5 ms·
Between a surveillance state where every communication is siphoned up, fed to LLMs, and used to target random people not already under suspicion... and a world
by btown 1y ago
Between a surveillance state where every communication is siphoned up, fed to LLMs, and used to target random people not already under suspicion... and a world where at the very least there needs to be some documented/auditable/accountable/whistle-blowable process of identifying an individual target and serving, say, a warrant to a third-party chat company... the second world has something of a "damping function" that slows the acceleration of authoritarianism. While far from ideal, it's better than the first option, which ChatControl was laying the groundwork for.
- JoshTriplett 1y agoWe are not obligated to choose a "lesser of two evils" here. We should reject both. I really appreciate Signal's public responses to warrants ("sure, here's all the information we have, by design we don't have anything important"). https://signal.org/bigbrother/ https://signal.org/bigbrother/
- RandomLensman 1y agoI think, there are warrants to put surveillance software on a device under certain circumstances (in Germany, Quellen TKÜ).
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoAnywhere that a warrant could be used to do something, you can be certain that someone is doing that same thing without the warrant. The method that works is to make it technically or practically impossible.
- RandomLensman 1y agoWhy? How?
- JoshTriplett 1y agoBy way of example, if there's a backdoor key, it can be stolen or misused. Witness the many examples of companies that collect too much data and have that data stolen, and many examples of police departments abusing police databases for personal stalking and similar misuses. Any other backdoor mechanism can similarly be breached or misused. There is no such thing as a backdoor that can only be used for what it is "supposed" to be used for.
- RandomLensman 1y agoIf you can install stuff on the device, how could you protect against it?
- JoshTriplett 1y agoDepending on the level of security you need, there are any number of steps people could take or the industry as a whole could take: - Don't allow remotely installing things on a device, only doing so with physical presence on the device. - Have "binary transparency" mechanisms to make sure that you're seeing the same binary everyone else is, and you're not getting served a special backdoored version nobody else sees. (This doesn't prevent global backdoors, of course, but those are more likely to get caught.) - Relatedly, have multiple independent app stores in different jurisdictions, and make sure they are serving identical binaries. That ensures no one jurisdiction can surreptitiously demand and enforce a backdoor. - Have signatures from the original app author that can be verified, and ensure that intermediaries (e.g. "app stores") can add signatures but can't add anything to the package that's not covered by the original signature. That reduces the number of parties you have to trust. - In an ideal world, only install Open Source software that's reviewed and subject to multiple independent reproducible builds.
- RandomLensman 1y agoIn high security settings, just don't allow devices in. Also, democratically authorized state actors have a valid role to play in liberal democracies.
- littlestymaar 1y ago> The method that works is to make it technically or practically impossible. The only way is to avoid the jurisdiction altogether then, because any app can be remotely updated to disable encryption…
- tliltocatl 1y agoDisable automatic remote updates. These should never have been a thing.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoHow much do you trust the button that says to disallow automatic updates then?
- littlestymaar 1y agoAnd what do you do when you app stops working because the server rejects it for being out of date? For the record, Signal pushes an update every few days.
- JoshTriplett 1y agoNot disagreeing with the underlying issue, but the tradeoff is: security bugs are a thing.
- Aachen 1y agoWhat does Quellen TKU mean?
- RandomLensman 1y agoSomething like source telecommunication surveillance
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoToo vague. More like surveillance of telecommunications at the source (by means of trojaning the source/device, or using existing backdoors at whichever layer of the stack).
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agohttps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekommunikations%C3%BCberwachung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekommunikations%C3%BCberwac... https://bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2025/bvg25-069.html https://bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteil... https://www.bka.de/DE/UnsereAufgaben/Ermittlungsunterstuetzung/Technologien/QuellentkueOnlinedurchsuchung/quellentkueOnlinedurchsuchung_node.html https://www.bka.de/DE/UnsereAufgaben/Ermittlungsunterstuetzu...
- _3u10 1y agoThe "second" world is now western civilization. People in government need to get paid, so if the state isn't paying them, then you have a defacto free society. When the state pays poorly, it aligns the incentives of the people and the government. It is the best form of government, and I am glad to live somewhere where the rule of law extends to all, and not just the elites. Recently in the country I live some people from interpol accidentally withdrew a red notice, after initial prosecution, the prosecutor realized several mistakes were made and documents lost, so as a country with the rule of law, the prosecution withdrew the charges as there was insufficient evidence, compare and constrast with a corrupt country like Canada where the attorney general was fired for wanting to prosecute a company that had bribed Momar Ghaddaffi with 2 million dollars. Worse yet, they spread their culture of corruption through out the world instead of keeping it at home.
- u8080 1y agoRemember, that German government made an attempt to secretely wiretap Jabber.ru XMPP node without any legal basis: https://www.devever.net/~hl/xmpp-incident https://www.devever.net/~hl/xmpp-incident