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France rejects backdoor mandate

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Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#301

Post by alphager »

tw04 wrote: post #241
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…

> given that the US have become hostile to Europe That’s more than a bit of an overstatement. One faction in the US government has started being less loyal to Europe. Most Americans consider Europe to still be our closest allies and friends. Furthermore the US businesses are not stupid and have shown they will stand up to government pressure around data sovereignty. Anything less will drive both US and global custome…

Your government has threatened military invasion of Denmark.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#302

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> To me it just proves that they don't understand the very basic of how encryption works.

No?

You can have encryption with “secure” backdoors. (In the sense that only an entity with the backdoor key could use it.)

For example, let’s say you were going to symmetrically encrypt some data with a certain private key.

You can add the key to the data, asymmetrically encrypted with the public backdoor key.

(You can improve on this with a salt to retain public anonymity.)

As a theoretical matter, cryptography can do this. As a practical matter…that’s a separate question of human structures and behaviors. But you don’t need cryptography to understand that.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#303

Post by palata »

agent327 wrote: post #164
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…

The US have not become hostile. So far it has made two demands of Europe, and both of them are reasonable: 1. Europe should not rely entirely on the US for its defense (stated by Trump numerous times). 2. Europe should stop its mad self-destruction and descent into totalitarianism (stated by Vance on several occasions). Were they incorrect? Were they unreasonable? Sometimes you need a friend to tell you a harsh truth…

> Europe should stop its mad self-destruction and descent into totalitarianism (stated by Vance on several occasions).

If your source is Vance, I would suggest you question it.

Most of the world is currently looking and worrying at the US becoming an oligarchy. Who is talking about "Europe descending into totalitarianism"? The sentence does not even make much sense, as Europe is not a country. I'm not even sure if Vance is aware of it.

When you genuinely think that everybody else is wrong and you are right, maybe it's time to take a step back.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#304

Post by palata »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #155
raincole wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What politicians want (and what they think average people want) is very different from what HN users want. Politicians: a backdoor that can be used by the police for investigating crimes, but not by criminals themselves. HN users: no backdoor at all, especially not a backdoor that can be used by the police.

also politicians want a backdoor especially for tracking treason / spying possibilities, which in a way comes under police investigating crimes but is more national security apparatus protecting the state.

Which makes no sense, because if you have a backdoor, it opens the way for adversaries to access your data. You don't improve your national security by weakening its encryption.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#305

Post by palata »

dataflow wrote: post #15
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…

> 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…

I upvoted because I don't think you should be censored, but I kindly disagree :-).

To me (and I think that's the position of cryptography-aware people), requesting a backdoor is a risk so high that it makes absolutely no sense.

Of course, they understand that if an adversary gets access to the backdoor, then it's game over. And of course, they believe that it's possible to prevent the adversary from accessing the backdoor. But that's my whole point: their believing this means that they don't understand the problem.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#306

Post by roenxi »

palata wrote: post #291
roenxi wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments aren't exactly happy that for digital assets there's ready made mass-market systems where the response to any search warrant will be to pound sand. Which is to say they understand the situation perfectly and are acting with a firm intellectual grasp of what is going on. The issue isn't that they don't understand encryption, it is that they reject citizens having any sort of power to resist the state. Wh…

> it is that they reject citizens having any sort of power to resist the state But by doing that, they make it easier for adversaries to spy on their own citizen, which is a national security issue. That's why it sounds like ignorance to me: I understand that they really want a backdoor just for themselves "because they are the good guys" and "for national security", but they don't understand that if they have a back…

It isn't even that complex an idea, you laid it out in 1 sentence. "If they have a backdoor, then their adversaries will eventually have it, too". They understand that just fine. If anything, you're the one who doesn't understand although I'd not push the point because the rules around political debate are weird and you might be humouring them.

The people in government have a hierarchy of threats. Social challenges from within their own nation always higher than those from foreign countries. Most politicians are perfectly happy to sacrifice national security to be able to see what their citizens are saying, they just won't articulate it in plain language because it sounds bad.

We can tell this because they're signing off on narratives around being "the good guys". Anyone pushing that sort of narrative spin isn't a good guy. That isn't how law enforcement works in practice and anyone in high political power knows it if they have even a shred of intellectual honesty; they've seen how the sausage is made and are well aware that the real world is all various shades of what happens when a family breaks down and siblings start fighting with each other.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#307

Post by neycoda »

Backdoors are too much of a security risk for the people. The solution is to provide the data upon a search warrant from a judge who determines a reason for suspicion of a crime. That's it. The government pushing for more than that is becoming a new security problem.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#308

Post by neycoda »

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…

The adversary is often the person wanting the backdoor.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#309

Post by jmull3n »

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 suspect Five Eyes already has backdoors into Apple and Google and can remotely push compromised updates to specific targeted devices. How do you know the version of Signal you get from the App Store is the same as everyone else? Australia can compel engineers to implement backdoors, they can't refuse or even talk about it due to gag orders. They can then share that info with Five Eyes to bypass their own laws like they did with ANOM. Australia ran the operation specifically to bypass stronger privacy laws in the other countries. The Snowden leaks with PRISM, showing governments getting data straight from Apple and Google servers. Australia's latest encryption bill lets them force companies to give access to encrypted comms. Seems pretty plausible to me.

Re: France rejects backdoor mandate

#310

Post by throwaway290 »

orbital-decay wrote: post #279
throwaway290 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you quoted is reality. People who care are in those two categories with rare exceptions. If you are actually russian like me you'd know that 95% of people are in two of the above groups I described. Literally everybody you ask either voted for Putin or did not vote (if we pretend elections were real) And you I guess have no objection to my main point. e2ee helps crime as much as good guys, maybe more because it…

TSPU is just the consequence of a failed attempt to bring it under control, which happened much much earlier (no point in getting into detail here). And yes you're right, I actually have no objections to proportional response and keeping trust where it's possible, you can't get things done without it. Just keep in mind that "it cannot happen here" attitude is dangerous and you're always one step from what you've thou…

Sure. But also remember there is also a balance between hostile distrust for all things government does and getting things done. They cannot happen at the same time.

And remember authoritative governments don't care about trust and they get things done while west is squabbling.

To say gov does it to spy is not constructive. What can you do? If they are against you you lose, they hold all the power. This reminds me of attitude of most people in Russia. But to say government does it because it doesn't know is constructive. Because it (and the public) can be educated. There are democratic processes for this.

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