BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

KMag wrote: post #227

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…

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 k…

Post by kioleanu » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #246

lgreiv wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like the idea of becoming a public servant and bringing innovation to places that really matter for basically everyone around me, but salaries are not even in the same ballpark even with IT-Zulage.

It's not the IT salaries that are the problem, it's that many places working on government IT projects in Germany range from slow, backwards and incompetent to outright toxic. These are not environments that attract the best people but usually clueless YES men.

Post by pchangr » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #77

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 anyon…

Post by kkkrist » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #77

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 anyon…

Post by cies » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

coretx wrote: post #216

cies wrote: post #110

I'm happy to see this. I came out embarrassingly that Germany was spied on by the "ally" US. They already did not trust MS Exchange, probably for good reasons. So they either trust the Swiss (Signal), the Russians (Telegram, prolly not), the ..., or they roll their own, or they use open source. I'm stoked to see they seem (yes: seem) to be doing the latter. Why do I emphasize "seem". Well there have been several Germ…

I don't know why the person who was first to respond to you is "dead" but set aside his value judgement; all he wrote is factually correct. The embarrassment you speak of lies in the fact that it became public knowledge, not in the act itself, depending on the perspective of specific institutions. Furthermore, disregarding the fact that signal is in Israeli hands, i'm fairly certain they don't even trust themselves a…