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European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

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Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#211

Post by blibble »

pjc50 wrote: post #82
seanw444 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that UK courts can't overturn Acts of Parliament. Interesting. I didn't know this, and as an American, it seems quite odd. Decisions by the parliament are treated as immutable there? Here, if a bill passed by Congress is deemed unconstitutional, it can be struck down by the Supreme Court.

Yeah, I don't think it's quite as simple as commentators are making out, because ECJ rulings have roughly constitutional-level effects in disapplying Acts.

only because Parliament allowed it to be so by passing the European Communities Act 1972

this power was removed by one line in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018:

> The European Communities Act 1972 is repealed on exit day.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/16/pdfs/ukpga_2018...

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#212

Post by Nostromos »

There's a degree of push/pull on government and industry as far as encryption is concerned. Government shouldn't be injecting vulnerabilities into algos but they also need a way to read messages from criminals and terrorists. Industry wants some way for customers to feel safe using their product to message or whatever their (legal) use case.

Without some local pressure, this cedes encryption commercialization to the US. Sure academics will still love their novel algos but until someone can make money from them, they'll sit in papers, ready for the enterprising american dev to turn into the next big encrypted chat app that is more secure than Signal or something like that.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#213

Post by Andrex »

denton-scratch wrote: post #78
seanw444 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that UK courts can't overturn Acts of Parliament. Interesting. I didn't know this, and as an American, it seems quite odd. Decisions by the parliament are treated as immutable there? Here, if a bill passed by Congress is deemed unconstitutional, it can be struck down by the Supreme Court.

The only constitution that the UK has consists of Acts of Parliament. So I don't know why it should seem odd; the US courts can't strike clauses of the US Constitution, and the UK courts can't strike Acts. Amusingly, the UK government is currently trying to pass an Act to the effect that black is equivalent to white, i.e. that Rwanda is a safe country to which asylum seekers can be sent. This is analogous to the Stat…

"Safe" is a judgment call, the value of pi is not.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#214

Post by hot_gril »

procflora wrote: post #210
hot_gril wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more fake because you download the app, look up your friend's number "1-555-333-2222", and your client trusts their server to actually return your friend instead of a MITM. Some asterisks there, but basically it's far from trustless.

Isn't this what the "safety number" in Signal is for? Obviously you are still trusting many other things there (the client software, OS, hardware, whatever out of band method you use to compare the numbers, etc.), but I thought the safety number pretty much addresses the MITM concern specifically, if you bother to check it.

Right, the issue is that nobody checks it and they don't really tell users upfront why they need to. It also notifies you if the number changes later, but seems like that can happen for benign reasons too, so it might go ignored. WhatsApp and Telegram are similar.

Someone could orient an E2EE app around these trusted identities, but it'd probably not be very popular.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#215

Post by Andrex »

jltsiren wrote: post #203
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such a thing has not been done since 1992 We’re a 235-year old republic. Changing the firmware once every 10 to 15% of the time seems fine. > and not on a politically charged question since 1971 This is a feature. If a question is charged it should be resolved first federally, through the states, and then politically, via the legislature. Only once there is consensus should it be elevated to Constitutional status.…

I believe that a constitution should get a full rewrite once every 50-60 years. That's to only way to ensure that the constitution remains legitimate and relevant. The US does not really have a constitution. There is a set of documents that claims to be the constitution, but it's so out of date that it can't serve as one. Then there is the Supreme Court, which can change the actual constitution easily with its creati…

The Constitution is a divining rod to cut through hundreds of years of patchwork caselaw and legislation. Its true use is in a psychological "what would God/The Constitution want?" sense.

Does it make rational sense? Not really, but my reading of history shows a stronger national identity if tied to something "beyond." Whether that be God, Pharaoh, the Founding Fathers, what have you.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#216

Post by pb7 »

matsemann wrote: post #152
ganieldackle wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify was made up of 75% US employees since the moment it validated its value. DICE is a failed studio. Battlefield 2042 was one of the worst AAA video game launches of all time (with Cyberpunk 2077 by Polish studio CD Projekt Red being another) after a rocky Battlefield V launch and there is no reason to believe they will come back from it. King makes low quality micro-transaction-riddled games for addicts. Mojang…

Facebook is just scams and intervenes with elections. Google is just privacy hell that sells your data for ads. Amazon is in the business of abusing its workers. Point being, it was asked for success. Not if people like the company or not.

If we're going to be reducing to absurdity, Europe is a museum. No one is looking to it for the next big thing.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#217

Post by krapp »

Andrex wrote: post #215
jltsiren wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that a constitution should get a full rewrite once every 50-60 years. That's to only way to ensure that the constitution remains legitimate and relevant. The US does not really have a constitution. There is a set of documents that claims to be the constitution, but it's so out of date that it can't serve as one. Then there is the Supreme Court, which can change the actual constitution easily with its creati…

The Constitution is a divining rod to cut through hundreds of years of patchwork caselaw and legislation. Its true use is in a psychological "what would God/The Constitution want?" sense. Does it make rational sense? Not really, but my reading of history shows a stronger national identity if tied to something "beyond." Whether that be God, Pharaoh, the Founding Fathers, what have you.

>Its true use is in a psychological "what would God/The Constitution want?" sense.

That's its purpose as the holy writ of the civil religion of the United States. And indeed, the Supreme Court derives their authority to judge the Constitutionality of matters from, in essence, divining the will of the Prophets (Founding Fathers) in interpreting this divine scripture. And as with the Pope, they remain infallible even when they contradict themselves, as well as unaccountable.

However, my reading of history has shown that strong national identities built around the worship of state and national myths tend towards dark and bloody ends.

In reality, The Constitution is what it is. A 200 year old legal fiction. A compromise between flawed, mortal men written to serve the needs of an agrarian society far closer to medieval than modern, created with the expectation that times and needs can change.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#218

Post by penteract »

denton-scratch wrote: post #78
seanw444 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that UK courts can't overturn Acts of Parliament. Interesting. I didn't know this, and as an American, it seems quite odd. Decisions by the parliament are treated as immutable there? Here, if a bill passed by Congress is deemed unconstitutional, it can be struck down by the Supreme Court.

The only constitution that the UK has consists of Acts of Parliament. So I don't know why it should seem odd; the US courts can't strike clauses of the US Constitution, and the UK courts can't strike Acts. Amusingly, the UK government is currently trying to pass an Act to the effect that black is equivalent to white, i.e. that Rwanda is a safe country to which asylum seekers can be sent. This is analogous to the Stat…

> The only constitution that the UK has consists of Acts of Parliament.

That's not completely accurate. The UK has an unwritten constitution, consisting of how everybody knows things work.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#219

Post by pb7 »

scotty79 wrote: post #208
xvector wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU's entire modern tech industry does not even measure up to that of one US company. Dismissals of the EU's inability to compete in tech is why EU citizens have missed out on literally tens of trillions of dollars in economic growth post-2000s. The EU's lack of ability to innovate is becoming a serious problem for the progress of our species as a whole.

US valuations are simply insane. Oligarchs money looking for an investment vessel inflate share prices. In most cases it has nothing to do with actual value of the companies or their revenue. In US empty company can be "worth" billions for a time.

That's what happens when you're a wealthy country with a booming economy and flush with companies that serve the world.

Re: European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption

#220

Post by x-complexity »

infamouscow wrote: post #205
jacobp100 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. Governments aren't accountable to their citizens, and there aren't any repercussions nor punishment for violating rights. Sure, the court might have ruled on this, but that's irrelevant when the government decides "national security" takes precedent and uses the media to manufacture the consent of the population into thinking extraordinary times require extraordinary measures…

It's being downvoted because it's like saying "lol" or "L". Nothing substantive was added to the conversation.
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