Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals
No.
It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption is actually there to protect us from you!
The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way.
> > Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals
> No.
Without going into whatever context the original quote has: doch — encryption does both. There is no technology so pure it only helps the "good guys", from fire to firearms[0] there are things we can't possibly survive without, and yet criminals can use them for crimes.
I don't know the best way to handle this with crypto, mainly because the problem is much deeper than the crypto itself: even if absolutely everyone without exception or equivocation agrees everyone gets unbreakable cryptography, it is getting ever easier to just spy directly — laser microphones on drones, using software to repurpose a WiFi antenna as a wall-penetrating radar, IR cameras, using AI for gaze detection and 3D scene reconstruction to figure out who (or what) you were looking at when you blushed — that's all coming to a blackmailer near you. (Caveat: fake images and potentially at some point 3D bioprinted fake bodies will make the evidence invalid in courts of law, but that's a whole different discussion).
The only thing I can even think to suggest is a radical liberalisation of almost every law and punishment such that we can as a society survive when everyone's crimes, misdemeanours, and administrative infractions/regulatory offences are cataloged and dealt with in real time.
The only thing I am sure of is that the future can't look anything like the examples from history — while it might be much better or much worse, it won't be even close to the same.
[0] I don't mean in the American 2nd amendment sense though, I mean an army with no firearms will loose to one that has them.
>Without going into whatever context the original quote has: doch — encryption does both. There is no technology so pure it only helps the "good guys", from fire to firearms[0] there are things we can't possibly survive without, and yet criminals can use them for crimes.
So? Cars also help the bad guys escape from robberies faster, but we don't seem to ban those...
Not to mention knives... those can be deadly if somebody stubs you with one.
And what about clothes? Naked criminals would be much less effective...
The thing is anything can assist criminals. Why single out encryption (besides the government wanting to snoop at will)?
Bad example. We definitely do ban carrying large knives (blade length >X), butterfly knives etc. around with you. Relatedly Germany even punishes carrying around lockpicking tools (unless that is your job) -- just carrying them.
Also cars have unique identifiers literally attached to the outsides of them with typefaces you can read from 100 feet away. They do this to, you know, mitigate their criminal uses.
A sharp enough 3cm blade is more than enough to make someone bleed to death.
A 5cm screwdriver is more than enough to give brain damage to someone.
A flexible extension hose like the ones that go under the sink (with the nuts attached) is perfect for knocking someone out.
A titanium tipped pen is quite good if you aim for ears, temple or throat.
A tightly rolled newspaper makes a very good blunt weapon.
Breaking/banning encryption like would have minimal benefits while exposing the whole society. Don't think that only the gov't will have the secondary keys if they decide to "only" have back doors. Anyone motivated enough will have them.
If chat encryption is banned... let's say it's not hard to reintroduce it on top of existing layers for anyone motivated enough or with enough money.
When I was a teenager (in the 90s in the UK), the police sent a guy to our school to tell us all about the new knife laws. He said that even a sharpened plastic ruler was illegal.
All those things are regulated, specifically to reduce chances for abusing them, but also to help in fetching criminals. Similar, nobody is demanding a ban on encryption (anymore), what they want (now) is the balanced middle, to allow justified access for "the good guys".
Whether the balance is good or bad, we will see. But society is all about balancing the good and the bad.
Yes, it will be abused. As will the surveillance tech that I prefer as an alternative to crypto backdoors, on the grounds that (1) the crypto is far too important to permit backdoors, and (2) it won't be possible to stop boring everyday criminals from getting surveillance tech, let alone governments, and (3) crypto is knowledge that's already out of the bag, so sufficiently motivated bad guys can still have it without backdoors even if everyone else's crypto is broken.
That's why I can only see a plausible outcome involving radical reductions in penalties for basically everything.
Well, encryption is in fact used by offensive military forces too so it definitely can be a part of the "bad guys" arsenal but I don't think this is the real motivation behind the push for breaking encryption.
It's not just EU but UK, USA, China and every single entity that collects intelligence for their goals. They all would love to have encryption braked in their favor because we created vast communication networks with enormous data stored that can be reached at instant but they can't reach those due to encryption.
Consider that you are in charge of defending your community against straight out criminals and foreign influence or actors who have other goals than you do. How amazing would be for you to be able to check out each and every citizen or each and every device relevant to you at click of a button, right? It's the ultimate society debugger, you will be able to do your job so much more easily.
The problem with that is, we as a society, don't have a definitive good or bad or truth or allies or enemies and we constantly change our minds on all these things and this is not a bug but a feature.
Let's say some kind of anomaly happens and the encryption is removed and government officials have total access and none of them are corrupt and they do their jobs perfectly. Instantly you removed progress in the society and everything will stay the way it is, good luck if you are on the wrong side of things because the only way anything changes from now on will be possible only through discussion from within the community of those who happened to be in control when the encryption no longer worked.
I don't want this to happen because I don't live in country where the mainstream policies are aligned with my ideas on how the world should work. What about criminals you say? Well, catch them through police work and other means - it doesn't have to be completely effortless for you to do your job.
Demolition Man called this. How did the police catch criminals before bio-engineered trackers were attached to every citizen? "We worked for a living, this fascist crap makes me want to puke".
I'm for E2E encryption wherever it's applicable, and for individuals having the ability to be fully anonymous online, but it's not useful to claim it doesn't have drawbacks as well. Yes, it's true that it might it harder to arrest criminals because of encryption, but the alternative that nothing can be 100% private is so much worse.
But each improvement in communications tech (landlines, mobile phones, internet) have enabled new, faster, easier, better communication methods. Medieval criminals would have to physically meet to coordinate a coach robbery; nowadays a terrorist attack can be coordinated fully remotely and anonymously. There is no point in denying the facts - that encryption and the ease of use of the Internet enable criminals to coordinate more easily. Sweeping it under the rug won't change it, and it will be a part in the reasoning for limiting encryption. It should be fought with numbers and the gravity and the tradeoffs, not "people used to be able to communicate with pidgeons so there is no issue here".
How will you enforce 'limiting encryption'? Will you prosecute everyone who runs a few mathematical calculations on their own computers, presuming guilt?
Do you think that criminals will care that it is 'illegal' to send messages when they're plotting more heinous acts? In such a scenario you'll have to radically enforce what programs may or may not be run on everyone's computer. If you do that, you're worse than the criminals.
> Do you think that criminals will care that it is 'illegal'
If that sort of logic were to be applied what's the point in any law? Deterrence, making it harder, and punishment. Rolling your own crypto is hard, just like building your own gun for a robbery is. Not impossible, but it will certainly deter less motivated individuals. If all crypto was broken with law enforcement owned escrow keys (not in any way advocating for this, just playing devil's advocate, criminals would know not to rely on it and would have to first build a reliable safe method of communication (like physical meetings). Not the end of the world, just a deterrent.
> In such a scenario you'll have to radically enforce what programs may or may not be run on everyone's computer. If you do that, you're worse than the criminals.
That's a wild exaggeration. All sorts of things radically enforce what software can run on anyone's computer (DRM, antiviruses, licenses, etc.) and that's not great, but comparing that to an actual violent crime for instance is just stupid and honestly insulting.
Can't the authorities do what they've always done since time immemorial: monitor these activities from afar (without needing to know specifically what was said), and plant people in these organizations.
Compromising everyone's security to target a few seems backwards.
They are doing that, this scales to ~100-1000s of people per state. I suspect that on the current trajectory they will need to monitor far more and they are dealing with technology that most likely has been compromised by the US but not them.
They are monitoring people in person its just that they also want to break encryption. Why not have it all?
Let's not forget, that the government is doing this to keep us nice and safe. It knows what 'nice' really means, and what 'safe' is too! (You don't)
Sometimes it needs to keep you safe even from yourself!!
So, it turns out, that government (an imaginary concept that only exists in our minds) actually cares about us even more than we care about ourselves! Right?
Without encryption, criminals will have even easier time stealing personal information and breaking into accounts. Limiting encryption use may hurt certain types of criminals, but also helps another types of criminals, mainly cyber criminals.
A huge chunk of things are already encrypted in that sense - the data for all big tech companies for example is encrypted in transit, decrypted, analyzed etc. on their servers, and then encrypted again when saved to disk and not immediately used for anything. You'd have to compromise both their at rest data storage and the storage for their local decryption keys to steal useful data. That does mean that data on a provider that is thoroughly compromised is vulnerable, and that you obviously have to trust the provider itself, and judging from the recent NYT article (and Google's reputation wrt closed accounts in general) at least Google is not at all worth that trust.
End to end encryption / Trust No One encryption setups are much simpler in that regard - only you have the keys, so you don't have to worry nearly so much about the provider being compromised or just not giving a fuck about paying customers. Plus you just don't have to worry about monitor people creeping on your photos and such.
I think all the legislations proposed have been for backdoored encryption, not a blanket ban on encryption, under the (probably extremely naive) assumption that encryption can be backdoored only for law enforcement use and nobody else would be capable of exploiting that.
> There is no point in denying the facts - that encryption and the ease of use of the Internet enable everyone to coordinate more easily.
Since it’s easier for everyone, it’s also easier for criminals. But we don’t have to deny it to everyone just because the subset of people called criminals benefit too.
Encrytion was used since forever and birds as a fast transportation too. Nothing changed. And btw if i where a terrorist i would use birds to communicate. What do we learn? Criminals will always find a way, instantly.
Yeah, and this worry about criminals is misdirected. The only legitimate worry should be about national security - the danger from terrorists, especially foreign actors. And the answer to that is simple - the state should have complete control over the communication infrastructure. But this is impossible with the internet. So the real solution, and an unpopular one, is to introduce legislation banning "free" communication and treating internet messaging companies like WhatsApp, Zoom, Skype etc. like telecommunication companies and applying the same legislation to them.
The only bloody reason people use WhatsApp and Skype etc. is because it is "free". Take away that aspect, apply the same laws and rules applicable to telecom companies to them, and we will find they will lose their appeal very fast. (I do believe offering a product for "free" should be considered an anti-competitive behaviour as it hugely increases the barrier to entry in any field. Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc. continue to have a monopoly on the internet solely because competing with them for "free" is a losing proposition for anyone - in fact, if they were not backed by CIA and NSA funds and programs like PRISM, even they would have collapsed a long time ago).
You can deal with it on your own. I won't be putting up with this, go ahead, make encryption illegal, I'll follow along with you to every fucking court because you have 0 proof that my disk drive is encrypted instead of overwritten with content of /dev/urandom
I think people on HN forget that the biggest problem with full E2EE is individuals losing access (similar issues with crypto). I believe this is one of the big reasons (not the only one) Apple hasn't added E2EE to everything yet. Permanently losing access to health data is different than losing access to decades of pictures.
We can see "AI" at work. And even if a human checks it you are doomed, because you don't fit in the business plan. Therefore never upload private data on a strangers computer. The cloud is by definition a strangers computer! It is nice that you can find your lost phone with their website but you shall not store any private data on the computer of someone else. If you want keep data in sync across multiple devices multiple providers providers and tools allow for that:
* https://syncthing.net/ (recommend: everyone)
* https://git-scm.com/ (recommend: it-professionals)
* https://mailbox.org (recommend: everyone, including mail, calendar, contacts, notes)
* https://posteo.de/ (see above)
* https://nextcloud.com (recommend: hobby and it-professionals)
The situation changes somewhat if you pay with money for service instead with data. Now you are the customer and not the people working with your data. Shared-Hosting usually comes with readily usable E-Mail and other stuff, sometimes with automatic setup of nextcloud or similiar.
Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"?
> The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way
repetita iuvant: secrecy is not privacy.
encryption makes conversation private but not totally secret, WhatsApp knows if I write to the person named "dentist" on my address book only when the phone number connected to "wife" is out of town.
Or if I dial the number of a tow truck service at 4 am after my phone has been for hours inside a club and my CC was used to pay for half a dozen alcoholic drinks.
that's more than enough to imply what everyone is implying by reading this.
no need to know the content.
on that matter cheating was easier and safer before encryption was a common thing, nobody actually listened to our calls, and we did not leave around clues strong enough to rebuild our entire life in exchange for a messaging platform.
Secondly, that article clearly states, as any other deliberation of the EU, that the law can override the right to secrecy and that's what happens all the time: the authorities ask the permission to a judge that can grant it or deny it.
It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot.
Every country spies on their nominal allies. That part is not unusual or unexpected and has a long historical tradition. You can find story after story on this.
“Allies” are only allies for reasons of national interest, not because they are genuinely friends, whatever that would mean between countries.
Of course, there’s still outrage when they get caught. Here, for example, is Germany being outraged that the US spied on them. [1] And here’s Germany spying on France [2]. But they all know it’s going on.
And here’s a good quote from French intelligence:
> “If Hollande was genuinely shocked by these allegations, that would mean he wasn’t aware that this kind of thing is normal,” he said. “But of course he is aware. Hollande has to satisfy the feelings of the general public by expressing some indignation, but the truth is all countries spy on their friends and the only limitation is the means at their disposal.
they have sources and intelligence officers share information, for various reasons, not excluding political beliefs.
but spying the way USA was doing it on Merkel (for example) is not common, at all.
It would also mean that American intelligence is more incompetent than French or Italian intelligence, never caught spying an ally, which cast some doubts on why CIA is so highly praised...
I really don't believe it's true.
And frankly "former intelligence officer says that" it's more information warfare than something newsworthy.
If we believed "former intelligence officers" flying saucers should be filling our skies.
France has been caught spying many times. There was a huge scandal in the 90s when the French intelligence services were caught bugging American business leaders. WikiLeaks cables make the claim France is actually the “evil empire” of state-sponsored industrial espionage. France also has an enormous NSA-style spying apparatus.
Beyond just spying, French intelligence services even blew up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand. They don’t have a moral problem with messing with allies.
Allies negotiate with each other all the time. Of course it helps them to have inside knowledge of what’s going on behind the scenes. Why do you think any country would handicap itself?
> Why do you think any country would handicap itself?
why do you think I think that?
As a person from Rome I have no respect for France.
The point is not that secret services spy on each other, but that mass surveillance of the scale US has built has no equivalent in the west.
They have been spying their citizen too.
Televisions, smartphones and even anti-virus software are all vulnerable to CIA hacking, according to the WikiLeaks documents released Tuesday. The capabilities described include recording the sounds, images and the private text messages of users, even when they resort to encrypted apps to communicate
Add to that most of the corporations amassing people data are American and manufacture the most popular devices around (not limited to but including clouds, voice assistants, even roomba now) and have close relations with NSA (they have to or are willing to do it it doesn't matter) and the only logical conclusion is that they either are incompetent and got caught or they have been doing it too aggressively and the allies got pissed. Right now I believe they simply stepped up their game and catching them is just gone be harder.
Wiretapping looks like child's play in comparison.
But in the end my comment was about the fact that EU Parliament is not the CIA and it's not advocating for mass surveillance.
There's a reason why secret services are called secret, because they are not doing it because the laws permits it.
Multiple EU countries have mass surveillance programs and spy on their own citizens. One of my links described the French mass surveillance program in detail.
> Multiple EU countries have mass surveillance programs and spy on their own citizens
Stop saying things you can't prove.
> French mass surveillance program in detail.
not remotely in detail and not remotely close to what we call mass surveillance and not remotely close to what NSA does
from the article (which I have to suppose you haven't read, because it's in the first paragraph)
The agency intercepted signals from computers and phones in France as well as between France and other countries, looking not so much at content but to create a map of "who is talking to whom", the paper said.
The metadata from phone and internet use was stocked in a "gigantic database" which could be consulted by six French intelligence and security agencies as well as the police.
NSA don't simply look for metadata, they can simply ask Face.. ehm Meta for that (WhatsApp).
They actually look closely at the content.
The article also goes on saying that France haven't protested much about Prism because they have (assumingly) the largest system in Europe, after the Brits (that come way after the US)
So not "multiple countries in Europe" but a couple countries have put in place system that rivals with WhatsApp abilities to collect metadata, but WhatsApp obtain it from willing users.
Imagine what MS, Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, Oracle, and many other american corporations can collect for the NSA while hiding those activities as legit businesses and what that means for NSA: being free to focus only on everything else.
Pretty hard joke to point at the German constitution, after it displayed it hard failing in the last years. Protection from bad state-actors is necessary, but not for the price to also expose the citizens to non-state bad actors. Protecting the citizens is also a state's job, and somewhere they need to find balance between the different protections.
> All the recent war involvements of Germany are inherently against the German constitution
You'll have to back that up a little. Which wars? Which involvement is considered unconstitutional? Because a lot of those have been tested in the constitutional court and found to be covered by the constitution - see the courts judgement from 1994 https://www.servat.unibe.ch/dfr/bv090286.html#
"BVerfGE 90, 286 (286)1. Die Ermächtigung des Art. 24 Abs. 2 GG berechtigt den Bund nicht nur zum Eintritt in ein System gegenseitiger kollektiver Sicherheit und zur Einwilligung in damit verbundene Beschränkungen seiner Hoheitsrechte. Sie bietet vielmehr auch die verfassungsrechtliche Grundlage für die Übernahme der mit der Zugehörigkeit zu einem solchen System typischerweise verbundenen Aufgaben und damit auch für eine Verwendung der Bundeswehr zu Einsätzen, die im Rahmen und nach den Regeln dieses Systems stattfinden.
2. Art. 87a GG steht der Anwendung des Art. 24 Abs. 2 GG als verfassungsrechtliche Grundlage für den Einsatz bewaffneter Streitkräfte im Rahmen eines Systems gegenseitiger kollektiver Sicherheit nicht entgegen."
I mean you can justify all you want, and there is various critiques on how the Verfassungsgericht has become an instrument of politics where the top assignments are now based on party affiliation. But regardless of what you think of it's decision and what you think of it's decisions, Artikel 2 of the GG says this:
> Art 2
> (1) Jeder hat das Recht auf die freie Entfaltung seiner Persönlichkeit, soweit er nicht die Rechte anderer verletzt und nicht gegen die verfassungsmäßige Ordnung oder das Sittengesetz verstößt.
> (2) Jeder hat das Recht auf Leben und körperliche Unversehrtheit. Die Freiheit der Person ist unverletzlich. In diese Rechte darf nur auf Grund eines Gesetzes eingegriffen werden.
"(2) Everyone has the right to life and physical integrity. The freedom of a person is inviolable. These rights may only be interfered with on the basis of a law."
You kill someone, you bomb someone, you support someone that is bombing someone -> you are inherently violating article 2 of the GG no matter how the VerfG decides to justify the Kosovo or Iraq war or justify it as a act of selfdefense.
EDIT: yes, on the basis of a law - that I retroactively rewrote in order to justify a "defensive war" that is on the other side of the planet. Let's not kid ourselves here. The German and US MIC has done a fantastic job in white washing the violation of something that has been proven to be a false pretence by now. Even assuming that the WMD defence held up in court AT THE TIME(which is a joke TBH, since there was no evidence available), we all know that all the officials admitted that it was a lie by now.
_these rights may only be interfered with on the basis of a law_. There is a law that covers it, just as there is a law that covers all the restrictions to freedom when you commit a crime. Killing in self defense is not a violation of the constitution. That's outlandish.
Killing in a war is not in violation of the constitution. The GG itself establishes an army used for territorial defense. Article 24(2) covers the case of integrating that army into a defense and security pact (NATO, EU army, UN) and from that derives the right to deploy german soldiers in NATO and UN missions. And if they have to kill on those missions, they are _not in violation of the GG Article 2_
Edit: When reading the GG, you also need to take into account that there are many fundamental rights that are in contradiction to each other. These need to be balanced out, there's no single right that always trumps the others. Take the case of an armed robbery: My right to my property (which is codified in Art 14) is opposed to the right of the robbers physical integrity (or even life). It would be outlandish to resolve this as "the robbers right to not be hurt trumps my constitutional right" and indeed, there is the Notwehrparagraph (StGB § 32 Notwehr https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__32.html) which codifies your right to self defense with whatever means necessary to stop the attack. (The boundaries of what's necessary are murky and difficult to generalize, but let's leave that aside here)
The German constitution has been very much subject to changes to reflect the will of the people (requires a 2/3 majority in parliament). It is true that Germans do not quite are so obsessive about their constitutional rights like US citizens, however, I would say our constitution is a quite solid basis. The general approval ratings for the legal system and the constitution are really not bad [1]
It’s obsessed about in the US so much because we have a federal government that oscillates between parties who want to violate it one way or another. Their whims being unconstitutional is our only defense.
>"Germans do not quite are so obsessive about their constructional rights"
In this case "obsessive" is a very desired quality. People's constitutional rights must be guarded from the sweaty paws of the governments that may treat those as a mere annoyance.
> It specifically prohibits discrimination and welcomes people from other nations, both of which the average German does not actually like
Isn't "prohibiting discrimination" something else entirely as "allowing all foreigners to come in without questions asked"? Germans profited from the ability to take refugee during and after WWII themselves.
The claim is wild because the german constitution does not encourage immigration.
It contains paragraphs that prohibit discrimination. It guarantees asylum for people that are prosecuted in their home country for political views [1]. There's also a paragraph that widens the definition of "German citizen" in the GG to those that were german citizens in 1937 or who lost their german citizenship due to the nazis. After the reunion some groups from russia emigrated to Germany (Russlanddeutsche) [2]. That is wildly different from wanting more immigration.
[1] there's a long laundry list of exceptions to that rule, for example you have to travel straight to germany without passing through a safe country. It's effectively void. See Art 16a https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_16a.html
You're being disingenuous. And given on your follow-up you're actually misrepresenting what I say, which is wilfully malicious behaviour in a discussion. German politicians have repeatedly called for a reform of article 16a of the GG. The paragraph is about the right of asylum. And yes, during what they call the "migration crisis" article 16a clearly supported the case for mass migration to Germany.
You claim was that the GG imposes immigration on the unwilling german citizenship. That's just plain wrong. Are there applicants for asylum that try to apply despite not being covered? Probably. Is that in the GG? No.
I am as sympathetic to the Germans who dont want racial diversity and as anti globalist as it gets.
But here is the counter argument. Europe (if you don’t take the Slavs and the albenians into account) has a negative birth rate. There is no way to sustain current standard of living without immigration. The politicians in Bundestag who control the EU knows that. And if there is one thing that they are afraid of is to encounter the shortage of labour and have to increase wages that comes from that. As the crisis from Covid has shown us.
I think the root cause of the decline of the national and cultural identity of Europe is not because of immigration but because of a local population that has mostly no interest in family formation.
>"but because of a local population that has mostly no interest in family formation"
I am in Canada so do not know what the trends are in Europe but I can clearly see that having kids here is quickly becoming a financial burden many people can not afford. Part of it because people want higher living standard while the other is our fucking politicians creating such conditions.
Taiwan has a completely different demographic and a negative birth rate and no real immigration "problem" and to me it is clear that the negative birth rate is indeed more related to the cost of living crisis than it is to other factors that people like to attribute it to. Their salaries have stagnated for 30 years, while cost of living has skyrotted for anyone but expats. In relation to the income Taipei is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Who wants children if you have to live in a room in your parents flat(at 35) because you can't afford to live on your own.
And yes, while Germany and other European countries have great benefits for child rearing, regardless of that a lot of Germans are actually struggling being able to afford living in the cities. Everyone here, myself included probably makes a lot more than an average worker in Germany.
What do you mean by “want more immigration”? More tax payers? More potential customers? More cheap workforce? Immigration as a help for unfortunate people in other countries?
You're perhaps in a sociopolitical bubble if you find that claim wild. Even if you don't personally know anyone with this perspective, I would hope that it's logical, rational, and expected that a significant proportion of an indigenous population targeted for "diversification" would be opposed to the idea.
(As a counter-anecdote, I don't personally know a single person in my social circle, in Australia, who is supportive of racial diversity, ranging from indifference to a depressing powerlessness and helplessness to protest what is being done to us by the government, to open and outright racist hostility to the concept.)
When I read the original post I was getting nervous, a little angry and wanted to make the same post and mark that claim as wild. But now that I've read your comment I thought a little about my experience here in southern germany.
I recently left Berlin after over 30 years. I have been outside, but not for long to get to know "other germans". And yes, you are right, the mindset here in the south is a lot more narrow minded and what people say about refugees/foreigners is just mind blowing. Which is kinda sad. I like it here, but I doubt I can live around these people for much longer.
I'm curious which population in Australia you are designating as "indigenous". Here in the UK, "indigenous" usually means white. But I think of indigenous Australians as the aboriginals.
So there's history in Australia of white immigrants trying to force aboriginals to "integrate" with whites. I suppose you could call that "targeted diversification". But you make it sound as if your social circle is white people, objecting to "diversity" in the sense of deviation from whiteness.
Well I'm not going to argue with a blood-and-land white nationalist from Oz, telling me how people feel here in Europe. I'm going to butt out, because I have blood-pressure problems. Bye.
Assume for sake of argument that it were possible to develop an encryption regime which protected bona fide users, but did not protect criminals. That would be a good thing.
As a matter of public policy, criminals shouldn't be given the right to communicate for the sake of furthering criminal activity without the possibility of lawful interception. It's here that some technologists lose sight of the real world. In the real world, society expects that authorities be able to fight crime using proportionate means.
The real issue is that you can't separate the two from each other - weakening encryption for criminals means weakening it for everyone.
You sure you want to deprive anybody who has ever been allocated the tag "criminal" the right to private communications? You might want to think long and hard about the members of that class, and what fate they are subject to when they are laid bound at the feet of their prosecutors in the state, who were also the party responsible for defining who they are, sometimes for no offense more complex or voluntary than being born.
Be very, very careful about handing power to the state, there's a reason they're the largest cause of non natural death in the past century, and it's not their innate benevolence.
> Assume for sake of argument that it were possible to develop an encryption regime which protected bona fide users, but did not protect criminals. That would be a good thing. [...] The real issue is that you can't separate the two from each other - weakening encryption for criminals means weakening it for everyone.
Even if such a hypothetical encryption scheme was not intrinsically weaker, it still requires two very strong assumptions:
1. Not a single individual with legal access to the interception system will ever abuse it for their own purposes, or in exchange for a significant bribe or under the threat of blackmail from a powerful and wealthy malignant actor.
2. A future government (democratically elected or not) will never decide that currently legal behaviour is now a crime which warrants interception—say possession of drugs for personal use, "deviant" sex, unpatriotic discourse, etc.
Here's the thing - both of those issues you've identified are broader societal issues that concern everyone, not just you.
(2) in particular is suggesting, effectively, that you should be allowed to circumvent a law you disagree with. In other words, you should be allowed to communicate unlawfully if you don't agree the communication should be unlawful.
That's just not how it works. As a society, your view is one of many. I'm sure many people involved in illicit activity disagree in their activity being characterised as criminal.
(1) undermines the fabric of institutions and assumes that law enforcement targeting criminals may do so for collateral purposes, so they shouldn't be allowed to target criminals just in case.
Whatever society decides is not necessarily good; it's your moral right to break laws you thjnk are sufficiently unjust. When germany goes fascist again, you can bet I'll be using encryption.
If you want people to respect the rule of law, you have to offer them a compromise.
You can break whatever law you choose, but there may be consequences for doing so. It's no answer to breaking a law to say that you don't agree with the law.
Okay.
Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals
No.
It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption is actually there to protect us from you!
The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way.
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html