5 ms·

This type of legislation should never ever be proposed in a democratic system, so had disagree. This is an extremely totalitarian-style move from EU - governin

by Xelbair 11mo ago

This type of legislation should never ever be proposed in a democratic system, so had disagree. This is an extremely totalitarian-style move from EU - governing bodies are exempt from the law, meanwhile peasants have to be watched 24/7 for wrongthink, all under guise of protecting the children.

ben_w 11mo ago
While I agree with the sentiment, you need to think like a state to stop this kind of thing. Even without any argument about personal rights and what's totalitarian, I can't even square the circle of the unstoppable force of "the economy is dependent on encryption that can't be hacked" with the immovable object of "hostile governments and organised criminals undermine ${insert any nation here} and communicate with local agents via encryption that can't be hacked".
- DangitBobby 11mo ago
  Organized criminals (especially state actors) will find ways to communicate in the dark regardless, including just continuing to use illegal encryption.
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    > including just continuing to use illegal encryption. First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail. Second, what gets talked about in public (the only thing any of us knows for sure, but also definitely not the whole picture) includes foreign governments recruiting locals via normal messenger apps. More of a problem is that the back-doors can be exploited by both criminals and hostile powers.
    - DangitBobby 11mo ago
      > First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail. You're assuming they continue to use monitored channels to carry it out.
      - ben_w 11mo ago
        I am assuming that the entire (EU in this case) internet is monitored for un-decryptable messages, and that they use the internet. Can you square the circle, even in principle, without questions of cost?
        Xelbair 11mo ago
        The issue is that EU does not control the internet, nor all means of communication. Nor perfect form of monitoring exists so question is moot in itself. Especially as perfect encryption is indistinguishable from noise. and the answer is no but yes - by encrypting everything E2E you can massively reduce harm done, and treat espionage/crime as policy/economic problem instead.
        ben_w 11mo ago
        The EU delegates stuff to the member states, those states enforce laws, that could in principal include requiring everything up from the physical link layer to scan for watever they say so. > Especially as perfect encryption is indistinguishable from noise. Irrelevant. If powers can't decrypt it, powers deem it a crime to have or send. "white-noise.wav is a test file and I'm an acoustics engineer": tough, supply the seed to the PRNG which created it or fine time. > policy/economic problem instead Instead? Everything about this is about groups wanting to act in secret for their best interests, and other people wanting to ensure that only the interests they share get to do that. This is true when it's me logging into my bank and criminals trying to get access to the same, when it's the Russian government sponsoring arson attacks in Europe and local police trying to stop them, and when it's the CIA promoting Tor for democracy activists in dictatorships and those dictatorships trying to stop them. We must have unbreakable encryption, and yet also we cannot have it.
        gf000 11mo ago
        > "white-noise.wav is a test file and I'm an acoustics engineer": tough, supply the seed to the PRNG which created it or fine time. It's a photo I took yesterday. Now what? It may or may not have a secret message that only the target knows how to decrypt. Or maybe it's just more "traditional" text encryption with code names, but real human-legible text. It's technically unfeasible to ban encryption.
- Xelbair 11mo ago
  >While I agree with the sentiment, you need to think like a state to stop this kind of thing. I'm thinking like state already, i would never trust ANY state with such powers, even the one that was perfectly aligned with my political views. It's not issue of state, but dilution of responsibility and the way the votes are counted. It is also an issue of unelected officials deciding things - the whole system is broken. Before you say that heads of state were elected - this is highly contentious issue, no one ran on this in internal campaigns, and votes on this issue are counted country-wide(all for or all against), without any regards to distribution of populace's opinion on this subject. >Even without any argument about personal rights and what's totalitarian, I can't even square the circle of the unstoppable force of "the economy is dependent on encryption that can't be hacked" with the immovable object of "hostile governments and organised criminals undermine ${insert any nation here} and communicate with local agents via encryption that can't be hacked". You're enacting legislation that will actually empower those entities this way! Criminals - surprise surprise - can just break the law, and use devices/software that just.. does not do content scanning, and uses true E2E encryption. Even over insecure channel by using steganography and key exchange over it. Espionage can be handled the same way, probably even easier as they can easily use one-time pads and key phrases established beforehand in their country of origin! Meanwhile only group affected by it are just normal citizens.
- zx10rse 11mo ago
  I keep seeing this fallacy argument about some bad actors and criminals etc. etc. Every government have structures and laws to prevent such activities, in absolutely no shape or form it does not need to read every single message of it citizens. I don't understand how someone can be apologetic for totalitarian state.
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    > Every government have structures and laws to prevent such activities, in absolutely no shape or form it does not need to read every single message of it citizens. Indeed, the state doesn't need all of them. That it's all-or-nothing is due to how the tech works, in that you can't break it *only* for the targets — a point I make when I'm trying to explain the dichotomy to the politicians who want to spy, that this absolutely will be abused to reveal *their own* secrets, too. The way politicians talk about this stuff, suggests they think computer code is like law, that words may have precise meanings but there's still an element of human judgement and common sense, and at human speed, not cold logic operating on bits faster than us by the degree we are faster than geology, where the potential harm from errors can be irreversable total loss of an entire business due to one single error made one time by one person, nor where mistakes from 20 years ago might be discovered and exploited at any time. That's why I said "I can't even square the circle". If I thought the government position here was just absolutely fine, it wouldn't be difficult to square the metaphorical circle. The difficulty is that despite their wrongheadedness about the consequences of what they're trying to do, what they're trying to do is actually necessary. And that's just the crypto parts of this. I left the UK for two reasons: The Investigatory Powers Act, and Brexit. Kinda related cause I thought Brexit would make it harder to fight the IP Act. Went to Westminster to talk to my MP to try and convince them to vote against the IP Act. I remain convinced that the British government was straight up lying about its reasons for having that Act.
raxxorraxor 11mo ago
And while all this is happening, there are cases were peoples homes get search for comments on twitter. These are often in bad taste, but what tastes even worse is that the judiciary doesn't seem to understand proportionality anymore. Mean tweets carry higher sentences than raping someone, stern look at Germany here. A judiciary in such a sorry state, that has not adapted to a changed reality, cannot be permitted to read private communications.
- Fnoord 11mo ago
  'Mean tweets' is such an empty meaning. Come with examples. It is on paper very easy to break the law via speech. If I post something here about how I want to reward a murder on a certain politician (or want to do it myself), I can guarantee you the police would be involved. And rightfully so. Freedom of speech is about pre-moderation. It doesn't mean your actions do not have consequences. If you yell fire in a theatre while there is none, you should be held liable. See also the case of Gennaro P. (the Damschreeuwer) who at May 4 of 2010 yelled during two minutes of silence of Rememberance of the Dead.
  - gregbot 11mo ago
    >doesn't mean your actions do not have consequences YES IT DOES THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT You obviously do not believe in freedom of speech as defined by US law. You are conflating extremely narrow exceptions with broad politically motivated violations of freedom of political speech
    - Fnoord 11mo ago
      The US Constitution. What a beautiful piece of paper, such a nice theory. Yet your current president is circumventing Congress. Your president is bullying states. You don't even have a functional popular vote. Your SCOTUS is dysfunctional. And, this 1st amendment, is that why peaceful protestors got shot by rubber bullets when they were protesting against the war in Iraq? Which, as it turned out, was started for dishonest reasons. You folks also were first with DMCA. Yet we don't have BS like filibuster and gerrymandering. There's a good reason why on every half-serious index about freedom of speech or freedom of press, the best countries are Scandinavian and Switzerland, followed by West-Europe. And that data is from before the current orangutan is in office.

by Xelbair 11mo ago

ben_w 11mo ago

While I agree with the sentiment, you need to think like a state to stop this kind of thing. Even without any argument about personal rights and what's totalitarian, I can't even square the circle of the unstoppable force of "the economy is dependent on encryption that can't be hacked" with the immovable object of "hostile governments and organised criminals undermine ${insert any nation here} and communicate with local agents via encryption that can't be hacked".

DangitBobby 11mo ago
Organized criminals (especially state actors) will find ways to communicate in the dark regardless, including just continuing to use illegal encryption.
- ben_w 11mo ago
  > including just continuing to use illegal encryption. First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail. Second, what gets talked about in public (the only thing any of us knows for sure, but also definitely not the whole picture) includes foreign governments recruiting locals via normal messenger apps. More of a problem is that the back-doors can be exploited by both criminals and hostile powers.
  - DangitBobby 11mo ago
    > First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail. You're assuming they continue to use monitored channels to carry it out.
    - ben_w 11mo ago
      I am assuming that the entire (EU in this case) internet is monitored for un-decryptable messages, and that they use the internet. Can you square the circle, even in principle, without questions of cost?
      - Xelbair 11mo ago
        The issue is that EU does not control the internet, nor all means of communication. Nor perfect form of monitoring exists so question is moot in itself. Especially as perfect encryption is indistinguishable from noise. and the answer is no but yes - by encrypting everything E2E you can massively reduce harm done, and treat espionage/crime as policy/economic problem instead.
        ben_w 11mo ago
        The EU delegates stuff to the member states, those states enforce laws, that could in principal include requiring everything up from the physical link layer to scan for watever they say so. > Especially as perfect encryption is indistinguishable from noise. Irrelevant. If powers can't decrypt it, powers deem it a crime to have or send. "white-noise.wav is a test file and I'm an acoustics engineer": tough, supply the seed to the PRNG which created it or fine time. > policy/economic problem instead Instead? Everything about this is about groups wanting to act in secret for their best interests, and other people wanting to ensure that only the interests they share get to do that. This is true when it's me logging into my bank and criminals trying to get access to the same, when it's the Russian government sponsoring arson attacks in Europe and local police trying to stop them, and when it's the CIA promoting Tor for democracy activists in dictatorships and those dictatorships trying to stop them. We must have unbreakable encryption, and yet also we cannot have it.
        gf000 11mo ago
        > "white-noise.wav is a test file and I'm an acoustics engineer": tough, supply the seed to the PRNG which created it or fine time. It's a photo I took yesterday. Now what? It may or may not have a secret message that only the target knows how to decrypt. Or maybe it's just more "traditional" text encryption with code names, but real human-legible text. It's technically unfeasible to ban encryption.
Xelbair 11mo ago
>While I agree with the sentiment, you need to think like a state to stop this kind of thing. I'm thinking like state already, i would never trust ANY state with such powers, even the one that was perfectly aligned with my political views. It's not issue of state, but dilution of responsibility and the way the votes are counted. It is also an issue of unelected officials deciding things - the whole system is broken. Before you say that heads of state were elected - this is highly contentious issue, no one ran on this in internal campaigns, and votes on this issue are counted country-wide(all for or all against), without any regards to distribution of populace's opinion on this subject. >Even without any argument about personal rights and what's totalitarian, I can't even square the circle of the unstoppable force of "the economy is dependent on encryption that can't be hacked" with the immovable object of "hostile governments and organised criminals undermine ${insert any nation here} and communicate with local agents via encryption that can't be hacked". You're enacting legislation that will actually empower those entities this way! Criminals - surprise surprise - can just break the law, and use devices/software that just.. does not do content scanning, and uses true E2E encryption. Even over insecure channel by using steganography and key exchange over it. Espionage can be handled the same way, probably even easier as they can easily use one-time pads and key phrases established beforehand in their country of origin! Meanwhile only group affected by it are just normal citizens.
zx10rse 11mo ago
I keep seeing this fallacy argument about some bad actors and criminals etc. etc. Every government have structures and laws to prevent such activities, in absolutely no shape or form it does not need to read every single message of it citizens. I don't understand how someone can be apologetic for totalitarian state.
- ben_w 11mo ago
  > Every government have structures and laws to prevent such activities, in absolutely no shape or form it does not need to read every single message of it citizens. Indeed, the state doesn't need all of them. That it's all-or-nothing is due to how the tech works, in that you can't break it *only* for the targets — a point I make when I'm trying to explain the dichotomy to the politicians who want to spy, that this absolutely will be abused to reveal *their own* secrets, too. The way politicians talk about this stuff, suggests they think computer code is like law, that words may have precise meanings but there's still an element of human judgement and common sense, and at human speed, not cold logic operating on bits faster than us by the degree we are faster than geology, where the potential harm from errors can be irreversable total loss of an entire business due to one single error made one time by one person, nor where mistakes from 20 years ago might be discovered and exploited at any time. That's why I said "I can't even square the circle". If I thought the government position here was just absolutely fine, it wouldn't be difficult to square the metaphorical circle. The difficulty is that despite their wrongheadedness about the consequences of what they're trying to do, what they're trying to do is actually necessary. And that's just the crypto parts of this. I left the UK for two reasons: The Investigatory Powers Act, and Brexit. Kinda related cause I thought Brexit would make it harder to fight the IP Act. Went to Westminster to talk to my MP to try and convince them to vote against the IP Act. I remain convinced that the British government was straight up lying about its reasons for having that Act.

raxxorraxor 11mo ago

And while all this is happening, there are cases were peoples homes get search for comments on twitter. These are often in bad taste, but what tastes even worse is that the judiciary doesn't seem to understand proportionality anymore. Mean tweets carry higher sentences than raping someone, stern look at Germany here. A judiciary in such a sorry state, that has not adapted to a changed reality, cannot be permitted to read private communications.

Fnoord 11mo ago
'Mean tweets' is such an empty meaning. Come with examples. It is on paper very easy to break the law via speech. If I post something here about how I want to reward a murder on a certain politician (or want to do it myself), I can guarantee you the police would be involved. And rightfully so. Freedom of speech is about pre-moderation. It doesn't mean your actions do not have consequences. If you yell fire in a theatre while there is none, you should be held liable. See also the case of Gennaro P. (the Damschreeuwer) who at May 4 of 2010 yelled during two minutes of silence of Rememberance of the Dead.
- gregbot 11mo ago
  >doesn't mean your actions do not have consequences YES IT DOES THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT You obviously do not believe in freedom of speech as defined by US law. You are conflating extremely narrow exceptions with broad politically motivated violations of freedom of political speech
  - Fnoord 11mo ago
    The US Constitution. What a beautiful piece of paper, such a nice theory. Yet your current president is circumventing Congress. Your president is bullying states. You don't even have a functional popular vote. Your SCOTUS is dysfunctional. And, this 1st amendment, is that why peaceful protestors got shot by rubber bullets when they were protesting against the war in Iraq? Which, as it turned out, was started for dishonest reasons. You folks also were first with DMCA. Yet we don't have BS like filibuster and gerrymandering. There's a good reason why on every half-serious index about freedom of speech or freedom of press, the best countries are Scandinavian and Switzerland, followed by West-Europe. And that data is from before the current orangutan is in office.