German Official Wants Backdoors In Every Device Connected To The Internet

[C C]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201712...rnet.shtml

EXCERPT: The US Department of Justice is reviving its anti-encryption arguments despite not being given any signals from the administration or Congress that undermining encryption is something either entity desires. The same thing is happening in Germany, with Interior Secretary Thomas de Maizière continuing an anti-encryption crusade very few German government officials seem interested in joining. The key difference in de Maizière's push is that he isn't limiting potential backdoors to cell phones. He appears to believe anything connected to the internet should be backdoored… possibly even the cars German citizens drive....

MORE: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201712...rnet.shtml

[confused2]

The question must surely be - "What did anyone expect to happen?".

[Yazata]

The argument 'for' is that it would facilitate the government catching terrorists, spies and other criminals.

The argument 'against' is that it would facilitate the government spying on political non-conformists among its own citizens.

So the whole thing boils down to how much we trust our own government.

Given the politicization of the 'deep state' here in the United States, my own answer is 'not very much'.

I'm increasingly inclined to think that we should error on the side of civil liberties as opposed to creating a security-state where we are all being constantly monitored, 1984-style.

I want to watch my TV. I don't want my TV watching me. (Or the government watching me through my TV, phone, computer or toaster.

[RainbowUnicorn]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201712...rnet.shtml

EXCERPT: The US Department of Justice is reviving its anti-encryption arguments despite not being given any signals from the administration or Congress that undermining encryption is something either entity desires. The same thing is happening in Germany, with Interior Secretary Thomas de Maizière continuing an anti-encryption crusade very few German government officials seem interested in joining. The key difference in de Maizière's push is that he isn't limiting potential backdoors to cell phones. He appears to believe anything connected to the internet should be backdoored… possibly even the cars German citizens drive....

MORE: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201712...rnet.shtml

Interior Secretary Thomas de Maizière continuing an anti-encryption crusade very few German government officials seem interested in joining

yawn... copying the trump-ite alt-right facist movement to try and garner support from the neo nazi european groups to make hay while the alt-right shines and try and oppose secular mainstream government.

thats my guess.

no shortage of counter-parts in the US for such facism(wearing socialist top hats) inside the republican party and proudly advertsiing themselves.

[Syne]

Given the politicization of the 'deep state' here in the United States, my own answer is 'not very much'.

I'm increasingly inclined to think that we should error on the side of civil liberties as opposed to creating a security-state where we are all being constantly monitored, 1984-style.

I want to watch my TV. I don't want my TV watching me. (Or the government watching me through my TV, phone, computer or toaster.

My thoughts exactly.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201712...rnet.shtml

EXCERPT: The US Department of Justice is reviving its anti-encryption arguments despite not being given any signals from the administration or Congress that undermining encryption is something either entity desires. The same thing is happening in Germany, with Interior Secretary Thomas de Maizière continuing an anti-encryption crusade very few German government officials seem interested in joining. The key difference in de Maizière's push is that he isn't limiting potential backdoors to cell phones. He appears to believe anything connected to the internet should be backdoored… possibly even the cars German citizens drive....

MORE: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201712...rnet.shtml

Interior Secretary Thomas de Maizière continuing an anti-encryption crusade very few German government officials seem interested in joining

yawn... copying the trump-ite alt-right facist movement to try and garner support from the neo nazi european groups to make hay while the alt-right shines and try and oppose secular mainstream government.

thats my guess.

no shortage of counter-parts in the US for such facism(wearing socialist top hats) inside the republican party and proudly advertsiing themselves.

You don't read to well, do you? "the administration" is the Trump administration...which has not "given any signals" that it wants any anti-encryption efforts. You probably naively believe the antifa lies, even though it's the alt-left antifa in the US that want big government. Don't confuse European left/right with those of US.

It's the leftist Democrats in the US that favor socialism. Try learning something about that which you opine.

[Yazata]

You don't read to well, do you? "the administration" is the Trump administration...which has not "given any signals" that it wants any anti-encryption efforts.

The people who want it are the "deep state" spooks. Some (not all) of these people are "swamp creatures" to their core and I simply don't really trust their loyalty to democracy or to the American people. The alphabet agencies are self-perpetuating bureaucracies largely interested in their own survival and in increasing their own covert behind-the-scenes power to control the country and the world.

They are the same people that recorded Trump's conversations with foreign leaders and then handed transcripts to those who call themselves "journalists". They are the same people who Trump believes tapped his Trump Tower phones in New York before the election. So I'm pretty certain that Trump doesn't trust them any more than I do and will view any proposals to increase their surveillance powers over the American people with great skepticism.

And I consider that a good thing.

[C C]

[...] I'm increasingly inclined to think that we should error on the side of civil liberties as opposed to creating a security-state where we are all being constantly monitored, 1984-style.

I want to watch my TV. I don't want my TV watching me. (Or the government watching me through my TV, phone, computer or toaster.

A potentially bad turn over time is the human evaluators at the end of the spy chain getting so cut in numbers by funding that the advanced descendants of earlier surveillance programs like Carnivore will route their "data of interest" to the judgments of specialized AI. Bypassing medium-stage human involvement altogether in terms of determining whether or not a citizen is a valid candidate for menace via his/her behavior.

On one hand the AI reviewer might be an improvement in terms of occasional human laziness, negligence, hastiness, subjective partiality, and bureaucratic bloat leading to erroneous conclusions. But on the other its own lack of imagination (alternate possibilities), lack of lived experience with everyday affairs, and statistical biases may introduce its own brand of uncompassionate mistakes and machine paranoia.

- - -

[Syne]

You don't read to well, do you? "the administration" is the Trump administration...which has not "given any signals" that it wants any anti-encryption efforts.

The people who want it are the "deep state" spooks. Some (not all) of these people are "swamp creatures" to their core and I simply don't really trust their loyalty to democracy or to the American people. The alphabet agencies are self-perpetuating bureaucracies largely interested in their own survival and in increasing their own covert behind-the-scenes power to control the country and the world.

They are the same people that recorded Trump's conversations with foreign leaders and then handed transcripts to those who call themselves "journalists". They are the same people who Trump believes tapped his Trump Tower phones in New York before the election. So I'm pretty certain that Trump doesn't trust them any more than I do and will view any proposals to increase their surveillance powers over the American people with great skepticism.

And I consider that a good thing.

I totally agree. Unelected bureaucracies, not beholden to the people, that create regulations (de facto laws) are a potentially existential risk to any free country. Yeah, all bureaucracies seek their own survival, because that survival is much more contingent on what leverage/influence you have on those who make funding decisions than the opinions of the people.

Yeah, even just the perception of being a target makes for an ally to free people.

[confused2]

Somewhat relevant...
The average shoplifter will spend at least an hour in the shop - building up camera time. With two cameras that's two hours of recording to watch - 8 cameras would give 8 hours of recording time. So you know goods have been taken (they have put something in their bag). You can even have a recording of them putting the item in their bag. They haven't stolen it until they leave the shop. If you try to stop them outside the shop they will run. So you have two or more hours or recording which will take at least two hours to look through - even with good equipment it still takes about the length of the recording to look at it. If arrested on the basis of the recording of goods being placed in their bag they will claim they changed their mind and put the goods back on a shelf 'somewhere' - they can't remember where. To cover everywhere in our shop would take about 20 cameras - so that would be 20 hours of recording to search for an event that everybody knows didn't happen - the problem is proving it didn't happen. You rapidly reach the point where the number of people needed to catch shoplifters exceeds the number of shoplifters and the cost of detection far exceeds the likely losses through shoplifting. With AI it might be possible to reduce the time taken to follow an individual using (say) 20 cameras to the point where you just need to look at a minimum of three angles - which is still three hours of recording to look for evidence that the claim goods were returned is false - without that evidence you have no case in court.

So I think the general case is that it takes at least an hour to watch someone for an hour. If the watchers take 8 hour shifts that's three watchers per watchee. In general any claim about 24 hour surveillance is an expedient lie.

[stryder]

Cryptography in and around 2000 had Bush's administration push for the US government being able to Bruteforce encryption when necessary and the UK government "Legally Insisting" that a person should provide a decryption key on demand.  At that point in time cryptology actually had embargo's on where it could be used, a cryptographic algorithm in one country wasn't permitted in certain other ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_...ted_States

Furthermore (To my knowledge) Julian Assange played a small roll in the moderation of the RSA (wikipedia.org) cryptology usergroup while working for Bigpond (this is from memory), which incidentally was the cryptology which was exposed for having a NSA exploited weakness embedded.

So with that all said, legislation or not, a government will always have someone willing to find a way, even if it's a little borderline ethically. Although technically Cryptographic algorithms are probably "Patentable" similar to Compression algorithms as Software Patents, so a government could imply that if someone to patent the cryptology, they would require giving the government a skeleton key.

The problem is Encryption is a double edged sword, while indeed terrorists, people traffickers, paedophiles and other criminal elements can use encryption to hide a variety of information, encryption is also useful from keeping private and confidential information more secure from those criminals. Undermining encryption literally force crime to have the upper hand in the long run. Especially since criminals can still use Steganography to hide data in other files which can be far more difficult to crack.

I