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Actually, having encryption defeating mechanisms makes a lot of sense when its limited to public servants, like the Denmark's Justice Minister. Those people ar

by mrtksn 1y ago

Actually, having encryption defeating mechanisms makes a lot of sense when its limited to public servants, like the Denmark's Justice Minister. Those people are trusted with a lot of public resources, in fact all the public servants should have a monitoring device like a black box on them all the time and when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong. Corruption and incompetence, solved.

miohtama 1y ago
Chat Control proposal excludes politicians themselves from Chat Control.
- bojan 1y ago
  Former Dutch PM used to have an old Nokia with a very limited capacity to store messages[0], so he could always say he had to delete messages so he could keep receiving new ones. [0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-volstrekt-verkeerd-signaal-maar-wat-zijn-de-regels https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-vol...
  - alluro2 1y ago
    Eschewing responsibility through these kinds of "tricks", where the person obviously thinks themselves so above everyone else that they can make them idiots to their face, makes my blood boil. It's always either public "servants" in power, or the rich people, putting themselves outside of the rules. If you are an elected official, and make a stunt like this, it should be grounds for immediate dismissal, IMO. But, alas, nowadays these kinds of things are so minor and irrelevant, in the sea of ridiculously horrible stuff they do. It's at least refreshing that there are still places, like the Netherlands in this case, where there are some (even when it's surface-level) repercussions of such behavior.
    - vanviegen 1y ago
      > makes my blood boil I don't think off-the-record communication always implies corruption. I imagine it to be impossibly hard sometimes to get people to agree on anything (which is basically a PM's entire job), if all communication must happen out in the open.
  - em500 1y ago
    Yes, and now he's the NATO Secretary General. As PM, he employed the obvious and straighforward defense against the Dutch version of FOIA of keeping the most important communications in-person behind closed doors[1]. I'd assume many high ranking Western politicians do something similar, while paying lip service to high minded ideals about openness, transparancy and democracy. [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutte-doctrine https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutte-doctrine
  - Romario77 1y ago
    messages could be (and usually are) stored server side. Plus SMS is not secure at all and easy to eavesdrop on.
- elric 1y ago
  I think the parent commenter was aware of that and was deliberately flipping the tables on these self-serving politicians.
hulitu 1y ago
> all the public servants should have a monitoring device like a black box on them all the time and when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong. no. Regards, Ursula
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dabeeeenster 1y ago
Several years ago the UK government started being defacto run via Whatsapp. I was absolutely furious about this, but seemed to be in a tiny minority of people who cared about it! Our PM at the time of covid "lost" his Whatsapp backups, and his replacement also had problems getting access to Whatsapp messages. How convenient. If you worked in a regulated industry this would be instant dismissal. For the UK govt its business as usual.
- PicassoCTs 1y ago
  [dead]
- pxoe 1y ago
  It may seem like it's "convenient", but whatsapp is truly a nightmare when you try to move it literally anywhere in any way. Huge backups, needing to transfer phone numbers, having to restore from backups, having and moving those backups in the first place, the way it's designed in that regard is the most inconvenient for a platform that doesn't even necessarily provide more security or anything for that to be worth it at all, particularly for people who don't even seek that kind of security or even know about it and just use it for "texting and stuff". Not to defend that or say that it isn't just a convenient excuse (it can be for sure), but just to say that whatsapp is possibly the most annoying app in that regard. It's such a pain in the ass I'd rather store all of that in the cloud. (Which ironically whatsapp pretty much just does anyway if it backs up to google drive, it just makes it the most inconvenient it could be)
  - jaapz 1y ago
    Is it that hard? Every time I moved to a new phone, whatsapp's backups are in my google drive and restored without any problem whatsoever
    - trollbridge 1y ago
      It’s not hard, but if you do one step out of order, your backup becomes unusable and all your history goes bye-bye.
teekert 1y ago
I submitted this some time ago [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45127521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45127521
soulofmischief 1y ago
Our governments have hoodwinked the population into believing that society needs to be surveilled by the government to prevent crime, and not the other way around. We're forgetting who signed off on this whole thing.
- dmesg 1y ago
  The central problem here is this: In the Physicists from 1961 (German: Die Physiker, F. Dürrenmatt) the central theme is that scientists cannot "uninvent" something. Encryption is here to stay. Mathematically proven. Period. The criminals will just flock to the "real encryption" and not the honeypots/backdoored messengers as they are being caught. In the end word of mouth will spread: "This is safe, this is unsafe." Just because a few Kremlin bots on Telegram are brainwashing people in the west, the west doesn't have to become North Korea. Defending the innocent law abiding adult Joe, just wanting to send their honey pics in private is a distractor in this argument. I will not sacrifice my western standards just because 0.1% people are inherently evil.
  - FridayoLeary 1y ago
    >The criminals will just flock to the "real encryption" and not the honeypots/ backdoored messengers as they are being caught. In the end word of mouth will spread: "This is safe, this is unsafe." Actually the opposite seems to be true. Criminal gangs are particularly susceptible to honeypots precisely because they don't trust the mainstream services. 2 prominent example was that huge sting operation a couple of years back where a supposedly "secure" service was being run by the FBI. And then you have the infamous pager plot, which is admittedly very different but it perfectly illustrates how shaky alternative communications can be. >Just because a few Kremlin bots on Telegram are brainwashing people in the west, the west doesn't have to become North Korea. From the hysteria this has generated you would think it was the most crippling threat western democracy has faced since communism.
    - dmesg 1y ago
      Oh really? https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366617630/German-court-finds-hacked-EncroChat-phone-evidence-inadmissible https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366617630/German-court-f... Actually the reality was the honeypots were illegal to use as evidence in court. So these criminals are now smarter and more dangerous as we taught them OPSEC.
ErigmolCt 1y ago
Put the surveillance where the actual power lies. Public servants should be held to a higher standard of transparency, especially when mismanagement or corruption affects millions. Want trust? Show accountability.
- mintaka5 1y ago
  [dead]
Muromec 1y ago
>when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong. We always check the logs and when something goes wrong we vote for the box to explode
mintaka5 1y ago
[dead]
GuB-42 1y ago
Public servants have a job, outside of their job, they are just regular citizens with the same rights and duties as everyone else. So, monitoring them of the job, sure, but they have the right for a private life. Or not, depending on the law... It is a bit more complicated for high ranking official, where immunities and classified information come into play, and they don't really have 9-to-5 jobs. But for lower ranking public servants, like police officers, magistrates, mayors, etc... that would apply.

by mrtksn 1y ago

miohtama 1y ago

Chat Control proposal excludes politicians themselves from Chat Control.

bojan 1y ago
Former Dutch PM used to have an old Nokia with a very limited capacity to store messages[0], so he could always say he had to delete messages so he could keep receiving new ones. [0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-volstrekt-verkeerd-signaal-maar-wat-zijn-de-regels https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-vol...
- alluro2 1y ago
  Eschewing responsibility through these kinds of "tricks", where the person obviously thinks themselves so above everyone else that they can make them idiots to their face, makes my blood boil. It's always either public "servants" in power, or the rich people, putting themselves outside of the rules. If you are an elected official, and make a stunt like this, it should be grounds for immediate dismissal, IMO. But, alas, nowadays these kinds of things are so minor and irrelevant, in the sea of ridiculously horrible stuff they do. It's at least refreshing that there are still places, like the Netherlands in this case, where there are some (even when it's surface-level) repercussions of such behavior.
  - vanviegen 1y ago
    > makes my blood boil I don't think off-the-record communication always implies corruption. I imagine it to be impossibly hard sometimes to get people to agree on anything (which is basically a PM's entire job), if all communication must happen out in the open.
- em500 1y ago
  Yes, and now he's the NATO Secretary General. As PM, he employed the obvious and straighforward defense against the Dutch version of FOIA of keeping the most important communications in-person behind closed doors[1]. I'd assume many high ranking Western politicians do something similar, while paying lip service to high minded ideals about openness, transparancy and democracy. [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutte-doctrine https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutte-doctrine
- Romario77 1y ago
  messages could be (and usually are) stored server side. Plus SMS is not secure at all and easy to eavesdrop on.
elric 1y ago
I think the parent commenter was aware of that and was deliberately flipping the tables on these self-serving politicians.

hulitu 1y ago

> all the public servants should have a monitoring device like a black box on them all the time and when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong. no. Regards, Ursula

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

dabeeeenster 1y ago

Several years ago the UK government started being defacto run via Whatsapp. I was absolutely furious about this, but seemed to be in a tiny minority of people who cared about it! Our PM at the time of covid "lost" his Whatsapp backups, and his replacement also had problems getting access to Whatsapp messages. How convenient. If you worked in a regulated industry this would be instant dismissal. For the UK govt its business as usual.

PicassoCTs 1y ago
[dead]
pxoe 1y ago
It may seem like it's "convenient", but whatsapp is truly a nightmare when you try to move it literally anywhere in any way. Huge backups, needing to transfer phone numbers, having to restore from backups, having and moving those backups in the first place, the way it's designed in that regard is the most inconvenient for a platform that doesn't even necessarily provide more security or anything for that to be worth it at all, particularly for people who don't even seek that kind of security or even know about it and just use it for "texting and stuff". Not to defend that or say that it isn't just a convenient excuse (it can be for sure), but just to say that whatsapp is possibly the most annoying app in that regard. It's such a pain in the ass I'd rather store all of that in the cloud. (Which ironically whatsapp pretty much just does anyway if it backs up to google drive, it just makes it the most inconvenient it could be)
- jaapz 1y ago
  Is it that hard? Every time I moved to a new phone, whatsapp's backups are in my google drive and restored without any problem whatsoever
  - trollbridge 1y ago
    It’s not hard, but if you do one step out of order, your backup becomes unusable and all your history goes bye-bye.

teekert 1y ago

I submitted this some time ago [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45127521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45127521

soulofmischief 1y ago

Our governments have hoodwinked the population into believing that society needs to be surveilled by the government to prevent crime, and not the other way around. We're forgetting who signed off on this whole thing.

dmesg 1y ago
The central problem here is this: In the Physicists from 1961 (German: Die Physiker, F. Dürrenmatt) the central theme is that scientists cannot "uninvent" something. Encryption is here to stay. Mathematically proven. Period. The criminals will just flock to the "real encryption" and not the honeypots/backdoored messengers as they are being caught. In the end word of mouth will spread: "This is safe, this is unsafe." Just because a few Kremlin bots on Telegram are brainwashing people in the west, the west doesn't have to become North Korea. Defending the innocent law abiding adult Joe, just wanting to send their honey pics in private is a distractor in this argument. I will not sacrifice my western standards just because 0.1% people are inherently evil.
- FridayoLeary 1y ago
  >The criminals will just flock to the "real encryption" and not the honeypots/ backdoored messengers as they are being caught. In the end word of mouth will spread: "This is safe, this is unsafe." Actually the opposite seems to be true. Criminal gangs are particularly susceptible to honeypots precisely because they don't trust the mainstream services. 2 prominent example was that huge sting operation a couple of years back where a supposedly "secure" service was being run by the FBI. And then you have the infamous pager plot, which is admittedly very different but it perfectly illustrates how shaky alternative communications can be. >Just because a few Kremlin bots on Telegram are brainwashing people in the west, the west doesn't have to become North Korea. From the hysteria this has generated you would think it was the most crippling threat western democracy has faced since communism.
  - dmesg 1y ago
    Oh really? https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366617630/German-court-finds-hacked-EncroChat-phone-evidence-inadmissible https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366617630/German-court-f... Actually the reality was the honeypots were illegal to use as evidence in court. So these criminals are now smarter and more dangerous as we taught them OPSEC.

ErigmolCt 1y ago

Put the surveillance where the actual power lies. Public servants should be held to a higher standard of transparency, especially when mismanagement or corruption affects millions. Want trust? Show accountability.

mintaka5 1y ago
[dead]

Muromec 1y ago

>when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong. We always check the logs and when something goes wrong we vote for the box to explode

mintaka5 1y ago

[dead]

GuB-42 1y ago

Public servants have a job, outside of their job, they are just regular citizens with the same rights and duties as everyone else. So, monitoring them of the job, sure, but they have the right for a private life. Or not, depending on the law... It is a bit more complicated for high ranking official, where immunities and classified information come into play, and they don't really have 9-to-5 jobs. But for lower ranking public servants, like police officers, magistrates, mayors, etc... that would apply.