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BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

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Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#71

Post by TimPC »

znpy wrote: post #64
lzauz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I wouldn’t call such people mentally invalid. However, as an Italian, i understand your feelings. Public administration has always been the land of bureaucratic people that want to see sheets of paper, stamps and signatures. They’re almost often unfamiliar with technology and they are mostly unwilling to change their workload. The real problem if very often that upper management is often also old and unfamiliar with…

The tolerance for high salaries in government is basically non-existant. People throw fits in my region about teachers with 30 years experience and the maximum scale making just over $100k/year Canadian (just over $70k/USD). So you can imagine what it's like to try and hire senior developers (five years experience) at around $90k when top of the market is quadruple that and a large number of companies pay double that. The end result is they hire from the bottom 25% of developers, the bottom 25% of product managers and the bottom 25% of managers. Add to that a large dysfunctional bureaucracy and they are lucky if they get people 10% as productive as in competing companies. It's a colossal problem because government routinely fails at building technology and then outsources it at extreme cost. That outsourcing isn't always successful either in part because the requirements hinge on those same Product Managers that government can hire on extremely restricted budgets.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#72

Post by junon »

derac wrote: post #46
jlelse wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the "Online-Personalausweis" for quite some things actually. For example to authenticate at banks, so you don't have to do Video-Ident. Or to do taxes etc. I wrote a post about it earlier this year: https://b.jlel.se/s/59c

I don't speak german, but by video identification do you mean the system in which you turn in the webcam and it checks your face? If so, that is highly vulnerable to real time face swapping attacks (and possibly just recorded webcam footage). I'm sure you're aware, but these systems need to change.

Nah it's a web call where they check your passport for authenticity and identity in real time with a real human in order to authorize a new bank account etc.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#73

Post by leonry »

foepys wrote: post #38

Germany was quite advanced when it came to technology but then the drive to make more of it somehow stopped. It has always been incredibly sad to me that the German ID card (Personalausweis) has an RFID chip inside with trust zones, certificates, authorization features, and much more and just never had been used. Like at all except for getting cigarettes at vending machines. 12 years after the first RFID Personalausw…

A couple of years ago, I would have concurred. But for some time already you have the possibility to use the e-ID through Postident (https://www.deutschepost.de/de/p/postident/privatkunden/iden...) which is kind of well integrated in many businesses. Moreover you have private / corporate solutions like Verimi (https://verimi.de/) that incorporate functionalities of the e-ID. There is even an alternative (https://www.openecard.org/startseite/) to the official app. (EDIT: The alternative is open-source, but so is the official app. Removed adjective.)

I really like the development that has gone into the e-ID. They even have thought out a safe way to update your PIN (https://www.pin-ruecksetzbrief-bestellen.de/)! The biggest drawback of all is the lack of any marketing, IMHO.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#74

Post by getcrunk »

catiopatio wrote: post #70
Pxtl wrote: post #58

Quoted post unavailable.

It doesn’t take a religious nut or a conspiracy theorist to see the catastrophically enormous downsides of universally mandated, centrally managed, and cryptographically-backed state identification cards, complete with RFID. Imagine, for example, that upon declaring a protest unlawful, the police could simply scan all the RFID-enabled ID cards in the area and issue everyone a court summons. Not carrying an ID card? N…

It sucks that this seems to be the only way. Why can’t we support both. Given how QR codes are forcefully replacing menus with no paper fallback options seems to be the only way

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#76

Post by Xylakant »

beardedman wrote: post #69

Another virtue signal from good 'ol Deutschland. Where 75% of the population prefer cash. "Do what we say, just don't do what we do", as the old adage goes. How painful.

I prefer cash and would at the same time use an encrypted messenger to communicate with the government.

While cards are certainly convenient, they have failed me at very inopportune moments. I’ve also recently witnessed how someone could not book a ticket for a ferry in one of the mostly cashless European states - cash wasn’t an option and they didn’t have a card. This was at the official counter at the harbor.

A few month ago, card terminals of a widely used type failed hard in Germany, only cash payment was possible.

Being able to do some purchases anonymously is also a good thing - even if it’s only my wife’s birthday present.

I prefer a society where cash is an option for all (in-person) transactions. And preserving that requires exercising the use of cash.

Encrypted secure communication with (and within) the government, or my medical provider is entirely orthogonal to that.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#77

Post by woah »

foepys wrote: post #38

Germany was quite advanced when it came to technology but then the drive to make more of it somehow stopped. It has always been incredibly sad to me that the German ID card (Personalausweis) has an RFID chip inside with trust zones, certificates, authorization features, and much more and just never had been used. Like at all except for getting cigarettes at vending machines. 12 years after the first RFID Personalausw…

Makes a lot of sense with German culture IMO. There's a culture of doing your job very well, but not much of a culture of thinking outside of the box or shaking things up.

Some Herr Doktor probably followed all the best practices to implement "trust zones, certificates, authorization features, and much more" in the ID, doing their job really well. But actually changing the processes to use those features is not anyone's job, and might actually eliminate a lot of jobs, so it never happened.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#78

Post by jszymborski »

catiopatio wrote: post #70
Pxtl wrote: post #58

Quoted post unavailable.

It doesn’t take a religious nut or a conspiracy theorist to see the catastrophically enormous downsides of universally mandated, centrally managed, and cryptographically-backed state identification cards, complete with RFID. Imagine, for example, that upon declaring a protest unlawful, the police could simply scan all the RFID-enabled ID cards in the area and issue everyone a court summons. Not carrying an ID card? N…

See, I totally agree that you shouldn't require identification for most services.

But, for things like banking, car registration, etc... we require strong ID'ing, and it behooves society to make it secure.

I still think municipalities should own their own data rather than have it stored at a central federal level, but we need municipalities to rely on something better than a serially-issued social insurance/security number which I have stored in a million databases that can pop at any second.

It's easy to dream of the future dystopia and ignore the one we live in now, where identity theft is trivial.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#79

Post by strbean »

catiopatio wrote: post #70
Pxtl wrote: post #58

Quoted post unavailable.

It doesn’t take a religious nut or a conspiracy theorist to see the catastrophically enormous downsides of universally mandated, centrally managed, and cryptographically-backed state identification cards, complete with RFID. Imagine, for example, that upon declaring a protest unlawful, the police could simply scan all the RFID-enabled ID cards in the area and issue everyone a court summons. Not carrying an ID card? N…

There is quite a lot of slipper slope going on here.

> centrally managed, and cryptographically-backed state identification cards, complete with RFID.

Does not necessitate:

> universally mandated

> No access to anything

> felony to do so intentionally

> Your 2FA and disk encryption is mandatorily tied to your ID card

All the latter things are awful, but we can have the first thing without any of the latter things.

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