EU Article 45 requires that browsers trust certificate authorities appointed by governments::The EU is poised to pass a sweeping new regulation, eIDAS 2.0. Buried deep in the text is Article 45, which returns us to the dark ages of 2011, when certificate authorities (CAs) could collaborate with governments to spy on encrypted traffic—and get away with it. Article 45 forbids browsers from…
What the fuck is EU doing? Why are they trying so hard to participate in the enshitification effort?
Personal ID cards have certificates on them issued by the government. These certificates can be used for anything from digitally signing documents to logging in to government web sites without having yet another user/pass. So far situations was a nightmare.
Government provided tools and plugins for browsers to support logging in and signing, but it’s been a shitshow when it comes to support. Pretty much only Windows and only certain versions of it and even then it worked half of the time. You had to install certificate manually and trust, etc. Am assuming this is to make sure these services work but also so they can issue certificates for their own web sites.
Personal digital certificate sounds like an awesome concept. Too bad the implementation seems so narrow-minded. Typical beaureaucrats.
My country has half-assed implementation but in general it has been great. For any signing I can just shove my personal id, enter pin and document is cryptographically signed. No alteration possible. And since government is the issuer of the certificate, no one can fake it. We have our e-government thing also, where you can do a lot of things, from checking your kids grades in school to theoretically handling all of the documentation you might need. Personal id is used to login into that service. Shove a card, enter pin and you are there. No sign up, remember password, etc. I have even set up, at one point, login into my computer using my personal id, out of curiosity as it held no other benefit. Had to add that root certificate to my machine though.
Sadly it all sounds great on paper, but execution is lacking. Some things still require pen and paper and it’s annoying, but we’ll get there. That’s why my assumption is governments wanting to push for easier integration. Then all you’d need was card reader and a browser. Which also the reason why I don’t think they are trying to push this idea for nefarious purposes. People download and install government software without thinking or double-checking all the time. Adding certificate through any installation wouldn’t be much of a challenge.
“No one can fake it” Oh boy. This is going to be an utterly horrible future.
And they don’t even use custom crypto!
What a fucking nightmare. And I thought the US was bad about trying to encroach more on privacy.
Am thinking this looks like a nightmare but their intentions are actually different. However giving any kind of power to government is almost universally bad idea since it’s guaranteed to be abused, no matter the initial reason it was added.
There’s literally zero reason for this that isn’t shady.
I can actually think of more reasons that it’s a legitimate request than a shady one.
Such as?
Well, like I wrote in other comment of mine. Governments here issue personal certificates signed by government ones. These personal certificates can then be used to digitally sign documents and tax reports. It can be used to log into government web sites and many similar uses. These certificates that EU says browsers have to accept are the same ones everyone already uses for biometric passports. If browser accepted these root certificates, then things would be significantly easier to support. No software installation required.
People seem to think this will be used for nefarious cases, but in reality people just install government issued software without thinking. Well, any software without thinking. During that installation you can already add certificate to browser and whole OS. It’s just easier and better supported if they go through public way instead of having to support multiple OS installations and similar issues.
Yeah that argument holds zero water. Forcing browsers to trust these roots means not only pre-trusting them, but disallowing removal of trust. This is completely intended for surveillance purposes.
Removal of trust happened many times in the past. And like I said, it’s not changing anything other than making things easier. You can still add certificates to the browser trusted list if you have access to the person’s computer, which when you install any software you do. Perhaps the best middle ground would be to add certificates but make them conditional that is to say ask the user what they want to do and offer multiple options. Trust for this domain only, trust always, just this time, don’t trust.
Where and how do we complain? This is really bad…
Can we at least admit that requiring CAs is not how ecryption in Internet should work? Just FYI there is already distributed public key infrastructure: DNS(DNSSEC).
Just a heads up: new wording has killed this.
Surely they can’t force say US browser companies to do this to browsers downloaded from the USA?
Seems great, if they achieve the same security standards as a private company I don’t see why we cannot have public CAs.
And how long will it take for intelligence agencies to start issuing fake but trusted certificates for surveillance?
Yes, private companies are invulnerable to this ploy
They already do it.
Fuck the EU. Fuck ruining my built in phone batteries too.
