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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

#161

Post by ric2b »

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…

> If you weaken encryption, you can catch more terrorists.

Can you? Where's the evidence? Why would they obey laws like this when software for strong encryption is widely available?

Same thing for all other examples of criminal activity.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#162

Post by ric2b »

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.

> The right to free speech

Compared to the US? I don't see it except for a few EU countries, mostly the ex-USSR ones.

> and to defend yourself + your property

Are you talking about the "right" to kill someone that tries to steal your laptop at night? Yeah, that's not usually allowed in the EU, only if your life is at risk.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#163

Post by ric2b »

emteycz wrote: post #74
rocqua wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encryption is actually incredibly hard. This is why it took whatsapp and other apps centrally doing it, and coordinating it between devices, to make end-to-end encryption commonly used.

UX is hard, not encryption.

Encryption is also hard but there are many open source solutions available.

I agree that UX for secure encryption is more of an open problem.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#164

Post by ric2b »

rocqua wrote: post #71
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.

Nothing about e-commerce requires e2e encryption. Using non-perfect forward secrecy on TLS has done very little for making webshops safer.

TLS is e2e encryption between the browser and the site. It's absolutely required because the modern e-commerce story relies on sending credit card details over the wire.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#165

Post by ric2b »

autosharp wrote: post #39
marcosdumay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long will it survive after the backdoor leaks? How long will credit card stay usable? E-commerce has enough problems with security already. Adding digital security as another one will be a huge drag.

After the backdoor leaks all they need to do is a key rotation.

Sure, after the damage is done. We'd prefer to prevent the damage.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#166

Post by ric2b »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #34
noodlesoups wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like e2e is heavily utilized must-have for crime either. Tons of crime happen through regular unencrypted text messages, and nobody gets caught. But this isn't about protecting in the first place, so it isn't all that relevant.

e2e is a heavily utilized must-have for any organized crime these days, and this is very frequently a wall that law enforcement hit and cannot get past. I don't think banning encryption or something silly like that is therefore the solution, but minimizing the problem is not helpful in understanding why there's such a heavy push from all sorts governments, democratic and authoritarian alike, to "deal" with the proble…

> e2e is a heavily utilized must-have for any organized crime these days

Do you happen to have a source? I'm under the impression that they prefer to use SMS on pre-paid burner phones.

Re: The EU is set to declare war on encryption

#167

Post by loughnane »

dalbasal wrote: post #66
loughnane wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mean to be glib, but it’s a common fallacy to expect consistency. Consistency might happen for a stretch, even a long one, but the first principle is to keep and acquire power. The people who don’t prioritize power above all don’t hold office long because they lose out to people who do

I suppose I am being glib, but... This is not a vice reserved for the powerful. Politicians and whatnot certainly do nakedly make a principled argument one and the opposite the next. So does almost everyone. We do it especially when something is at stake, but we'll also do it to win an argument. It's an irony of human nature. OOH, we're seekers of patterns, principles and consistency. OTOH, we're also highly adept at…

I agree with you. I wasn’t trying to say only politicians exhibit this behavior, just that they do.

Maybe it’s more pithy to say we shouldn’t expect better of them than we demonstrate ourselves.

Part of me though still things that we should elect those that represent the best of us.

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