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BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

element.io

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Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#261

Post by oaiey »

moooo99 wrote: post #65

German officials have had a whole lot of groundbreaking visions for as long as I can remember. The visions were never the issue but the delivery. I remember Peter Altmaier claiming in 2017 that in 2021 any government service will be accessible online lmoa. To this day I regularly have to print out PDFs and send them via registered snail mail or fax (yes, I actually have a fax)

In the 2000/2001 the defense minister (Rudi something) wanted to have a direct communication channel to all officers of the army. They contracted the Telekom (aka T-Mobile). The result was a parallel modem line network with extra PCs next to the well established communication network of the army. It was called Rudiphone and a the most stupid project ever.

So yes, visions where always there but the implementation was indeed always a story

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#262

Post by oaiey »

jasonzemos wrote: post #223

Where can I find information about how the German government came to this decision? Does this involve contracts to outside companies for development and consulting or will that all be done by the government? If the former, when and where did the bidding process take place? What alternatives were considered? I don't speak German, so I need some help understanding this. Precise links would be appreciated.

What angle is in your question? Matrix is the best choice i could imagine. And the lobbyists of Google, Microsoft and Apple surely had better funding than anyone touching matrix.

If your ask whether a consulting agency earned something between 10 and 100 million on that decision you are most likely right. But I guess overall it was probably the CCC influence on the politics and the population. The club and their members are much more influential than you would expect.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#263

Post by oaiey »

jupp0r wrote: post #163

Using open protocols and open source solutions: great idea. Letting some random company operate your army's IT infrastructure: what could possibly go wrong?

The article is pretty explicit in that BWI are not running but packaging a reference software.

And aside how do you think that anywhere in the world software for the army is created. It is called military industrial complex for a reason.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#264

Post by oaiey »

nforgerit wrote: post #250
LAC-Tech wrote: post #205

Did the German language ever have a 'proper' German word for messenger? I seem to recall a computer message was a "nachricht", but I have forgotten so much...

Bundesnachrichtendienst unfortunately was already taken by some weird guys

Awesome.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#265

Post by oaiey »

wongarsu wrote: post #47
jonas-w wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently the best way is via fax or post

*most convenient. The best option is obviously coming in person, with a ring binder containing all relevant documents as well as written records of all previous communication

And not to forget: in German :)

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#266

Post by inglor_cz »

est31 wrote: post #87
mr_mitm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germans have diffuse fears of new technology. Many of us are skeptical whenever it comes to new gadgets, especially if the risk of being tracked or spied on plays a role. Eventually most people level out and get it anyway, like the cell phone, the smart phone, credit cards, Google/Apple pay, etc. Not sure if our history has something to do with it so that many feel uneasy about giving away too much control about our…

> Not sure if our history has something to do with it so that many feel uneasy about giving away too much control about our personal data, but maybe it does. Germany has seen two dictatorships in the last century. The first one was more brutal, but the second one maintained a gigantic spying apparatus on its citizens, that took a large fraction of the state's budget.

Germany is not unique in this regard. The entire central Europe shared the same fate.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#267

Post by inglor_cz »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #189
stevehawk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impact is not likely to be positive. Nearly every government in Europe will want access to the comms happening, particularly if it's within their borders or with their citizens. Europe is not likely to introduce an end-user-to-end-user encryption. It will be encrypted from end user to the government to the next end user.

The EU's DMA regulation, which is the one that will enforce interoperability, explicitly requires end-to-end encryption to be preserved.

At the same time, EU tries to introduce Chat Control, which would emasculate E2E by exfiltrating the content of the conversation anyway.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#268

Post by EMIRELADERO »

inglor_cz wrote: post #267
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU's DMA regulation, which is the one that will enforce interoperability, explicitly requires end-to-end encryption to be preserved.

At the same time, EU tries to introduce Chat Control, which would emasculate E2E by exfiltrating the content of the conversation anyway.

It is helpful to avoid thinking of any legislative body as a monolith.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#269

Post by farhaven »

hrdwdmrbl wrote: post #111

Is this more of a teams app (Slack, Teams) or more of a chat app (Whatsapp, Signal, Messenger)?

Element feels a lot like Slack/Teams/Discord. It has a few distinct features (federation and such), and a few are, as far as I'm aware, missing or "different enough" such as Slack's whole "We'll replace Email, why don't you write your longer documents in here as well"-thing.

Re: BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration

#270

Post by GekkePrutser »

GTP wrote: post #168
foepys wrote: post #38

Germany was quite advanced when it came to technology but then the drive to make more of it somehow stopped. It has always been incredibly sad to me that the German ID card (Personalausweis) has an RFID chip inside with trust zones, certificates, authorization features, and much more and just never had been used. Like at all except for getting cigarettes at vending machines. 12 years after the first RFID Personalausw…

In The Netherlands, they are implementing a thing which gives the same advantages (i.e. disclose some attributes about yourself without disclosing unneeded data), but uses different technologies. It's called IRMA, you can find an overview here [1]. It can be combined with other applications to do cool stuff, e.g. with PostGuard [2] you can use identity-based encryption to be able to send an encrypted email to someone…

I'm from the Netherlands but I don't like IRMA. I respect what they're trying to do but they're lowering the barrier.

Right now most platforms don't do ID validation because users hate sharing their details. By making it more privacy-safe more platforms will do it because the barrier is lower. I really hate that, I think the internet should remain anonymous. So I can pick whatever nick and even have multiple.

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