There is of course also the fact that the EU is not a sovereign state, legitimate government, or any kind of legitimate government at all, not to mention that is it an abrogation and disassembly of democratic principles of self-determination, and inherently foreign and even hostile to all its members, the most dominant of which jockeying over control of all of Europe through the EU.
Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#32This article is fundamentally false - we addressed it on https://element.io/blog/addressing-fear-uncertainty-and-doub... dang: is HN really the place for competitive marketing crap like this?
> Finally, anyone paying attention knows that the UK government’s Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) impacts all vendors globally which service individuals in the UK. Something that’s obvious given the high profile TCN that the UK served Apple: the fact that Element and the Matrix.org Foundation are UK-based is irrelevant. Is it irrelevant? A vendor that isn't based in the UK could just rightfully tell the UK government…
Ok let's say you're a UK vendor and you developed and published an adding algorithm for 2+2 that returns the correct result: 4
How does that publicised adding algorithm get corrupted, if the UK government decides they want that 2+2=5?
The answer is that matrix being based in the UK isn't ideal, but since they published the whole protocol, it can't just be made unsafe on request without people noticing. If the math maths it still maths when the government doesn't want it to math.
What could happen is that the UK could force specific servers of the UK based entity to surveil targets etc. But you don't have to use their servers (in fact, their goal is probably that you run your own).
As someone who would be in the position to decide for or against matrix/wire usage in my org, I have to say this kind of pratise didn't particularily strengthen my trust in wire.
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you're a EU company or a EU government it makes a difference if your supplier is subject to EU surveillance laws or UK surveillance laws. As far as I can tell it comes down to: - are you afraid of foreign espionage vs. - are you afraid of your own government
Wire is located in Switzerland. Outside the EU.
This cope is officially dead now, not even Proton is believing Switzerland anymore. The pressure has gotten enough that they had to freeze all Swiss investment and start the process of moving key infrastructure to another country (I don't remember which, but it's the one Mullvad is at).
Truth is, Euros don't care about privacy. The endgame will probably be to host this stuff in the third world or something, like pirates do
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wire is located in Switzerland. Outside the EU.
Technically yes but Switzerland does subscribe to most EU legislation in order to join the internal market. They're a lot more "EU" than the UK is now.
... You're suggesting Switzerland is subject to EU surveillance laws? Instead of the ones they put in planning in January?
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#35I don't know if Matrix is "safe" or not, but I usually avoid companies that attack companies like this. Not a good look in my view.
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wire is located in Switzerland. Outside the EU.
This cope is officially dead now, not even Proton is believing Switzerland anymore. The pressure has gotten enough that they had to freeze all Swiss investment and start the process of moving key infrastructure to another country (I don't remember which, but it's the one Mullvad is at). Truth is, Euros don't care about privacy. The endgame will probably be to host this stuff in the third world or something, like pira…
It's not "cope".
Switzerland created a new set of surveillance laws in January, that far exceed anything inside the EU. Which means that EU laws are irrelevant, when talking about a company inside Switzerland - you should be talking about what they actually use!
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#37I am a Wire user. I am not happy that, if their server goes down, all the text and images that I shared with other users will become unavailable to me. As a special case, I am not able to look at my own old messages while using my laptop on the airplane, as the Linux client is just a webview. On the phone, it works.
Backups half-way solve the issue with text messages - I would still need to contact someone with sufficient development skills to decrypt the backup and extract the text in a readable form, but the information is there.
But with images, there is no recovery. And they apparently already lost some of my photos (the placeholder for some of them never gets replaced with the actual photo when I scroll up to year 2023).
Add to that the incompatible backup formats between the desktop and mobile apps.
So this is definitely not the claimed data sovereignty.
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#38I don't know that running a smear campaign against an open protocol to hock your paid alternative makes me trust you with my data, personally.
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#39wire is centralized unlike matrix so any "they have to follow the law of the country they are based/hosted in" critique is a self own.
wire continues to be a clown show.
Re: Matrix Is Not Safe for EU Data Privacy?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Finally, anyone paying attention knows that the UK government’s Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) impacts all vendors globally which service individuals in the UK. Something that’s obvious given the high profile TCN that the UK served Apple: the fact that Element and the Matrix.org Foundation are UK-based is irrelevant. Is it irrelevant? A vendor that isn't based in the UK could just rightfully tell the UK government…
Ok let's say you're a UK vendor and you developed and published an adding algorithm for 2+2 that returns the correct result: 4 How does that publicised adding algorithm get corrupted, if the UK government decides they want that 2+2=5? The answer is that matrix being based in the UK isn't ideal, but since they published the whole protocol, it can't just be made unsafe on request without people noticing. If the math ma…
> it can't just be made unsafe on request without people noticing
A likely outcome is that they make it unsafe and people do notice.