France is about to pass the worst surveillance law in the EU.
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A reminder that the people voting for these laws do not understand technology. They don't get it. Yes, this law sucks, but even if it passes, I'd be really surprised if it was actually enforceable.
The law is enforceable. If the options you're given is "put a backdoor in your product or stop operating in the country", it'll happen. And even if you reply "then I'll go away", laws like this, stupid, dangerous, breaking everything, will keep popping in one country after another until it's too late.
It not making sense have no bearing on whether it can be enforced or not. And the mere existence of the law may be enough to later put you in hot water if you have some de-facto illegal software on your phone or computer, for example. It would not be automatic everywhere, but another tool to just legally have something against most people.
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If this is passed, would this only apply to people in France? Like Signal and WhatsApp, etc, could they make a different version of the app / backend that's unencrypted just for them? Is that even possible? I can't imagine Signal adding a backdoor for everyone in the world.
Or would they just outright pull their software / apps from being used in France? But then what's stopping someone in France from sideloading the app and using a VPN?
It is possible to do, to some extent. Everything's possible. But then, when people that are on both side of this encryption barrier wants to talk, then both must use unencrypted messages. You'd also have the obvious case of someone having a phone/device/account from country A temporarily crossing through country FuckingFranceOrUK, so what do you do in that case?
You'd need to implement that, add UI features to know if you're using encryption or not, and above all, it's fucking stupid and against what most sane messaging solutions wants to do.
I'm sure it's possible to find people that would gladly do all that. Hopefully those people are not in the business of making all the useful communication services we currently use.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/56769139
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23170564
not at all arguing this is okay, not even a little
but
If you are the French government, and you know what the French populace has a history of doing to the French government, it would be understandable to be a bit paranoid of them, no?
again. It ain't cool. But I'm honestly surprised they didn't hop on the "intrusive surveillance" bandwagon sooner.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/56769139
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23170564
The government is not your friend, we are ruled by power tripping authoritarian rulers. They are using security and defense as a pretext to abolish your rights. You can solve the narcotraffic problem by simply legalizing drugs, they are going after encryption for something else, they want to control everything and everyone.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/56769139
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23170564
So I'm going to get down voted to hell for this, but: this kind of legislation is a response to US tech companies absolutely refusing to compromise and meet non-US governments half-way.
The belief in an absolute, involute right to privacy at all costs is a very US ideal. In the rest of the world - and in Europe especially - this belief is tempered by a belief that law enforcement is critical to a just society, and that sometimes individual rights must be suspended for the good of society as a whole.
What Europe has been asking for is a mechanism to allow law enforcement to carry out lawful investigation of electronic communications in the same way they have been able to do with paper, bank records, and phone calls for a century. The idea that a tech company might get in the way of prosecuting someone for a serious crime is simply incompatible with law in a lot of places.
The rest of the world has been trying to find a solution to the for a while that respects the privacy of the general public but which doesn't allow people to hide from the law. Tech has been refusing to compromise or even engage in this discussion, so now everyone is worse off.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/56769139
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23170564
TSA officers steal from passengers
This may seem unrelated but it gives a real life physical example on exactly why backdoors shouldn't exist.
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It feels like the UK and France are in a competition to see who can steamroller their peoples' rights the fastest.
There's been been bills at the EU level, but they've been defeated. I think individual countries introduced their own bills if they were supporters of the EU one.
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So I'm going to get down voted to hell for this, but: this kind of legislation is a response to US tech companies absolutely refusing to compromise and meet non-US governments half-way.
The belief in an absolute, involute right to privacy at all costs is a very US ideal. In the rest of the world - and in Europe especially - this belief is tempered by a belief that law enforcement is critical to a just society, and that sometimes individual rights must be suspended for the good of society as a whole.
What Europe has been asking for is a mechanism to allow law enforcement to carry out lawful investigation of electronic communications in the same way they have been able to do with paper, bank records, and phone calls for a century. The idea that a tech company might get in the way of prosecuting someone for a serious crime is simply incompatible with law in a lot of places.
The rest of the world has been trying to find a solution to the for a while that respects the privacy of the general public but which doesn't allow people to hide from the law. Tech has been refusing to compromise or even engage in this discussion, so now everyone is worse off.
I can invite someone over to my house and talk about anything I want with no risk of government meddling. Why should it be any different in online communication regardless of the country?
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Almost seems like they're afraid of us or something
Luigi wasn’t talking with anyone. None of this would’ve helped them with him.
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I can invite someone over to my house and talk about anything I want with no risk of government meddling. Why should it be any different in online communication regardless of the country?
Continuing the analogy, government agencies can absolutely eavesdrop on in-person conversations unless you expend significant resources to prevent it. This is exactly what I believe will happen - organized crime will develop alternate methods the government can't access while these backdoors are used to monitor less advanced criminals and normal people.
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And the things that are perfectly okay today might be the things you want to hide tomorrow. Abortions and pregnancies, thoughts about labor rights out climate, sexual orientation, ...
As an American, I can vouch for this.
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Luigi wasn’t talking with anyone. None of this would’ve helped them with him.
I think you’re falling into the trap of making a good faith argument when the people pushing to destroy encryption are not.
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Isn’t Sweden trying something stupid too?
Yup, they are trying to put a backdoor into signal, even though their military advised against it.
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It feels like the UK and France are in a competition to see who can steamroller their peoples' rights the fastest.
Although not in the same way, the US is leading the charge on that front.
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I'm no cryptographer, so take this with a good heap of salt.
Basically, all encryption multiplies some big prime numbers to get the key. Computers are pretty slow at division and finding the right components used to create the key takes a long time, it's basically trial and error at the moment.
If you had an algorithm to solve for prime numbers, you could break any current encryption scheme and obviously cause a lot of damage in the wrong hands.Basically, all encryption multiplies some big prime numbers to get the key
No, not all encryption. First of all there's two main categories of encryption:
- asymmetrical
- symmetrical
The most widely used algorithms of asymmetrical encryption rely on the prime factorization problem or similar problems that are weak to quantum computers. So these ones will break. Symmetrical encryption will not break. I'm not saying all this to be a pedant; it's actually significant for the safety of our current communications. Well-designed schemes like TLS and the Signal protocol use a combination of both types because they have complementary strengths and weaknesses. In very broad strokes:
- asymmetrical encryption is used to initiate the communication because it can verify the identity of the other party
- an algorithm that is safe against eavesdropping is used to generate a key for symmetric encryption
- the symmetric key is used to encrypt the payload and it is thrown away after communication is over
This is crucial because it means that even if someone is storing your messages today to decrypt them in the future with a quantum computer they are unlikely to succeed if a sufficiently strong symmetric key is used. They will decrypt the initial messages of the handshake, see the messages used to negotiate the symmetric key, but they won't be able to derive the key because as we said, it's safe against eavesdropping.
So a lot of today's encrypted messages are safe. But in the future a quantum computer will be able to get the private key for the asymmetric encryption and perform a MitM attack or straight-up impersonate another entity. So we have to migrate to post-quantum algorithms before we get to that point.
For storage, only symmetric algorithms are used generally I believe, so that's already safe as is, assuming as always the choice of a strong algorithm and sufficiently long key.
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Instead of extra keys, perhaps describe it as weaker locks. Would you consider the lock to which every cop had a key to be as strong and secure as a regular lock? And look at the USA for an instance of a new regime that can potentially use vast amounts of personal data to persecute and oppress anyone the fascists don't like. Many people might have (naively) trusted the government with the surveillance Edward Snowden and others revealed, back when they did not perceive the US Government as an immediate threat to ordinary Americans. But the new regime quite clearly is ready to persecute and punish people for their political views, and it now has all that data.
I’d combine both metaphors: police have keys and deadbolts are banned.
The “good guys” CAN get in, and the bad guys can easily break in.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/56769139
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23170564
France is a police state in which citizens are all suspects. Cryptography was illegal until 1996 outside of government/military use and it's one of the worst countries for any hobbyist who needs to use radio frequencies, fly stuff around or even mere street photography. This law will make it easier for the government to crackdown on anyone using encrypted messaging as a pretext to arrest them or put them under surveillance.
Note that the current interior minister and his predecessor both are vile fascist scum.
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So I'm going to get down voted to hell for this, but: this kind of legislation is a response to US tech companies absolutely refusing to compromise and meet non-US governments half-way.
The belief in an absolute, involute right to privacy at all costs is a very US ideal. In the rest of the world - and in Europe especially - this belief is tempered by a belief that law enforcement is critical to a just society, and that sometimes individual rights must be suspended for the good of society as a whole.
What Europe has been asking for is a mechanism to allow law enforcement to carry out lawful investigation of electronic communications in the same way they have been able to do with paper, bank records, and phone calls for a century. The idea that a tech company might get in the way of prosecuting someone for a serious crime is simply incompatible with law in a lot of places.
The rest of the world has been trying to find a solution to the for a while that respects the privacy of the general public but which doesn't allow people to hide from the law. Tech has been refusing to compromise or even engage in this discussion, so now everyone is worse off.
It sounds like you haven't observed the conversation.
And it's not the tech companes so much as the Linux community who have pushed for e2e.
Considering how many abuses (pretty clear violations of the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States) have been carved out by SCOTUS during mob investigations and the International War on Terror, no, the people of the US want secure communication. The law enforcement state wants back doors and keep telling tech folk to nerd harder to make back doors not already known to industrial spies, enthusiast hackers and foreign agents.
You're asking for three perpendicular lines on a plane. You're asking for a mathematical impossibility.
And remember industrial spies includes the subsets of industries local and foreign, and political spies behind specific ideologies who do not like you and are against specifically your own personhood.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/56769139
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23170564
The eventual outcome of this sort of thing is more widespread use of steganographic data storage schemes. We already have plenty, such as ones that make your data look like unused LTS blocks of garbage and code blocks with multiple hidden partitions, so that you can open one block showing pedestrian data and the court unable to prove there are other hidden blocks.
These are technologies that already exist for those people who are really interested preserving their renegade data.
But if I own a business and I don't want my rivals reading my accounting, and open crypto is illegal, I may go stegan whether or not I have secret slush funds.
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Continuing the analogy, government agencies can absolutely eavesdrop on in-person conversations unless you expend significant resources to prevent it. This is exactly what I believe will happen - organized crime will develop alternate methods the government can't access while these backdoors are used to monitor less advanced criminals and normal people.
Spending significant resources to prevent it is exactly what encryption is. What the government wants is to completely eliminate online private communication. Continuing with the analogy: you want telescreens.
