Seems to me we're going to have to let the anti-encryption mob have their way until things go wrong—bigtime. No amount of expert advice will convince them until they witness firsthand the negative consequences of weakening encryption.
It's only afterwards and as a consequence some highly
newsworthy disasters occur such as a child abduction or political sex scandal involving a high profile politician come to light that the lay public will get the message that weak encryption is effectively no encryption.
In the meantime criminals will be early adopters of more sophisticated messaging such as steganography.
I find it fascinating that a country with citizens that are typically willing to protest in the streets at the drop of a hat don't seem to care. Is it that they aren't technically literate?
These sorts of laws have repeatedly failed to pass in Europe due to people protesting. The government just keeps coming back and trying again it seems.
That makes little sense if you know some basic political science, the EU is comprised of different political interest groups just like your country is.
Unless you literally belive everyone in the EU belive the exact same thing and there's zero disagreements what do ever.
Kind of, at least in France? Our privacy-nefarious laws have been passed by both left- and right-leaning governments. It seems that if there is something the elite agrees upon, it is that the plebeians should be kept in check.
This article incorrectly implies that Telegram is end-to-end encrypted, by putting it in the same line as WhatsApp and Signal.
Telegram doesn't even try to be end-to-end-encrypted by default. WhatsApp claims to be end-to-end-encrypted, but it's not open-source, Signal is end-to-end-encrypted.
telegram may not be end-to-end encrypted by default but it does support end-to-end encryption. the generous reading is that this encryption, if used, should be broken.
so as i read it the article doesn't suggest that all of telegram is end-to-end encrypted only that it has support for it.
Some people do not take no for an answer. This is bordering on absurd.
But on the other side what I miss is some explanation if forensic analysis helps here? Presumably the messages stay on a phone and you can recover them. If that is the case then it should be enough to fight the crime, i.e if you get a warrant to access the device then you can access messages, which I believe many would agree is fine.
Lets pretend this happens, I am curious how it would work.
So a person in Canada messages someone in France who's WhatsApp is not encrypted. But the message from Canada is encrypted. Will the person in Canada's message have to be sent unencrypted ? Or will WhatsApp Canada need to allow France to break Canada's encryption ?
Personally I think it would be easier for these apps to ban people in France from using their service.
> "Perrin now offers a different framing. “Article 8 ter, which I had adopted, was not at all aimed at obtaining encryption keys but at introducing a ghost participant into a conversation before encryption,” he says. The “ghost participant” approach, sometimes called a ghost user proposal, was floated by GCHQ in 2018 and rejected by every major privacy organization, civil liberties group, and security researcher who looked at it. The idea is that the platform silently adds a third recipient, an invisible intelligence agent, to a supposedly two-person conversation. Users never see them. The encryption technically still works, except that one of the parties is the state."
And by the way, this article mentions other things already in place, such as being able to commandeer your device and spy on it without breaking encryption:
"The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case with freedom, which in a democracy often descends into anarchy... The excessive liberty of the individual in a democracy eventually leads to a desire for authoritarian rule, and out of that desire, the tyrant arises." - Plato's Republic
> Mass surveillance, of course, isn’t what the delegation is proposing. The fear isn’t that a French investigator will read every WhatsApp message.
French investigators won't care about every WhatsApp message. But they definitely will slurp them all up, process them all with AI, and read them whenever they have an interest. And they will deny they are doing this as they do this.
It'd be interesting (horrifying?) to see something that was once assumed secret go public. Imagine if all chats and payments eventually went public at some point.
With TON, perhaps altcoins will give way to micro coins - tailored especially for apps and their users/founders? ..for micropayments and running on AI infrastructure. Blockchain and AI infrastructure are already interchangeable in large part. So if transaction histories are exposed, the damage is limited. Startups won't look to IPO, they'll look to float a coin to make serious money. Binance did it.
I'm not sure if Ethereum tokens would be the same thing.
Seems to me we're going to have to let the anti-encryption mob have their way until things go wrong—bigtime. No amount of expert advice will convince them until they witness firsthand the negative consequences of weakening encryption.
It's only afterwards and as a consequence some highly newsworthy disasters occur such as a child abduction or political sex scandal involving a high profile politician come to light that the lay public will get the message that weak encryption is effectively no encryption.
In the meantime criminals will be early adopters of more sophisticated messaging such as steganography.
I find it fascinating that a country with citizens that are typically willing to protest in the streets at the drop of a hat don't seem to care. Is it that they aren't technically literate?
These sorts of laws have repeatedly failed to pass in Europe due to people protesting. The government just keeps coming back and trying again it seems.
What makes you think French citizens don’t care?
Maybe it's time for France to reconsider its relationship with the EU.
The French people typically elect far-right politicians to represent them at the EU level, so...
It's not about left or right, but up and down.
That makes little sense if you know some basic political science, the EU is comprised of different political interest groups just like your country is.
Unless you literally belive everyone in the EU belive the exact same thing and there's zero disagreements what do ever.
Kind of, at least in France? Our privacy-nefarious laws have been passed by both left- and right-leaning governments. It seems that if there is something the elite agrees upon, it is that the plebeians should be kept in check.
This is France pushing this onto themselves?
This article incorrectly implies that Telegram is end-to-end encrypted, by putting it in the same line as WhatsApp and Signal.
Telegram doesn't even try to be end-to-end-encrypted by default. WhatsApp claims to be end-to-end-encrypted, but it's not open-source, Signal is end-to-end-encrypted.
telegram may not be end-to-end encrypted by default but it does support end-to-end encryption. the generous reading is that this encryption, if used, should be broken.
so as i read it the article doesn't suggest that all of telegram is end-to-end encrypted only that it has support for it.
> WhatsApp claims to be end-to-end-encrypted, but it's not open-source
And explicitly does not encrypt metadata.
Meanwhile NSA top brass publicly stated, "We kill people based on metadata."
I imagine in 2027 people will be getting killed over vibes.
Does make you wonder what kind of people they kill or how many. I can't think of a lot of crimes whose metadata warrants being killed for personally.
I'm starting to think we need to make encryption a protected class, so that we can label speaking against it as hate speech.
Let's start putting some of these politicians in jail for being stupid.
Some people do not take no for an answer. This is bordering on absurd.
But on the other side what I miss is some explanation if forensic analysis helps here? Presumably the messages stay on a phone and you can recover them. If that is the case then it should be enough to fight the crime, i.e if you get a warrant to access the device then you can access messages, which I believe many would agree is fine.
Let’s start with the smartphones of politicians.
Lets pretend this happens, I am curious how it would work.
So a person in Canada messages someone in France who's WhatsApp is not encrypted. But the message from Canada is encrypted. Will the person in Canada's message have to be sent unencrypted ? Or will WhatsApp Canada need to allow France to break Canada's encryption ?
Personally I think it would be easier for these apps to ban people in France from using their service.
They would have used the "ghost user" strategy.
> "Perrin now offers a different framing. “Article 8 ter, which I had adopted, was not at all aimed at obtaining encryption keys but at introducing a ghost participant into a conversation before encryption,” he says. The “ghost participant” approach, sometimes called a ghost user proposal, was floated by GCHQ in 2018 and rejected by every major privacy organization, civil liberties group, and security researcher who looked at it. The idea is that the platform silently adds a third recipient, an invisible intelligence agent, to a supposedly two-person conversation. Users never see them. The encryption technically still works, except that one of the parties is the state."
One of many simultaneous attempts all around the world:
https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-en...
And by the way, this article mentions other things already in place, such as being able to commandeer your device and spy on it without breaking encryption:
https://community.qbix.com/t/increasing-state-of-surveillanc...
"The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case with freedom, which in a democracy often descends into anarchy... The excessive liberty of the individual in a democracy eventually leads to a desire for authoritarian rule, and out of that desire, the tyrant arises." - Plato's Republic
> Mass surveillance, of course, isn’t what the delegation is proposing. The fear isn’t that a French investigator will read every WhatsApp message.
French investigators won't care about every WhatsApp message. But they definitely will slurp them all up, process them all with AI, and read them whenever they have an interest. And they will deny they are doing this as they do this.
It will become more important over time - Telegram and the TON coin are reintegrating. So messaging surveillance is financial surveillance too? Price is going up too. https://x.com/BSCNews/status/2053046567930937817 Upgraded a month ago: https://x.com/durov/status/2042247948147241072
It'd be interesting (horrifying?) to see something that was once assumed secret go public. Imagine if all chats and payments eventually went public at some point.
With TON, perhaps altcoins will give way to micro coins - tailored especially for apps and their users/founders? ..for micropayments and running on AI infrastructure. Blockchain and AI infrastructure are already interchangeable in large part. So if transaction histories are exposed, the damage is limited. Startups won't look to IPO, they'll look to float a coin to make serious money. Binance did it.
I'm not sure if Ethereum tokens would be the same thing.
Yo, fuck you, France! Love, The rest of the rational world.
To make the link with another very successful article on HN today: who is Franced rule by yet? By cyber-libertarians right?