We (the citizens) need access to all the politicians communication, just in case if they do anything illegal... 24/7 microphones, digital communication tracker, etc. Let's start with that, and then move on to "normal people", if politicians still believe in no privacy.
Politicians are the most surveilled people, and sometimes vote for things like this for fear of or as the result of being targeted by their own or other countries' intelligence agencies.
If the CIA wants Spain to ban encryption, they're not going to be bothered by the resistance of some Spanish MPs, they're going to fix the problem.
We (the citizens) need to ban secret police and secret courts.
> Politicians are the most surveilled people, and sometimes vote for things like this for fear of or as the result of being targeted by their own or other countries' intelligence agencies.
Not here. Probably not anywhere outside US and some very few countries.
Politicians are mostly corrupt, though degrees vary. Most relevant child abuse was covered by famous politicians¹²³⁴⁵. Nevertheless, the same politicians cut budgets for police to do actual investigation work, because that could harm themselves, then want to cut the last line of defense the public has to do actual investigation and journalism (which requires free speech and privacy) by declaring that this is required to fight pedophilia.
We need to do something against this. We really do.
Politicians are just ambitious people, sharing full spectrum of other traits. Most people would become equally corrupt if presented the opportunity. Being ambitious just amplifies the temptation.
If you downvote, please at least state a reason. All of the links are reputable and verified. And all of them were covered by famous, reputable politicians.
My reason to downvote will be: Around half the girls I've met in my life were molested by adults as children, and it wasn't by famous people or politicians. It was by neighbors and family members in the suburbs where they grew up. It's fine to call out hypocrisy in the ruling class that covers up for their own while claiming to be trying to address the problem, but at the end of the day the vast majority of the millions of daily cases of child abuse are taking place right nextdoor or even in the same houses as the people who make a lot of noise about corrupt politicians. I'd even go as far as to say that an obsession with famous child abuse cases is a good indicator of someone who's either committed or thought about committing that sort of crime.
Spain is already a 1-party consent country, it is legal to record any conversation as long as you are part of it. However, it is not legal to publish them, but they can be used in a trial.
Thanks. Looking up “1-party” sent me down an interesting rabbit hole learning about the limited “0-party” rights of interception. For radio interception in NJ, it is legal (and only legal?) to intercept:
f. Any person to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted:
(1) by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;
(2) by any governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communication system, including police and fire, readily accessible to the general public;
(3) by a station operating on an authorized frequency within the bands allocated to the amateur, citizens band, or general mobile radio services; or
(4) by any marine or aeronautical communications system;
———
Which would imply that broadband RF recording using SDRs, even if it excludes the cell phone bands, is not OK!
For example, the MURS band seems to be illegal to intercept.
Can someone steelman the argument against one-party consent? I literally can't think of any reason anyone would want it, other than wanting to be able to lie about what they said later. It doesn't even help people who are saying things that might be dangerous if they leak, since illegal != impossible.
While of course no government comes close to that level of radical transparency, Finland comes closer than most. I believe Finland requires all official government documents be made public by default, unless they are specifically exempted. Many other governments, like the US through FOIA, let citizens request documents with varying degrees of success, but proactive disclosure is much more rare. And of course, this is just about official documents and doesn't cover the contents of private meetings.
(I'm just an interested observer, so I'd love to hear from actual Finns on how they feel about their government's level of openness!)
It's the same here in Sweden. It just feels natural that _obviously_ we should have access to what goes on in the public sector, unless there's a very specific reason not to. There was a huge backlash when the current government decided to hide who received electricity subsidies this last winter, as it was seen as a way to hide corruption.
Way back when, Ukraine implemented video recording of all politicians' offices in order to combat corruption. I read an article where a citizen was trying to get something done at a local government office, tried to offer a customary bribe, but was rejected as the officer pointed to the recording camera in the corner of the room.
Yep, and they're working and being paid for and by us. If they're working for the benefit of the people (or at least their voters), why would they keep secrets from us/them?
I have been advocating this for some time. If we want full transparency, let's start with the public servants. Oh, they won't be able to make backroom deals, fail at peace agreements because they walked out after 2 hours, and we'll know exactly how they failed? Yes, that's how it should be, because millions of plebs will have to fight and pay the price for their abject failure, negligence and incompetence later. Let it be on full display!
Look, maybe nuclear secrets, black ops and some kind of weird Blackwater (er excuse me Academi) stuff can be off the books, although that has historically resulted in a lot of misery, especially the CIA: https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/511185078/america-in-laos-tra... and is probably a major reason behind war in Ukraine since 2014 ... but also in dozens of other countries, too. You'll find out when it's fully declassified 10 years later, but by then they'll just say "mistakes were made".
Come to think of it, we'd all be richer, too. Want to get rid of wasteful spending? Start with the Pentagon. Somehow debt-ceiling Republicans aren't eager to do that but it can't account for $35,000,000,000,000 https://www.yahoo.com/video/pentagon-35-trillion-accounting-...
that’s what I’m saying, quadruple or 10x their pay to increase the cost of them selling out for corruption but also make them wear 24/7 body cameras, maybe we can get the true patriots who are willing to sacrifice some privacy to do the good work and as a bonus shorter terms will just work themselves out naturally
Have everyone in govt making in excess of 2x poverty line be subject to a tax of 99% for all income exceeding the avg of 5 years of income before joining govt
You can be rich and join govt. You can live ok post-govt. But you sure as hell should not get rich off govt
It's called public service for a reason. Its a service. Not a career.
Either you have a sense of duty and are willing to sacrifice, or else go work on the private sector.
It is so ridiculous that the exact same discussion has to be repeated again and again. The arguments haven't changed. "Bad thing is happening and we need this to ensure it doesn't anymore". The bad thing changes to what's currently the most popular threat although protecting children is obviously an all-time favorite.
I think the next angle will be that it's needed to prevent hate speech. Any other ideas?
There needs to be an international human rights treaty that enshrines the right to end-to-end encryption. Law enforcement all over the world already has more than enough power to do their jobs. If they cared about protecting people, they should be embracing the wide availability of strong encryption with open arms.
It's time politicians spent time increasing accountability and preventing abuse before they even think about granting more power to law enforcement.
They never needed to go to a "next angle"; the "protect children" has almost always worked (with the occasional "prevent terrorism" thrown in for diversity) :)
You don't need to change the angle, you just need to keep trying until the people's views align enough to get it through. "Never let a crisis go to waste", and such.
Counter-terrorism, criminal investigations, national security, cybersecurity, anti-corruption, regulatory compliance, breaking up organized crime, stopping drug distribution and trafficking, stopping black market trades (weapons, human trafficking, and the aforementioned drugs), stopping production of illegal materials, preventing insider trading, detecting fraud, stopping money laundering, preventing corporate espionage, nationalistic thought-police stuff that some countries legitimately want, stopping identity theft, political back channel interference prevention, social stability (someone might incite unrest), economic stability (someone might share ideas bad for the economy), public health safety (someone might share anti-vax ideas), gang activity prevention, stopping cults and sectarian violence, scam/fraud call and message prevention, disrupting ransom schemes, preventing propaganda, stopping environmental crime, disrupting illegal immigration, military and government organization advantage against allies on whom they can spy if they pressure them into abandoning E2E... oops I mean... peacekeeping, preventing the undermining of democracy (or the fatherland/motherland for those of the authoritarian inclination). There are definitely a few bingo cards worth of possible excuses.
This is already tested somewhat in the UK, where you're required by law to provide a password to an encrypted file or volume when asked. If you're in possession of the encrypted volume, the courts assume you know the password, and throw you in jail if you don't. Obviously this can be easily abused by slipping an encrypted USB drive into someone's backpack.
The point is that they will look at intention and surrounding context - is there a crime leading to you in some way and could it have been facilitated in part by encrypted messaging? Did you also transit a billion random Spanish words during this time frame? If so, it seems to follow by their current laws and logic that they can assume this was encrypted information and therefore broke the law. And if you refuse to decrypt it for them, that's another broken law.
Perhaps we need to make a special decrypt program, one that accepts any password and just produces some log files. They can't prove it is not the data (except by claiming they planted it)..
I recommend filling up the empty space on hard drives and flash drives with random data from /dev/urandom. What is the government going to do, try and get you to decrypt that? On my computer I already have several terabytes of completely random data. Decrypt that, thought police.
You're speaking as if this will help you. If you go to the prosecution/trial phase, you will be found guilty since you probably hadn't the best opsec and forensic analysis of your computer found the encryption/steganography software you used, or you left something in the system logs (e.g. timestamps of accessing files), or you left something in the thumbnail cache, or you did not rename the file before deleting it, or the timestamp analysis of e.g. you browser data and logs will show clear behavioral patterns pointing to you hiding data. If you use VMs, their ram is stored in a plaintext file unless you configure it otherwise, on your ssd it never goes away due to wear protection. Even if you had an encrypted drive you will be forced to give them the key, then they will rederive the master key and analyze parts of the disk free space to find something on you, again on ssd this is a certainty and on for example Bitlocker you can never change the master key, ensuring you going to jail.
Even if all of this did not incriminate you, you're in trouble for something in the first place, since you're on trial, right? So probably other people you communicated with lead them to you. And in this case, the judge applies common sense, there is this traffic cell of 6 people and on 5 computers we have clear evidence but on 6th nothing, therefore you're still probably 95+% guilty? Judges aren't stupid.
People making comments like yours annoy me since you seem to be calming people down that we could endure total strong encryption ban, while we absolutely could not.
The type of person you are replying to has most likely never lived in any sort of authoritarian regime. People like them play these games...almost like the equivalent of a child saying "I'm not touching you".
What happens in authoritarian regimes is that the law is used to justify the actions of the ruling body, not the other way around. So if you just so happen to blast random static and act suspicious, you'll be taken, beaten and either admit to a crime or a law will be made or amended to justify it. And then you'll admit to it.
The price of freedom is constant vigilance. You are correct in saying we could not endure a total strong encryption ban.
I am, of course, familiar with the wrench decryption method (https://xkcd.com/538/).
I am saying no ban on encryption can be logically consistent since you can’t absolutely prove that something is encrypted. Even if it is a file called encrypted_drive.imencrypted.
I’m not a lawyer but this kind of ban should be wide open to legal attack. Especially if the country also has freedom of speech. And if it doesn’t have that, it should.
And if all else fails and this insane law passes, the illiterates who pushed it through will cause a national economic and security disaster. Online crime will skyrocket. The KGB/FSB will have a feeding frenzy. Voters will quickly learn to love encryption again.
I'd have more sympathy to the "we need to be able to read every one's message, and open up everyone's communication to criminals to stop crime" story if there was any evidence it would actually do anything.
There is no evidence that the reason terrorist attacks (the common go to) would be stopped by removing encryption from people, because we know that existing attacks have occurred even when law enforcement is already aware (take the Manchester bombing: multiple friends and family had reported him to the police on multiple occasions).
We do have a huge amount of evidence that any such attack on privacy will immediately be abused. In the UK those laws that were passed to "stop terrorism", etc are used to catch people not picking up dog poop, not paying TV licensing, etc. In the US we had wide spread warrantless surveillance of literally everyone, courtesy of AT&T.
My opinion is that any law that proponents proclaim will only be used to stop X should contain terms along the line of "any use of this legislation for any purpose other than X invalidates this law, any evidence acquired must be destroyed, and any convictions derived from such evidence are no longer valid". I would give good odds that any attempt to add such text would result in push back by the people saying the law is only needed to stop X.
Spain's politicians don't understand what this ban means. In their eyes, it's like allowing a policeman to open suspicious mail at the post office; and no, it's like getting your mail in transparent envelopes, or receiving all your online shopping in crystal boxes. However, nobody will convince them since someone has sold them the other idea: the same people who sell ultra-expensive software to government that causes nothing but problems.
Fair point. We always hear about the NSA has this or that. The calls to ban encryption are lower in the US, so I wonder if NSA has something they just won’t share with Europe?
My view on banning encryption in any way is always the same: it will disadvantage the innocent masses, and the criminals they purport to be targeting will simply continue to use it. The black hats will rejoice because now their victims are less secure by law. Good luck stopping them.
I don't understand how this is proposed all over again when it has zero chance to be effective.
Criminals will not use apps that compromise security. They will still use apps that are end-to-end encrypted. These people are breaking the law already, why would they make an exception for one that would compromise their opsec?
Oh sweet summer child. It's a government. This one may be "far-left". The UK wants to do the same and is "far-right". The far-right in the USA want to ban porn, prostitution and burn books. Governments are made of psychopaths. It doesn't matter what kind of politics the psychopaths are pretending to have in order to get into power. The reason that politicians even have parties is so that there is always someone else to blame, not them: you blame "the far-left" and not the psychopaths in power. The problem is always "woke people", "fascists", "lefties", "racists", you name it. No the problem is psychopaths.
Readit News
If the CIA wants Spain to ban encryption, they're not going to be bothered by the resistance of some Spanish MPs, they're going to fix the problem.
We (the citizens) need to ban secret police and secret courts.
Not here. Probably not anywhere outside US and some very few countries.
We need to do something against this. We really do.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
² https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336831983_Understan...
³ https://time.com/2974381/england-land-of-royals-tea-and-horr...
⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux
⁵ https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/past-pedophile-...
Dead Comment
And no more unrecorded votes.
f. Any person to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted:
(1) by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;
(2) by any governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communication system, including police and fire, readily accessible to the general public;
(3) by a station operating on an authorized frequency within the bands allocated to the amateur, citizens band, or general mobile radio services; or
(4) by any marine or aeronautical communications system;
———
Which would imply that broadband RF recording using SDRs, even if it excludes the cell phone bands, is not OK!
For example, the MURS band seems to be illegal to intercept.
https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call...
https://www.digit.fyi/data-protection-political-parties/
(I'm just an interested observer, so I'd love to hear from actual Finns on how they feel about their government's level of openness!)
Look, maybe nuclear secrets, black ops and some kind of weird Blackwater (er excuse me Academi) stuff can be off the books, although that has historically resulted in a lot of misery, especially the CIA: https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/511185078/america-in-laos-tra... and is probably a major reason behind war in Ukraine since 2014 ... but also in dozens of other countries, too. You'll find out when it's fully declassified 10 years later, but by then they'll just say "mistakes were made".
If we knew about how the covert operations that led to wars that killed MILLIONS of people, we'd hold them to account: https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-...
Come to think of it, we'd all be richer, too. Want to get rid of wasteful spending? Start with the Pentagon. Somehow debt-ceiling Republicans aren't eager to do that but it can't account for $35,000,000,000,000 https://www.yahoo.com/video/pentagon-35-trillion-accounting-...
Thankfully we have C-SPAN at least.
This is about duty. Not about profit.
I think you have it flipped.
Have everyone in govt making in excess of 2x poverty line be subject to a tax of 99% for all income exceeding the avg of 5 years of income before joining govt
You can be rich and join govt. You can live ok post-govt. But you sure as hell should not get rich off govt
It's called public service for a reason. Its a service. Not a career.
Either you have a sense of duty and are willing to sacrifice, or else go work on the private sector.
We need statesmen. Not rent-seeking politicians
I think the next angle will be that it's needed to prevent hate speech. Any other ideas?
It's time politicians spent time increasing accountability and preventing abuse before they even think about granting more power to law enforcement.
Dead Comment
- will it be illegal to transmit a blast of static?
- will it be a crime to transmit words that aren’t good, clear Spanish? If no, what if it’s a crazy complicated language?
- will it be a crime to transmit Spanish with bad grammar? What if I transmit a billion random Spanish words?
The point is that they will look at intention and surrounding context - is there a crime leading to you in some way and could it have been facilitated in part by encrypted messaging? Did you also transit a billion random Spanish words during this time frame? If so, it seems to follow by their current laws and logic that they can assume this was encrypted information and therefore broke the law. And if you refuse to decrypt it for them, that's another broken law.
Even if all of this did not incriminate you, you're in trouble for something in the first place, since you're on trial, right? So probably other people you communicated with lead them to you. And in this case, the judge applies common sense, there is this traffic cell of 6 people and on 5 computers we have clear evidence but on 6th nothing, therefore you're still probably 95+% guilty? Judges aren't stupid.
People making comments like yours annoy me since you seem to be calming people down that we could endure total strong encryption ban, while we absolutely could not.
What happens in authoritarian regimes is that the law is used to justify the actions of the ruling body, not the other way around. So if you just so happen to blast random static and act suspicious, you'll be taken, beaten and either admit to a crime or a law will be made or amended to justify it. And then you'll admit to it.
The price of freedom is constant vigilance. You are correct in saying we could not endure a total strong encryption ban.
The parent comment has nothing to do with anything you just spouted.
It's about random transmissions being labeled as "encrypted" when that is not the intention.
Encryption is not limited to the more modern systems. They have existed for a long time.
These are politicians. We cannot trust them to have any knowledge or nuance.
I am saying no ban on encryption can be logically consistent since you can’t absolutely prove that something is encrypted. Even if it is a file called encrypted_drive.imencrypted.
I’m not a lawyer but this kind of ban should be wide open to legal attack. Especially if the country also has freedom of speech. And if it doesn’t have that, it should.
And if all else fails and this insane law passes, the illiterates who pushed it through will cause a national economic and security disaster. Online crime will skyrocket. The KGB/FSB will have a feeding frenzy. Voters will quickly learn to love encryption again.
I'm open they ban anything related to Latinx. Or at least call it a different language.
There is no evidence that the reason terrorist attacks (the common go to) would be stopped by removing encryption from people, because we know that existing attacks have occurred even when law enforcement is already aware (take the Manchester bombing: multiple friends and family had reported him to the police on multiple occasions).
We do have a huge amount of evidence that any such attack on privacy will immediately be abused. In the UK those laws that were passed to "stop terrorism", etc are used to catch people not picking up dog poop, not paying TV licensing, etc. In the US we had wide spread warrantless surveillance of literally everyone, courtesy of AT&T.
My opinion is that any law that proponents proclaim will only be used to stop X should contain terms along the line of "any use of this legislation for any purpose other than X invalidates this law, any evidence acquired must be destroyed, and any convictions derived from such evidence are no longer valid". I would give good odds that any attempt to add such text would result in push back by the people saying the law is only needed to stop X.
- The government proposes a law to regulate content on the internet, ostensibly targeted at Netflix and similar services.
- Critics point out that the law would apply to small-time content creators too, and could destroy their ability to compete.
- The government pinky-swears that they would never apply the law to individuals.
- A member of the opposition proposes an amendment to explicitly exclude individuals from the law.
- The government rejects the proposal and passes the bill as originally drafted.
Deleted Comment
Criminals will not use apps that compromise security. They will still use apps that are end-to-end encrypted. These people are breaking the law already, why would they make an exception for one that would compromise their opsec?