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Ireland wants to give its cops spyware, ability to crack encrypted messages
- zexodus 9mo agoI'm so tired of these... Is there really no way we can make it technologically impossible for them to exfiltrate user data?
- a_paddy 9mo agoThe problem is they'll legislate for the providers to insert back doors, negating cryptographic hardness.
- TingPing 9mo agoThey have to make custom software illegal at some point.
- 0xTJ 9mo agoGiven how many of these stories have been coming out, I'm sure they're considering it.
- digiown 9mo agoThey don't have to make it illegal. They can just create all kinds of barriers like only allowing government approved OSes for essential services, and then using custom software can become grounds for suspicion and subject you to searches, etc.
- thewebguyd 9mo agoI'm certain this is the direction we are all heading, unfortunately. Governments will sanction the major proprietary OSes and compel Apple, Google, Microsoft to participate in their surveillance programs, and those will have remote integrity attestation and will be the only hardware and software you will be able to use to access essential services and the internet as whole, most likely. The usage of alternative software won't be outright illegal, but will get you on a watchlist. Like you said, they don't need to make other software illegal, just make circumventing the blocks illegal. They can't arrest everyone, but, it's one more gray area thing that can and will be used against you should the government ever decide they have a bone to pick with you specifically so you can get away with it for a long time, until suddenly you don't.
- voxic11 9mo agoYou can make it technologically impossible, but they can also come and arrest you just for using such technology. So its not really a technical problem, its a social/political one.
- jMyles 9mo agoSure, but then they need to send a physical person, which is expensive and impossible to scale. Making it extremely expensive is probably good enough. (Feels like we have this same discussion over and over on HN.)
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- direwolf20 9mo ago[dead]
- gmueckl 9mo agoI don't understand this take. There is no real way in which a private person can make law enforcement "more expensive". The government can always find means as long as it is supported by a sufficiently big fraction of its people.
- xboxnolifes 9mo ago1 person using encryption vs 1 million people using encryption.
- SauntSolaire 9mo agoSure, they won't go out and arrest all one million, but from an individual perspective it's basically security by obscurity. Once that's the case, otherwise legal activities (e.g. protesting, or making political statements) run the risk of making you a target. Law enforcement can then punish you for your legal activity by selectively enforcing this other law. The resulting situation is one where everyone knows to some extent "you better shut up if you know what's good for you", and puts a chilling effect on otherwise legal forms of civic engagement. You might point out that there are already laws on the books that let them do this, but I'm sure they wouldn't mind another.
- mghackerlady 9mo agoAvoiding centralised services is generally a good start. You could also do something like encrypt any messages through PGP even if the service you're using is already "e2e encrypted" like iMessage or signal
- rtkwe 9mo agoI don't think there's a way with a phone that people would actually be willing to use. At some point it has to be decrypted to be displayed to the user and there's always the chance there's a flaw somewhere in the stack from hardware to OS to app etc that will have a gap to exfiltrate the data.
- briandw 9mo agohttps://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ User data can only be as safe as the user.
- anigbrowl 9mo agoThere are no technical solutions to human problems. This has been explained over and over again, most famously in Randall Munro's XKCD comic where the secret police resort to hitting someone with a $5 wrench until they give up the password. If you're in a repressive state and you're worried about your data being exfiltrated the best security practice of all is not to create records of illegal activity. If you have to store such material, don't keep it on a communications device, put it on an external storage device, hide it somewhere outside your home, and don't tell anyone about it.
- Froztnova 9mo agoFeels like we're headed back towards governments attempting to control the sharing and usage of cryptographic algorithms again.
- Nicook 9mo agoalways has been
- budududuroiu 9mo agoWhenever these people ask for more power in order to "stop/prevent crime", there should be a bot that replies a list of times when the police didn't act to stop crime, despite having full knowledge of the crime occuring and potential to stop it from happening. EU member and supporter of Chat Control, Romania, had a massive scandal where a kidnapped 15 year old girl called emergency services multiple times to report she was being kidnapped, every single time, the operators and the police officers spoke to her in an ironic and condescending tone. It took 19 hours to locate her, by which time, she was already dead. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%83ce%C8%99anu_and_Luiza_Melencu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%8...
- alistairSH 9mo agoEven better, in the US, the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime (unless that person is in government custody). The courts have upheld this time and again.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo ago> (unless that person is in government custody) Someone please correct me, but do they ever much bother to protect those in custody?
- JasonADrury 9mo agoThey certainly seem to be willing to spend a lot to keep Luigi Mangione safe.
- foxyv 9mo agoTheir main method of "Protecting" people in custody has been deemed a form of torture called Solitary Confinement.
- freedomben 9mo agoGenerally speaking, yes. I have worked with the corrections side of law enforcement in the US and don't internationally for quite a few years at this point. The correction side is a different beast than the police side in many ways, so I definitely want to meet clear that my personal experience is limited in scope to that. However, generally speaking I have seen that the majority of corrections staff take protection very seriously. There are individual officers that can be scum, and ideally they should be bounced out of there. But realistically, it's a human problem. I've known plenty of software engineers that were cavalier with people's personal information in ways I think can be just as damaging. On the whole though, the majority of software engineers I know take protecting that information quite seriously.
- hopelite 9mo ago[flagged]
- shevy-java 9mo agoWhat is strange is that this happens in several countries at the same time. I never found out why this is the case, because there can be many explanations. In general the global tendency is that the more and more digital data is there, the more and more states want to surveil people and invade onto their privacy. This is functional erosion of rights. I don't know of many states that counter that trend.
- DetectDefect 9mo agoWhy is that strange? Technology's proliferation decentralizes political power nexuses, making it a near-existential threat to tyrants^Wgovernments everywhere.
- pixl97 9mo agoconversely >Technology's proliferation centralizes political power nexuses
- DetectDefect 9mo agoClosed-source propriety systems certainly have this effect (subjugation), but this is not the Free technology I am talking about.
- pixl97 9mo agoData and code are not the same thing. "Free technology" is just as free to enslave you as closed technology is.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- freedomben 9mo ago> Data and code are not the same thing. feels a stir in the sea. The Lisp and Haskell people died a little inside
- josefritzishere 9mo agoIreland wants to turn their police into the CIA.
- alistairSH 9mo agos/CIA/NSA/g (probably)
- hiprob 9mo agoOh look, it's the copy of the UK acting up again!
- cranium_melter 9mo agoThat's terrible, people really gonna stand for this??
- cranium_melter 9mo agoThat's terrible, people really gonna lie down for this??
- Revolution1120 9mo ago[dead]
- 627467 9mo agoSo, it is always going to be a cat and mouse game. As long as the rules are clear let the game begin. Just dont try to tilt the game in your favor by using legal threats (ie Chat control and alike). Anyone can try to break encryption, why can't the police force? But dont say others arent allowed to use malware/Spyware - or malware/spyware countermeasures - if you are using it yourself. You already have (theoretical) access to state resources. You dont need more help
- clickety_clack 9mo agoThere’s a massive lack of gardai (the Irish word for police) in Ireland, and you’ll be waiting for the better part of an hour if you call them. But by all means, let’s forget about the types of basic “safety in your own home” type of policing and focus on creating a cyberpolice force instead.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- monster_truck 9mo agoI know you want to think, or have been told to think that the reason this happens is because they need more cops. Brother let me assure you, more cops will not help. I have lived in cities with more than twice as many cops per 10k. Both times I actually needed one it took over 3 hours. They were never intended to provide basic safety to you in your home. That's your job. Their job is to deal with what comes after that.
- Fernicia 9mo agoYou've missed the sarcasm in the OP. On a side note, the suggestion that police numbers don't affect crime is obviously false. We've seen what an arbitrarily large police presence does to Washington DC this year with the national guard deployment.
- john-h-k 9mo ago> They were never intended to provide basic safety to you in your home. Uh actually i do think police presence has a deterrent effect on crime. In fact, number of police on the street is one of the strongest measures for reducing crime!
- throwaway85825 9mo agoEuropean governments see their future survival absolutely requiring a draconian level of surveillance and repression.
- anigbrowl 9mo agoThis isn't about European governments particularly. Cops everywhere are like this, it's a personality type. Of course they want to use tools that will make their job easier, so would you if you were a cop.
- throwaway85825 9mo agoCops might push it. The governments wouldn't otherwise go along with but for the lebanonization happening in western Europe.
- LtWorf 9mo agoLol it's not about making their job easier.
- randcraw 9mo agoHow very... British of them.
- thestructuralme 9mo agoEvery ‘lawful access’ proposal eventually becomes either a backdoor (which attackers also get) or targeted exploitation (which doesn’t scale and incentivizes stockpiling 0-days). The technical reality doesn’t bend to policy language.
- elevation 9mo agoIf Ireland is still used as a tax haven for large multinationals (including the companies that provide widespread encrypted messaging) then it would be the ideal venue for anti-privacy lobbying -- large companies may be able to close a token office in a small country to move beyond the reach of sanctions, but if that country is enabling billions of dollars a year in tax savings, then their influence may be the biggest global threat to user privacy.