Funny - the European Commission told its staff to "Switch to Signal messaging app" in Feb 2020:
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-to-staff-switc...
I wonder what changed.
EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
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Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#52This is more common than the opposite. I’m reminded of that recent embarrassing display of US government where the TikTok CEO was peppered with the kinds of questions that betray the fact that the congresscritter doesn’t comprehend the topic. If they wanted real answers they’d say, “I yield my time to this SME I brought in.” But they’re just there to look tough on whatever.
You don't need to be a subject matter expert to understand how encryption works. E2E can be explained to an 8 year old. The problem is that the skills selected for in politicians is the same as the skills selected for in non-venomous snakes, ie, their resemblance to venomous snakes, without the metabolic overhead of actually producing venom.
I don't understand your metaphor.
> E2E can be explained to an 8 year old.
Can.
Also, the main problem here isn't explaining the tech itself (although the quotations in the link indicate this is also a problem), but rather explaining why it's (a) actually good, and (b) impossible to prevent even if it wasn't good.
But even if it was the tech itself, most people don't have maths skills and fundamentally don't (care to?) think logically.
When I was a kid, I couldn't understand why the adults kept joking about why it was so hard to stop the VCR from flashing 12:00 when I found it trivial.
(I think we're getting to the point where you could run an image detection process on the display itself, totally circumventing any encryption. This will have a lot of consequences that are totally obvious and yet it may be done regardless).
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#53just give me the NSA putting backdoors in my chips rather than this two-faced nonsense.
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#54Don't believe vendors' lies about "end-to-end" encryption. If caught red handed, they will always say it depends on how you define where both "ends" begin. Do not trust a cloud service that you have not developed and deployed yourself. You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content, but only if you have given it your content pre-encrypted by yourself, not trusted a third party to encrypt it on your beha…
> You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content
Couldn't someone still capture them from the untrusted hardware, wait until quantum computer technology is available, then decrypt them?
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having a solution is not a prerequisite for providing criticism. It is okay to see a flaw but not yet have an answer.
No but it makes it an empty criticism. It's like the activists who say "abolish the police!" but either have no insight into or are deliberately ignoring why the police exist, and have no ideas regarding who would perform the equivalent function instead.
>It's like the activists who say "abolish the police!"...
I would also caution you to focus less on these kinds of catchphrases and more on the crux of their message[1] (and I should point out that this applies to any kind of movement), lest you not see the forest for the trees.
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#56Don't believe vendors' lies about "end-to-end" encryption. If caught red handed, they will always say it depends on how you define where both "ends" begin. Do not trust a cloud service that you have not developed and deployed yourself. You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content, but only if you have given it your content pre-encrypted by yourself, not trusted a third party to encrypt it on your beha…
> Don't trust old-school typewriters and the postal system either. Letters are routinely opened and typewriters can be matched. For example, the Stasi (secret police of the former GDR - German "Democratic" Republic) had an archive of type samples of all sold models of typewriters for re-identification of political pamphlets.
That's theoretical. I highly doubt anyone extends that much effort to target typewriters anymore. The best they could probably do is match a series of messages to the same typewriter. Though they might not even be able to do that, because the law-enforcement skills to match typewriter documents to each other have also probably nearly completely atrophied.
You're probably more likely to be caught by being the weirdo still buying typewriter ribbons.
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#57This is so common (not just in the EU) that it makes me feel like it was done by design in a lot of cases. By creating these massive overcomplicated bills, they make sure only a handful of individuals are capable of reading them and the rest of us (including other politicians) will never read them and instead have to rely on faith. It feels to me like they want to give you the illusion that it's all open/public but a…
Legalese is like that thanks to a long history of people looking for and abusing any and all loopholes. That led to the natural conclusion of legal words holding standardized definitions that might differ from common understanding, and extreme specification of all details in an effort to preemptively close off any and all loopholes. Anyone who tries to make legalese simpler finds themselves immediately torn asunder b…
I have no problem with the vocabulary itself and most of the Legalese. I try to use more of it in my documentation because, as you mentioned, it has less room to interpretation and loopholes compared to more commonly used phrasing.
My problem is when they take what should have been a simple table with a few columns and turn it into a 9-line long sentence with triple negations, exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions and abusing references to other sections to create these puzzles that are very hard to solve. If they need it for some reason, they should also provide the easy-to-read version alongside it. I would prefer that the easy version came from the same people who wrote the original bill instead of a college textbook or a journalist relying on second hand information because he also can't read it properly.
Mixing multiple unrelated subject into a single bill is also completely unnecessary from the pov preventing loopholes.
When it gets to the point that even the people voting on it can't understand/read it, something needs to change. How do you know they didn't slip in intentional loophole? Even with a well intentioned politicians, the intern typing it could sneak something in.
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#58Reminds me of the senator that asked Zuckerberg how do they make money [0], and Zuckerberg simply said they run ads. What a way to use your questioning time, with something that was a google search away. [0] https://youtu.be/n2H8wx1aBiQ
Often the point of seemingly obvious questions like that is to have the person on record making that statement and potentially what they might omit.
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#59She maybe don't understand technology, but I get the feeling that breaking or weakening p2p is not what she talking about. The scanning means scanning performed on the end devices, not of the communications. The idea is to force communication messengers providers to perform scan on end user's device.
That, obviously, will fail, as many (including child predators) will migrate to messengers that don't do that.
Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill
#60Don't believe vendors' lies about "end-to-end" encryption. If caught red handed, they will always say it depends on how you define where both "ends" begin. Do not trust a cloud service that you have not developed and deployed yourself. You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content, but only if you have given it your content pre-encrypted by yourself, not trusted a third party to encrypt it on your beha…
> You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content Couldn't someone still capture them from the untrusted hardware, wait until quantum computer technology is available, then decrypt them?
There are quantum-resistant encryption schemes.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography