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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

#161
post #160

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.

And for some things you still need to send a Fax... oh my!!! a FAX in 2022! Amuse yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz_amU-6EQI

ROFL!!

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had cards expire and the new cards sent to an outdated address, and when that was discovered, the bank blocked all cards since they could have fallen into the wrong hands. I happened to be traveling at that time. I’ve had cards be blocked due to random fluctuations in the usage pattern. Calling usually helps a to resolve this, though it usually takes time. I’ve had an ATM eat my card and not return it. I have…

You're completely missing the point I'm making. Other countries aren't exempt, but other countries also don't write case studies on how everyone else should operate. It's absolutely baffling to me that Germany touts a more secure messenger, but can't get card payments working seamlessly / consistently. To your point, I was visiting there earlier this year & card payments were completely offline for 2 - 3 days. But su…

Yes, the broken terminals happened earlier this year. You were unlucky.

I don’t get your point about “writing case studies how everyone else should operate.” - where does Germany write case studies about how payment systems in other countries should operate?

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

#164
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think the government considers it much of an inconvenience to use violence to handle all of those things today. Automatically issuing court summonses without first using chemical weapons and forced restraints is pretty good actually. If youre trying to make it so the government can't prosecute people for protests, you need to get rid of the idea of an illegal protest The government can already torture, enslav…

> I don't think the government considers it much of an inconvenience to use violence to handle all of those things today.

Of course it does. It’s expensive, inefficient, and plays badly on TV.

How much easier would it be if every single person could be identified automatically from a drone and arrested out of public view?

How much more efficient if people suppressed themselves, and never attended a protest, out of fear of it being declared illegal and automatically receiving a summons (or worse, an arrest warrant)?

> The government can already torture, enslave, and kill you. If you can trust your government to handle those well …

I don’t trust them to handle those well. That’s why the legal system incorporates strong checks and balances, and even then is still ripe with corruption and abuse.

Why would I want to give them more powerful tools with far less oversight?

> If government can't handle those things well, the ids don't make for much of a change wrt to the government

That’s absurd; if you don’t trust a government, facilitating their abuse of citizens obviously has a material impact on the scale and scope of their actions.

Your argument, taken to its conclusion, would justify any privacy violation by the government.

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

#165
post #146
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…

I actually use my German ID card to communicate with the Elster service of the German tax offices. My old USB signing stick would need to be replaced next year, but using my ID card was the cheaper option.

You can also generate a certificate. Registering it requires receiving a letter by snail mail and it expires every X years (5 maybe?), but otherwise it's just like your certificate for your server you use to SSH in.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet. It's not slippery slope, it's looking ahead. Is the ice on the lake cracked? No. Therefore there is no chance of it cracking? Setup, then execute, not necessarily immediately.

It's literally the definition of a slippery slope argument. > A slippery slope argument (SSA), in logic, critical thinking, political rhetoric, and caselaw, is an argument in which a party asserts that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant (usually negative) effect. Small first step => significant negative effect "centrally managed, and cryptographically-back…

A slippery slope argument is not fallacious if the slope is, in fact, slippery.

Additionally, “centrally managed, and cryptographically-backed state identification cards, complete with RFID” is not a “small first step”.

That’s a huge step that centralizes a great deal of power that can be readily leveraged through small subsequent steps.

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

#167
post #77
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 anyon…

I think modern political criticisms might be too dismissive of inefficient bureaucratic developments, or we might be taking criticisms too seriously.

They might be slow, complicated, budgeted terribly, unbelievably incompetent by standards of typical for-profit mega corporation, but a lot of those projects work at first try and works for decades, in the end.

SLS capsule came back in one piece on first try. That German ID system probably works too. And that’s great.

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

#168
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…

In The Netherlands, they are implementing a thing which gives the same advantages (i.e. disclose some attributes about yourself without disclosing unneeded data), but uses different technologies. It's called IRMA, you can find an overview here [1]. It can be combined with other applications to do cool stuff, e.g. with PostGuard [2] you can use identity-based encryption to be able to send an encrypted email to someone, but without the need to know their public key in advance, nor having to authenticate it. The drawback is that you have to trust a central server and a third party identity provider.

[1] https://irma.app/ [2] https://postguard.eu/

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

#169
post #163

Using open protocols and open source solutions: great idea. Letting some random company operate your army's IT infrastructure: what could possibly go wrong?

The infrastructure is managed by Germanys public administration.

The French utilize matrix for military operations as well. This isn’t “some random company”.

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

#170
post #163

Using open protocols and open source solutions: great idea. Letting some random company operate your army's IT infrastructure: what could possibly go wrong?

Random is pretty load bearing here. The BWI GmbH was literally created to operate the armies non-military IT infrastructure.
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