641–650 of 780 posts
For me it sounds like banning legal weapons in the expectation that all criminals are going to follow the rules.
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E2E encryption is scary. I'm also in the "you can't ban math, why try" camp. But I can't see authorities/politicians give up the idea of getting access to decrypted communications after court orders, in a 100 years, even if everyone completely understood the topic. It's just not happening.
Why is E2E encryption scary? This is a genuine question because it's a counterintuitive notion to me since I find the lack of E2E encryption scary.
It's obviously even more scary (an existential threat) to authorities that are used to be able to do mass surveillance of messages in transit (Such as the NSA).
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When they have a court warrant, it's not arbitrary. I think some rights were given to the people to combat government tyranny (right to bear arms for example), but combating government tyranny is just not feasible anymore, due to a set of factors, like our inability to organize behind a common cause. Anyway, the choice here is reserving our ability to overthrow an unjust system, or giving the government the rights to…
The court warrant sounds like it's a good idea, and don't most other things work that way too? Actually End-to-end encryption isn't that different. It so happens that there's no point in taking out a warrant against the man-in-the-middle, because he has no access to begin with. You'll have to get a warrant against one of the ends. What these proposals would end up doing is to force people to weaken protocols and star…
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Too late to edit my previous post, but here is the article: "Fejzulai is also believed to have travelled to neighbouring Slovakia in July accompanied by another man, where he attempted to buy ammunition suited to the weapons he used in the attack, but the sale reportedly fell through after he failed to produce a firearms licence. Slovakian authorities are said to have informed their Austrian counterparts at the time.…
In the US, most states allow you to order ammo online or via mail order without any license, and shipped to your home.
Unfortunately no actions were taken, there seem to be communication issues within and across the ministries involved.
As long as this isn’t fixed, more data won’t help, quite to the contrary it might tie up resources even further.
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As it should, but who will verify it's only used in that way? Who watches the watchmen? Snowden revealed that the watchmen (NSA) are scooping up all data they can find, and that they have easy access to big internet companies' data (and they're not allowed to mention your data was accessed, even if no charges were made).
Well that is the crux of the issue, how much do you trust your government and what are your options in supporting change. This may require a level of involvement in politics that is more time consuming than most want to expend or can. This means if not actively supporting a candidate or current representative who shares your views that you instead convince them your view is worthwhile. If not actively finding one who…
There doesn't appear to be an emotional argument the other way - I guess "so you're happy with random police officers[0] browsing your nudes, then?".
It needs to be framed as an emotional argument, because that's what cuts through to the audience these days. Only HN is interested in logical discussions ;)
[0] Actually, not even police officers - there is always an escalation of government departments able to access data that was originally captured to prevent serious crime.
We need to establish the use of encryption as a basic human right. I'm so tired of this cropping up every couple years.
> Article 8: Right to privacy - Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. - There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention…
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Several EU governments use Matrix - so yeah, there's a paradox here. On one hand Element (the company set up by the core Matrix team) depends on government work to keep the lights on for Matrix work, but on the other hand we feel a clear responsibility to push back on backdoors, given backdoors are intrinsically flawed and dangerous. This is why we're proposing a (hopefully) better alternative instead (and this is al…
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'
Good analogy, especially because governments themselves are living in the same walls (i.e. using the same apps) and this effort will hurt their own security.
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> Article 8: Right to privacy - Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. - There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention…
Good find, but it has enough caveats and loopholes to render it useless. Prevention of not just crime, but also disorder? The economic well-being of the country? Protection of health or morals? I suppose it's better to pay lip service to Right to Privacy, instead of completely ignoring it altogether. But this is not a human right.
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So really it wouldn’t be encryption so much as right to have secrets. Because whether I use EDCA or a really strongly in crackable safe, my right to privacy should be a thing? It sounds like somewhat of a stronger version than the US’s fifth amendment which says that you have a right to privacy unless it has to do with the crime currently being investigated. And come to think of it, encryption is unconstitutional as…
This is incorrect. The fourth amendment gives people the absolute right against "unreasonable search and seizure". This means the police may be granted access to search someone's property by a judge, if they are suspected of a crime. It does not give the government the right to find anything, only to search. Furthermore, the fifth amendment grants people the absolute right to not incriminate themselves. So if you kno…
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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…
China has the same goal as the Western powers have: to be able to keep spying on anyone they deem enemy of the state.
The difference is who they define as enemy of the state. In China, that includes pretty much anyone that criticises the Government, as well as what they see as hostile nations (probably the USA, maybe UK, which openly call China their enemies mostly without real provocation, and perhaps Japan due to its closeness to the US and its past of barbarities committed during the occupation of nearly half of the Chinese territory).
In most western democracies, the enemy would be terrorists (they claim) and, as we now know, pretty much any other Government, ally or not... and that's what we currently know, there is probably a much wider reach still that we may never know for sure... the Snowden leaks show that they will collect mass surveillance not only on foreign heads of state, but on their own populations without any restrictions, just in case they need it later. Given that, I am not even sure China actually has more surveillance in place than the USA and the UK, for example. It's a huge disappointment for anyone thinking the western world holds the moral ground, we who live here need to get our Governments understand we will not accept this!
Europe and some developing countries did not really react when it was revealed the US was mass-spying on its Government officials because they obviously are doing the same, they just didn't get caught in the same way yet. The people behind all this spying believe they are doing good as they're keeping world peace. I think they do the opposite: because other governments' counter-intelligence probably know more or less who is doing what against them, they're kept in a constant state of readiness for conflict. True world peace can only come when there's mutual trust between countries... While everyone spies on everyone else, we'll continue to live in a world on the brink of WW3. You think WW3 is impossible? Well, read about WW1 and how basically no one expected it at all. Circumstances today are even more heated than at the time WW1 broke out. Funnily enough, the only thing that's holding WW3 back is the nukes behind the big armies which make full-on conflict a very uncomfortable prospect indeed.