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EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

statewatch.org

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Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#601

Post by strken »

londons_explore wrote: post #583

A middle ground in the encryption/privacy debate seems to be "the authorities can spy on what I do, but have to notify me first ". That could be implemented by having full e2e encryption as today, but requiring clients to hand over the keys when requested by a local governing authority. The client/app would then immediately show to the user "Local Authorities have viewed a copy of this message". Why isn't this middle…

The obvious downside is that anyone who cares about privacy will write their own client, governments will regulate against unofficial clients, platforms will comply with the regulation and lock everything down, and the end result will be users unable to exercise any control over what's installed on their devices.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#602

Post by londons_explore »

feanaro wrote: post #589
londons_explore wrote: post #583

A middle ground in the encryption/privacy debate seems to be "the authorities can spy on what I do, but have to notify me first ". That could be implemented by having full e2e encryption as today, but requiring clients to hand over the keys when requested by a local governing authority. The client/app would then immediately show to the user "Local Authorities have viewed a copy of this message". Why isn't this middle…

I don't know why they are not proposing this instead (well, I do, because they'd prefer more power), but I do not find this proposal acceptable either. The fact that you might be able to see that a government read a message of yours offers little assurance that the government will not start abusing this power. After all, what possible recourse do we have after we start seeing these notifications on our messages? Cert…

> little assurance that the government will not start abusing this power.

My hope is that if millions of people started seeing these messages next to their conversations with their lovers, the people would vote for a different government.

There's a big difference between knowing big brother is scanning for criminals, to seeing big brother has right now looked at my private message.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#603

Post by raxxorrax »

londons_explore wrote: post #583

A middle ground in the encryption/privacy debate seems to be "the authorities can spy on what I do, but have to notify me first ". That could be implemented by having full e2e encryption as today, but requiring clients to hand over the keys when requested by a local governing authority. The client/app would then immediately show to the user "Local Authorities have viewed a copy of this message". Why isn't this middle…

> Why isn't this middle ground being discussed?

Why should it? What problem does it solve? Certainly not the problem of terror in Vienna.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#604

Post by vbezhenar »

gcpwnd wrote: post #398
feanaro wrote: post #218

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.

They are either stupid or they don't care about terrorism. It's very easy to develop simple encryption scheme. It could be implemented by any half-competent developer. And I'm sure that global terrorists have enough money and people to make it happen. So terrorists won't care about this law. They'll switch from Telegram to Terrorgram and that's about it. But global spying over citizens will be achieved. I'm sure that politicians are just envy over China and want to replicate their measures. Many countries already replicate Great Firewall to some extent. Now they want to implement a global surveillance to strengthen their powers and prevent any kind of riots. That's terrorists they care about.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#605

Post by tiborsaas »

londons_explore wrote: post #583

A middle ground in the encryption/privacy debate seems to be "the authorities can spy on what I do, but have to notify me first ". That could be implemented by having full e2e encryption as today, but requiring clients to hand over the keys when requested by a local governing authority. The client/app would then immediately show to the user "Local Authorities have viewed a copy of this message". Why isn't this middle…

Can't tell if you are serious. What is the point of spying then?

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#606

Post by raxxorrax »

MayeulC wrote: post #165

This 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…

> This is madness

It is by definition. Their ambitions haven't changed the last 30 years.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#608

Post by povik »

londons_explore wrote: post #583

A middle ground in the encryption/privacy debate seems to be "the authorities can spy on what I do, but have to notify me first ". That could be implemented by having full e2e encryption as today, but requiring clients to hand over the keys when requested by a local governing authority. The client/app would then immediately show to the user "Local Authorities have viewed a copy of this message". Why isn't this middle…

I would especially like to see a cryptographic mechanism enforcing such middle ground. That is, a mechanism that would allow law enforcement accessing the private key or plain text, but only with some inescapable side effect which would hinder abusing that power. That may be producing a cryptographic "proof of compromise" for the person being spied on, or the spying being publicized, possibly with some delay, or something else. I am searching for an analogue of having police show up for a home search, which would notify both you and your neighbors, and cannot be done sneakily and by-the-book at the same time.

Are there some interesting candidates for such a mechanism? At first is sounds like a long shot, but there are cryptographic mechanisms achieving unintuitive results, so it may very well be possible.

Re: EU Draft Council Declaration Against Encryption [pdf]

#610

Post by feanaro »

londons_explore wrote: post #602
feanaro wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why they are not proposing this instead (well, I do, because they'd prefer more power), but I do not find this proposal acceptable either. The fact that you might be able to see that a government read a message of yours offers little assurance that the government will not start abusing this power. After all, what possible recourse do we have after we start seeing these notifications on our messages? Cert…

> little assurance that the government will not start abusing this power. My hope is that if millions of people started seeing these messages next to their conversations with their lovers, the people would vote for a different government. There's a big difference between knowing big brother is scanning for criminals, to seeing big brother has right now looked at my private message.

That's a bleak future to hope for. We can do better. How about if we do not allow big brother to scan for criminals in the first place? Big brother has no business scanning for anything.

Also, remember that criminals are defined by the law and the law is defined by the government.

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