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The EU is set to declare war on encryption

tech.newstatesman.com

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Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#131

Post by ColanR »

rendall wrote: post #102
ColanR wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who are the real crooks? > terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers At some point, unless you want everyone making their own personal moral judgements (including people who e.g. don't think women should have rights?), it should be permissible to deal neutrally with everyone who wants to do business with you. Let the law enforcers enforce the law, let the bankers bank. Edit: clarity.

Except they are breaking the law, but are too powerful to be brought to heel, largely because of lots and lots of money and powerful, shady friends. https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/global-bank... The Mexican drug cartels could not fit cash through the teller stations quickly enough, so HSBC had special teller boxes so that it was far more efficient. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hsbc-probe/hsbc-b…

> U.S. agencies responsible for enforcing money laundering laws rarely prosecute megabanks that break the law, and the actions authorities do take barely ripple the flood of plundered money that washes through the international financial system.

From your first link. It sounds like the law enforcers need to do better at enforcing the law. If they can't enforce it against the banks, how can we expect the banks to enforce the law against themselves?

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#132

Post by Spivak »

rbecker wrote: post #116
Spivak wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming that policing is a video game where difficulty needs to be balanced? “Hey sex-traffickers that know what they’re doing are telling all their people to switch to Signal. Since basically our only tools to connect people are phone location history, call logs, text messages, and maybe surveillance footage if we’re lucky, we’re hitting a massive brick wall in every investigation. Help?” Like go listen…

> Why are you assuming that policing is a video game where difficulty needs to be balanced? But that's their argument. "Give up your rights because policing is getting harder", while staying quiet when policing gets easier. If policing, on the whole, isn't actually getting harder, their argument is invalid. Look at your own example. Despite encryption, the police would still get a graph of connections (even without k…

Aren't we talking about the ability to break into specific devices like the phone or laptop of a deceased victim or a non-cooperative suspect? I'm not talking about dragnet surveillance at all here.

If you can come up with a system where it's possible to break into any device without having the ability to break into every device I'm all ears.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#133

Post by LatteLazy »

dahfizz wrote: post #101
LatteLazy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, its don't much better at human rights than any of its predecessors or competitors...

That's pretty subjective. The right to free speech and to defend yourself + your property is severely diminished in the EU. The EU and US definitions of "human rights" are pretty different.

I think free speech is much stronger in the EU. No central military means no central system of classifying things and no Espionage act. Similarly, gun rights are states rights in the EU. I shot an AK47 in Poland, seems pretty liberal to me...

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#134

Post by McDyver »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #125

People don't seem to realize that you need both attack and defense. Let's take the 4 horsemen: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers. * If you weaken encryption, you can catch more terrorists. At the same time, the terrorists can track down their targets more quickly, and they might even find your personal identity and counter-attack directly. * If you weaken encryption, you can catch more pedoph…

> People don't seem to realize that you need both attack and defense.

This war on encryption is not being waged by "people". This is not something that can be rationalised to be avoided, otherwise it wouldn't even be an option.

I just hope that there will always be someone who has the competence and willingness to develop something that will keep freedom an option for everyone, even if it's "illegal"

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#135

Post by rbecker »

Spivak wrote: post #132
rbecker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you assuming that policing is a video game where difficulty needs to be balanced? But that's their argument. "Give up your rights because policing is getting harder", while staying quiet when policing gets easier. If policing, on the whole, isn't actually getting harder, their argument is invalid. Look at your own example. Despite encryption, the police would still get a graph of connections (even without k…

Aren't we talking about the ability to break into specific devices like the phone or laptop of a deceased victim or a non-cooperative suspect? I'm not talking about dragnet surveillance at all here. If you can come up with a system where it's possible to break into any device without having the ability to break into every device I'm all ears.

It sounds like we agree on the problem. If you require backdoors on devices/software, that can circumvent encryption in bulk, without the relatively expensive and time-consuming steps of physically planting bugs or similar on specific targets, it will inevitably be used for dragnet surveillance. At least that's what happened almost every time so far.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#136

Post by Spoom »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #56
Finnucane wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like what they want is not so much breakable locks, but for you to have locks that can all be opened by a common master key. And they pinky swear that the master key will be kept totally safe and all the thousands of law enforcement officers they share it with will also keep it totally safe, and they will never ever use it except for intended purposes, and no bad guys will ever be able to get a copy of it.

I wouldn't trust my government with these keys.

Fun fact, they did this with luggage locks. Long story short, TSA master keys are readily available on the internet.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#137

Post by LordDragonfang »

dahfizz wrote: post #101
LatteLazy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, its don't much better at human rights than any of its predecessors or competitors...

That's pretty subjective. The right to free speech and to defend yourself + your property is severely diminished in the EU. The EU and US definitions of "human rights" are pretty different.

Because the right to free speech is working out so well for American politics these days. Not to mention that we're jailing people for protesting the government while letting nazism be on the rise.

And while I'm not exactly sure which "right defend yourself + your property" you're referring to, I'd wager you're talking about the right to extrajudicially murder people who you feel threatened by, or the right to own tools intended to assist in that murder, neither of which are "human rights" if you're honest about what you're discussing. Even in the US, the right to bear arms is a constitutional one, not a human one.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#138

Post by kyboren »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #137
dahfizz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty subjective. The right to free speech and to defend yourself + your property is severely diminished in the EU. The EU and US definitions of "human rights" are pretty different.

Because the right to free speech is working out so well for American politics these days. Not to mention that we're jailing people for protesting the government while letting nazism be on the rise. And while I'm not exactly sure which "right defend yourself + your property" you're referring to, I'd wager you're talking about the right to extrajudicially murder people who you feel threatened by, or the right to own to…

> Because the right to free speech is working out so well for American politics these days.

I am unconvinced that the state of US politics is a consequence of a more permissive environment for speech.

> I'd wager you're talking about the right to extrajudicially murder people who you feel threatened by

That's one hell of a biased way to describe the right to defend oneself. The right to self defense, and to use basic tools in aid of that defense, is indeed an inherent human right and not one that that springs from the text of some document.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#139

Post by candiodari »

indymike wrote: post #124
dingaling wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like GDPR you'll still have privacy on an individual level unless law enforcement decides that you shouldn't have. It's perfectly parallel.

Law enforcement does not have the right to be in my private meetings. Even with a warrant or if they spy, there are risks and limits. Yes, they can spy, but they are limited by reality. Encryption imposes almost the same limitations on digital life as secrecy does in real life. Why should my rights be different online?

You haven’t met many police officers lately, I guess. They all agree that they have the right to break the law, and a duty to protect anyone in their group (not just police officers, but almost any other government employee) from the law. At the very least until that paedophile teacher manages to get into the newspaper just by the shear number of victims he makes. By far the biggest group of child abuse perpetrators are physical Ed teachers (which is even pretty obvious, if you were a paedophile, what job would you take?) and the agencies protecting children all get regularly caught abusing children, and generally getting away with it.

The child argument is stupid because government employees, and children themselves share about 90% of child abuse crimes between them. Of course, one might make the point that children abusing other children at school is also technically their responsibility ... as it’s on their watch. There’s no point protecting against the 1% case ...

That’s what I find so hard to believe. Governments know they themselves are the big problem when it comes to child abuse, but the reaction is always more, and ever more powerful bureaucrats, some of which have excellent positions to abuse children with (like youth services psychiatrists, who decide on the use of state violence against children. Doesn’t take an expert how that post can be abused to get an 11 year old girl to ... you). We know no-one is taking any of these jobs for the excellent benefits or pay ...

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#140

Post by orev »

megous wrote: post #73
orev wrote: post #24

Maybe they don’t realize that e-commerce wouldn’t exist without trustworthy encryption. They’re taking about sabotaging trillions of dollars of economic transactions in lieu of just doing real police work to find the criminals.

Not true. E-commerce did just fine even without TLS in the past. Also most of the e-commerce features don't really need encryption, but authenticity. That can be achieved with just asymmetric crypto and signing, but payloads can be in the open. Encryption is only needed for privacy.

There was no e-commerce before SSL. That was a huge thing and one of the main driving factors for all e-commerce sites to get certificates, display all those “trust” badges, etc.

Most people buying things online would prefer to keep their credit card information private.

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