Live data from Hacker News

The EU is set to declare war on encryption

tech.newstatesman.com

61–70 of 167 posts

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#61
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 get where you're coming from and I sort of agree, but the last time the US or the UK actually declared war was in 1942 (with Hungary and Thailand respectively!?). So if we used it properly, it would basically be a defunct word...

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#62
post #24

Maybe they don’t realize that e-commerce wouldn’t exist without trustworthy encryption. They’re taking about sabotaging trillions of dollars of economic transactions in lieu of just doing real police work to find the criminals.

It is not only e-commerce. A digital information network like the Internet is without doubts of great usefulness, be it commerce, business, science, or keeping personal relations.

However, a communications network where trustworthiness, integrity, and privacy of communication is not kept is not worth much.

This is why: Human communication uses universally some kind of medium to transmit some kind of symbols. This is pretty much universal whether we use gestures, sound waves, smoke signals, handwritten letters, telegraph lines and Morse code or digital networks. To be able to communicate, we need to have trust that the symbols match the reality which they are supposed to describe - be it a bank transaction, a business plan, or a marriage proposal. If symbols and reality do not match, they do not have any value. This is so important that we judge individuals in how well what they say matches what they do, the property which we call honesty and trustworthiness. It is much of the yarn which binds the social fabric. It is quite the same as with money - anyone can print numbers on pieces of paper but to have people agree these pieces represent some value, it needs trust. Without this trust, business is hardly possible.

In many realms, privacy is also required, or more technically, confidentiality of individual communication. Especially in business, but also in domains where individuals need to be protected from organizations which have more power than them, and not always benevolent intentions (think of gay people in Russia or Iran). Furthermore, integrity and confidentiality of information is intertwined, as digital signatures do not work without private keys, and security certificates need to be kept safe. This becomes even more important as much software is distributed via the cloud. Without confidential keys, there is no integrity of software.

Disabling or crippling encryption is like demanding that no private dwellings can have locks on the doors, so that police can enter at any time and check whether somebody has stolen something. Clearly, theft is not desirable, but preventing theft is not worth it to generally abolish the security of people's private living space.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#63
post #51

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?

Encryption is a very easy copy paste of programs and Is free, guns are a complex physical device that cost money and must be manufactured elsewhere and distributed to sellers. There's a significant level in effective ability to use them.

But yes, it is similar. Distribution is so widespread that illigalization doesn't affect those who don't follow the law.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

[deleted]

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

>Any self-respecting drug cartel and terrorist organization has been using modern encryption at all levels

There are plenty of organizations who by this logic don't. However they don't dissappear, even though we already have the tools available. If they're not capable of using the tools they have, why are they reaching for something substantially harder to do? There must be something else to it if they're not bothering to do what they can.

> It's strange to argue that this ought to have no impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat organized crime

Of course power grants you that, it grants you absolutely anything you want, just like setting a fire gets rid of the rodents in your house, along with the house. That is exactly why absolute power is not to be assigned to any single organization, it can't be contained.

There is also the expectation like anyone using encryption for malicious purposes wouldn't do it regardless of any law, just like criminals carry illegal weapons. Only the law-abiding citizens could therefore be targeted

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#66
post #9

How is this even slightly consistent with their stance on privacy?

I don’t mean to be glib, but it’s a common fallacy to expect consistency. Consistency might happen for a stretch, even a long one, but the first principle is to keep and acquire power. The people who don’t prioritize power above all don’t hold office long because they lose out to people who do

I suppose I am being glib, but...

This is not a vice reserved for the powerful. Politicians and whatnot certainly do nakedly make a principled argument one and the opposite the next. So does almost everyone. We do it especially when something is at stake, but we'll also do it to win an argument.

It's an irony of human nature. OOH, we're seekers of patterns, principles and consistency. OTOH, we're also highly adept at using these tendencies selectively and disingenuously.

..whether or not we prioritize power.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#67
post #2

> This makes the work of law enforcement and the judiciary more challenging, as they seek to obtain lawful access to evidence. And the ever growing surveillance permeating our society makes it less challenging, but they're not asking for reduced authority to compensate for that , are they?

Why are you assuming that policing is a video game where difficulty needs to be balanced?

“Hey sex-traffickers that know what they’re doing are telling all their people to switch to Signal. Since basically our only tools to connect people are phone location history, call logs, text messages, and maybe surveillance footage if we’re lucky, we’re hitting a massive brick wall in every investigation. Help?”

Like go listen to or watch some true crime podcasts and documentaries and see just how little police have at their disposal.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is we couldn't trust anyone with that kind of a key; it's fundamentally unsafe.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#70
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Encryption is a very easy copy paste of programs and Is free, guns are a complex physical device that cost money and must be manufactured elsewhere and distributed to sellers. There's a significant level in effective ability to use them. But yes, it is similar. Distribution is so widespread that illigalization doesn't affect those who don't follow the law.

Encryption is actually incredibly hard. This is why it took whatsapp and other apps centrally doing it, and coordinating it between devices, to make end-to-end encryption commonly used.
Post reply on HN