EU Proposes Enforcing Data Encryption and Banning Backdoors

[TheShadowKnows!]

Is that + or - GMT?

Hope that is satire. if not:

polynomial time <<< exponential time [encryption::= NP complete algorithms]

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PolynomialTime.html

 

[kemal]

Anyone can put their own encryption on top of any mandated encryption with a back door despite what the EU mandates. But so what. This doesn't preclude law enforcement from monitoring with whom who is conversing.

 

[Fuzzball84]

As soon as we have left the EU we can ban encryption in the UK and allow our government to keep an eye on everyone! We need to be alert, if you see anything suspicious, report it immediately to the Brexit Drop Shock Troopers and they will destroy it, deport it or export it.

Lets allow the elites to Take Back Control

 

[thespacekid]

I'm sure all software produced by China and Russia would abide by such an edict.

 

[WatchFromAfar]

But yeah. I guess what stood out was your poor opening line, because it was educated folks, universities, scientific research groups, were the ones voting to remain. You could at least dodge that completely and bring up "the common man".

Really, you can't see how elitist that sounds? perhaps some "educated folks" want nothing to do with the EU. For better or worse, the majority voted to leave. Are you saying the voices of the majority shouldn't be heard?

 

[mark-vdw]

While this is a nice idea, the fact is any sort of government regulation of the internet, created by people who frankly don't know anything about it at a technical level, is only going to cause more harm than good, by forcing standards that in many ways may be less secure, or less useful to the user. While this may, in theory, force international companies to encrypt more stuff (which is a good thing), I'd prefer the free market, and academics who are far smarter than any politician, figure out how to make the internet more secure for everyone.

I disagree rather strongly.

Making private data encryption mandatory is the digital equivalent of saying that vehicles need to meet certain safety standards or that buildings need to adhere to fire safety regulations. The free market is not good at self-organizing for these type of things. Rather it is precisely the kind of case where government intervention is needed to come to an optimal outcome. Consumers never make it top of their list to choose a supplier based on safety conditions because individuals are bad at taking these type of risks into account in their decision making. That creates a downward pressure on suppliers to provide a cheaper, less safe version of their product. The free market drives them to cater to the customers who gloss over safety considerations to just get to the absolute cheapest product out there. This then sets these customers up for disaster (see: recent Grenfell fire in London).

The ironic thing is that very often the suppliers don't really _want_ to create an unsafe product, but cost pressure from competition forces them to. Often, the suppliers are actually the ones asking government to _please_ make this mandatory. That gives them a level playing field where everybody is supplying safe products, rather than a race to the bottom because consumers don't take the risks into account properly. The vendors and academics are actively asking the EU to introduce these laws - so it's not politicians trying to be smarter than the free market and the academics, it's politicians doing what the free market and academics are telling them is needed. In practice, many products out there are already end-to-end encrypted (Apple iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp), so I could perfectly understand this becoming the new normal, in the same way that airbags and fire escapes are perfectly normal.

 

[Rigby]

I don't trust the EU with its unelected elites deciding on our lives.

An interesting thing to say given the context, since this proposal was made by the EU Parliament, which is very much elected.

 

[weckart]

Really, you can't see how elitist that sounds? perhaps some "educated folks" want nothing to do with the EU. For better or worse, the majority voted to leave. Are you saying the voices of the majority shouldn't be heard?

Look at the post he responded to. That one wasn't elitist at all. /s

 

[jennyp]

many were manipulated by friends/press/propaganda and didn't actually know...

While people may be manipulated by "friends/press/propaganda" (which presumably includes yourself), many think for themselves and realise that they don't want people who they can't remove by any democratic mechanism having executive power over them.

It is annoying when people opine that those who voted for Brexit somehow "didn't understand" the issues. Maybe they understood them all too well. Oh but isn't democracy annoying, too, when it doesn't do what you want it to? But that's the point. Let the people decide, and don't patronise them when they vote against your ideas. As the old adage runs: democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others.

 

[mark-vdw]

Banning encyprtion wouldn't help. For starters terrorists could just do it illegally.

Correct, but that wouldn't stop overzealous politicians from campaigning on banning it anyway. Either because they are honestly too thick to realize what you just said, or because they do realize but cynically know that their proposal might score well with the electorate. Which would then hurt the 99.999% of the population that are not terrorists, and not do much to stop the .001% that are.

 

[jennyp]

An interesting thing to say given the context, since this proposal was made by the EU Parliament, which is very much elected.

The EU Commission is very much not elected !

 

[AdonisSMU]

Why isn't doing nothing at all an option? Sometimes you don't need the tech illiterate writing legislation On topics they have no experience with.

 

[Rigby]

It is very much not elected !

Is this an alternative fact in your mind?

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en
"The European Parliament is made up of 750 Members, who are directly elected."

 

[MLVC]

The EU Commission is very much not elected !

You might want to check how exactly the European Commission is set up:

Appointing the President
The candidate is put forward by national leaders in the European Council, taking account of the results of the European Parliament elections. He or she needs the support of a majority of members of the European Parliament in order to be elected.

Selecting the team
The Presidential candidate selects potential Vice-Presidents and Commissioners based on suggestions from the EU countries. The list of nominees has to be approved by national leaders in the European Council.

Each nominee appears before the European Parliament to explain their vision and answer questions. Parliament then votes on whether to accept the nominees as a team. Finally, they are appointed by the European Council, by a qualified majority.

https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodies/european-commission_en

FYI, The European Parliament of course is directly elected by the citizens of the EU.

 

[mark-vdw]

The EU Commission is very much not elected !

That's technically true in the same way that saying Theresa May is not elected as PM is technically true.

The EU Commission is not directly elected by the full EU population. Rather, there are checks & balances, with the member states having the final say. The president of the EU Commission is appointed by the EU Council, which are the heads of state in each of the EU nations. They pick someone from the party who won the Parliament elections. This was a compromise made to ensure that the member states retain final control, not the federal level. As a eurosceptic, you should be HAPPY that that is the way it works, rather than complaining.

Somehow I don't think you would be very pleased if we gave the federal level a more direct democracy rather than filtering it through the member state level.

 

[nwcs]

Anything that we do to give legitimate police more power of terrorists in terms of information security will inevitably also give much less legitimate hackers more power over the general population.

I agree but security is not in the best interest of governments. It's in the best interest of consumers. The consumers will lose.

 

[groovebuster]

It is annoying when people opine that those who voted for Brexit somehow "didn't understand" the issues. Maybe they understood them all too well.

It is also annoying when obviously a majority of people was manipulated with wrong facts by politicians and big media companies in order to push the election into a certain direction. It is the simple minds who are not used to dig for reliable sources for themselves or are used to deal with complex situations like that and fall for it more likely.

Oh but isn't democracy annoying, too, when it doesn't do what you want it to? But that's the point. Let the people decide, and don't patronise them when they vote against your ideas. As the old adage runs: democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others.

Your malicious joy will be past soon. Have fun to celebrate your "independence" from the EU on your isolated island in poverty in a few years from now. I just feel for the many great people I know from the UK who actually got that "The British Empire" is long gone...

 

[JohnGrey]

The debate has erroneously centred (at least outside of tech-literate circles) on the 'balance' or 'compromise' between e-to-e encryption and people being kept safe, as of the two things were in conflict.

On the face of it I think that this EU draft sounds good, but just as important (because it's a global matter) is to impress again and again that encryption is not in opposition to our safety, rather that it is vital in order to secure it.

The number of terrorist incidents is too high. Obviously. Even one is one too many. But the spectacular and sensationalised nature of such attacks (which is half the point) against relatively tiny numbers of people should not let us disproportionately damage aspects of digital infrastructure that keep us all safe every day in countless ways.

To be clear, any kind of backdoors or compromises in encryption only do real, lasting harm to we, the law-abiding and innocent. Whilst some 'low-hanging fruit' criminals and potential terrorists could be disrupted or caught by monitoring communications that has had its encryption broken, any vaguely competent bad guys will avoid detection altogether by other means. Meanwhile internet commerce, important (and in some cases vital) physical infrastructure would be put at risk, eveyone's privacy would compromised, and authoritarian states around the world would continue to be enboldened to crush dissent and political opponents by the poor example set by the supposedly enlightened free democracies.

Also, intelligence agencies already have a wide array of capabilities to monitor communications and metadata. I'm sure this gives them lots of leads and evidence, which is good (and I'm not sure whether the EU proposals go too far in this respect). But they only get that because bad guys think the content itself can't be decrypted. If encryption was gone, what would they do? Continue to send stuff and just hope no-one reads it? Come on, it doesn't pass the 'smell test', does it?

Except for those small fraction of people involved in perpetrating it, we all want terrorism and criminality to stop. But removing everyone else's protection whilst causing minor inconvenience to the bad guys wouldn't achieve that.

I hope the EU enacts something like this proposal, and that others follow.

Thank you for this. I'm glad that I'm not the only one that understands that there is no such thing as selective security when it comes to encryption. It's either integral and is capable of thwarting anyone, or it's the technological equivalent of a night light.

 

[macduke]

MacRumors really needs to stop promoting the idea that encryption, and therefore privacy, are political issues. They are not. They are fundamental human rights and should be treated as such.

These governments should just wait until the quantum internet comes online and is unable to be decrypted. Recent experiments have already shown that it's possible.

 

[danckwerts]

All you need to know is that the opposite should happen of anything the horrible horrible Amber Rudd says.

I was going to say the same about the European Parliament. Perhaps we are both right or both wrong, or some other permutation.

 

[manhattanboy]

You could at least dodge that completely and bring up "the common man".

The common man really has no say...until the next revolutionary war. Reminds me of the 13 colonies uniting to fight the King's unilateral imposition of his will.

A better piece of legislation, if I was writing it, would simply force greater transparency from companies on how they secure user data, what encryption schemes they use to do it, and then let the market figure out what's actually best. Non-profits like the EFF and academia will figure out how to translate this information for public consumption.

In theory what you are proposing is correct, but I would counter that the EFF has been sounding the horns on government surveillance overreach for years now, and "the common man" really has done nothing about it.

 

[danckwerts]

MacRumors really needs to stop promoting the idea that encryption, and therefore privacy, are political issues. They are not. They are fundamental human rights and should be treated as such.

One person's idea of what constitutes human rights doesn't necessarily accord with another's. Therein lies the politics.

 

[Fuzzball84]

Who cares if People voted for Brexit believing it would be to their benefit. it was not and a lot of things were said to people that will never be delivered, as they are not deliverable. But they believed it and so they are the fools.

Now that we are leaving the EU we can strip away regulations, remove workplace protections and lower taxes. This will include stripping away privacy for the U.K. Citizens by banning encryption and monitoring all internet access so that we may restrict what can be accessed and punish those that view unsuitable or otherwise innapripritate materials

 

[ksnell]

With our current dictator in power (Theresa May) I doubt we’d see these measures, since she wants to lock down the UKs internet and open encryption North Korea style.

Did you really compare your elected official to an actual dictator in North Korea? Just because you didn't vote for them doesn't make them a dictator. Although I agree the UK's fight against internet freedom is horrible, inflammatory comments like that do no good. Consider how bad North Korea really is and then think again about the comparison.

 

[macduke]

One person's idea of what constitutes human rights doesn't necessarily accord with another's. Therein lies the politics.

So is it a political issue to allow rape and torture?

No, because those are human rights issues. Fundamental human right to not be raped, and to not be tortured. It's inexcusable. If you don't believe in basic human rights, then you shouldn't get to participate in a society of other humans. Freedom only goes so far, and that's violating fundamental human rights of another person.