Fabio Manganiello on Nostr: A brief summary about the EU Chat Control:<li><p>End-to-end encryption only works if ...

A brief summary about the EU Chat Control:<li><p>End-to-end encryption only works if <em>nobody</em> other than the two parties in a conversation (including the government and the provider of the service itself), under <em>no circumstances</em>, can <em>ever</em> decrypt the encrypted traffic.</p></li><li><p>You can’t violate encryption only for a handful of use-cases without weakening it for everyone. Anyone who tells you otherwise, and tells you that a government backdoor or private keys signed by government agents are safe, is either a complete ignorant about math or technology (or both), or is acting in very bad faith.</p></li><li><p>If you break end-to-end encryption for one use-case, you break it for everyone. It’s like leaving your house key in the fob of your door and expect only your trusted friend to use it.</p></li><li><p>Every time someone says “but it’s to protect the kids” / “but it’s to protect you from terrorists”, be aware that they’re using an over-abused argument to convince you that degrading privacy for everyone is a requirement to keep you safe. And it’s a shitty argument because if I say “actually I’d rather keep my conversations private, without the government or companies with a business model based on surveillance snooping on them”, then someone will promptly react with “then you don’t want to protect the kids / then you support terrorists?”</p></li><li><p>The first time a government tried to make the argument that end-to-end encryption is a crime was in 1991, when Zimmermann first developed PGP and gave military-grade encryption to the masses. Not knowing what he should be incriminated for, the US government prosecuted him for terrorism and arms trade. These arguments have remained nearly the same for the past three decades.</p></li><li><p>“The government needs to protect you from criminals and abusers, and in order to protect you it needs to be able to access everybody’s digital content” is an argument as weak as “the police needs to protect you, and in order to protect you it needs to get a copy of everyone’s house keys”.</p></li><li><p>Just like police forces have many means to investigate criminal activities other than breaking into everybody’s houses, they also have many ways of investigating online crime without breaking everybody’s privacy.</p></li><li><p>If you say “I’ve got nothing to hide” about unauthorized actors spying into your email and messages, would you also say the same about strangers breaking into your house without your authorization? Privacy is all about deciding what you share with others.</p></li>

The simple truth is that governments don’t like encryption in the hands of citizens, they’ve never liked it, and they’ve spent the past three decades looking for ways of breaking it.

The persecution against Zimmermann and Snowden, the NSA backdoors, the deals under the table with the developers of large tech products, the anti-encryption legislation regularly pushed “to protect children from potential abusers” / “to protect citizens against terrorists”, are all actions that point to one single, simple truth: governments think that it’s their right to spy into everyone’s lives, and will keep fighting for that right, and they’ll keep trying to make you believe that it’s for your own good.

The EU Chat Control may have been temporarily withdrawn, but it’s far from dead. It’ll go through another round of consensus-seeking negotiations. And in July Hungary will start its 6 months turn at the head of the EU Commission. Orban is a deeply illiberal and despicable human being who would love to snoop over political opponents, and he’s already made it clear that he’ll try to get the Chat Control draft approved whatever the cost.

It’s our job as European citizens to keep protesting against this awful piece of legislation, to invite everyone to join the fight, and not to cast our vote for anyone who doesn’t explicitly oppose widespread institutional surveillance.

Sign the petition here https://stopchatcontrol.eu/ and keep applying pressure on our elected representatives.

If a legislation like Chat Control were to be approved, I’ll be more than happy to start publishing guides on how to use alternative methods to still get end-to-end encryption - the takeaway is that WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc. would no longer be safe, and you’ll have to get back to emails signed with PGP keys generated by yourself.

https://stackdiary.com/eu-council-has-withdrawn-the-vote-on-chat-control/