
Taking stock of the new French-German encryption proposal - taylorbuley
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-cybersecurity/2016/08/taking-stock-of-the-new-french-german-encryption-proposal-216051
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spdy
Elections are coming and everyone has to play tough. None of this is targeted
at terrorist as is does not even remotely make sense its all about controlling
the population.

Let`s see when they propose to ban math.

Mandatory John Oliver on Encryption :)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjZ2r9Ygzw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjZ2r9Ygzw)

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Freak_NL
Ignoring the ample amount of ethical and political objections to the whole
notion of government (which government, incidently?) backdoors, how does one
even start to implement this kind of legislature? You might be able to coerce
Facebook or Google to cooperate, but you can't exactly outlaw any alternative
that is out of reach of the EU, or any jurisdiction for that matter. These
tools exist now, and won't just dissappear. Any terrorist worth his salt will
use whatever works, regardless of legality.

~~~
CydeWeys
> You might be able to coerce Facebook or Google to cooperate

I doubt it, not for the French or German governments anyway. Simpler to
shutter the offices there and put the onus on France/Germany of creating
China-like Great Firewalls if they want to block Google/Facebook web access to
their citizens. I can't actually imagine that happening in said democratic
societies.

~~~
allendoerfer
This would be EU law, and apply to a market of currently 508 million people
with the potential to grow to 750 million people.

I still think and hope it would not be put into place.

~~~
Freak_NL
These kind of laws also tend not to exist in isolation. There are politicians
in both the EU and the US who entertain this notion of cryptographic
backdoors. Common sense says that it is impossible for this kind of law to
gain traction beyond these kind of probing attempts at finding support; there
are just too many practical issues to solve without this law becoming a
complete farce.

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RaleyField
One thing I miss in here in EU is the first amendment and its interpretation.
Code should become protected speech, simple as that, and we shouldn't dance
around how to "balance" things out. That said, I'd like somebody to point out
where in this proposal are mentioned mandatory backdoors (which article
mentions and would be an attack on freedom of speech in my view). Maybe the
proposal is only about requests for decryption of ciphertext for which key is
present on servers to be legally enforceable.

~~~
guitarbill
> One thing I miss in here in EU is the first amendment and its interpretation

What makes you think other countries don't have similar laws? Also, code as
protected speech isn't even agreed on in the US AFAIK [0]

> for decryption of ciphertext for which key is present on servers to be
> legally enforceable.

Currently it's not doable by anybody (except sender and recipient), so legally
enforceable = legally doable = illegally doable = backdoor. Do we really need
to point this out every time? It isn't too hard to understand that
maths/cryptography has no concept to differentiate between police man, judge,
or hacker.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-
fbi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-fbi-fight-
asks-is-code-protected-as-free-speech)

~~~
RaleyField
> It isn't too hard to understand that maths/cryptography has no concept to
> differentiate between police man, judge, or hacker.

It isn't too hard to understand that half the apps sell snake oil as well. By
the standard used by them "encrypted" communication happens if mechanically
aes is being used when talking to server.

> What makes you think other countries don't have similar laws?

What makes you think other countries have similar laws. They are vaguely
similar. Defamation laws are plaintiff friendly in EU. If you say something
and you aren't completely sure it is true and will be recognized by courts as
such then you are liable. Then you have attacks that would be unthinkable in
US, like proposal for law penalizing utterances of "polish death camps" with 3
years.

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/use-phrase-
polish-d...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/use-phrase-polish-death-
camps-in-poland-and-you-may-go-to-jail-180960167/?no-ist)

