It seems like a lot of these proposals are coming out of Europe—assuming I’m not mistaken (and I may well be), why is Europe cracking down so much on privacy?
As opposed to the US, where this spying is done illegally and no one gives a shit?
Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
231–240 of 283 posts
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#232Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The issue with Apple caving to UK demands regarding encryption Apple "caving" would've looked different; in fact, we probably never would have known, given the insidious nature of the underlying statute in the UK. Apple is making noise about the fact that they pulled the product, and the tech press is making it clear WHY even though Apple itself is legally prohibited from giving any additional context. I feel like t…
Removing the advanced encryption option for new accounts is really 'caving' to the demands of the government in my view. And in time, they will also remove the e2e encryption on existing accounts using the e2e feature to comply with UK demands. They may have sounded the alarm, which I appreciate, but they still have to 'cave' and do as the UK government tells them or they have to cease operations in the UK.
What I'm really noting here is that Apple had no good options.
Capitulating would've meant giving the UK government the back door they wanted. They didn't do that. They complied in a loud and public way, which unmistakably shined a light on the insane request.
The only other options for them were withdrawal from the UK market entirely, or a secret court fight they'd probably lose.
To me, their actual response reads more like malicious compliance than "caving," which usually implies giving up completely.
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits who will lobby against this kind of legislative overreach and sue if the legislation passes. Obviously we have all sorts of other problems, but mostly our bureaucrats and legislators aren’t making backdoors a policy as far as ai’m aware (who knows what the CIA and FBI and NSA are up to, though?). I assume it’s just one of thos…
> While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits So does Sweden, and have had strong privacy advocates for a long time. Remember that The Pirate Bay came from Sweden? It spawned a political and ideological movement (Piratbyrån & Copyleft/Kopimi) that still has some presence in Sweden and EU although doesn't seem as strong as it used to be, except for Iceland I think. > I h…
Yes, my country is the US. I'm very skeptical that Sweden and the US have similar policy in the general case or in the case of privacy in particular. With respect to privacy specifically, I don't think the US has passed any "no encryption" or "mandatory backdoor" policies (I'm happy to be corrected). In the broader case, I'm of the impression that Swedish policy differs dramatically from US policy with respect to regulation, social safety net, taxation, government-owned enterprises, etc.
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#235What is the state of peer to peer messengers with E2EE? Over ten years ago, Bittorrent Inc. (now Rainberry and Resilio) made a serverless chat client (Bleep IIRC). But I don't think there is anything new that is also user-friendly? (Drop-in replacement of WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, etc.)
Peer to peer communications are difficult to combine with mobile phones (at least if you value battery life). There are various messengers out there, but they're incredibly niche and I doubt they'll ever get any decent user bases. Tox is peer to peer and encrypted, but its UX will probably drive away anyone who wants the ease of use of Signal or WhatsApp. I think Matrix experimented with the concept of running a serv…
> Matrix experimented with the concept of running a server on-device
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#236Which bill are they talking about? Chat control?
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#237[flagged]
That's a huge challenge isn't it? Unless you do it like in El Salvador.
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is only somewhat true for the software most popular with technical users - the sort of thing the average Hacker News reader might be familiar with. There is a long tail of malware in app stores, despite the efforts of app vendors to police such things. Nobody would be bothering to fork them because most technical users don't care about them, but they still attract lots of victims. Example: malicious Chrome exten…
Yes, malware does exist in app stores. I don't really see how that's related to Free Software though? When I say user-hostile features I'm not talking about malware. Yes, I suppose theoretically you could fork a Free Software malware app and make it not-malware, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about things like Samsung putting ads on your TV home screen[1], or BMW charging a monthly subscripti…
If malware isn’t user-hostile, I don’t know what is? It works both ways. A fork can fix something that’s user-hostile, but it can also introduce malware into an otherwise useful app that didn’t already have it, and many users won’t know which one to install. There’s no guarantee that any security researcher is watching. In practice we rely largely on reputation, and sometimes that’s the blind leading the blind.
Users don’t get final say in what their devices do unless a software developer is willing and able to help them. Most are actually pretty helpless on their own.
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#239[flagged]
> If the purpose is to stop the gang violence, why not remove the gangs from the country?
Because the stated purpose is only the sales pitch. The full list of uses will never be stated publicly, unless someone like Snowden leaks it at great personal peril.
Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
#240What is the state of peer to peer messengers with E2EE? Over ten years ago, Bittorrent Inc. (now Rainberry and Resilio) made a serverless chat client (Bleep IIRC). But I don't think there is anything new that is also user-friendly? (Drop-in replacement of WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, etc.)
Session, SimpleX, Jami, Briar are a few.