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France rejects backdoor mandate

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Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#151

Post by cship2 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #118
achenet wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Frenchman, this really grinds my gears. Our state is already one of the biggest arms dealers on the planet, and, like all modern nation states, fundamentally a coercive protection racket (note that I don't actually have a problem with coercive protection rackets. You remember that scene in The Godfather where everyone is thanking Vito Corleone as he saunters through the street? That's me thanking the French welf…

> Why don't we just get in on the drug trade ourselves, undercut the dealers That was tobacco, but they blew it by never going for alternatives nor providing healthier/better products. With the pharma knowledge we have now, we surely could have developed a legally acceptable drug with few enough downsides. Otherwise, they are of course getting in on the drug trade, just not under the framework we'd want to: https://w…

But once it is legal, they can't use it to deal weapons anymore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#152

Post by lstodd »

tiltowait wrote: post #108
Nextgrid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "war" on drugs is what brings all of the violence and crime associated with drugs, not the drugs themselves. But it finances the police industrial complex and so many people would lose out (or be forced to focus on actual crimes rather than people consensually trading plants or chemicals) that it will never happen.

> The "war" on drugs is what brings all of the violence and crime associated with drugs, not the drugs themselves. Some of it, certainly, but I doubt it's all. Violence committed by druggies trying to scrape up enough for their next hit would still happen.

Do you not see that you're contradicting yourself?

If drugs were not prohibited, they would not cost so much as to cause "scraping up enough".

How come I can buy 50 liters of isopropanol (99.(9) whatever, dehydrated, better than medical eth) for like 20 euro, but no luck for ethanol. Even while ethanol is that much cheaper to produce?

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#153

Post by raincole »

palata wrote: post #3

Just like for other big challenges like biodiversity and climate change, it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. Of course they can't all have a PhD in cryptography, but they should also not have no clue at all. Over an over again, politicians are asking for backdoors. To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryptio…

What politicians want (and what they think average people want) is very different from what HN users want.

Politicians: a backdoor that can be used by the police for investigating crimes, but not by criminals themselves.

HN users: no backdoor at all, especially not a backdoor that can be used by the police.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#154

Post by csomar »

bambax wrote: post #148
csomar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. That's a very gullible take and kind of apologetic for the politicians. If you are implementing a backdoor to crypto-systems, you probably know exactly what you are doing. That, and this has been re-surfacing time and again under different pretenses make this a deliberate attack on freedom of expression. T…

Listening to the debates in the lower chamber (Assemblée Nationale) and the arguments of those arguing in favor of backdoors clearly show they do not have a clue how any of this works. They are not clever players doing double-bluffs. They are ignorant stooges.

First, the constituents on the chamber are supposed to vote along the party lines. Yes, they do not understand what is going on but that does not obviate their responsibility. Negligence can be criminal. I am specifically talking about the people pushing this (as in planning, writing, orchestrating its ascent to become law and then enforcing).

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#155

Post by bryanrasmussen »

raincole wrote: post #153
palata wrote: post #3

Just like for other big challenges like biodiversity and climate change, it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. Of course they can't all have a PhD in cryptography, but they should also not have no clue at all. Over an over again, politicians are asking for backdoors. To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryptio…

What politicians want (and what they think average people want) is very different from what HN users want. Politicians: a backdoor that can be used by the police for investigating crimes, but not by criminals themselves. HN users: no backdoor at all, especially not a backdoor that can be used by the police.

also politicians want a backdoor especially for tracking treason / spying possibilities, which in a way comes under police investigating crimes but is more national security apparatus protecting the state.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#156

Post by bambax »

buybackoff wrote: post #12

I've found the original debates video on the National Assembly website. My French is good enough for that (not enough for cooking et al. though), so I believe I understood. I'm positively surprised by some deputies remarks. But Bruno (interior minister) Retailleau is either totally incompetent technically, with his advisors as well, or is a liar. "We will apply the math selectively, only for those that are a threat a…

The level of math and/or tech understanding in the French political "elite" is abysmal. These people graduated high school, and went on to college without doing any math AT ALL after 10th grade ("seconde"), and probably sucked at math even then.

And they have nothing but contempt for the people who do understand those issues ("les techniciens").

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#157

Post by concerndc1tizen »

raincole wrote: post #153
palata wrote: post #3

Just like for other big challenges like biodiversity and climate change, it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. Of course they can't all have a PhD in cryptography, but they should also not have no clue at all. Over an over again, politicians are asking for backdoors. To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryptio…

What politicians want (and what they think average people want) is very different from what HN users want. Politicians: a backdoor that can be used by the police for investigating crimes, but not by criminals themselves. HN users: no backdoor at all, especially not a backdoor that can be used by the police.

I strongly disagree.

Politicians: technology that strengthens the power of the state, against crime, but also militarily, for spying on enemies both foreign and domestic.

Citizens: defensive architecture that prevents the state from preventing free speech.

This is especially relevant in the era of AI, where the cost of mass surveillance is virtually zero, and is incredibly powerful at sentiment analysis and summarization. Free speech is threatened when any statement can and will be used against you.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#159

Post by drdeca »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #25
dataflow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they should also not have no clue at all. Over an over again, politicians are asking for backdoors. To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryption works. Unless you're claiming that it's literally impossible to construct a cipher with multiple decryption keys, I don't see how you're implying that asking for a backdoor "proves they don't understand the very basics of how encryption…

the problem with backdoored encryption isn't making a cypher with multiple decryption keys. It's keeping secret that's worth billions of dollars and shared among 10s of thousands of people. The difference between backdoored encryption and no encryption is whether the backdoor is known to the public. There is a coherent set of values that lead to saying "no encryption", but not one for "only backdoored encryption".

Could it be possible to make a cryptosystem where messages can be decrypted either with the recipient key, or by sequentially applying say, 100 different backdoor keys, such that the different backdoor keys could be stored on different machines without ever being present on the same machine?

If you increase the number of backdoor keys needed to decrypt by enough, and have these keys be stored only on hardware that is meant to make it infeasible to extract the key from it, and if these machines are distributed among a sufficiently large and varied group, maybe that could work as reasonable oversight to prevent the backdoor from being used outside of select cases?

Edit: to be clear, I don’t want this. Just trying to map out what positions could reasonably be held / what options there are.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#160

Post by bananalychee »

daniel-s wrote: post #116
palata wrote: post #3

Just like for other big challenges like biodiversity and climate change, it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. Of course they can't all have a PhD in cryptography, but they should also not have no clue at all. Over an over again, politicians are asking for backdoors. To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryptio…

These aren't dumb people. They know exactly what they're asking for. Privacy and security of the public's data is not a priority to them, surveillance and power is. Politicians would much prefer all communication in plaintext, to hell with individual freedoms and privacy, especially European politicians that don't come from the same traditions of freedom as the anglophone countries. What politician do you expect to o…

The UK and Australia are ahead of countries like France in restricting freedom, so this sounds like a poor attempt to avoid complimenting the US specifically.
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