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EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

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Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#401

Post by intricatedetail »

auganov wrote: post #201
botto wrote: post #86

Ultimately the problem with any idea like this is that encryption is as basic as mathematics and trying to ban it will only harm everyday people and the dumb criminal. The criminals that want to stay hidden will continue to do so because you will always find open source projects that provides encryption.

It wouldn't be an encryption ban, but a ban on operating a platform that enables E2EE messaging. Similarly in most places you already cannot be an ISP or VPN provider without following some reporting requirements. And there's no simple way for criminals to get mainstream quality networking services that don't follow regulations. I don't agree with the ban, but I do think it would certainly hurt many classes criminals…

You cannot ban it unless you start deep inspection of people conversations. You can easily sneak public keys disguised as regular conversation and then encrypt messages offline and disguise as well.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#402

Post by go13 »

some non-obvious negative effects of banning end-to-end encryption:

1. an individual loses his power against large corporations, most importantly, GOVERNMENTS. Large structures become corrupt over time and occasionally need to be demolished partially or fully because they stop serving their purpose but start serving their self-interest. Only an individual, not groups, as ultimate indivisible units is the last resort for all values that any civilisation is built on: starting from justice, democracy etc. Thus, e-2-e encryption empowers individuals (putting aside criminals that cane be considered as a necessary evil) that doesn't make groups in power happy. So, by shifting the power from individuals to groups, the first loose an ability to use their intrinsic, built by billions of years of evolution, judgements what is good and what is now, to keep the system in check and press a red button when needed to destroy a government (like Nazi) that went out of control or a corporation.

2. Introducing these kind of anti-individualistic laws creates a bad example for already corrupted and authoritarian countries lie Russia, China and others, that would use this as an justifications to toughen already draconian laws to control their citizens. Once they do loose a good example of freedom that is meant to exist in western countries, they would become corrupted even more, causing not only troubles, but potentially military confrontations that would cost way more than those relatively small issues caused by criminals.

Even just this simple example shows that stepping aside from principles for the sake of expedience may create unforeseen consequences that left governments (because all governments in europe are large and trying to become even larger) don't want to realise because of one simple reason: they have already transformed from serving their initial idea and purpose to being self-serving.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#403

Post by notreallytrue »

ben_w wrote: post #387
notreallytrue wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As any other country did something similar to what US did? Can you name one which isn't already bad? Like, I don't know, Spain? Germany? Argentina? South Africa? The greatest democracy and country in the World shouldn't even be in the same business of North Korea style And yet...

There’s plenty of stuff America does wrong, present tense and past, without needing to make hyperbolic comparisons to NK.

It's not hyperbolic

How many countries NK invaded?

How many coup d'état that established long and painful military dictatorships around the World it supported and/or financed?

At least nobody calls NK the greatest democracy and country in the world or the land of the free...

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#404

Post by intricatedetail »

jug wrote: post #130

How is this going to be enforced? The easy thing to do is to ban chat apps offering encryption. But the consequences are much greater. For example, do they need to ban Tor or I2P as well, even SSH? Unencrypted applications will gain encryption and sometimes even anonymization if encapsulated within these. What about abusing legal services using encryption for chat like purposes? All they need to do is to offer collab…

I imagine that human language will evolve to facilitate key exchange and encryption as you speak

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#405

Post by MauranKilom »

EGreg wrote: post #350

I have given this stuff a lot of thought. I have spent $1M and years to build a company that builds decentralized social networks ( https://qbix.com/platform ) and now a company that uses crypto to secure payments and elections ( https://community.intercoin.org ) So I have spent a long time thinking about, and spoken to a lot of prominent people about, encryption and I have come to a seemingly contrarian type conclus…

I am very interested in having you expand some of these points, because they're not clear to me yet.

> I no longer think that end-to-end encryption is the right solution to human rights problems

I agree with this sentiment. But I don't understand why you consider it significant. Of course, secrecy is (and always has been) a way to lessen the impact of human rights problems. But where was it suggested that it would solve human rights problems?

> But let’s see if there are any uses of encryption — as opposed to signing and securing data - that are truly indispensable to society and are the right and best solution to solve the problem.

I may be missing the point, but if I want to send a private electronic communication to someone (be it an email containing corporate secrets, a chat message discussing a sensitive topic, or a copy of my bank statements)... What do you propose instead of encrypting the communication channel?

> checks and balances among the most powerful entities in the system [...] make sure it’s super hard to maintain a collusion for long

Isn't a collusion exactly the way to break these rules founded on checks and balances?

> you need to focus on architecting the governmen’t technology to be more benign in its rules

This sounds great in principle. But - while I haven't exactly looked - I'm unaware of any government that's looking to be re-architected, or a concrete proposal for how that would look like. Can you point me to an example of at least the latter?

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#406

Post by EGreg »

MauranKilom wrote: post #405
EGreg wrote: post #350

I have given this stuff a lot of thought. I have spent $1M and years to build a company that builds decentralized social networks ( https://qbix.com/platform ) and now a company that uses crypto to secure payments and elections ( https://community.intercoin.org ) So I have spent a long time thinking about, and spoken to a lot of prominent people about, encryption and I have come to a seemingly contrarian type conclus…

I am very interested in having you expand some of these points, because they're not clear to me yet. > I no longer think that end-to-end encryption is the right solution to human rights problems I agree with this sentiment. But I don't understand why you consider it significant. Of course, secrecy is (and always has been) a way to lessen the impact of human rights problems. But where was it suggested that it would so…

I just made a post about this very thing. Can we continue the conversation there?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25030085

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#407

Post by intricatedetail »

ben_w wrote: post #283
intricatedetail wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The governments of each country in the EU, elected democratically, are the people who choose the specific law-writers (council of ministers) who you are critical of for proposing this law in this story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Organs_of_the_European_Un... To the extent that conspiracies of “deep state” or “lobbyist” are involved, the only reason the EU is different to the member states themselves is that i…

And in this case lawyers role is to implement what EC proposed and MEPs voted in. Elected governments are like management of McDonalds franchise. People can choose chair layout or where napkins are located.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#408

Post by intricatedetail »

alkonaut wrote: post #233
intricatedetail wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how average Brit had more power?

Because they still had exactly the same power in their own government, and a sizable chunk of power in the European one. Now they'll follow a huge part of European regulations to be able to trade, but have no seat at the table.

Government had to implement whatever EC proposed and MEPs voted in. Now they don't have to.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#409

Post by CivBase »

They keep saying "encryption is important" and "law enforcement needs to be able to access relevant data" without ever elaborating why encryption is important, why law enforcement needs access to the data, or even what data law enforcement needs access to. It's just a collection of assertions without any of the insight necessary to have a useful conversation on the subject.

They also completely fail to address the elephant in the room: bad actors already have access to strong encryption and they don't need the blessings of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, or any organization to use it. Encryption is an idea, not a product. They cannot prevent terrorists from using strong encryption any more than they can prevent terrorists from using algebra.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#410

Post by intricatedetail »

m4rtink wrote: post #269
intricatedetail wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not exist because there is no public awareness. One of the parties could start looking into it and make noise. But if it won't catch up with the public it won't happen, however without EU at least we have a chance.

The Czech pirat party is dping rather well on both local and european level - it meeds a lot of work, but it can be done!

It's much less work to convince one country than dozens.
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