France is about to pass the worst surveillance law in the EU.

[exu@feditown.com]

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.

[fuzzzerd@programming.dev]

That's being too generous. Some may not fully understand, but many do and simply don't care. Not sure if better or worse, but its not entirely lack of understanding.

[ulrich@feddit.org]

Yep that's kinda how they explained it, too.

[slopppyengineer@lemmy.world]

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, ...

[noodle07@lemmy.world]

France always tries to copy the US with a 10y delay so.. Yeah

[makyo@lemmy.world]

Almost seems like they're afraid of us or something

[ramble81@lemm.ee]

Isn’t Sweden trying something stupid too?

[cley_faye@lemmy.world]

Yeah. Also we don't have good guys either, but, that sounds nice.

[cley_faye@lemmy.world]

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.

[cley_faye@lemmy.world]

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.

[archonet@lemy.lol]

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.

[index@sh.itjust.works]

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.

[regalpotoo@lemmy.world]

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.

[stevedice@sh.itjust.works]

TSA officers steal from passengers

This may seem unrelated but it gives a real life physical example on exactly why backdoors shouldn't exist.

[wewbull@feddit.uk]

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.

[stevedice@sh.itjust.works]

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?

[zephorah@lemm.ee]

Luigi wasn’t talking with anyone. None of this would’ve helped them with him.

[soleinvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

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.

[soleinvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

As an American, I can vouch for this.

[sacralplexus@lemmy.world]

I think you’re falling into the trap of making a good faith argument when the people pushing to destroy encryption are not.