The EU, the US, and the UK are now campaigning against encryption. Have we lost this war?
EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
521–530 of 780 posts
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
Western Europe is still incredibly safe, and in my quick overview safer than eastern Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... My home country is Norway, it looks safer than all of Eastern Europe, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
Huh? I'm seeing a 0.5 murders per 100K in Norway which is exceptionally safe no doubt but meanwhile Poland has 0.7 murders per 100K. Bulgaria is 1.3, Czech 0.6...the two most dangerous are Ukraine and Russia. Belgium's 1.7, France is 1.2, Germany 0.95... Real mix it seems. But no, it's not safer by an order of magnitude for all of it, mainly just Ukraine and Russia.
The tragic thing is that those Western countries likely used to be on the same or even better level a few decades ago as Scandinavia and Central Europe today, but they are no more.
By the way, I wouldn't necessarily mention South-Eastern Europe in the same sentence as Central Europe; the Balkans have quite a tradition of being a hotbed of conflict.
And let's not just reduce safety to murders. There is the petty crime too, which I hear is becoming widespread in some problematic areas of big cities in Western Europe. There are social tensions, there are protests with occasional deaths and property damage, there is the radicalization of politics which may lead to all sorts of "interesting" things down the line. There is the "reasonable" restrictions on freedom of speech to counter the former, and yeah, it seems we are now talking about restricting privacy in the name of war on terror, which guarantees further increase in tensions and may enable a slide into totalitarianism in the future.
Remember that when Stalin started, he didn't intend to kill millions of people for fun, he just wanted social justice. The terror "happened" along the way.
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unwanted consequence of the US second amendment is that the US has one of the highest gun death rates in the developed world.
The U.S. certainly has a problem with gun violence, but I fear gun access is the proximal problem while our cultural relationship with violence and revenge is the root of the problem. (See also death penalty support, recent violent protests in Oregon and Washington, etc.) Note that the areas with very high rates of legal gun ownership aren't the hotspots of gun violence [0]. Switzerland and several other Eurpean coun…
Personally I believe it’s about individualism vs the collective.
Here in Sweden we’ve seen a horrible development regarding gun violence - easy to chalk up to “immigration” and “soft laws” but in my mind it’s a lot deeper - interesting enough this is at the same time we have a record amount of dollar millionaires in the country.
We used to work as a collective but our economic policies are turning more and more neoliberal and thus individual. This exacerbates the issue of creating a new “class” of citizens already left partly out of the loop of riches.
If we take care of each other in a better way as a collective there’s a chance to turn things around. It’s all about increasing the chance of a good outcome per individual. This is the secret to a lot of the success in northern Europe - if you’re born here chances are great that you’ll get an education and that you live a long and healthy life.
Regarding crime and violence specifically I’ve read a lot about the “group violence intervention” program and a lot of it is about cooperation and taking care of people in a humane way.
Here’s David Kennedy speaking in Sweden where this has been worked successfully:
In short - don’t be to afraid of taxes, and vote in a manner where money can be spent more wisely. Funneling tax money to havens by way of “entrepreneurs” seems less well spent... problem is that when such a system is set it will want to be conserved - looking at the US and it’s kinda dark over here as well.
All I can do is try to mold my children into caring human beings hoping to influence culture that way.
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#524This is madness. Oh, of course, it's much easier to put a wrench into some gears to show that you are actually working at "solving the terrorism problem" than shaving the yaks, but that machine is actually important for other things. We live in a dangerous world. We cannot control everything. I don't mind a slight risk of terrorist attack on myself or my family (caveat lector: I am young), if that means greater freed…
>We live in a dangerous world. No we don't, but that's what the Politicians try to implement in our brains.
We do. Even though the world has become safer and more prosperous it is still dangerous to our health and sanity. That doesn't mean we should avoid all risk.
What you are more talking about is the Politicians overstate the chance of dangers and they do it on the most evocative of topics (ex: terrorism, CP, etc).
A high danger we're in is from the potential for our governments to entrench their own powers and encourage potential future totalitarianism for small benefits here and now.
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
I'm certainly open to changing the URL from what is probably an obscurantist press release to a more accurate and neutral source. But it would need to be in English. Sorry—I realize that's frustrating to anyone who reads both languages, but most HN readers can't. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Wasn't this originally on orf.at? That is the web site of the national Austrian news network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORF_(broadcaster)
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#526I see this as follows: 1. Terrorism and trafficking of children will win the moral high ground. 2. App stores will be forced locale by locale to conform to these policies. 3. Most people will not notice or care. 4. This will be used by N-Eyes and totalitarian governments to quash dissent. 5. Meanwhile the tech crowd will create alternate app distribution mechanisms allowing those who care to communicate securely. 6.…
It all comes down to distribution. We need actual software like https://Matrix.org or https://qbix.com/platform to be good enough that people will install it. Like the Web Browser did killed AOL and MSN. Otherwise we will live with Facebook Google etc. and this is moot. But that is just the beginning. Secondly, we need open source hardware. We are nowhere close to competing with Apple and Android. But as we have seen…
I just don't understand why people go on downvote spree. There are many things here that people can agree on or at least understand.
Many of the common tools (both hardware & software) that common people use are at the hands of few, who can abuse the users themselves or at the request of the Government.
> To be honest ... I no longer think that end-to-end encryption is the right solution to human rights problems. If citizens are reduced to sneaking around and denying their activities to survive, their governmental system is way past due for fixing. This is like the “good slave owners” delaying the abolition of slavery. You’re solving the wrong problem.
This (clap)(clap)(clap)
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#527https://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…
What about proposing encryption as an EU human right? Has that been attempted?
Privacy is already a UHR according to UDHR article 12 [0]
The problem with applying this is that the violation of privacy is not arbitrary, from the draft:
> Law enforcement and judicial authorities must be able to access data in a lawful and targeted manner
So this is framed as an matter of lawful and targeted intercept, not blanket bulk access, like pretty much all of the mass surveillance creep.
[0] https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#528If this came to pass and a person wanted to shut down their online accounts before they immediately get hacked, how would you live a modern life as a software engineer?
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#529What's next? They're going to require a microphone in every home because else it's too hard to fight terrorism?
Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably something along the lines of 'guns for me but not for thee'. But they don't even have the excuse of encryption actively hurting anyone, so it's more like 'strong walls for me but not for thee'
It does hinder police investigations, so it comes down to how much harm you think obstructing the police causes.
So does the right to a trial, habeas corpus, the need for a warrant, juries, the right to remain silent and many other protections...