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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

> ...at the EU-US Senior Officials Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs, held in Stockholm on 16 and 17 March, the minutes of which are now available. The delegations “… concurred on the need to mirror privacy by design with lawful access by design…,” apparent code language for mandating the undermining or removal of strong encryption practices.

What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such scheme?

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Most of our leaders are much less bright and much more self-centered than almost anyone would imagine. The evidence repeatedly validates this, but we're reluctant to believe it. Many do come from relatively elite backgrounds but their knowledge and morality have surprising gaps.

They are overwhelmingly self servicing to the point that intelligence is not even worth commenting on.

Smart or dumb, they are just in it to gain power.

Experiments show that groups of humans pick as their leader the loudest and most confident of the bunch.

You can imagine how this quirk of psychology affects power at all levels in our society.

I believe it’s difficult for nontechnical people to fully grasp the consequences of having so-called backdoors in the digital realm. It’s different from the physical world, where something like a master key or the possibility of forceful entry isn’t unreasonable. They probably think it must necessarily be possible to have something equivalent for electronic communication.

“Lawful access” is the new soundbite for putting backdoors in all our software and hardware.

Power I guess, only because they can. But if you communicate by Cell Phone (txt, email...), encryption can be stopped by law only because they are closed systems. But I tend to believe Cell Phones already come with a backdoor, so laws do not really matter for those.

If using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good luck stopping that.

> using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good luck stopping that

They won't engage us on those terms. They'll use their authority to pass laws saying use of cryptography strong enough to defeat them is evidence of guilt. Judges will instruct juries to assume there's CSAM in your encrypted hard drive.

Same I here: I don't really mind because I've never assumed smartphones to be secure. But maybe I have been wrong because they do seem to have problems in decryption of things like Signal or even the Meta's stuff. As for serious transnational crime, I really doubt whether these proposals will make any difference. After EncroChat, serious criminals have probably gone back to pencil and paper and whispering.

There is no need to ban encryption in client-server protocols like HTTPS. Just require that servers logs all session keys for future lawful access.

That's a great way to have a central point of failure for bad actors to target

"But it's already illegal to steal data from someone else's computers!"

Leadership positions (especially those in government) attract some of the worst people.

If China (as the US claims ) does it, why not the US ? They don't want to lose the lead in this field. /s

They’re malicious. It’s not that they don’t understand, or that some well worded essay will ever give them their “aha” moment.

They want power over you, and this is just another means to that end.

It's not even power over you. It's mostly power over their political opponents.

You can read up on how Polish government used their access to Pegassus.

The PEGA committee reports are "hilarious" reading. The "best" situation seems to have been in Greece where ordinary politicians have spied other ordinary politicians and ordinary civil servants other ordinary civil servants. Must be fun to work in such a state apparatus.

Well, if you were to ask in this very same forum if the trade-offs of private and permissionless communication, as granted by cryptography, should apply to money. You would get a much different answer.

So either a large part of HN has already been co-opted by this public campaign, or is uneducated/obtuse, or is able to trace a very different set of weights for what you can do with your expression but not your money.

You won't get a different answer from me at least. KYC/AML is just the financial version of global surveillance and should be fought just as vigorously.

Maybe HN just hates cryptocurrencies.

> Maybe HN just hates cryptocurrencies.

Or more specifically, all the endless scams and grift that orbit around cryptocurrencies, the failure of cryptocurrencies to actually solve any problems of the existing financial system (because you need to inevitably bridge the two) as well as the negative externalities that cryptocurrencies have on the environment and hardware availability.

The disconnect is wild. Spending magic money online can already feel like instant messaging, e.g. Zcash with its encrypted memo field for text messages is basically as if Bitmessage had an optional monetary payload

They don't actually fucking know what they are doing. They get these righteous ideas into their heads and convince themselves they're doing what's good for us. They ignore the consequences even when it affects them, reacting with a literal child-like entitlement and self-importance "you can't read my messages, just the other people's messages, I'm a special class of person, this is outrageous".

There are people here on HN who say they actually met at least one of these politicians. Check out this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656323

These are the people imposing their silly laws on us. It's a joke. I wanted to respect them enough to think it's all some sort of master plan to oppress us more efficiently but could very well be that they are dumb enough to back this without understanding what encryption even is.

> What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such scheme?

Never underestimate the appeal of making one's job easier.

Part of the benefit that comes from being well traveled is sharing stories and experiences with locals, leaders don't do any of that. Generously, most of them are too busy to do so, and instead spend most of their time in a building that could be anywhere in the world in a similar looking conference room.

Although you are right, it does take a certain level of intelligence to recognize when one is outside of their element and to seek proper expertise. Assuming no malicious intent.

Ah, you sort of accidentally stumbled upon the very heart of the matter.

For example: https://www.youtube.com/@OxfordUnion/videos

  The Oxford Union is the world's most prestigious debating society with a tradition of hosting internationally prominent individuals across politics, academia, and popular culture. Founded in 1823 at a time when The University of Oxford restricted students from discussing certain topics, The Union continues to uphold the principle of free speech through the exchange and debate of a wide range of ideas and opinions, presented by a diverse range of speakers - some inspiring, others controversial. As we celebrate 200 years of free speech during our Bicentenary year of 2023, we reaffirm our commitment to our integral values and also our belief that the discussion of complex topics should not only be encouraged but is an essential element of any free society.

Now, click around a few of the videos, and observe if the above description, an honest self-image of the best and the brightest, I'm sure, comports with the actual reality on display.

Make special note of the attitudes displayed by these bright young minds and the questions put to the speakers. Heck, might even notice the ever increasing pop-culture nature of the proceedings. I guess hearing from PSY about Gangam style is one of the most of all time.

In short, a large chunk of these "elites" who go into politics are nepo babies governed by fashionable group think no different from their less monied peers. iPhones are the great equalizer. Everybody is equally cringy. It is a different caliber of person now from the heyday and naturally trends towards authoritarianism.

The exceptionalism is gone a long time ago already. It was perfectly lampooned half a century ago in shows like 'Yes Minister'. Lofty ideals, duty, intellectual curiosity, honesty, a sense of decency, long ago succumbed to mediocrity and farce. And that was the 80s. We are way past that stage where there was still a sense of shame, past the age of spin, hurling into cynical ambivalence now and soon complete forgetfulness.

In short, the West really is in decline and has been for a long time. People who have a clue about why this is a bad idea are nowhere near the halls of power. And I don't mean intricate technical knowledge, these subjects go back centuries, the relevant ideas and ideals are at the very core of what made these societies great in the first place. Poof.

You know why this is wrong instinctually, at your core, because you paid attention to the ship of state and still give a shit about something bigger than yourself. They don't.

There's nothing outright wrong with them, they are just basic ordinary consumers. And the lessons of the past will have to be re-learned if we don't accidentally find ourselves this time in an unescapable permanent dystopia.

In part because they have full access to the classified info about the threats that are being disrupted regularly

If they're trying to influence public opinion and there really are a bunch of successes from surveillance programs that can be defeated with consumer-grade encryption, they could find ways to declassify statistics.

I suppose there's the concern that a statement like "we prosecuted 2387 child molesters based on surveillance of unencrypted chat" would cause future offenders to stop using unencrypted chat, but I think that's a red herring. Any reasonably clever criminal would not be sending felonious content unencrypted today.

This is one of those classic problems where if they didn't violate civil rights and something terrible happen the public backlash clamoring for civil rights violations would push them 10x further into outright oppressive practices (i.e. after Sept 11th in the US) than if they'd just broken the rules in the first place.

That's the excuse they use.

Unfortunately, they've often been shown to also be lying bastards in other matters, so why would we believe them for this situation?

I didn't say anything about believing them

Or their other behavior

Just that its easy to imagine being in that role, being privy to some insane shit that barely gets stopped, and never again thinking twice about violating all these rules just to prevent that kind of thing.

Doesn't mean what they're advocating for isn't messed up. But its not hard to think through how they get there.

> privy to some insane shit that barely gets stopped

Hmmm, sounds more like fantasy thinking (to me). :/

I find this much more likely than others' explanation that they're evil, that it's just about power, that there is a conspiracy among world leaders, etc.

There is nothing wrong with these people. Those in the power always want to have more power.

There will be no implications if encryption is banned. People have been using unencrypted wired phones and unencrypted bank cards for a long time and the world hasn't collapsed.

Also, there is no need to ban any encryption, client-server encryption protocols like HTTPS can stay, provided that the server would log all session keys for future lawful access.

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