Governments continue losing efforts to gain backdoor access to secure communications
Governments continue losing efforts to gain backdoor access to secure communications
The perennial tug-of-war between government interests and individual liberties is playing out in the battle over encrypted messaging. Technology tilts the field toward individuals.
In order to retain our rights to private communications, we have to win every time.
In order to take them away, they only have to win once.
They will keep trying.
Stay vigilant.
This type of democracy is awful sometimes.
There are certain kinds of rules and discoveries that society can make that they must defend by making rules that eliminate anyone that dares bring the adverse ruling up again. You want slavery and propose it back into law? Society kills you for that.
if we depose them we only need to win once
We need to reverse this. We need to make sure we only need to win once, to permenantly secure this. This is why constitutions exist. Instead of passively waiting, we need to go on the attack, and strike the final blow, before they do. We need these rights secured by constitutions, so they can't be so easily taken away from us. I read that for instance Germany has article 10 of their Grundgesetz, which, (in this translation), states:
"(1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable."
But sadly it's being followed by:
"(2) Restrictions may be ordered only pursuant to a law. If the restriction serves to protect the free democratic basic order or the existence or security of the Federation or of a Land, the law may provide that the person affected shall not be informed of the restriction and that recourse to the courts shall be replaced by a review of the case by agencies and auxiliary agencies appointed by the legislature."
I imagine more countries might have these half-ass measures. Laws that read '(1) X is a fundemental right and nobody can ever take it away from you. (2) except ofcourse goverment, who can do as they please'. I suppose ultimately it requires legislators to give up power, and obviously that only happens under external pressure. Currently people don't seem to care enough to put pressure on these types of issues. I mean, if people cared, they'd move to private services, and if they did then this would be less of an issue. It's an issue precisely because people don't seem to care nor understand the relevance of privacy.
So we need people to care temporarily, and then use that momentum to get our constitutions changed. And for that we probably need a scandal, one that's completely outrageous, while still being quite easy to understand. I don't know if or how this would come to pass, but I wouldn't say it's completely unthinkable. Perhaps we also need some books or films, like a modern 1984, some AI-dystopia. that atleast gets cultural elites, but preferably larger parts of society, to worry about their freedom. In a sense doing the groundwork, and then when minds are ready, we need to strike.
Stay vigilant indeed.
If we kill them it helps.
The real challenge is getting loved ones to care enough to use a FREE encrypted communication app.
Its like they see privacy as an anti-feature and would rather leave the door wide open for anyone to come rummage through their messages.
We are supposed to trust our governments however it is pretty obvious that a Trump could come along and seriously misuse the backdoors that were said to be necessary to protect us. It doesn’t matter if you trust the current mob, it’s a rogue future mob we have to guard against.
Border guards searching phones and making arrests after finding anything critical of Trump, on the grounds of "extremism" is a pretty big indicator.
Well, the future has arrived in the US but not everywhere else 😬
From a cybersecurity perspective, it is nearly impossible to create a backdoor to a communications product that is only accessible for certain purposes or under certain conditions.
Oh? It is possible? Pray tell, how?
I at least have a core group of friends that use Signal and I keep Element installed on my phone and computers hoping someday more people move to that over the next decade
If the law ever says that we are not allowed to have encryption, I am absolutely going to be one of the first ones going to jail because I'm not going to put up with that.
The way I see it is you can throw me in jail where you then have to feed me, give me proper climate control, give me a place to sleep, etc. all on your dime.
throw me in jail where you then have to feed me, give me proper climate control, give me a place to sleep
Hope you don't live in the United States. You might end up in a Salvadoran prison. Or, almost as bad, an American one.
Lol, fair point. I suspect though that so many people would just ignore that as unlawful that they would have no way of possibly enforcing it.
How long do you think your rights in prison are going to last once they've eliminated your most basic rights outside of prison?
I get it, it's internet hyperbole. But dude, if that happens please fight back. Protests, voting, or god forbid gunfire if need be. But don't just give up and die, that's what they want.
For the entire time I have lived on this planet, I've been pretty confident that my daily activities would generally be considered legal, and that the Federal Government had literally zero reason to be interested in me or anything I did.
Now, though, I am aware that the government can disappear me and rendition me to a death camp, without trial and even without habeas corpus.
As far as I can tell, if I'm being arrested I no longer have anything to lose. I am aware of that, and should it come to that, I understand why people are saying to act accordingly.
That is as far as I am going to say in this conversation.
No you won't. You have no idea how utterly inhumane US prisons are.
The real challenge is to get government to quit using communication devices with backdoor access
WHO WHEN WHERE Signal knows who, when, and where! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/back-it-back-it-let-us-begin-explain-encrypted-chat-backups
you did not even read the article that you linked. if you had you wouldn't be saying this.
Signal does not know who, when and where - they barely know when, and not even who or where.
also if you don't agree with me, go and read the Signal codebase, and if you don't like that, self host your own Signal server, or use your own encryption on top of it all.
Also that article is about chat backups, not the safety of your chats in transit or about the privacy of your social graphs on Signal. Nowhere does it mention anything about who, when, or where.
I agree that Signal isn't the best most anonops dark web Tor anonymous hacktivist app or service but, it gives privacy to the masses, and spreading disinfo at a time when people desperately need encryption more than ever is shitty behavior imo.
I love the fact that the information they can provide is basically a couple of reference points that takes up a quarter of a page 🤣