EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

Post by Daniel_sk » Sun, Nov 08, 2020, 10:30 PM UTC

waskeifnikakew wrote: post #274

Daniel_sk wrote: post #243

I want to also give some perspective why this is bad even IF we can make sure that only governments will have the keys. We have just uncovered an organized crime at the top levels in Slovakia where even the President of police is part of it and they influenced many court cases and were accessing secret information and databases on citizens, basically a mafia. And we are part of EU. I don't trust our goverment to use…

I also don't trust my goverment to use the keys only for good purpose, recently in Spain a commissar was paying girls to have sexual contact with influential people to get information about politiceans.

Post by ben_w » Sun, Nov 08, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

intricatedetail wrote: post #224

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation in most countries does not come from elected officials, it typically is drafted up by lawyers. That's not a good argument. With the commission a lot of what ends up on the proposals is lobbied by citizens and it's the MEP that vote on it before becoming law who are elected. I vote liberal parties in my country and that has done jack shit to prevent shitty laws to be passed because the majority seems to be…

The difference is that you can vote for people who choose lawyers and they can influence what lawyers write. You dont have this much control in the EU.

Post by feanaro » Sun, Nov 08, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #21

scrollaway wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First step is finding a way to educate the mainstream (including politicians) on the dangers of master keys and backdoors. It is too easy for many politicians and security agencies to think that their master keys and backdoors won't ever fall into the wrong hands, that they're careful, etc. And if you point out the problem, they'll tell you they'll be even more careful. Think about it from a non-techie perspective. I…

E2E encryption is scary. I'm also in the "you can't ban math, why try" camp. But I can't see authorities/politicians give up the idea of getting access to decrypted communications after court orders, in a 100 years, even if everyone completely understood the topic. It's just not happening.

Post by josho » Sun, Nov 08, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

part1of2 wrote: post #212

Arathorn wrote: post #43

https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix... is our attempt at Matrix to spell out what a catastrophic idea it is to backdoor end-to-end encryption (and to provide an alternative proposal in the form of using decentralised reputation to mitigate abuse. We're kicking decentralised reputation work off in earnest tomorrow, so watch this space to see how it goes). I guess we'll be weighing in on the EU…

What about proposing encryption as an EU human right? Has that been attempted?

Post by ben_w » Sun, Nov 08, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #143

ben_w wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that regard, is any large organisation different? I tried to convince the UK government this was a terrible idea when the Investigatory Powers Act was going through. I failed to make any difference at all to any part of it, but I did learn about Select Committees while trying to find out which MP I had to try to convince given my local MP was a powerless newbie.

With the UK, I've found (as a foreigner with voting rights previously) that it's best to build your relationship with a seniorish MP, and if that doesn't work, cough up to donate around 8-10k to the parties every year (for much more senior access). You'll pop a few eyeballs in Labour with such a donation, while the Conservatives have their own special interest groups for donors (although these usually end up as mass…