
European MEPs want to ban states from backdooring encryption - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/20/european-meps-want-to-ban-states-from-backdooring-encryption
======
merricksb
Earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14592745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14592745)

------
jamiethompson
Yet another reason to be sad about having my EU citizenship forcibly removed.
The UK government want the exact opposite of this.

~~~
lloeki
I can relate but complain all you want, it wasn't "forcibly" removed, it was
democratically so.

~~~
onion2k
_democratically_

For a value of 'democratically' where billionaire media tycoons controlled the
narrative.

~~~
hd4
Virtually-unknown tech companies too:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-
great...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-
british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy)

------
cabalamat
What will the EU do about operating systems developed outside the EU, such as
MS Windows, iOS, or Android? If these contain a backdoor for the NSA, it is
unlikely that the manufactureres will tell the EU that they do.

Therefore if the EU is serious about this (and it should be), it should
develop its own operating systems, and mandate them for all enterprises that
store personal or sensitive data (which means all enterprises).

Doing this, while necessary, is not sufficient to stop backdoors, because they
could be implemented at the hardware level. Many chips are manufactured in the
far east, and China is a state that may be hostile to the EU in future. So the
EU needs all chips to be designed and manufactured on its own soil, if it
wants digital independence.

~~~
Svenskunganka
Well, Linux does originate from Scandinavia (Linus Torvalds is Finland
Swedish), and it's open source, so nothing stops us from building operating
systems on top of Linux. But there are however a lot of good Linux-based
operating systems out there already (open source, too), and the problem would
rather be what comes pre-installed with the machine you buy. If Microsoft for
example can't ensure the EU that Windows doesn't contain backdoors for the NSA
for example, the EU could regulate the PC market to favor, say, Ubuntu over
Windows pre-installed. But I really don't think it would be a good idea to do
that.

I do however think that our government agencies and militaries should be
forced to run Linux. They already have a problem of being too reliant on
Windows for pretty much everything.

~~~
cabalamat
> If Microsoft for example can't ensure the EU that Windows doesn't contain
> backdoors for the NSA for example

What counts as ensurance? Simply MS saying "no backdoors" clearly isn't good
enough. Open sourcing the whole OS, to make it harder to find backdoors, would
help.

~~~
Svenskunganka
Yeah that's the tricky part. I don't think the EU could make Microsoft open
source their Windows, but I guess something along the lines of Microsoft
having to give access to their source code to a team of EU security
researchers that audits and looks for backdoors would be a start. But even
that isn't foolproof.

------
lmilcin
While this is probably a step in a good direction, I would like to see EU
enforcing companies to be responsible for the security of the products they
are offering if they want to conduct business in EU states.

