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Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

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Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#231

Post by toohotatopic »

fluffything wrote: post #217
toohotatopic wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's for a GmbH [1] where you create an independent legal entity. Actually it's 25k and almost 1k in legal fees. Though, you only need an accountant if you have millions in assets or plenty of employees. [3] However, that's for an independent legal entity. If you want to start a business, you can simply register a business, even online [2] for about 25 to 100 euros. If you don't have wealth to protect you don't nee…

> However, that's for an independent legal entity. If you want to start a business, you can simply register a business, even online [2] for about 25 to 100 euros. If you don't have wealth to protect you don't need a legal entity anyway. I'm not sure I follow. If your startup isn't even an independent legal entity, AFAICT you can't pay your employees with equity (e.g. stock options). If you could, the risk would be su…

You are right. I just wouldn't see those points as essential problems:

* If you have co-founders, 25k shouldn't be a problem if you pool your money. A group of people who have worked for some years should have that much money or I would fear that they cannot hold budgets for the company

* If you have employees, 25k is a month or two of their salaries. You are dead in the water if you don't have that amount of money in advance as a buffer

* If the CEO owns something like 90% of a GmbH and he screws up, his 90% go to whoever has to be compensated. There is no fundamental difference to him owning everything. If you are an employee, then you better start your own company with your colleagues, even if it was a GmbH. If you are an investor, well, start anew. You have spend less than 25k or this would have been a GmbH.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#232

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

pjmlp wrote: post #210
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is talking about being rich but if you look at house prices in the major European metro areas or tech hubs, they're out of reach even for devs while that's not the case in the US.

Yet most people get to buy houses just with one credit instead of the multiple morgages in US.

Really? Who? A house near a big city in Germany is over a million and city apartment over half a million.

How many devs can afford that even with a credit?

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#233

Post by mercacona »

rmoriz wrote: post #43
VMG wrote: post #39

From personal experience, I can tell you that the consequence of this will be that ministries will be using unencrypted and unauthenticated email and SMS.

At least in Germany companies and government are required to configure mandatory TLS for SMTP and IMAP so the biggest attack vector is gone. No end-to-end encryption though.

The most significant attack vector might be the admin of the email service. In European public institutions, the admins have access to your work account (which is healthy and ok). WhatsApp, it’s the equivalent to share a coffee some blocks far away from the office (which is healthy and ok).

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#234

Post by ryandrake »

Hokusai wrote: post #58

This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…

Thank you for comparing to E-mail. E-mail federation has been a solved problem for decades. Why on Earth is it so chronically intractable for chat? It's as if every time a new chat app is created, the developer's #1 requirement is: "Must be incompatible with every other chat app"

With so much, frankly, miraculous software systems out there in production, built by some of the smartest minds in software, it's just stupefying how "send text from one person to another, regardless of the sender's and receiver's client" continues to escape us.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#235

Post by [deleted] »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #154
vinay427 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of European countries are complicit in similar acts of their own, and many more tacitly assist. I don't think many deserve being painted as a victim of this situation. There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption. In any case, I think the hypocrisy makes sense if you consider that the people saying this are from places (the US + close allies) that proba…

The UK and The Netherlands are NATO members mutual assistance when your attacked is a key part of NATO

[deleted]

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#236

Post by jacquesm »

orr721 wrote: post #224
jacquesm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also use money, mobsters do too. They breathe air, mobsters do too. I don't think mobsters using something that is otherwise legal to use is going to stop adoption.

https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22231150/threema-as-evidence-in-t... https://china-cee.eu/2019/10/11/slovakia-political-briefing-... The parent did not say it is a mafia app. But it's use really is strongly associated with mafia in Slovakia. That for sure will never make it very popular choice for people in Slovakia don't you think? You can look for yourself, the only thing which pops-up on google when you search for thre…

Slovakia is not exactly the largest country in the world and to extrapolate from 'Slovakian mobsters have used it' to 'this app is associated with the mob' is a bit of a stretch.

It may only be hard to convince non-mob Slovakians to use it, but that's a relatively insignificant number of people on the larger world stage.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#237

Post by ryukafalz »

dijit wrote: post #105
Hokusai wrote: post #58

This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…

I wish I had more than one upvote, this capitulates perfectly my feelings on the situation. I see the same sentiment echoed in our American friends w.r.t. Chinese spying. Huawei is dangerous and must be stopped, but the NSA having broken encryption a bunch of times, sending NSL's to chip makers and such is fine. And that is not seen as hypocritical. We as Europeans have no technological industry without the USA, and…

> but the NSA having broken encryption a bunch of times, sending NSL's to chip makers and such is fine.

Fine according to whom? Many Americans, myself included, are outraged at this.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#238

Post by aianus »

pjmlp wrote: post #211
aianus wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is more in life than being rich. Yes, of course. > Everything else is lost in US with immediate job termination, no thanks. This doesn't matter when you save $60k/year from your $250k FAANG job. Job termination just means a long, fun vacation before you look for your next thing.

FAANG is a drop into the ocean for a selected few.

This just isn’t true, they have 100,000s of employees and are hiring nonstop.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#239

Post by pjmlp »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #232
pjmlp wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet most people get to buy houses just with one credit instead of the multiple morgages in US.

Really? Who? A house near a big city in Germany is over a million and city apartment over half a million. How many devs can afford that even with a credit?

By having a 30 year long credit and not going over the roof with their choices.

Meanwhile as described by Lehman brothers fiasco documentaries, multiple American families went totally bankrupt with their multiple mortgages over their houses.

Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go

#240

Post by marto1 »

Hokusai wrote: post #58

This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…

> The misalignment between Europe and the USA has grown the recent years

I wouldn't count the last 20+ years as "recent", but ok.

> The solution is trivially easy and has existed for long: open standards.

What we usually get is a hybrid "compromise". Things of absolutely no consequence are using open standards, e.g. Messenger will send JSON back and forth and things that matter a lot, e.g. social engineering algorithms for "ads" are black boxes.

It is my personal opinion these heavily asymmetric compromises are a consequence of severe technical inadequacy from most power bearing persons in the EU parliament. Another plausible explanation might be mind boggling corruption.

> The alternative is heavy regulated monopolies, no government is going to allow this situation to go for long

What we get so far are monopolies that are heavily regulated in inconsequential aspects to "please the crowd". Also, it has been a tendency of humans to underestimate how long a bad situation could last. Governments are very much a reflection of it's people(believe it or not) and they mostly "don't want trouble" - it is my belief it's exactly this attitude that has lead us so far astray.

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