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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

> Previously secure end-to-end encrypted messenger services such as Whatsapp or Signal would be forced to install a backdoor.

This is surely a fantastic extrapolation of this author. The chance of this happening is zero, which is also the chance of this being explicitly stated in the legal text.

It would be a disaster of course. And extremely controversial. Which is why it doesn’t just get passed under the radar, even as a temporary measure.

Isn’t there a copy of the actual legal text anywhere? Or a sober analysis of that text that isn’t made by a member of the pirate party?

Edit: Here https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/docs_autres_instituti...

It doesn’t mention encryption, back doors, or forcing any entity to do anything. It does mention allowing companies to temporarily continue current monitoring for child abuse under certain conditions. What exactly is the outrage about?

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But it did get passed under the radar. No one knows about this except for techies, and even then it was quite easy to miss.

The legislation would not have passed under the radar if it does what the author claims e.g require backdoors or similar.

The reason it didn’t raise many eyebrows is because it doesn’t mention this.

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/message-screening/?la...

> For autumn 2021, European Commission announced that it will propose a follow-up legislation that will make the use of chatcontrol mandatory for all e-mail and messenger providers. This legislation might then also affect securely end-to-end encrypted communications.

So far nobody is reporting on this.

So he is outraged by this and the worst thing is… not in this legislation but in a potential follow up legislation that might contain those bad parts?

At this point I'm assuming you are arguing in bad faith. Again, no one is reporting on this. People should be made aware that if the vote happens, they can nag their reps beforehand. But they aren't being made aware.

You must be misunderstanding what I’m arguing.

I’m saying nothing about the actual law passed or how it wasn’t reported on.

What I’m saying is that the article linked talks about banning encryption or mandating back doors, and that law would be very controversial (much more than this one) so that law couldn’t just be passed unnoticed.

The future law text about banning encryption might be written some day and I too hope we have plenty of time to nag reps before it ever gets to a vote. This could be years from now, if ever.

nah, you are bsing, the article is about legit concerns, you failing to see any of that or naively/foolishly believing the innocence of the legislators is your own problem.

> the chance of this happening is zero

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/471/227/dd0...

Why would a company in the US (Signal) decide to comply with the doctrine of another country, especially a doctrine antithetical to their entire business?

Well, zero is not just a really small number.

But to answer "why" would involve unpacking many direct and indirect motivations. First, I would never trust that any corporation has any doctrine that they would or could stand by ad infinitum given the right pressures.

At the end of they day you're talking about humans. A group of self-interested humans. A group of self-interested humans whose makeup changes as directors and executives rotate out. A group whose intentions can be undercut by an individual. Think you that the "Snowden" move doesn't happen the other way around? Probably more frequent that the intelligence communities infiltrate private organizations with rogue contractors than they experience it themselves. Probably really dang easy to be honest.

Since it came up earlier, I might just casually point to AT&T letting the NSA (or whomever) mirror all the traffic running through their network[0]. That would seem antithetical to their business, but obviously there are competing motivations. Where are those motivations sourced? Who makes the call? We don't know. I guess that's my point - you can't put faith in opaque decision making processes. I wouldn't rely on them, is all I'm saying. You could say the risk is low, but it's definitely not zero.

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-spying-relies-on-atts...

My point originally not whether anyone would comply, but whether such a measure would ever be worded, let alone enforced.

The op article doesn’t convince.

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