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Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

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Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#191

Post by gruturo »

pjmlp wrote: post #155
gruturo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay devs worse because software is a complete aftertought, and the guys who produce it therefore are not seen as adding much value, if any. Meanwhile, the "software is eating the world" memo is almost 10 years old yet nobody this side of the pond got it. Fix this mindset (good luck!), which is the real issue, and dev wages will correct themselves too.

I never felt I was earning worse than on US, while enjoying my 30 days vacations, home office, unemployment support, health insurance and having a privileged life above many of my friends in "regular" (non-IT related) jobs.

In the US, so many jobs, in so many industries, pay a complete pittance. It's one of the least regulated economies and people are seen as a fungible asset, hired, laid off at a company's convenience (in many states), and paid literally as little as possible. And yet, in this bizarro (for Europeans) world, devs are often paid a small fortune.

That's not generosity.

That's because they are recognized as bringing huge value, otherwise they would never be offered anywhere near those amounts of money. Europe just won't get it, therefore Europe is going to remain behind.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#192

Post by dividedbyzero »

Hidios wrote: post #116
greggman3 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't need to share any ID My phone number is an ID. An ID I don't want to share. An ID that can be stolen by calling the phone company and saying you're me and bought a new SIM.

That can never ever happen in Europe. You can't just go ask Vodafone for a new sim with the same number because you lost it. You must be American.

You can get replacement SIMs with the same number (source: I'm in Germany and on my third SIM with my current number after first not having a micro-SIM and then a nano-SIM) – I did get notofied of this by SMS, though, and no idea what other anti abuse measures may be in place. I can order one for 10 Euro via the website anytime and I suppose I could do it via phone as well.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#193

Post by swimfar »

vinay427 wrote: post #132
dijit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had more than one upvote, this capitulates perfectly my feelings on the situation. I see the same sentiment echoed in our American friends w.r.t. Chinese spying. Huawei is dangerous and must be stopped, but the NSA having broken encryption a bunch of times, sending NSL's to chip makers and such is fine. And that is not seen as hypocritical. We as Europeans have no technological industry without the USA, and…

Plenty of European countries are complicit in similar acts of their own, and many more tacitly assist. I don't think many deserve being painted as a victim of this situation. There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption. In any case, I think the hypocrisy makes sense if you consider that the people saying this are from places (the US + close allies) that proba…

I'm sure European governments love all the press that the US gets for this kind of stuff because it draws attention away from them. A lot of Europeans seem to know more about wiretapping in the US than in their own country.

A 5 minute search will bring up lots of examples. These are a bit old, but I can't imagine any powers have been removed since the laws have been passed. (I apologize for the tone of some of these articles.)

[1] 2003 Italy and the Netherlands top wiretap chart

76 and 62 wiretaps per 100k citizens, compared to 0.5 in the US (you could make an argument about the uncertainty in that measurement).

[2] 2017 New Dutch law allows law enforcement to digitally wiretap your friends and family to get to you

"Netherlands Senate passed a new surveillance and data mining law. The new law (available in Dutch) expands the government’s targeted and mass surveillance powers and were first introduced in 2015."

[3] 2007 Dutch Law Threatens to Wiretap Family and Friends

"The legislation under consideration allows for much more generalized information gathering—or “bulk” monitoring" "And since The Netherlands is a major hub for the fiber optic networks that carry huge amounts of information from many different countries, including the United States, the new law would open the way for the Dutch services to suck in communications that U.S. law might prevent the American intelligence agencies from tapping directly."

[4,5] 2011 German politician reveals six months of private mobile phone data

[1] https://edri.org/edrigramnumber2-14wiretap/

[2] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/new-dutch-law-all...

[3] https://torguard.net/blog/dutch-law-threatens-to-wiretap-fam...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1EKvWot-3c

[5] https://www.dw.com/en/german-politician-reveals-six-months-o...

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#194

Post by ancaster »

BjoernKW wrote: post #33

Just a few years ago, paramedics in Germany were routinely (and probably not entirely legally) using WhatsApp for communicating with the hospital while en route because there wasn't (and still isn't) a reliable, secure and interoperable system allowing healthcare providers to communicate with each other. It's not like people in Germany are using tools such as WhatsApp in a professional context because they're neglige…

> Just a few years ago, paramedics in Germany were routinely (and probably not entirely legally) using WhatsApp for communicating with the hospital

Here in Canada, WhatsApp is routinely used in the hospitals for doctors to communicate with each other about patient care. We aren't supposed to send identifiable information but... it happens all the time, of course. And for the same reason: no sanctioned system to replace it.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#195

Post by rb2k_ »

vbezhenar wrote: post #140
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The USA is in a position to shutdown all the technological infrastructure of Europe (AWS, Google, Facebook, Azure, ...) and to openly spy its citizens OK, and what can we do about that? We build our own successful cars, we build our own successful planes but it seems like when it comes to building highly scalable world dominating software we are powerless even though our universities churn out tons of talented CS en…

I thought that in US salary is significantly higher than in EU. Probably that's the main differentiator.

Yup, moved from Germany to the US. Would never be able to earn in Germany what I earn here without going into management.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#196

Post by rb2k_ »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #126
Hokusai wrote: post #58

This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…

>The USA is in a position to shutdown all the technological infrastructure of Europe (AWS, Google, Facebook, Azure, ...) and to openly spy its citizens OK, and what can we do about that? We build our own successful cars, we build our own successful planes but it seems like when it comes to building highly scalable world dominating software we are powerless even though our universities churn out tons of talented CS en…

From my (German moved to the US) perspective:

1. Stop putting college kids with a bachelor degree in business in charge of software development teams. "Management" is still seen as something very 'fancy' in Germany. Being "a manager" carries a lot of weight.

2. Allow Engineers to advance without forcing them into management. A lot of very talented engineers in Germany are forced in mediocre middle management / product owner positions as the only option to gain some more influence.

3. Pay

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#197

Post by polycaster »

ajconway wrote: post #189
Hokusai wrote: post #58

This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…

> The only reason for the rise of apps is that companies see them as a good way of lock-in customers, gather data and increase influence Apps live and thrive because they are convenient and provide the most value to most people. As a user, I wouldn't want the government to tell me what software I should use. As a software engineer, I wouldn't want to be told what software I should write. If the problem lies in bad fo…

> As a user, I wouldn't want the government to tell me what software I should use. As a software engineer, I wouldn't want to be told what software I should write.

As far as I am aware nobody is telling anyone what exact software to use or to engineer. Also nobody seems to be calling for that.

What has been applied here instead are standards. That's quite a different thing and I'm pretty sure, as a software engineer, you're used to be told to follow standards, aren't you? They exist in other fields, too. Like citizen rights and protection of personal data.

The advise not to use a specific piece of software because it doesn't appear to adhere to existing standards (by an agency with the sole purpose to watch over compliance) is also very different from telling people what software to use specifically.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#198

Post by Jtsummers »

tasogare wrote: post #18
ThePhysicist wrote: post #9

From my experience a lot of people will not hesitate to contact you via WhatsApp even in a professional setting if they can get hold of your phone number. After this happened several times to me I made sure to have a separate phone for business where no messengers or any "social" apps are installed. The funny side of this behavior is your client messaging you via WhatsApp but forgetting their profile picture shows th…

I’ve never understood the appeal of WhatsApp: it requires a phone number (so it’s useless or hard to setup abroad, and it’s tied to a very personal data), handle very poorly wifi connection (somehow it seems to only update when connected over 4G) and force me to download pictures and videos to see them, trashing my photo folder in the process. It also has no killer features in comparison to any existing messaging app…

You can disable storing media to your photo folder. That was the first thing I did after installing it. I've never had issues with support on wifi, and that's a large amount of my usage of it.

Its killer feature was what it did before it was acquired by FB, really not much difference since then. The killer feature was international messaging without SMS/MMS costs (and poor reliability) and only needing a phone number, so you could take it with you easily as you moved through devices so long as you controlled the same number. This got presence around the globe making it easy to message almost anyone, almost anywhere.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#199

Post by patja »

I was appalled when I went to install it and there was no way I could see to avoid handing 100% of my contacts to it.

Do people keep a private offline contacts list, or a clean phone just for this?

Or do folks just not care about giving away the mobile phone numbers (and addresses? email addresses? birthdays? other notes on the contact about kids names, etc.?) to an app?

Am I behind the times and everyone just knows none of this stuff is private anyways due to leaks etc.? Even if that is your attitude, it seems you are feeding more links to the graph someone else is maintaining. Did you get consent from every one of your contacts to do so?

I feel like I must be missing something here. Am I over-reacting or paranoid?

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#200

Post by johannes1234321 »

oezi wrote: post #118
mjevans wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to consider this killer feature for _normal_ people is one of the kill-worthy features in my will never touch it category.

Whatsapp has replaced SMS as the defacto standard mobile messenger for 98% of users in Europe (or many other places). It doesn't matter if they do things badly, there is no way around them at the moment.

It is even replacing SMS more in areas where Facebook pushed their internet.org / free basics program, where mobile network companies where supported by Facebook to grant free access to Facebook services while still charging for SMS (or other websites and services) There WhatsApp is/was free. (A few years since I looked into it last, not sure how the project changed)
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