Live data from Hacker News

EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

statewatch.org

531–540 of 780 posts

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. We live in such a dangerous world that the biggest reason for cause of death in many developed countries is suicide, obesity, diseases, etc.

The world is so safe that instead of dying from war, famine or untreatable infectious disease, those in developed countries are dying from diseases of wealth and comfort.

Suicide is not a disease of comfort. Obesity is not a disease of wealth, for food (and junk food) is incredibly inexpensive in the developed world today, likely no more expensive than heavy smoking, alcohol, cocaine or opiates.

These are diseases of overpopulation, loss of freedom and control over one's life and general lack of anything to live for in the future. Mouse utopia comes to mind.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#532

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…

While adding backdoors to encryption is a bad idea my gut sys decentralized reputation is just a bad. Most here know the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive". But it's worse than that, people on different sides of the political spectrum will work to "cancel" people of the other side by working to lower their rep via crowdsourcing. 4chan type groups will do the same for "the lulz", I can even imagine the ransomware people…

Gives a new meaning to the term "character assassination".

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#533
post #516

Earlier 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…

> Switzerland and several other Eurpean countries have very high rates of gun ownership, but low rates of gun violence.

They also have vastly stricter gun regulation laws, and while ownership rates are high in some, the US is an extreme outlier and no other country comes even close.

Because nobody in any European country thinks they have a "right" to own a gun, most of them could if they wanted to, but they simply don't want to deal with the hassle that owning a properly regulated firearm entails.

As it should be, owning a deadly weapon is a lot of responsibility that not everybody is up for/actually wants. The importance of that responsibility gets completely lost when firearms are treated like cool toys that everybody should have and exist in abundance.

That's why headlines like "toddler shoots mother" or "dog shoots owner" don't exist in Europe, but are a sad somewhat regular thing out of the US. These toddlers and dogs didn't do that because they watched too much violent media, they did that because the actual owners of the guns where irresponsible individuals and never should have owned one in the first place.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#534
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether this has been tried before, but it is definitely the right move. The governments should be busy fighting and trying to shut down our proposals and not the other way around.

Without public pressure it is not going to happen. German politicians have been positive towards this move recently (althought without mentioning it is already in progress). Sadly politics think it is the easiest solution to counter torrorism.

Public pressure rarely materialises spontaneously, out of a vacuum. For it to materialize, someone has to rally for it. A manifesto needs to be written, the goals written down and elaborated. It has to be pushed into the media.

It's not easy, but it's the only thing that will work.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#535
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether this has been tried before, but it is definitely the right move. The governments should be busy fighting and trying to shut down our proposals and not the other way around.

Without public pressure it is not going to happen. German politicians have been positive towards this move recently (althought without mentioning it is already in progress). Sadly politics think it is the easiest solution to counter torrorism.

While at the same time these governments fail to properly use the information they have and are able to gather through traditional intelligence work properly to avoid the type of attacks they claim putting up backdoors will prevent.

Most recently last weeks attack in Austria could have been avoided if the information the authorities received from a neighboring country of an attempt to purchase weapons by the attacker would have lead to actions. (I’ll try to find a link, apparently they had months to process and act)

So I think this makes the situation more unsafe in two ways - back doors will lead to all sorts of issues from leaking private communication to impersonation and authorities still don’t take responsibility and fix their processes so they can do their jobs.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Your expanded definition is better. Now let's flesh it out into a full-fledged proposal, put it up on a website and disseminate it among the people. Let's get it into the parliaments as something that the parliament members have to discuss and finally either accept or reject. Let's give them a good fight.

> Let's give them a good fight. Possibly the wrong goal. How about "Let's win." instead? :)

You're right. You can tell this topic makes my blood boil, unfortunately.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but see Article 8 which is cited in your sibling comment. It already contains a right to privacy. But the term privacy is not very rigid. It can be taken and interpreted in various ways. It's certainly a good thing to mention it, but encryption needs to be mentioned explicitly, spelled out even. There cannot be any room for interpretation: citizens have a right to encrypt their communication, end-to-end with…

What about this tech-agnostic version: citizens have a right to deprive the unrelated citizens from accessing their communications using any means . Note that this includes E2E encryption, whisper, face-to-face private conversation, rubberhose encryption, noise insertion and steganography all in one.

I like this "right to deprive" wording and toyed with it myself. Reminds me of the way DMCA anti-circumvention works. Perhaps we could call this the anti-snooping right.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you missed my point. Lawn mowers didn't get more dangerous. The level of danger hasn't gotten worse in that one respect. The level of trust might have changed. The acceptance of risk might have changed. I don't think that keeping my kid away from the lawn mower in order to protect them makes their life overall better or even safer. Lawn mowers are dangerous. But that doesn't mean they should be banned. As you…

How many people are killed by lawnmowers on a yearly basis?

Very few and I'd say, without checking, that it's probably much more common to lose a finger or a toe. That's a better analogy in this case too; it's unlikely that a mishap caused by the absence of encryption or the presence of a back-door will kill you. You might have to live with their consequences for a very long time though.

Arguing whether the World has suddenly become more dangerous is counter-productive in that aspect. In the end, we keep becoming wiser, technology evolves, and the World changes because of it. It doesn't matter if things actually got more dangerous or if we just got more afraid of them; it's the outcome of our actions that we need to focus on.

There is something to be said in comparing encryption to what usually amounts to spinning blades connected to some kind of engine; abusing any of those technologies can result in outcomes that are undesirable from society's point of view, and potentially from the users' point of view as well. Because, you know, fingers and toes.

The main problem is that just as if you outlawed the sale of lawn-mowers without specific features, there's nothing stopping people from using their existing lawn-mowers (or even building their own ones)anyway, the current encryption technologies won't go away. There's nothing stopping anyone from saving existing tools, or the source-code of existing tools, and keep using then. The only difference would be that such encryption, and the protection it brings with it, would now be restricted to the very criminals that the outlawing of the tools meant to stop in the first place.

Arguing whether the World has suddenly become more dangerous is counter-productive in that aspect. In the end, we keep becoming wiser, technology evolves, and the World changes because of it. It doesn't matter if things actually got more dangerous or if we just got more afraid of them; it's the outcome of our actions that we need to focus on.

Edit: As for the outcome, keeping encryption from everyone but criminals is outright ridiculous. It might get to some of the businesses selling specialized solutions catering to the people law enforcement is after, but in the end it will just result in the baddies simply moving away from those platforms and onto other platforms that are out of reach of EU law-enforcement. That leaves us with everyone else having a big target painted on them because this time we know there's a backdoor in their product.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#539
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, you can't 3D print an encryption key that would be useful in any way. Although, now I wish the guy from Lavabits had handed in his SSL cert as 3D printed letters and numbers like a puzzle.

3D printing is one of the more useful ways to securely backup up encryption key’s. Just ensure the only place they exist is inside an object and not only are they durable, but tamper resistant as someone can’t just photocopy the key.

That would be a 2D print.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We probably have left at the last minute. If that means you’re British: the GCHQ initiated this. Nobody is more under video surveillance than you guys. Enjoy your chat loicense.

Fun fact, almost all of that surveillance is operated by private players - pubs, shops, small stores, etc. The UK never had a Big Brother set up unlike some mainland cities. People keep bringing up this bullshit statistic without going deeper. And it's not like the police can barge in and demand video.

> UK never had a Big Brother set up

I don't even know where to start.

Post reply on HN