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The EU is set to declare war on encryption

tech.newstatesman.com

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Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#51

Post by hirundo »

mrweasel wrote: post #35

Less just assume that they go ahead, everyone complies... How long until you'd need to revert the law, because all legal traffic is now exploitable, while the criminals are still using good crypto? How much damage does this need to cause before politicians will sit down and understand while their half-assed idea failed?

> How long until you'd need to revert the law, because all legal traffic is now exploitable, while the criminals are still using good crypto?

That's a common gun rights argument -- "If guns are illegal only criminals will have guns". How controversial could it be?

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#52

Post by Proziam »

hexbinencoded wrote: post #48
zingplex wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse”: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers.

The banks service all of them and nothing much happens to them. Who are the real crooks?

The real key here is knowingly. Large banks have had a slew of "scandals" whereby they've been caught moving many billions of dollars for evil organizations the rest of us would go to prison for donating to. How many times do these organizations have to get caught for it to be handled in a fashion comparable to mere mortals?

I say "scandals" because by some miracle it never seems to be a particularly big deal in the media.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#53

Post by ColanR »

hexbinencoded wrote: post #48
zingplex wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse”: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers.

The banks service all of them and nothing much happens to them. Who are the real crooks?

> Who are the real crooks?

> terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers

At some point, unless you want everyone making their own personal moral judgements (including people who e.g. don't think women should have rights?), it should be permissible to deal neutrally with everyone who wants to do business with you. Let the law enforcers enforce the law, let the bankers bank.

Edit: clarity.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#54

Post by kspacewalk2 »

noodlesoups wrote: post #44
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

e2e is a heavily utilized must-have for any organized crime these days, and this is very frequently a wall that law enforcement hit and cannot get past. I don't think banning encryption or something silly like that is therefore the solution, but minimizing the problem is not helpful in understanding why there's such a heavy push from all sorts governments, democratic and authoritarian alike, to "deal" with the proble…

>but this isn't malevolence. It's fear and lack of competence. I'm not sure which is worse. We absolutely need people with the expertise in the area to make these kinds of decision. It's like giving a gardener the position to launch nukes. I'm sure they're very capable at trimming bushes, but that isn't exactly useful here. e2e is really not a must-have in crime. It's a nice-to-have, but people can and often do very…

Any self-respecting drug cartel and terrorist organization has been using modern encryption at all levels, from street to the top, for more than a decade now. What criminals would not be using an e2e chat app nowadays? Truly the lowest hanging fruit, and no fruit above that. The barrier of entry to using a level of encryption that's beyond the capabilities of most law enforcement agencies to snoop on was equivalent to finding a decent software/IT guy in 2010. It's non-existent in 2020. Just open the app store.

This pretty much solves a very serious problem for all illicit activity - secure communications. It's strange to argue that this ought to have no impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat organized crime or terrorism because they should just compensate elsewhere. That's waiving a problem away instead of facing up to it. Of course it's having a big impact, and telling them 'just be better elsewhere' is not gonna work, they'll still push for stupid legislation.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#55

Post by noodlesoups »

hexbinencoded wrote: post #50

I can't wait for the "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear" refrains to be trotted out yet again. Inverted totalitarian klepto-plutocracy wins against any individual who doesn't take extra-ordinary measures when it builds a panopticon. "Let's see your 30 year search history and find a crime in there to persecute, I mean, prosecute you with. Or even a professional technical illegality would suffi…

The saying is twisted, because it already assumes privacy is a privilege, which it is not. It's a basic right, written to the constitution

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#56

Post by Daniel_sk »

Finnucane wrote: post #47
smlckz wrote: post #30

oh god, please teach these people about encryption: what they're trying to do - it does not work like they think it works (as it seems to be). > Locking the door of your house (with near impossible to break locks) prevents us to find out what you're doing/keeping in your house, so we can't know whether you're doing/keeping something illegal in your house. So we are going to ban the making and using of unbreakable (or…

It seems like what they want is not so much breakable locks, but for you to have locks that can all be opened by a common master key. And they pinky swear that the master key will be kept totally safe and all the thousands of law enforcement officers they share it with will also keep it totally safe, and they will never ever use it except for intended purposes, and no bad guys will ever be able to get a copy of it.

I wouldn't trust my government with these keys.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#57

Post by ColanR »

hexbinencoded wrote: post #50

I can't wait for the "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear" refrains to be trotted out yet again. Inverted totalitarian klepto-plutocracy wins against any individual who doesn't take extra-ordinary measures when it builds a panopticon. "Let's see your 30 year search history and find a crime in there to persecute, I mean, prosecute you with. Or even a professional technical illegality would suffi…

> I can't wait for the "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear" refrains to be trotted out yet again.

We should make stickers that say that, and paste them on the cameras and drones we use to videotape the police.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#58

Post by michaelt »

smlckz wrote: post #30

oh god, please teach these people about encryption: what they're trying to do - it does not work like they think it works (as it seems to be). > Locking the door of your house (with near impossible to break locks) prevents us to find out what you're doing/keeping in your house, so we can't know whether you're doing/keeping something illegal in your house. So we are going to ban the making and using of unbreakable (or…

> Do you like this analogy?

Not especially - 99.9% of people have doors that are adequate to keep burglars out, but the cops can kick them down or break a window if they need to, in an emergency.

Which is exactly what encryption backdoor advocates want.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#59

Post by R0b0t1 »

hirundo wrote: post #51
mrweasel wrote: post #35

Less just assume that they go ahead, everyone complies... How long until you'd need to revert the law, because all legal traffic is now exploitable, while the criminals are still using good crypto? How much damage does this need to cause before politicians will sit down and understand while their half-assed idea failed?

> How long until you'd need to revert the law, because all legal traffic is now exploitable, while the criminals are still using good crypto? That's a common gun rights argument -- "If guns are illegal only criminals will have guns". How controversial could it be?

Both are appropriate. The state can be criminal or do criminal actions, and often is and does.

Illegalizing encryption this way just makes it easier for the government and protected parties to commit crime, just the same with illegalizing guns.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#60

Post by tialaramex »

ben_w wrote: post #25

The headline doesn’t seem to be backed by the content of the note they’re quoting. I do wish papers would reserve “war” for actual wars; while I would be appalled if this goes all the way through, a note saying “we want to have a chat and this is why” is slightly further from even a metaphorical war on encryption than Farage is from an actual war on Brussels.

> I do wish papers would reserve “war” for actual wars

There are fewer of those than you likely realise. Countries that we'd think of having a dozen wars in the last century may only have declared one or even none. The Geneva Conventions for example smartly do not hinge on declarations of war, they rely upon the idea of "armed conflict" which is an observable fact.

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