I suspect Facebook has wanted an excuse to remove the end to end encryption and avoid the negative publicity at the same time. Done.
Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
241–250 of 591 posts
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#242The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…
Disagree on hypocrisy. US still affords significant freedoms and largely respects human rights. Whether your communications can be decrypted or intercepted on networks that are government regulated anyway is not hypocritical.
Residents of the US are still free to use whatever mathematical algorithm they want to encrypt their comms. Transporting OTP's across physical borders is trivial, and not technically illegally if not mistaken. Strong encryption is open source as you've pointed out. There's no law against using those open source libraries, nor any discussion to try to censor/outlaw them, AFAIK.
Policing the airwaves and internet pipes hardly qualifies as some major abuse of human rights, particularly when the best that the Intercept/Snowden crowd can come up with regarding things like "Parallel Reconstruction" is "abuse" of "surveillance power" to catch, e.g., methamphetamine traffickers [1].
[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illega...
edit: Downvote due to disagreement? This seems to be the mantra of HN in recent years.
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the source code isn't available for audit by 3rd parties (or yourself), and you can't build it from source, then it was never really "secure" anyway. What lawmakers do or don't say is just noise. Careful - you're right that WhatsApp is untrustworthy, but laws that force them to add backdoors could well be applied to open-source code as well. Or make possession of non-backdoored software, open or not, illegal. Or…
If I can compile audited code from source myself, without any backdoors, then I can be reasonably assured there aren't any backdoors (excluding perhaps hardware level backdoors--but that's why we do the encryption in software). Implementing hardware backdoors that are opaque to end users is theoretically possible, but more difficult in practice. You could, for example, build a screen/monitor that just captures everyt…
> If I can compile audited code from source myself, without any backdoors, then I can be reasonably assured there aren't any backdoors
Many people can compile code from source. Not so many people have the ability to audit code for obscured backdoors. The number of people that are capable to audit and have the time that is necessary to do it is practically nil.
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#244The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…
> Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? Yes. Absolutely. That's the only logical endgame.
What indication is there of this?
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#245I think the implication is just that Whatsapp has to hand over encrypted messages ...
I'd imagine if the police are then in control of the target mobile they can decrypt those messages.
Tbh, if my understanding is correct, I'm not sure I see any problem there. It's targeted at specific individuals for good reason (presumably following a warrant process) and requires both the messages (from Whatsapp) and they keys (from the individual's device). What's the problem?
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#246The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…
> Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? Yes. Absolutely. That's the only logical endgame.
Not possible in the US unless the Supreme Court stops giving a crap about the first amendment. Incredibly unlikely no matter how unpopular free speech might become.
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#247Nowhere in the article is backdoor mentioned. Only sharing data that is encrypted. US an UK governments can't just force FB to add backdoor. It would require new legislation. FB must play ball for that to happen. Since WhatsApp has forward secrecy and end-to-end encryption, giving access to encrypted data is not easy to use. There might be some useful metadata that helps though.
There is absolutely zero ways for WhatsApp and other to comply unless there is a back door. If the Senate votes on this treaty then it has the exact effect of legislation.
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#248The idea that moves like this will "keep us safe" is utterly preposterous; there are a multitude of other ways in which terrorists (or the boogeyman de jour ) could communicate - are the UK and US governments going to insist on backdooring IRC, Slack and face-to-face conversations? Are they going to outlaw encryption libraries? I truely fear for the future that western governments, in particular the 5 eyes members, a…
Disagree on hypocrisy. US still affords significant freedoms and largely respects human rights. Whether your communications can be decrypted or intercepted on networks that are government regulated anyway is not hypocritical. Residents of the US are still free to use whatever mathematical algorithm they want to encrypt their comms. Transporting OTP's across physical borders is trivial, and not technically illegally i…
Disagree. The end goal has always been to make civilian use of encryption in a such a way as to prevent government from being able to intercept communication illegal. That’s where we will end up.
Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relying on laws leaves a lot of wiggle room for bad actors, slippery slopes, and political opinions changing over time. Laws are based on trust in institutions (do you _really_ trust large governments?). Laws are probabilistic, whereas math & source code is deterministic. You can verify that computer code does what it says it does. Laws depend on enforcement and complicated judicial systems (based on humans) to inter…
I agree that laws are not enough, independent verification must be possible. But your right to use secure software, and to audit it without risking to spend your life in prison or being killed, is ensured by laws. This is why moving the goalposts and further normalizing surveillance is extremely dangerous. The rights that you enjoy today are not universal, and can obviously be eradicated in less than a generation.
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Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?
#250So we are back to using code words, one time pads etc?
This will do nothing except intrude on civil rights.