3 ms·

The reason why this might worry people who don't like the US/UK/Israeli governments is hidden in a secret place...a paragraph that is neither the first paragrap

The reason why this might worry people who don't like the US/UK/Israeli governments is hidden in a secret place...a paragraph that is neither the first paragraph nor the last.

colordrops 2mo ago
Which is to say that they will become more authoritarian and aggressive? That's not a good reason to be unhappy that they can no longer hack shit. They shouldn't do that either.
- donkey_brains 2mo ago
  Nope. The article’s assertion is that governments will start to put enormous pressure on tech companies in their borders to include backdoors in their systems for LEO use. This in turn may lead to “nationalized” software e.g. what Russia and China largely do now, but in many more countries. You may have no choice but to use phones, computers, and software that is backdoored by your government - everything else will be illegal.
  - colordrops 2mo ago
    What do you mean "Nope", you mean "Yep" right? What you are describing is precisely "more authoritarian and aggressive"
  - abruzzi 2mo ago
    I think "nope" is in reference to "hacking" system. The point of the article is that hacking by software vendors that sell to law enforcement was a pressure relief valve that deflated the movement that the FBI was pushing at the time to have Apple (and others) build backdoors into their systems. If the phones could be hacked, and backdoors were not necessary the FBI could back off and still get what they want. If the FBI can't get what they want, they can either pressure the companies like Apple, or they can pressure congress to make laws requiring this. The phone makers could stand on principle, go to court, but the courts in the US are not very tech savvy, and usually deferential to law enforcement. Other countries may be better than the US, but some are definitely going to be worse. So is a backdoor worse than a security vulnerability? I don't know but that is what this article is about.
  - iamnothere 2mo ago
    It sounds like we should be gearing up for that fight then, so we can win it.
    - smalltorch 2mo ago
      I'm pretty sure you dropped a comment a while back about mailing systems. Finally got around to making my ideal prototype. https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/tmail/-/raw/main/tmail3.png https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/tmail/-/raw/main/tmail3.pn...
      - iamnothere 2mo ago
        I did, that looks pretty good for a prototype! I would suggest adding the option to send as plaintext email (disabling all formatting options), as this is still useful in some cases. Bookmarked.
        smalltorch 2mo ago
        There's a code block option. I thought that would be useful too. Is that what you mean? https://i.postimg.cc/0yKXWSbg/IMG-20260815-113546.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/0yKXWSbg/IMG-20260815-113546.jpg Yeah follow along I still have alot of testing and polishing to complete before I call it v1. No license on yet either. Still pondering that as well.
        iamnothere 2mo ago
        No I mean sending an email fully in plaintext, see https://useplaintext.email/ https://useplaintext.email/ (suggestions/justifications for mail client authors are near the bottom) Also, be sure you are sending a plaintext copy (formatting stripped) using multipart/alternative, as most terminal mail clients can’t do HTML mail or can’t do it well.
        smalltorch 2mo ago
        Thanks for the reference
- kulahan 2mo ago
  There are lots of things governments should and shouldn’t do, but unfortunately we don’t live in a vacuum, and need to consider the consequences of actions, rather than simply hope everyone is somehow forced to react the way we expect and desire. In a nutshell, what I’m saying is “They shouldn’t do either” is at best a platitude and at worst a distraction preventing critical thought.
  - colordrops 2mo ago
    So our strategy should be to shut down AI so it leaves vulnerabilities everywhere? Not sure what you are saying. Fixing security bugs across the world's software isn't some single policy action that we can vote on. Governments should behave. I know they don't, but they should, and the population should do everything in their power to force them to. What other choice do we have? Please demonstrate your powerful faculty of critical thought and explain what we should do instead.
    - sethammons 2mo ago
      Not who you replied to. "They should" isn't a solution. "Here is proposed legislation," "I started a petition," "i spoke with my congressman," "vote for Pedro." These are concrete. "They should" isn't anything. Like SMART goals, I believe the other commenter was pointing out that platitudes lack specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely aspects required for organizing and achieving progress.
  - danaris 2mo ago
    By this logic, we should never try to escape our abusers or resist our oppressors: we should just capitulate now, give them everything they want, and that way they won't escalate to (more) violence. In a nutshell, this is bullshit. Bootlicker bullshit. In a democracy (which our Western nations are certainly supposed to be, though that's become less true over time), if the people in government are doing things that are counter to the interests of the people, the appropriate response is to replace those people. Protest, contact your representatives and senators, contribute to campaigns that oppose what they're doing, etc. And, of course, in an authoritarian state, if they decide they're going to add in backdoors to our phones, or ban encryption, or take whatever other draconian measures, then it doesn't matter a huge amount how we, the people, express our opposition to this; it's extremely unlikely that we have just enough collective strength and will to prevent them doing A, but not to prevent them from doing B instead. Either we can stop both, or neither.
- ameliaquining 2mo ago
  The trouble is, sometimes governments do things that they shouldn't do.
- lelandbatey 2mo ago
  Read the article. That's what the article says. > Thus: over the next two years, major pieces of software are likely to run out of remotely-exploitable bugs. > While I think this is great, for law enforcement and offensive intelligence agencies, it’s going to be a nightmare. > So what do we do about it? I honestly have no idea. [...] it’s just occurring to me that we’re on a long greasy slide to a place that will look different than where we are today. [We’re] just going to have to hope that this time we make the right choices.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
turtletontine 2mo ago
Tl;dr the argument is if three letter agencies can’t buy or make exploits anymore because all vulnerabilities are patched, they will ramp up legal and legislative pressure to make vendors install backdoors. Which is bad and we should all worry about. One of the author’s blind spots here is the concept of “digital sovereignty”. The US is continuing to ban more and more Chinese-made hardware out of fear that the Chinese govt has installed backdoors in them… which you could interpret as an admission that the US does exactly that with American made products. Globalized supply chains are, erm, complex, and few if any companies are really going to be able to achieve “digital sovereignty” with hardware. But with software it’s actually plausible, though obviously hard. Whether or not the feds have actually installed backdoors in Microsoft Outlook, foreign govts are rightly concerned that they have, and are increasingly pushing to avoid US made software for simple national security reasons.
- leonidasrup 2mo ago
  The author of the article, Matthew Daniel Green, knows the capabilities of US to put backdoors into software and standards very well. Green's blog entries on NSA's backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG, and RSA Security's usage of the backdoored cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG), have been widely cited in the mainstream news media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_D._Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_D._Green

The reason why this might worry people who don't like the US/UK/Israeli governments is hidden in a secret place...a paragraph that is neither the first paragraph nor the last.

colordrops 2mo ago

Which is to say that they will become more authoritarian and aggressive? That's not a good reason to be unhappy that they can no longer hack shit. They shouldn't do that either.

donkey_brains 2mo ago
Nope. The article’s assertion is that governments will start to put enormous pressure on tech companies in their borders to include backdoors in their systems for LEO use. This in turn may lead to “nationalized” software e.g. what Russia and China largely do now, but in many more countries. You may have no choice but to use phones, computers, and software that is backdoored by your government - everything else will be illegal.
- colordrops 2mo ago
  What do you mean "Nope", you mean "Yep" right? What you are describing is precisely "more authoritarian and aggressive"
- abruzzi 2mo ago
  I think "nope" is in reference to "hacking" system. The point of the article is that hacking by software vendors that sell to law enforcement was a pressure relief valve that deflated the movement that the FBI was pushing at the time to have Apple (and others) build backdoors into their systems. If the phones could be hacked, and backdoors were not necessary the FBI could back off and still get what they want. If the FBI can't get what they want, they can either pressure the companies like Apple, or they can pressure congress to make laws requiring this. The phone makers could stand on principle, go to court, but the courts in the US are not very tech savvy, and usually deferential to law enforcement. Other countries may be better than the US, but some are definitely going to be worse. So is a backdoor worse than a security vulnerability? I don't know but that is what this article is about.
- iamnothere 2mo ago
  It sounds like we should be gearing up for that fight then, so we can win it.
  - smalltorch 2mo ago
    I'm pretty sure you dropped a comment a while back about mailing systems. Finally got around to making my ideal prototype. https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/tmail/-/raw/main/tmail3.png https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/tmail/-/raw/main/tmail3.pn...
    - iamnothere 2mo ago
      I did, that looks pretty good for a prototype! I would suggest adding the option to send as plaintext email (disabling all formatting options), as this is still useful in some cases. Bookmarked.
      - smalltorch 2mo ago
        There's a code block option. I thought that would be useful too. Is that what you mean? https://i.postimg.cc/0yKXWSbg/IMG-20260815-113546.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/0yKXWSbg/IMG-20260815-113546.jpg Yeah follow along I still have alot of testing and polishing to complete before I call it v1. No license on yet either. Still pondering that as well.
        iamnothere 2mo ago
        No I mean sending an email fully in plaintext, see https://useplaintext.email/ https://useplaintext.email/ (suggestions/justifications for mail client authors are near the bottom) Also, be sure you are sending a plaintext copy (formatting stripped) using multipart/alternative, as most terminal mail clients can’t do HTML mail or can’t do it well.
        smalltorch 2mo ago
        Thanks for the reference
kulahan 2mo ago
There are lots of things governments should and shouldn’t do, but unfortunately we don’t live in a vacuum, and need to consider the consequences of actions, rather than simply hope everyone is somehow forced to react the way we expect and desire. In a nutshell, what I’m saying is “They shouldn’t do either” is at best a platitude and at worst a distraction preventing critical thought.
- colordrops 2mo ago
  So our strategy should be to shut down AI so it leaves vulnerabilities everywhere? Not sure what you are saying. Fixing security bugs across the world's software isn't some single policy action that we can vote on. Governments should behave. I know they don't, but they should, and the population should do everything in their power to force them to. What other choice do we have? Please demonstrate your powerful faculty of critical thought and explain what we should do instead.
  - sethammons 2mo ago
    Not who you replied to. "They should" isn't a solution. "Here is proposed legislation," "I started a petition," "i spoke with my congressman," "vote for Pedro." These are concrete. "They should" isn't anything. Like SMART goals, I believe the other commenter was pointing out that platitudes lack specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely aspects required for organizing and achieving progress.
- danaris 2mo ago
  By this logic, we should never try to escape our abusers or resist our oppressors: we should just capitulate now, give them everything they want, and that way they won't escalate to (more) violence. In a nutshell, this is bullshit. Bootlicker bullshit. In a democracy (which our Western nations are certainly supposed to be, though that's become less true over time), if the people in government are doing things that are counter to the interests of the people, the appropriate response is to replace those people. Protest, contact your representatives and senators, contribute to campaigns that oppose what they're doing, etc. And, of course, in an authoritarian state, if they decide they're going to add in backdoors to our phones, or ban encryption, or take whatever other draconian measures, then it doesn't matter a huge amount how we, the people, express our opposition to this; it's extremely unlikely that we have just enough collective strength and will to prevent them doing A, but not to prevent them from doing B instead. Either we can stop both, or neither.
ameliaquining 2mo ago
The trouble is, sometimes governments do things that they shouldn't do.
lelandbatey 2mo ago
Read the article. That's what the article says. > Thus: over the next two years, major pieces of software are likely to run out of remotely-exploitable bugs. > While I think this is great, for law enforcement and offensive intelligence agencies, it’s going to be a nightmare. > So what do we do about it? I honestly have no idea. [...] it’s just occurring to me that we’re on a long greasy slide to a place that will look different than where we are today. [We’re] just going to have to hope that this time we make the right choices.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

turtletontine 2mo ago

Tl;dr the argument is if three letter agencies can’t buy or make exploits anymore because all vulnerabilities are patched, they will ramp up legal and legislative pressure to make vendors install backdoors. Which is bad and we should all worry about. One of the author’s blind spots here is the concept of “digital sovereignty”. The US is continuing to ban more and more Chinese-made hardware out of fear that the Chinese govt has installed backdoors in them… which you could interpret as an admission that the US does exactly that with American made products. Globalized supply chains are, erm, complex, and few if any companies are really going to be able to achieve “digital sovereignty” with hardware. But with software it’s actually plausible, though obviously hard. Whether or not the feds have actually installed backdoors in Microsoft Outlook, foreign govts are rightly concerned that they have, and are increasingly pushing to avoid US made software for simple national security reasons.

leonidasrup 2mo ago
The author of the article, Matthew Daniel Green, knows the capabilities of US to put backdoors into software and standards very well. Green's blog entries on NSA's backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG, and RSA Security's usage of the backdoored cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG), have been widely cited in the mainstream news media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_D._Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_D._Green