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EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

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Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#311

Post by dane-pgp »

iso947 wrote: post #294
tom_mellior wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to provide more intricate detail about what you mean.

They push a button on a screen, which is publicly recorded as a vote for, against, abstain or not present. Nowhere near superior systems like the U.K. where members leave te room, spend a couple of hours queuing to go into one of two rooms, and then see the result later in the day.

I assume you are being sarcastic and actually think that the UK's "analogue" system of voting is worse because it is slower. Let me assure you that making Westminster votes quicker is not the metric we should be optimising for.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/26/jfc-fml-jfc.html

> But actually, a group of Swedish MEPs have revealed that they pressed the wrong button, and have asked to have the record corrected. They have issued a statement saying they'd intended to open a debate on amendments to the Directive so they could help vote down Articles 11 and 13.

> We lost on a technicality, and there is no recourse.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#312

Post by scrollaway »

withinboredom wrote: post #273
scrollaway wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, non-techies do not "understand what encryption is". They'll understand if you explain it to them, but if you ask someone off the street what encryption is, the closest to a correct description they may give you is "it's garbled text you can decrypt". It's hard enough to explain the easy, obvious stuff like tax brackets. You think people have a native understanding of encryption ?

> You think people have a native understanding of encryption? It’s easy. Tell people they’re speaking English to one other person who also speaks English at a dinner table. No one else in the world speaks English. You can look and sound like you’re talking about how excellent the food is, but really you’re saying how terrible it is... and no one on earth will ever know, other than the one person who understands you.

This is not a good way to explain encryption to people. Explaining the concept of a "key" is essential to explain why this doesn't work.

- In your example, the contents can be deduced from the "encrypted" data, without the key. Indeed, there is no key, but rather a complex dictionary transformation.

- A "backdoor" is merely teaching GCHQ to speak English. Sounds perfectly reasonable in your example.

I'd argue the exact problem is that politicians have the particular understanding of encryption that you just gave.

You need to communicate two things:

1) Why backdooring safe encryption irreversibly breaks it for everybody

2) Why that's a bad thing

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#313

Post by ab-dm »

Nasrudith wrote: post #295
modzu wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly; the terror ... stop being afraid and we avoid the collective need to sell our souls and those of our children for the protection of the state

Yeah - it is goddamn tiring can't the professional emotional manipulators that call themselves politicians play on any other emotion than fear to get elected?

They do, but they don't get elected.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#314

Post by Daniel_sk »

dang wrote: post #293
sixhobbits wrote: post #219

My german isn't that good, but from what I understand and from the translation below, the source seems a bit conspiratorial. I completely agree with the concerns raised elsewhere in this thread, but I'm not sure I see the clear link to recent events in Vienna etc claimed here. Here[0] is an earlier document from 21 october which the article seems to take some screenshots from, so it seems that this has been coming ei…

Thanks—we've changed the URL from https://fm4.orf.at/stories/3008930/ . Submissions to HN need to be in English—we have great respect for other languages, including German, but HN is an English language site. Happily in this case, following the site guideline that calls for original sources solves this problem as well. (I've taken the title from the new URL, btw, which uses the rather strong preposition "against"—I s…

The German article is more on point and it goes into more details about the background and also the probable solution with "Exceptional Access" architecture. The official EU draft documents always use a very careful language to not create too much suspicion. Only one or two sentences actually tell the truth: "Possible solutions may need the support of service providers in a transparent and lawful manner, as well as improving the technical and tactical skills which the law enforcement and judicial authorities need to face the challenges of digitisation at a global scale." I hope some English articles will appear soon.

Exceptional Access document: https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SKM_C4582...

Rev. 1 of the original document, dated November 6: https://files.orf.at/vietnam2/files/fm4/202045/783284_fh_st1...

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#315

Post by dogma1138 »

kenniskrag wrote: post #242
sixhobbits wrote: post #219

My german isn't that good, but from what I understand and from the translation below, the source seems a bit conspiratorial. I completely agree with the concerns raised elsewhere in this thread, but I'm not sure I see the clear link to recent events in Vienna etc claimed here. Here[0] is an earlier document from 21 october which the article seems to take some screenshots from, so it seems that this has been coming ei…

Switzerland is not part of the european union but has to follow some rules to have access to their market. If Whatsapp breaks E2E it will possibly affect multiple countries.

If WhatsApp breaks E2E in Europe every other country will jump on the bandwagon.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#316

Post by wizzwizz4 »

treis wrote: post #235
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments have all sorts of things like machine guns, tanks, and battleships that (rightfully) aren't allowed for the general public. You have listed three things which are all really the same thing. There is no objection to private ownership of motor vehicles or ships. You object to the weaponry. But we can put aside the whole right to bear arms debate in this case because there is an obvious way to distinguish…

Secure communication is not a purely defensive technology. It allows you to safely coordinate an attack.

Being alive allows you to safely coordinate an attack.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#317

Post by BlueTemplar »

scrollaway wrote: post #6
camgunz wrote: post #4

We need to establish the use of encryption as a basic human right. I'm so tired of this cropping up every couple years.

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…

WhatsApp is closed source, isn't it? What kind of assurance do we have that these messages still aren't regularly sent to Facebook, unencrypted ?

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#318

Post by damnencryption »

euthrow439 wrote: post #34

I'm in my early 40s. Up until I was ~35 I was very strongly against this, sort of like most you. Now I feel the EU in general (some member states a lot worse than others) has backed itself into a corner because of the utterly failed integration efforts, union-wide. I live in a EU nation that has seen a very high rise in violent (and sometimes frankly horrible) crime over the past decade. As a dad of a 1-year old daug…

Your daughter is more likely to die from obesity than terrorism or primary cause of someone using encryption.

Can you provide me one reason why we shouldn't ban sugar including all the candies?

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#319

Post by dane-pgp »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #115
Daniel_sk wrote: post #8

I don't have a nice name for people in EU parliament that write these things, they don't really understand what encryption is. It's not a technology. You can't ban encryption. Terrorists can just use unencrypted chat and either use their own encryption or they can use predefined words and sentences that actually have a totally different meaning.

It's not about listening to terrorists (there were many terrorist attacks, where the police was informed about the terrrists in advance, and still didn't do anything). It's about listening to the masses of their own people.

Yes, isn't it strange how governments keep asking us to sacrifice essential liberties for temporary safety, but never turn around after an attack and say "I guess we were wrong, we shouldn't have sacrificed those liberties". Instead the refrain is always "Well, we obviously didn't take enough liberties".

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#320

Post by rkagerer »

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…

Interesting read, though it sounds more like decentralized censorship. It's a little unclear where you're talking about reputation of individuals vs. reputation of content.
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