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France rejects backdoor mandate

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Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#31

Post by whatshisface »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #27
aucisson_masque wrote: post #26

The backdoor mandate was part of an anti organized criminality law, Bruno Retailleau (interior minister) pretend criminals use encrypted chat to communicate and so backdoor is required to intercept their communications. makes sense to the average non tech people. The sad truth however is that it wouldn't even solve the issue, criminals will always be able to use encrypted communications: there are open source softwar…

Wouldn't law enforcement just use Pegasus style zero-days to spy on the their targets? So why all the hubbub about making backdoors that become vulnerabilities for nefarious users too? Like why bother convicting Signal to create a backdoor for you, when you can put your nations geniuses to find some RCE bugs in Qualcomm or Apple modems or SoCs, and spy on them that way? This way nobody's the wiser.

Governments around the world do not want to stop at the identifiable target. They'd like to imitate the US and China, obtaining special deals with service providers that allow them to collect summary statistics and identify individuals computationally from the total of all communication.

Here are a few uses for total surveillance:

1. Public opinion can be monitored on a much more objective level than polling provides.

2. Discontent can be identified long before potential protestors are aware of others who share their views.

3. People whose views are significantly outside the usual range can be picked out and targeted in advance of any crime, even when no crime would occur.

4. Serious attempts at labor or protest organization can be resolved into definite schedules with more basis for comparison to other events than the participants themselves have access to.

5. There would be no more electoral surprises.

From this list, you may notice that states that are presently democratic have even more of a use for this capability than the others.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#33

Post by buybackoff »

nickslaughter02 wrote: post #32

France has rejected this backdoor but keep in mind that France is still in favor of chat control (mandatory on device scanning of your communication). There's now a majority among EU countries and the proposal is expected to pass. The next meeting is April 8th.

I hoped that was a part of this EU debate. It's sad if not.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#34

Post by mytailorisrich »

buybackoff wrote: post #29
mytailorisrich wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is in decay with incompetent and unpatriotic governments for decades. It is facing many issues but has lacked strong leadership courageous enough to put country first. So, in fact, it is a fairly typical European country... The spread of "narcotrafic" is an example of that, there are others. If you follow French news you'll see many.

I live in France for the last 5 years. Been to many places in the world. France is OK overall.

Well I am French. "OK overall" is obviously good but at global scale this means better than the "third world", so context is important.

The context of my previous reply is France's "direction of travel", which negative like most other European countries. This is a key metric on any meaningful timescale, which is what ultimately matters.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#35

Post by WJW »

miohtama wrote: post #5
palata wrote: post #3

Just like for other big challenges like biodiversity and climate change, it feels like it often boils down to the politicians just not understanding enough to take rational decisions. Of course they can't all have a PhD in cryptography, but they should also not have no clue at all. Over an over again, politicians are asking for backdoors. To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryptio…

But think of the children

The children are not benefited by Putin and Kim Jong-Un being able to read their messages.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#36

Post by hansvm »

buybackoff wrote: post #12

I've found the original debates video on the National Assembly website. My French is good enough for that (not enough for cooking et al. though), so I believe I understood. I'm positively surprised by some deputies remarks. But Bruno (interior minister) Retailleau is either totally incompetent technically, with his advisors as well, or is a liar. "We will apply the math selectively, only for those that are a threat a…

Totally unrelated, but since you brought it up a bit, I find recipes written in French to usually be much higher quality than similar recipes I find in English -- enough so that I'll alter my country and language for search engines when searching for recipes, and for ChatGPT I'll ask the question French.

Modern translation products aren't too terrible to cook from. Especially if you know some French already, I think you'd get good results dropping your recipes into an online translator and trying to make the most of it.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#37

Post by bdelmas »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #27
aucisson_masque wrote: post #26

The backdoor mandate was part of an anti organized criminality law, Bruno Retailleau (interior minister) pretend criminals use encrypted chat to communicate and so backdoor is required to intercept their communications. makes sense to the average non tech people. The sad truth however is that it wouldn't even solve the issue, criminals will always be able to use encrypted communications: there are open source softwar…

Wouldn't law enforcement just use Pegasus style zero-days to spy on the their targets? So why all the hubbub about making backdoors that become vulnerabilities for nefarious users too? Like why bother convicting Signal to create a backdoor for you, when you can put your nations geniuses to find some RCE bugs in Qualcomm or Apple modems or SoCs, and spy on them that way? This way nobody's the wiser.

I feel like they would reserve this type of hack to international criminal organizations (plus terrorists and bad countries) but not for smaller fish.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#38

Post by whatshisface »

bdelmas wrote: post #37
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't law enforcement just use Pegasus style zero-days to spy on the their targets? So why all the hubbub about making backdoors that become vulnerabilities for nefarious users too? Like why bother convicting Signal to create a backdoor for you, when you can put your nations geniuses to find some RCE bugs in Qualcomm or Apple modems or SoCs, and spy on them that way? This way nobody's the wiser.

I feel like they would reserve this type of hack to international criminal organizations (plus terrorists and bad countries) but not for smaller fish.

The smaller fish, as you say, could just talk in person like they used to.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#39

Post by dataflow »

whatshisface wrote: post #20
dataflow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they should also not have no clue at all. Over an over again, politicians are asking for backdoors. To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryption works. Unless you're claiming that it's literally impossible to construct a cipher with multiple decryption keys, I don't see how you're implying that asking for a backdoor "proves they don't understand the very basics of how encryption…

It is impossible to construct a cypher with just one key, such that the good guys (spanning several allied nations, dozens of government agencies, perhaps even local police) can use the key, but bad guys (spanning several opposing nations, dozens of intelligence agencies, thousands of hacker groups, tens of thousands of individual cyber-criminals around the world) cannot. We are talking about every single person who…

You're missing my point completely.

These folks very well understand that bad people can steal keys. Stolen keys have been a thing since antiquity. It's not rocket science they don't understand. Every single key in history has had a risk of theft and this is no exception.

The truth is a lot of them understand this just like you. But unlike you, they are willing to accept this risk. You aren't. That's fine. You have a value disagreement -- you don't think the risk is worth it, and they think it is. Which is why you make arguments about the merits of the issue, instead of attacking the other side on their basic literacy. Just because you disagree on values that doesn't mean the other side is stupid or illiterate about the basics.

This isn't about politeness either, it's actively counterproductive to your own cause: insulting people and showing that you lack a basic understanding of their position is a sure-fire way to make sure they dig their heels in and continue to oppose you regardless of the merits of the situation. i.e. it's a grest strategy for losing in the end.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#40

Post by whatshisface »

jbm wrote: post #30
aucisson_masque wrote: post #26

The backdoor mandate was part of an anti organized criminality law, Bruno Retailleau (interior minister) pretend criminals use encrypted chat to communicate and so backdoor is required to intercept their communications. makes sense to the average non tech people. The sad truth however is that it wouldn't even solve the issue, criminals will always be able to use encrypted communications: there are open source softwar…

While I generally agree with your position, this is the same unconvincing argument I've read for a long time. Even if there is a specific criminal gang that is sophisticated enough to use a properly encoded open source application, the majority aren't, and there is enough of a overhead and annoyance factor that will allow the majority not to use them. If any open source application gets enough people using it, there…

Then the criminals will just talk in person about all the information they downloaded about us. ;-)
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