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BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

element.io

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

#221

Post by Klonoar »

mxuribe wrote: post #211
Klonoar wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are really no options outside of Element, unless you're a Linux user - then maybe you have a few ones. All alternative clients on iOS, macOS, and arguably Windows are an absolute clusterfuck of UI/UX, broken features, and varying stages of completion. I say this as someone who wants Matrix to work: people need to demand more from client apps, and client apps need to stop being okay with barely hitting the bar.…

Interesting. I actually have never tried any clients on macOs or iOS. I don't have apple products. On Windows i only use web Element. I don't disagree that it's early days for all clients, and they all could use improvement. But, Element does offer an Electron app, which would run equally on all platforms (if i recall correctly). Now, i myself am not a fan of electron apps. But that would at least provide a consisten…

Element does run on all platforms, yes - but it's not a well executed application and people often find it confusing.

That said I'm hopeful for the rewrite and I trust they've got the best interests in sight. I just mostly wanted to chime in on the "several more options" because this is unfortunately commonly said but disregards the sheer amount of work it takes to build a modern chat application.

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

#222

Post by jszymborski »

eredengrin wrote: post #217
jszymborski wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent instance I experienced was the GrapheneOS rooms which suddenly just stopped working. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/109510405342409074

To be clear, GrapheneOS was running on much older matrix room versions and the bugs that were causing the issues have (to my understanding) largely been mitigated in the later room versions. Of course it's not ideal it happened, but I wouldn't expect the same set of issues to persist after the upgrade, the mitigation has already existed it's just GrapheneOS (understandably) wanted to avoid the disruption of an upgrad…

That makes sense... I was having trouble with E2EE rooms with my friends back when Element was (regrettably) called Riot, but we also chalked that up to being (somewhat) early adopters. That didn't stop us from migrating to Discord, sadly.

It's why I characterised them as growing pains... I'm sure it'll all work out eventually and I've no doubt it's more stable than it has been.

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

#223

Post by jasonzemos »

Where can I find information about how the German government came to this decision? Does this involve contracts to outside companies for development and consulting or will that all be done by the government? If the former, when and where did the bidding process take place? What alternatives were considered? I don't speak German, so I need some help understanding this. Precise links would be appreciated.

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

#224

Post by stkdump »

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…

I use my Personalausweis to submit tax stuff, to get the current status of the government pension fund (I can know at any time, not just once per year how many Rentenpunkte I have) and to submit local requests for my city (for example changes for the garbage collection service). My phone serves as the card reader using NFC. It works like a charm.

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

#225

Post by catiopatio »

jszymborski wrote: post #198
logifail wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> car registration, etc... we require strong ID'ing Can you elaborate on what you mean by "strong"? I've been involved in precisely three car purchases over the last 20 years, and I don't recall what was involved in the way of ID checks. Have the feeling that at most some government-issued ID may have been pulled out of a wallet, presented ... and glanced at. The dealer handled the registration in every case. Oh, and…

I guess I should have phrased it as "we _should_ require strong ID'ing". Absolutely agree that currently you can get away with faxed signatures, photocopies of IDs, and all manner of incredibly "weak" ID'ing.

> "we _should_ require strong ID'ing".

Why? I’d much rather live in a world where privacy is prioritized over making life easier for the police.

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

#227

Post by KMag »

GTP wrote: post #168
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…

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…

I'm a little surprised we haven't seen governments try offering identity-based encryption as a way to head off encryption that's harder for them to wire-tap.

For the unfamiliar, with identity-based encryption, the recipient's public key is a function of the key authority's public key and some "identity", such as a national ID number or email address. Their private key is a one-way function of their identity and the key authority's private key. So, the recipient needs to ask the key authority one time to generate their private key for them, but there's only one public key to distribute. For the whole system, the sender can calculate the recipient's public key. The private key isn't even necessarily calculated before the sender has sent their message! It's very convenient and flexible!

Of course, the downside is that the private key is deterministic and can always be re-generated by the key authority, so it's fundamentally vulnerable to attack by the key authority. Also, some of the underlying math is less well studied than standard ECDHE/DHE/RSA, so we're less confident about vulnerabilities lurking just under the surface.

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

#228

Post by mynameisvlad »

catiopatio wrote: post #166
mynameisvlad wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Except it is. The slope is always slippery. Nobody can predict with 100% certainty what the future holds and if you believe otherwise, then I have a bridge to sell you.

Also, you clearly don’t understand what it means if you are nitpicking about the size of the first step. The whole point is that it builds up, and nobody can truly predict how it would shape up.

Trying to do so to fit a doom and gloom narrative is, once again, the literal definition. Just because you’d not like it doesn’t suddenly make it not so.

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

#229

Post by bmn__ »

catiopatio wrote: post #176
GTP wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From the website: > With IRMA it is easy to log in and make yourself known, by disclosing only relevant attributes of yourself. For instance, in order to watch a certain movie online, you prove that you are older than 16, and nothing else. That’s not “cool stuff”.

You present the conclusion only. Please share the train of thoughts that made you arrive at it, because it is not obvious.

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

#230

Post by cf141q5325 »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #45

Comes with free BundesTrojaner so someone is always reading your messages. Never feel alone again!

Its indeed a brave new world. With governments getting ever more interested in what you do online, some not quite so mentally stable people have an audience for their mental diarrhea for the first time. If you ever asked yourself the famous "who is supposed to read that", well now somebody is payed to. I hope they do the nice thing and upvote
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