• MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    My point being, what are they going to achieve with this? Ask WhatsApp to pass over their encryption keys?

    It should be pretty obvious that you shouldn’t be sharing sensitive stuff on chat apps controlled by the NSA. Use element with encryption or something, maybe Briar etc. What are they going to do if you insist on using apps which use asymmetric client-side encryption, break TOR? Force you to use symmetric encryption and give the government your decryption keys?

    I don’t see how they are going to spy on sensitive details of Europeans with this. They might as well ban phones completely if they want to limit communication.

    • makeasnek@lemmy.mlOP
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      6 months ago

      These laws are being passed by politicians who generally don’t understand technology. What they will achieve is a reduction in privacy and liberty for every citizen in the EU and easier methods to clamp down on dissent. Just because it’s not technically perfect or difficult to implement fully doesn’t mean it’s not a threat. It’s one step closer totalitarianism, and what’s stopping totalitarianism is everyday people, one step at a time, battling it back.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Well I get that they are stupid, but unless it’s their fetish to catch 14 year olds trying to spread rubbish propaganda, I doubt they’re going to get much. Any reporter, activist and consumer knows that anything they put on these apps goes straight to the NSA’s and MI6’s AI algorithms at the very least, and now they’re going to go to the rest of Europe.

        Yes, we should be protesting against this. Does Europe have an equivalents of the EFF to fight for such rights?

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I have to strongly disagree, you overestimate what people know/can/want to do. Some, sure, but not the majority. They either stay ignorant or are too lazy. Just look at add blocker usage. I can not even imagine to live without them, but here we are, I am the tiny minority! Most either do not care or are too stupid or somehow happen to not know about them.

    • ByteWelder@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      It’s literally in the article: They want to use client-side scanning. The client already has the data decrypted. This is much like what Apple wanted to introduce with CSAM scanning a while back. It’s a backdoor in each client and it’s a matter of time until it will be abused by malicious entities.

    • GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      You are 100% right.

      They can’t ban encryption, yet they can make it difficult. If all noobs don’t use encryption, only the pros are left. That means they only have to spy on 10 instead of 100 people. Those that don’t use encryption aren’t interesting.

      The problem is that they can’t spy on the 10 and hence they spy on the 90 and wait for the 1 guy making a mistake and becoming one of the 90.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Fairly sure my good Eastern Europeans don’t give a fuck about what France and Germany think and will pirate and TOR and I2P their merry life away (or so I’d like to think - you tell me)