WhatsApp threatened to leave the Netherlands due to controversial backdoor law
nrc.nl
nrc.nl
Ah yes, the "think about the children" narrative again.
This argument is as valid as banning knives because some percentage of knife owners commit crimes with them.
I'm really getting tired of this and hope larger groups of population start seeing through this bullshit.
Grapperhouse saw how hard it is to track down child abusers. He was touched by it and he wanted to fix this.
The best solution to track down child abusers fast is to track down their communications.
But I agree with you this might not be the best solution for the rest of the world.
Right. Then as bad actors find out that WhatsApp is backdoored, they move on to some other network, the police agents go on to think "oh, cool, no more abusers on WhatsApp, good job!", leaving the backdoor only for the good people and a bunch of police agents thinking "Now that CP is no longer a threat, what else are we going to use as a reason to keep these powers we have"?
The problem is people like Grapperhouse lack creativity. When they feel powerless they can't think of other solutions than the obvious.
Sommige Nederlandse mensen geloven dit? Ik weet het niet hoor.
We should reword this nearly-true claim to avoid spreading a pernicious myth. Let's try:
"I think you overestimate the amount that the average person understands about their privacy."
People care. They don't understand. Indeed, they are actively misled. That is not a fair foundation for assertions like "people don't care about X".
Many people are severly uninformed or have closed themselves off to information, that could disturb their comfort with FB and the likes (ha, pun not intended, but it works!). Many people are computer illiterates, addicted to their "drug of choice" and kept in place via network effect of "all their friends and family being on FB/WA/whatever" and they too are part of the problem, increasing the network effect.
I've had discussion with people, where I told them, that FB had the biggest personal data scandal in history (financially, in terms of what they had to pay), and that there is a new thing happening every month or so. Still these people do not want their way of being addicted shaken and continue regardlessly, dragging others down with them. I am sometimes at a loss what I can tell them, how I can explain to them what is happening. Telling them, that FB is running on ads, which are tailored to them, by spying on their behavior and mining that data. Nope, message not understood.
You are so right, I can't argue against that. It's the same psychology and social dynamics as why people continue to smoke or use harmful street drugs while seeing the people around them dying or getting sick, and being told every day that it's harmful.
I tried to make as clear, and sensitively as I could in Digital Vegan [1] why I think some digital technologies are a major public health issue, and that we are in the same territory as with tobacco 50 years ago.
One problem is that unlike heroin and tobacco, where the sickness of the victims is a net burden on governments, consumer capitalism, being a form of proxy mass-surveillance, traps governments in an uneasy "see no evil" alliance, if not outright support for digital harms.
Another is that digital harms can be remote, deferred in time and place, thus difficult to connect causally. As with many diseases or pollutants we are still in the early stages of understanding the effects of damage to privacy.
You're so right. What else?
- Safety is inconvenient
- Growth is inconvenient
- Success is inconvenient
- Long term happiness is inconvenient
That's why I consider the word convenience to be the modern form of the Greek work Thanatos, which is the "death drive" toward atrophy, stasis, forgetfulness and rigor mortis. Living is "Inconvenient", and because everything worth having costs something, convenience is "anti-life".
But that's a lot of beard-stroking philosophy. A more interesting question for hackers might be:
"Exactly when did we become the arse-wipers of the world, coddling
everyone in "convenience" lest their delicate brows produce a bead
of sweat or their minds be troubled by a moment of doubt?"
Political scientist Alexis De Toqueville writing in his 1840
Democracy in America [DeTocqueville35] questions the perils of
convenient systems so perfect in their pampering and coddling that
they render life pointless. Of what today we would call cybernetic
governance, he writes:
`` That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and
mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like
that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood;
but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
childhood: it is well content that the people should
rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For
their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it
chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and
supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures,
manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,
regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care
of thinking and all the trouble of living?''Secret services are one thing, police operations and investigations are another, spying your own citizens for the sake of spying them and collecting their data is not allowed in EU, but it happened in US (we have proof) and when it happened in Europe it was US companies doing it (Cambridge Analytica data scandal, to name one, was made possible by Facebook).
There's that.
Because after all, we don't talk about anything important on a computer - for that, we type up and send a physical letter.
Yeah, that's definitely a sentiment I've seen many times. I'm not sure if there's any scientific explanation/proof, but I see claims that the "vast majority of people are averse to [any] change" a lot in articles and books.
The problem is that the world doesn't care, and changes anyway. So we've moved financials and military to the digital world - which should be the very definition of "important" or "serious" - but people's perception of computers stayed mostly the same: tools for playing games, gossiping with friends, and watching funny cat videos. I think the general population will only catch up to the changes the IT revolution brought in a generation or two. By that time it'll be too late for any kind of regulation, I'm afraid.
That has been intensely studied in behavioral economics and there is a lot of laws that addresses the fact that people actually tend to leave pre-made decisions in place. (This is used in, e.g. laws that regulate consent to organ donation.)
You could argue the wording was loaded or something, but it’s certainly not an “opt-in to tracking” situation.
You couldn’t proceed without picking one of the options.
Facebook has been under pressure for many years to allow government agencies to decrypt messages. I believe that their "no" is also an ideological one, because I can't imagine any of the staff being willing to disable security for their customers for government oversight.
And sure, some companies do privacy only as a selling point, Apple, I think, is the best example. Is it a problem? Absolutely not.
and if someone gets arrested for a thoughtcrime or hatespeak offense, the evidence obtained from their chat logs will be inadmissible in court, right? :)
The system has been.in place for decades and the same procedures must be followed for every private conversation
Besides: do you know someone that was arrested for a thoughtcrime in the Netherlands?
>A court in the Netherlands has sentenced a man to 30 days in jail for insulting the king on Facebook.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36799639?
Plus, The Netherlands has quite a few restrictions on free speech in general. But I guess it depends on how you define "thought crimes"
That's not tough crime.
You can't insult the President of Republic here in Italy too, because it represent Italy, you're insulting the institution, it's against the law.
A though crime, as per Orwell - who invented the term - definition. is someone who goes against the status quo and get punished for expressing an unorthodox idea or doubting the system. You don't get a sentence usually, you simply disappear. Or get hunged in public as an example.
What you just reported is a plain straight law infringement. Just like a robbery.
A though crime would be being arrested for protesting against the US Supreme court and their vote to cancel abortion rights.
But I don't get your last point. If it was illegal to protest/criticize the Supreme court, and someone did, wouldn't that be straight law infringement too? I don't think they are mutually exclusive.
Insulting an institution, especially that of the Crown, is a form of protest and can be a way to express an unorthodox idea or a rejection of the system.
It's akin to going to jail for insulting Trump, Biden or Bush because you insulted the American presidency. To me that's just unsettling.
the nebulous laws are in place, like in every other country that had suddenly become very concerned about "protecting the children" in recent years
I wonder, at what point will they stop caring that there's no such thing as a “secure” backdoor?
Simply put, we don't want mass surveillance. We don't want authorities snooping in our private communications, period. That is more than sufficient, and does not require building on technological arguments that will only wear down.
"Federal Minister of the Interior Faeser has changed her mind about the EU Commission's plan: "I don't think it's compatible with our civil liberties to check every private message without any reason."
afaik they dont have a backdoor law? can you point to a link? tia
The existing law is already quite extensive: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/australian-government-...
Theoretically, any Australian could be compelled by the government to sneak backdoors into their bos's software, though I haven't seen any indication that such extreme measures were taken.
Australia is quite extreme in their anti encryption laws. Their government's stance has made me distrust Australian software dealing in security, and even Australian developers working on encryption technology. Not because I don't trust Australians per se, but because their government can force good people to do bad things.
Were this law to strike in the Netherlands, I'd expect other countries to shun Dutch security software immediately as well.
Circumventing the block would be trivial, so the next step would be to go after VPNs, TOR, decentralised messengers, and any other technology that would keep your private days out of the hands of the government.
Any archive links?
They were right to do this
It is a bit naive of some companies to think all they need is to "pay or comply" with some regulations and not push back when it is merited. It might come back later to bite them
And they dont have democracy. They cant french revolution on their CCP thing. Im no expert but this is mostly due to surveillance right? Dont say culture please, nobody prefer autocracy to democracy but the autocrate.
This convinced me surveillance is bad.
Edit: some of you disagree. Id like the opportunity to convince you. I get it that many chinese are just happy with the regime. And actually, I dont judge that. Its certainly a cool regime in some ways. But democracy grows like weed, there is no stopping it. But with surveillance. Remove surveillance, there is democracy in China tomorrow.
Of course culture has a part in it. Believe it or not, most people have never experienced democracy, and a sizeable amount do not believe that it is a superior society model. Some cultures will never be democratic in their current form, starting with the ones where religion is deeply intertwined with politics.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/27/democratic-rig...
There's an old saying I remember: "The best form of government is an absolute monarchy. The worst form of government is an absolute monarchy."
It all depends who's on top of the heap. Democracy tends to dilute the damage done by bad actors, but also hobbles really good ones.
No system is perfect.
Constitutional monarchy seems to rank highly:
Ask them if they'd like to get rid of corruption though: I would guess that most people would like to get rid of that from where they live, and you're more likely to remove it under democratic regimes.
> Some cultures will never be democratic in their current form, starting with the ones where religion is deeply intertwined with politics.
Religion or tribalism/clans? You'll find places that are democratic are less likely to be tribal/clanish (which often leads to less corruption), and there's a high level of modern secularism as well. You'll also find that these traits also tend to correlate highly with (historically) Christian cultures:
* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/joseph-...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_Wor...
* https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/dominion-makin...
Yes. In the above poll, pretty much every culture was advocating for a "fair justice system". But what justice? You'll find that the definition of justice varies wildly between places like, say, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and Iceland. The kind of justice the people want in some places has nothing to do with democracy. What constitutes "corruption" also varies wildly. If you ask someone from Uganda what sort of corruption he refers to, you might be surprised of the answer.
> Religion or tribalism/clans? You'll find places that are democratic are less likely to be tribal/clanish (which often leads to less corruption), and there's a high level of modern secularism as well. You'll also find that these traits also tend to correlate highly with (historically) Christian cultures:
You are taking the problem from the wrong end. Tribalist/clanic cultures cannot easily move towards democracy, it is not democratics states that are less likely to be tribal/clanic.
That's funny because India has also over a billion more people than the U.S., but the U.S is ranked 3rd by population. This means that even if US got 1 billion more people, they would still be the ranked 3rd by population
I know it's hard to believe but ask people who have lived in China. Most Chinese people do have a favorable view of the CCP and don't seem to mind the surveillance that much (or they welcome it).
Source: lived in China for ~10 years.
As a general rule: Anyone who speaks for hundreds of millions of people is either a demagogue or simply stereotyping. With the way things are at this point, you can't even know what Chinese people really think without being very close friends with them. Under Hu when the internet still wasn't as insanely censored, public opinion online was largely negative of the party and in the general population including older folks I'd guesstimate somewhere around 50/50.
Keep in mind that was right at the height of the economic boom, so finance wise people couldn't have been more happy. But like OP says, no one wants to be unfree. The assumption that people in certain parts of the world are more predisposed to support totalitarianism strikes me as (unconsciously) racist.
This research seems to mirror my experience: https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7...
> The assumption that people in certain parts of the world are more predisposed to support totalitarianism strikes me as (unconsciously) racist.
Oh boy...
I have a hard time believing someone has lived in China for 10 years, has a Chinese wife and is still that naive when it comes to dictatorships. Not even the party member I know believe this.
Sure, no one wants to be unfree, but majority prioritize things like wealth or security while actual freedoms have also dramatically increased since the 90s - even accounting for Xi's rollbacks. People bitching about politics online is like par for the course for any system, the very fact that people can bitch including IRL about politics is sign of how free PRC has gotten vs pre 90s. Granted it's lowkey like it's always been, including under Hu. Reality is for most people from develping countries, which PRC still straddles, "freedom" is fine, but other things are finer and worth putting up with autocracy for.
But most people prefer stability and prosperity over chaos and civil war, of which china had plenty of. And economically china is quite good, this is the main reason, the CCP is still in power.
One historical observation that was published a few years ago:
> It must be understood that liberalism and nationalism developed in China in lockstep, with one, in a sense, serving as means to the other. That is, liberalism was a means to serve national ends — the wealth and power of the country. And so when means and end came into conflict, as they inevitably did, the end won out. Nationalism trumped liberalism. Unity, sovereignty, and the means to preserve both were ultimately more important even to those who espoused republicanism and the franchise.
> China’s betrayal at Versailles did not help the cause of liberalism in China. After all, it was the standard bearers of liberalism — the U.K., France, and the United States — that had negotiated secret treaties to give Shandong to the Japanese.
> Former liberals gravitated toward two main camps, both overtly Leninist in organization, both unapologetically authoritarian: the Nationalists and the Communists. By the mid-1920s, the overwhelming majority of Chinese intellectuals believed that an authoritarian solution was China’s only recourse.
* https://supchina.com/2019/07/22/why-do-chinese-people-like-t...
* https://kottke.org/19/08/why-do-chinese-people-like-their-go... (via)
they've been a unified entity for over 3 thousand years, of course culture has a big part in it.
Besides, I'm not sure US (specifically) democracy is much better than Chinese system.
It's simply a different way of exercising power.
The average Chinese citizen is probably as content as the average American citizen.
See also:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World#Country_r...
> The average Chinese citizen is probably as content as the average American citizen.
Ask the minorities how they're treated in each (or in any country really).
> Freedom in the World is a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-based[2] non-governmental organization Freedom House
I'm not saying their data is wrong, but as always when it comes to data, it'd be great to have resources/data to read/interpret coming from "the other side" as well.
What do Asia-based/China-based organizations say about "democracy" and "freedom" in the US and Europe? Would they agree with the assessment from their US/Europe-based equivalents?
Of course the score depends on the what is measured and the metrics.
But an interesting yet simple 'practical metric' is/could be: from which countries are people emigrating from, and to which are they immigrating to (or wish to immigrate to, if there were fewer restrictions).
Where do people see that they can 'have a future' for themselves and possibly for their children?
not the best of sources.
Anyway the minority issues aren't worse in China than on US in my opinion.
If we think of women rights and children rights, they are worse in US than China, kids get shot in school over the right to own arms, women are stripped of the right to control their bodies over political vengeance from a former, bitter, undemocratic president.
Which seems to be why the US ranks so low in the 'Freedom Index': if you look at the "Safety and Security" metric is is ridiculously bad.
If you look at China's history a little bit deeply, you will notice a rhythmic pattern of unification and fragmentation.
I know this because I was told a by friend who is a History PhD, and gave me several resources to read.
China has not been politically unified, or even culturally similar for the past three thousand years.
There is a homogenous "Chinese culture" to westerners, because, honestly, westerners do not know much about China.
For example USA are much less homogeneous than China.
And they actually do not exist outside of the political entity we call the United States of America.
But let's be clear, the fact that Italy - my country - has been fragmented more than it was unified doesn't justify the argument that Italians haven't existed for more than 2 thousand years.
Totally agree with that.
My focus is on the earlier part of your comment. People from the West see China, a single color, India, a single color, Vietnam, a single color- and think all the thoughts of the people (not even on a micro scale), all the philosophies and ways of life, are similar.
That is very very far from the truth.
One of the most popular Chinese movies is “San Guo” or “3 Kingdoms”. This is historical fiction. There was a battle then just as there is still a battle now…in Taiwan.
From 1920 or so, a few groups, but mainly the CCP and the KMT (KuoMingTan) were battling for control of the mainland. The KMT lost, and so they fled to Taiwan. This battle is alive and well today.
In fact, rumor has it that Xi Jingping’s father whom served as the head of Canton wanted to secede in disagreement with Beijing and because there is still a history of Canton standing on its own.
China is fragmented still today.
Yeah but 92% of Chinese are Han.
Saying that a country of 1.5 billion people has inner conflicts is like saying that water is wet.
It doesn't mean anything actually other than they have a lot of history means a lot of conflicts. It happened everywhere.
Also if they can disagree, it means that there is some space for disagreement.
In Catalunya some believe they should be independent from Spain, in Italy some people in Sicily and other northern regions say they should be independent from Italy.
That doesn't make them any less culturally similar to the people around them.
Unified for three thousand years is a ridiculous claim. I find it amazing that this Communist Party propaganda idea (they claim 5000 years actually) of a millennia old continuous "Chinese" state gets repeated by so many people abroad as well. Just spending a few minutes on Wikipedia reading up on East Asian history would would help.
Btw something that few people know even among those who read before commenting and among Chinese themselves: The idea of a Han people didn't exist before Qing Dynasty, not to speak of thousands of years earlier. It's a modern invention by Qing intellectuals, mirroring similar developments in Western countries. There was no concept of nation states prior to our modern times, there were many large states covering similar territories in the past of course, but they weren't necessarily "Chinese". The same way English people aren't Romans and just because Vietnam uses the Latin alphabet, it doesn't make them Latin.
But it is mostly cultural. Individualism isn't nearly as important in China (and most of Asia) as it is in the West. And of course that translates to preferences and level of (un)happiness with the government and forms of governance. The west often operates under the false assumption that our way is the only right way and we easily dismiss these essential cultural differences.
> Im no expert but this is mostly due to surveillance right?
I don't think this is a logical conclusion. It certainly helps them in a way, but there was also no French revolution in China before modern surveillance was a thing. From a Chinese perspective many might be happy with their rise in importance and economic strength and the population grows wealthier each year.
it could happen here
Whatever system PRC is, rigourous surveys have consistently shown they overwhelmingly approve of it. And according to democracy perception index, significantly more Chinese view their system as democratic and democracy was important vs democratic decline in west. Democracy in this case being full process democracy - CCPs Democracy with Chinese characteristics. Regardless, flip side of whatever role of surveilliance in mediating speech is made up in improving security and enforcing laws that has vastly improved QoL. Pre mass survelliance PRC cities were chaotic as fuck, it's fun wild west if you're an expat, but most people prefer order.
>But democracy grows like weed
I would say most of human history demonstrates power aggregates towards some for of authoritarianism, especially in risky geopolitical enviroments.
They can’t “leave” a country.
the future of the internet in the West is even more grim than its present in China, Russia, Iran and all the other countries we had criticized for it up until a few years ago. now we're setting up our own Great Firewalls to protect our dumb gray masses from disinformation and telescreens to protect our ever-threatened democracies
freedom of speech is explicitly on the list of "a range of human rights" that need to be "recalibrated", and our young global leaders feel comfortable enough to say that bluntly. when it goes, anything goes
? surely you are joking?
- 1A was written at the time of pen and printing press. now there's the Internet
- 2A was written at the time of sword and musket. now there are fully semi-automatic assault rifles
- 2A was written to allow citizens possess the same tools as any other powerful imperial force of the day.
How is any of these concepts outdated?
You really think people who drafted those wrote them specifically about the tech of the day, and were smart enough to form a great nation, but too dumb to anticipate advances in technology, and were illiterate w.r.t history of civilizations and how technology advanced through the ages?
>fully semi-automatic
OK. You likely never held a gun in your hands. Makes sense.
Reminder: The nation with oldest gun culture in the world, Czech Republic, issued guns like candy to everyone that asked after Soviets pulled out in 1991. There were only two periods in Czechia that had prohibitions on gun ownership: 1. Occupation by Soviets. 2. Occupation by Germans. For the other 500 years Czechs owned and carried weapons, and still remain the only shall issue country in Europe, with rights secured by the constitution to carry and to use of deadly force in self defence.
(FYI: Gun homicides rates in Czechia are on par with much vaunted entirely gunless Asia.)
Afghans fought off the US with nothing but goats and AKs, while hiding in caves.
Seems these things are still quite relevant in 1991 and 2021.
Imo it's fine to explore such options as you should consider everything, but just give up, accept reality, and go look for alternative options when literally everyone with knowledge about the topic says it's a bad idea and impossible to do in a secure way.
They should spend that time on finding solutions that actually work.
Just because someone has a ridiculous idea, doesn’t always mean “experts should just propose a better alternative”. It may as well mean that the whole goal is flawed.
Netherlands government is payed $71 billion every year by the people to serve them. That's quite enough to pay the best security experts and software engineer in the world to increase digital security of the country, and still have plenty of money left to do everything else.
If criminals were actually super advanced and air tight, you would not need to worry about backdooring chat apps. They just wouldn’t use them. But since criminals tend to be flawed humans, there is a lot of room to find other avenues. Just like in real life, where cases are routinely solved even though we can’t actually hear every private conversation that occurred behind closed doors.
I do understand that E2EE chat is more powerful than conversation behind closed doors, but so is government dragnets, 0day exploit kits, etc. Ironically, extracting digital communications off of devices has actually become a cornerstone of court cases, even when encrypted chat is used.
As I did mention: I think it's good to consider all options, including this one, just move past it if it turns out that it's not a good solution. I think it would be great if the minister organized a panel of experts to find ways to combat these issues instead of insisting on his bad idea that even his own justice department disagrees with.
I vote for parties that suggest changes to how our police is structured, I believe that will be much more effective at increasing their capacity and ability to most importantly prevent crimes and otherwise investigate and prosecute.
To conclude, I think we fully agree; the focus should be on actual solutions, so let's get past this bad idea and let experts focus on solving the actual problems instead of fighting this bad idea.
Fortunately, there are plenty of alternative approaches to this right now that effectively give law enforcement the equivalent of backdoor access, often not just to encrypted messaging applications like WhatsApp but the entire device too.
Reading between the lines, this is likely why plans to legislate for encrypted messaging backdoors were quietly shelved, for now. But it's coming eventually.
Why?
Is that why you created a throwaway? Privacy for thee but not for other people?
I definitely would want a backdoor on the communications of every politician pushing for those kind of backdoors, that would be a net benefit to society
Not only that, it's also just useless. Criminals and child predators don't use commercial services to share their offerings and material, they use private forums. Placing all citizens under suspicion and privatizing criminal justice is not the right way.
You state this as fact, yet almost no one agrees with you.