioned by decades of violent dictatorship and were either afraid to make a noise or actively wanted the strongman fascist rule. And the guy in power is actual ex KGB. There's a difference > your politicians Putin? > need to be kept in check. Keeping in check != assuming the worst. Assuming the worst from everybody is how no one would get anything done. e2ee, like any tech not bad or good inherently helps both goodies and baddies. Not turning blind eye on this is important first step. Even if your gov doesn't get a backdoor now they will keep at it until they find a way because voters who are not extremist libertarian techbros want them to. Your way out is to help them find a good enough way witg a compromise.
  - orbital-decay 2y ago
    > People in Russia did the opposite of that. People in Russia were conditioned by decades of violent dictatorship and were either afraid to make a noise or actively wanted the strongman fascist rule. And the guy in power is actual ex KGB. There's a difference I'm sorry if I'm blunt or rude but you have zero idea what you're talking about, and judging by this answer you're unlikely to even attempt to find out. It saddens me that people who have actual chance to avoid neo-feudalism learn nothing from the experience of my own country (Russia), because hey that's Eastasia and we've always been at war with Eastasia so it can be discarded, "we" are not like that, surely "we" are not "them" and can do better, it can never happen here. Well, good luck! You'll need it.

unification_fan 2y ago

What I don't understand is this: Whether they are gullible, corrupt, or simply pieces of shit and sociopaths... Why are they allowed to keep their job? And how can we fix democracy to make sure that they are held accountable? Let's be clear about one thing: Hanlon's razor is bullshit. Globally, only about ~30% of humans think that "people are generally trustworthy". Even fewer think that "strangers can be trusted". So it fucking IS malice, and people are not trusting because they know that it is malice. In fairness you can look at nord-european countries for some counter-examples, but 30% is a good approximation. I don't even care if politicians are stupid or malicious. They're probably both anyway because they're human. But what I care about is that they don't fuck with my hard earned civil liberties. So much blood was shed to get where we are... have we learned nothing at all?