Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'

https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/germany-right-to-encryption/

by Audiophilip • 5 years ago

899 212 5 years ago

uniqueuid• 5 years ago

This is great, of course, but ~50 years of hesitant, schizophrenic legislation regarding digital security leaves me hesitant that Germany will actually be a forerunner on this one.

freeflight4• 5 years ago

Not sure were you are seeing 50 years of this?

It mostly started becoming relevant in the 90s, back then Germany didn't even have any legislation on that front at all, just a very general paragraph about "computer/information system sabotage" they had to throw at phreakers and other early hackers, for the lack of any other law.

By the late 90s they tried to fix that situation, but as usual, only for the worse; The so called "Hackerparagraphs" were enacted, which literally banned the ownership of "hacking tools", that by legal definition technically even included stuff like a mundane Linux nmap or security tools distributed by the BSI [0].

[0] https://www.tecchannel.de/a/das-bsi-und-202c-der-hackerparag...

formerly_proven4• 5 years ago

It's neat how many genuinely good points regarding information security and privacy made it into the coalition agreement, but everyone knows that just because it says in the paper that a new gov't wants to do something does not mean they do it.

monopoledance5• 5 years ago

While that's true, the Green party and FDP seem to mean it, when they pushed for these rights and progressive legislation - and combined, they have the majority within the coalition. Here is to hope.

freeflight4• 5 years ago

they have the majority within the coalition

A majority within the coalition does not translate to a majority in the Bundestag, which is what's needed to put any of these many promises and plans into actual action.

abliefern• 5 years ago

everyone knows that just because it says in the paper that a new gov't wants to do something does not mean they do it.

That's a common misconception. 80% of the commitments in the previous coalition agreement were fully or partially implemented:

https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/de/unsere-projekte/monit...

0xdeadb00f• 5 years ago

However, in general, I think it does reign true. This is a (welcome) exception to the rule, I think.

quotemstr3• 5 years ago

I approve of constitutionally guaranteeing that people can keep their communications secure, but as an American, I think the rhetorical framework surrounding the movement could be improved. We need negative rights, not positive ones.

People don't have a right to encryption, or a right to a specific computing environment, or really, a right to anything at all. What people do have is a right to be free of government limitations on the freedom of individuals to run whatever software they want on devices they own.

When you make something a positive right, that means it's something the government has to give you, and a government that can give you rights can take them away.

The American perspective is that people have rights just by virtue of existing, and the state can only illegally and immorality interfere with rights that you always possess, unconditionally, no matter what.

IMHO, the right framing isn't that people have a right to encryption, but that the state has no business interfering with the math people do on their own computers.

cblconfederate4• 5 years ago

It's not a matter of positive / negative really, it's not like encryption will be mandatory. The right to not have their encryption backdoored sounds negative enough to me

xxpor2• 5 years ago

People don't have a right to encryption, or a right to a specific computing environment, or really, a right to anything at all

This is an incredibly American libertarianish view, and essentially completely unheard of in Europe. The Europeans frame things in terms of positive rights all the time.

quotemstr3• 5 years ago

Yes, although you can also see the libertarianist approach in also some strains of British thinking.

All I'm doing is claiming that the American approach leads, in the end, to greater and more permanent personal liberty. I don't have anything against Europeans or their approach --- I just disagree with them on how to form a basis for limitations on state power.

harpersealtako2• 5 years ago

Well, in this case the difference is between two statements:

* The state grants citizens the right to encrypt data

* The state cannot infringe upon the right of people to encrypt data.

These two statements have important differences. Philosophically, the difference is that in the positive rights model, government is the source of rights, and if the government did not exist, you would not have this right. In the negative rights model, the source of rights is man's natural free will, and the government's declaration of rights is an enumeration of an existing right he already had (and yes, I'm conflating negative and natural rights, I apologize, but the point is still true).

It seems pretty obvious that encryption is more accurately a negative right -- if you were the last human on earth, alone in the desert, you would of course have the right to encrypt a message you carve into a stone (who could stop you?).

This is in contrast to a positive right like "the right to housing". The "right to housing" is an entitlement that the government promises they are going to provide to all citizens. All citizens, even those who cannot afford or build one on their own, are given a home if they want one.

It is further clear when you look at what would happen if these two examples were reversed. If government grants the right to encrypt data, then what would happen if there was no government? Do you suddenly stop being able to do encryption? This would make no sense.

Similarly, if you were too weak or lacked the materials to build a house yourself (as the last man alive wandering the desert), nobody would naturally grant it to you. A house does not simply materialize through free will alone.

This suggests to me without a doubt that the right to encryption should be considered a negative right (and you should certainly believe this too). The only debate is whether the distinction matters in a practical sense -- this is where the libertarians will probably argue that it does, and I would certainly agree with them, but that argument is a lot more complex and subjective. In this case it's a little easier since the specifics/vagueries of this specific law leaves quite a bit to be desired over the obvious negative rights version of it.

jeofken• 5 years ago

Let’s keep the level higher on HN. The ideas of freedom and universal rights isn’t unheard of in Europe - it originated here, and you’re certainly not speaking for all os us when you claim we accept the idea of “positive rights”.

frankfrankfrank3• 5 years ago

"We need negative rights, not positive ones."

That is already the case, however certain players that have an incentive, have actively undermined not just negative rights in general, but they have also been undermining people's ability to understand the topic, let alone support it.

Most people don't really understand, especially today, is that the bill of rights does not establish rights at all, it is really a bill of laws that prohibit the government and all subordinate jurisdictions from impeding on right in the enumerated manner.

The reason the founders quickly realized they needed the Bill of Rights is because humans are scoundrels and if you don't set hard boundaries, especially the attorneys will start convoluting everything into knots; hence why they felt strong enough to put the scoundrels on a leash regarding certain rights, e.g., free speech, right to keep and bear arms, etc. As it turns out, even those laws making it illegal, prohibiting government from infringing on those specific things, was not enough to keep the scoundrels at bay. They have still twisted us up in knots to the point where people are and do gaslight others by saying things like that basic things like suppressing free speech only applies to the government. Don't worry folks, slavery is only prohibited when the government does it … you are free to enslave.

8note• 5 years ago

I don't see a distinction? The right to do something is both positive and negative. You have the right to do the thing, and the right to not have the government stop you. Nobody's permission is needed; government or another person

The American perspective only assigns enumerated rights to enumerated people. People are assumed to not have rights when the constitution does not apply, or it does not specify the right. The government grants Americans those rights, the people don't have them by virtue of existing. Otherwise, the government could not spy on other countries, since those people would have 4th amendment rights. The same goes for the right to drive, which the government is perfectly allowed to infringe on since it is not specified in the document.

wolverine8764• 5 years ago

The American perspective is that people have rights just by virtue of existing, and the state can only illegally and immorality interfere with rights that you always possess, unconditionally, no matter what.

Universal human rights isn't just American, it's a bedrock of democracies worldwide and of international law.

Also, the US doesn't say states "only illegally and immorality interfere", but that their core purpose is to actively protect human rights:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

cblconfederate4• 5 years ago

Is it a right to End-to-end encryption or a right to "encryption from everyone except government" ?

volta83• 5 years ago

Ideally it would be a constitutional ammendent, stating that privacy is a right of every citizen, and a human right.

Legislation to the right to encryption would then just follow from it, but having it in the constitution would make it harder for future governments to pass certain kinds of legislation, or if they pass them, the supreme court would declare them inconstitutional.

quotemstr3• 5 years ago

The problem is defining "privacy" though, isn't it? What, specifically, would the amendment require or prohibit under the banner of "privacy"? How could this definition, if enshrined into nearly immutable law, be modified to account for a changing technological environment? How do you prevent such an amendment from suffering from the fate of the US second amendment, which in many places is honored mostly in the breach?

JCWasmx863• 5 years ago

human right

This should be the goal. In the days of the internet, mass surveillance, nearly eradicated privacy we need a right to have and use strong encryption without any backdoors.

cblconfederate4• 5 years ago

To be clear, it is already a human right, right of expression association privacy etc. Just nobody defends it

monopoledance5• 5 years ago

constitutional ammendent

They don't have the necessary majority to make constitutional changes without the CDU, I think. And the CDU is why we can't have nice things.

dunefox• 5 years ago

Knowing german politicians, it's the latter.

frankfrankfrank3• 5 years ago

If I had to bet, I would put money on "you have a right to encrypt, but we can't stop the 5+1 eyes from breaking the encryption for us and giving us the information" … Encryptocon?

cblconfederate4• 5 years ago

Then it is a sham

tick_tock_tick• 5 years ago

It's Germany of course it's the second.

JCWasmx863• 5 years ago

There is [...] a prohibition of state authorities to keep vulnerabilities a secret.

This is another great thing. It is simply unethical to hoard vulnerabilities, as this will eventually backfire[0]

On top that all future security legislation will be subject to an evaluation by a panel of independent experts who have to look into issues with any potential restrictions on freedom.

I really hope this will be people from the CCC.

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/28/nsa_backdoor_wyden/

frankfrankfrank3• 5 years ago

I'm genuinely a bit confused and suspicious. The german state is known for it's contradictions regarding security and privacy, e.g., mapping sites cannot record "street level" images in public view, but the government will decree what is and is not allowed speech and has been caught compromising systems to monitor that.

Now the government that is obsessed with making sure everyone thinks only approved things is going to codify a right to encryption and prohibit state authorities (Is there a 5+1 eyes workaround prohibition) from building in or maintaining vulnerabilities?

Maybe this really is just a bone for the peasants that will fool them into feeling like they have rights, while the Ol' 5+1 Eye Switcheroo is used to keep vulnerabilities and compromise encryption anyways.

JCWasmx863• 5 years ago

but the government will decree what is and is not allowed speech

Do you mean "free speech"? Here in germany have free speech, except for denying the holocaust (And this makes really sense, as this is simply wrong)

monopoledance5• 5 years ago

The german state is known for it's contradictions regarding security and privacy

16 years of CDU. It's not been contradiction, but good intentions with reliably poor execution by the coalition partner SPD, and the usual CDU SNAFU.

Otherwise we pride ourselves with pretty incompetent intelligence agencies, so please keep your NWO conspiracy narratives to yourself.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

mapping sites cannot record "street level" images in public view, but the government will decree what is and is not allowed speech

This isn't a contradiction unless you view everything through an American cultural lens. There is no conception of absolute freedom of speech in Germany. The public sphere in Germany is not the Wild West, never has been, never will be and has always been subject to considerations about what is in the public interest. In public you're not just an individual, you're a "Staatsbürger", a citizen of the state, and you have not only privileges but obligations to maintain public life.

Right to your data, your own body, your private communication, your own image, and so forth is part of the private sphere and personal, and as such enjoys much more protection.

cyberpunk3• 5 years ago

I mean, not forgetting that possession of nmap is technically a crime in Germany..

Which also makes any cybersec company operating in Germany also illegal.

Although, no one has been prosecuted for this, it makes getting insurance impossible…

https://iclg.com/practice-areas/cybersecurity-laws-and-regul...

Zak3• 5 years ago

Mapping sites can and do record street level images in Germany. They are required to blur certain personally-identifiable details recorded in those images.

https://goo.gl/maps/D81WK7JT9muHXwHa8

mainframed• 5 years ago

Google street view is not illegal. People just have the right to request that Google blurs their house. And because so many people requested it in Germany, Google said it's too much effort and disabled it completely. They still drive through Germany and collect images to improve their navigation services.

Also, I don't understand the discussion: Why is limiting free speech contradicting privacy efforts? Allowing people to prevent that their house being displayed on the internet is completely independent of stopping people writing racist slurs on the internet.

In Germany it's not about some extremist scalar ideology of freedom or control. You have basic rights and in daily life the rights of people collide.

In the case of Google Street view, there is the right of Google to choose their work (Art. 12 GG) vs. the right for privacy (derived from Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG) of people. Courts then have to follow a defined procedure to weigh those rights against each other. Apparently, it was ruled that the additional effort of blurring does not hinder Google's right to follow its occupation.

In the case of NetzDG (the law which enforces big social platform to delete criminal posts, such as racial slurs, which you probably refer to), you have the right of free speech of the poster (Art. 5 GG) and the right of human dignity of the guy who receives human dignity. Additionally, Art. 5 GG defines boundaries for free speech:

"These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour. (Art. 5 Abs. 2 GG)."

I learned how the constitution works in detail in uni, and I think it's beautiful. To me, this is a recipe to have a healthy democratic society. And a democratic society has to be able to defend itself against anti-democratic, racists. Otherwise, it'll just collapse sooner or later.

ClumsyPilot• 5 years ago

"mapping sites cannot record "street level" images in public view"

Only in America mass surveillance is a form of "freedom"

oytis4• 5 years ago

prohibition of state authorities to keep vulnerabilities a secret

It doesn't mean companies whose software the government buys can't do it, right?

pyuser583• 5 years ago

The history of encryption it includes doesn’t dwell West Germany.

The West German government had a reputation for supporting strong crypto (unlike the East Germans and Nazis).

They were aware that many of their day-to-day communications were being intercepted by the East Germans (much as they intercepted East German communications).

Many West Germans had loved ones in East Germany who could at least in theory face negative consequences for the actions of West Germans.

West Germany simply couldn’t be free without strong crypto.

freeflight4• 5 years ago

This is such a weird take, considering the reality how the NSA mass spying on Germans, and even Merkel, is quite legal and has been for many decades [0].

So while NATO forces are really big on supporting "strong crypto" for their own practical needs, what they were not really big on is supporting strong privacy rights for them West German people, as that would just "complicate" finding all those Communist spies and sympathizers.

Who were suspected to be everywhere, as split Germany was pretty much the main battlefield of the covert cold war.

That's why the West German G-10 law was specifically modified [1] at the request of the NSA [2] to legalize their, and that of NATO forces, mass spying on German citizens.

Btw: In terms of "Nazi encryption" it's a bit odd to make a statement like that, the Nazis, just like the USSR, the US, or pretty much any formal military force, did and still do use "strong crpyto" for their own needs [3].

That's why conflating encryption tech with privacy rights, as if they're just synonyms, is quite misleading.

[0] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-10/nsa-uerberwa...

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/2014...

[2]https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

Hamuko• 5 years ago

Does it matter if strong encryption is being eroded on the EU level?

cm2187• 5 years ago

My thinking. Not sure how they will translate “right to encryption” into law, but if they mean right to E2E encrypted correspondence, then german law will be on a collision course with EU laws in development. If that happens it will be interesting to compare the debate with what happened with Poland this year.

mantas• 5 years ago

There's already a case where EU and German law clashed.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/21/german-court-dismisses-legal...

AnssiH• 5 years ago

Despite some people pushing for it, I'd say we are very far from EU eroding strong encryption. The support just isn't there.

I know there are claims that EU is on the verge of banning E2E, but they seem to be, AFAICS, exaggerated or unfounded.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

It is a recurring topic on Hacker News though recently.

Here's a story from Mailbox.org which is another German email provider focused on Privacy, just like Tutanota: https://mailbox.org/en/post/chat-control-the-latest-eu-plans...

And here a more detailed site: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...

Not sure if this is indeed exaggerated or unfounded and I hope it is. I heard it was taken off the agenda but that was more of a "for now", with plans to revisit it next year.

gremloni• 5 years ago

Germany does a lot of things right. Why can’t we achieve anything reasonable in the US anymore?

melff4• 5 years ago

I think the main issues are polarization and the two party political landscape for you guys across the pond. Don't forget that the grass often seems greener on the other side, we here in germany also have a lot of polarization going on esp. in recent times. Also these coalition agreements are not reliable, politicians talk a lot if the day is long, we'll have to wait and see what actually comes of it.

Zak3• 5 years ago

Germany and the US have completely different electoral and legislative systems.

The US, notably has single member districts with plurality voting, which is extremely likely to produce two dominant parties. That's combined with a Senate that requires a supermajority to pass most legislation. Add a little more polarization than usual to that mix and the government can't legislate.

Neither plurality voting nor the filibuster rule are in the constitution. States have the authority to determine their own voting systems, and two states, Maine and Alaska have adopted instant-runoff voting for some elections. The Senate has the authority to change its rules, and has chosen to keep the filibuster in something resembling its present form since the 1970s with a small number of exceptions.

freeflight4• 5 years ago

Germany and the US have completely different electoral and legislative systems.

I wouldn't call them completely different, they are also not exactly the same, but there are also quite a few parallels.

Case in point; In neither place the people vote directly for president/chancellor.

rsynnott• 5 years ago

That's combined with a Senate that requires a supermajority to pass most legislation

And which is elected in such a way that it is unlikely to represent the will of the people; it represents the will of the constituent _states_ (kind of). Which, where one has a powerful federal government, is a rather weird setup.

dividuum• 5 years ago

Not really. It's mostly a clown show orchestrated by old people that have never touched a computer and still think the internet is a new thing in 2021. Sometimes by pure chance something good happens, but is then soon attacked again. Examples: The Vorratsdatenspeicherung (metadata surveilance) is suggested again and again but then gets shut down by some court. Only to be revived again when Football distracts the masses. The Hackerparagraf puts you at legal risk working or developing exploits, upload filters supposedly check everything you upload for copyright infringement, Leistungsschutzrecht tries to keep obsolete paper based business models alive. There are public projects that tried to use 5 blockchains and other embarassing nonsense. It's tiring.

Cu3PO42• 5 years ago

One thing I, personally, find very interesting is that a lot of wording from the coalition contract on this and related matters is apparently taken from or at least based on [0] a document [1] released by the CCC for that very purpose. I haven't personally carefully verified this to be true, but I have no reason to distrust the linked report.

[0] https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9f60b12e

[1] https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2021/ccc-formulierungshilfe-re...

(both in German)

majewsky• 5 years ago

Well yeah, after years of seeing lobbyists slipping their suggested phrasing into bills, it was about time we took a page from their playbook. :)

(Disclosure: I volunteer in a local CCC chapter, mostly in public relations.)

_the_inflator• 5 years ago

The last sentences already address this: "Ich sollte an der Stelle vielleicht auch klar ansagen: Die Politiker, die anderer Lobbyisten vorformulierte Entwürfe übernehmen, sind faule Schufte. Die, die unsere vorformulierten Entwürfe durchwinken, sind wohlinformierte und hochintelligente Ehrenleute!1!!" ;)

max-ibel• 5 years ago

I think this is all fine and dandy until the new Innenminister is starting his or her work early next year.

They will project the concerns of the civil service and somehow carve out enough special regulations that will all but hollow out any such rights.

I really want to believe that the majority of the coalition parties believe that they are saying, but that's not how politics are made or put into practice.

E.g., after Zimmermann, there was great hope that Germany would be a lot less conservative in it's interior policy, but following interior ministries have not really become much less conservative.

Here's to hope, though - Cheers.

2-718-281-828• 5 years ago

Innenminister ... dude, have some respect - it's secretary of interior

btdmaster• 5 years ago

https://fsfe.org/activities/publiccode/publiccode.en.html is finally taking shape!

cryptonector• 5 years ago

Let me guess: as long as there's key escrow or equivalent.

yyyk• 5 years ago

What does 'right to encryption' actually mean in this new plan? Can anyone explain in English?

For example, Google Translate (always dubious) gives the following*: "The state must also offer the possibility of real encrypted communication". Which may mean either 'e2e communication' or 'e2e communication except government' or even merely 'the state must create an encrypted messaging solution and allow everyone to use it, but nothing else will change' (and no one will actually use it due to scale effects Whatsapp etc. have).

* From Cu3PO42's excellent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29434183

melff4• 5 years ago

The Google Translation is accurate in this case, it's just as vague in German as it is in English

namibj• 5 years ago

I suggest Deepl for DE=>EN translation, it's significantly better than google translate.

hammock• 5 years ago

Wonderful how many good changes are happening so quickly with the new government. Merkel held power uninterrupted for over 18 years straight. The new leadership is basically Trump's campaign promise, for Germany (anti-globalist elite), but without all the backlash and manufactured outrage.

I guess these anti-globalist ideas have had enough time to percolate that even HN is supporting their fruits now.

oytis4• 5 years ago

Well, these are not changes yet, these are intentions (though good ones). Let's see what they can achieve, and whether they will stick to their promises when confronting tough problems.

officeplant2• 5 years ago

Germany often makes me wish I could just show them my family history of when we immigrated to the US so they can let me back in.

ivan_gammel• 5 years ago

Find a job in Germany and you can start packing. There are plenty of English-speaking companies here and shortage of skilled workers.

quelltext• 5 years ago

Why would they just let you in because of your family history? I presume your ancestors once left Germany to find a new country to live in and became successful there.

Not saying that Germany shouldn't "let you back in" if you want to immigrate back, but the mere fact that your ancestors were German should not qualify you more (safe for certain exceptional populations in recent war history) than others whose ancestors might for instance come from the UK.

jonp8882• 5 years ago

Germany, like most countries outside North America has citizenship based on ancestry, not place of birth.

In the eyes of Germany, if you parents were German you are German too, even if your parents never visited Germany.

The chain is only broken if you apply for foreign citizenship or serve in foreign armed forces.

To me it is bizarre that the mere fact of being on holiday in America at your time of birth makes you American.

jonp8882• 5 years ago

Many people have done that and found that they actually were German citizens all along.

The exact rules are complicated but it's worth looking in to.

zoe4883• 5 years ago

Good! German opposition and political activists desperately need good encryption to organize! Large opposition party was placed under surveillance before election, its leaders wiretapped. Today activists are monitored on Internet by secret services.

qwertox• 5 years ago

Just today the German online IT magazine heise.de published an article [0] claiming that the interior ministers (home secretaries?) will expect from social platforms like WhatsApp to implement backdoors so that the government can access a copy of the data. This is a wish they've been having for ages.

So, there's clearly an opposition.

[0] https://www.heise.de/news/Innenminister-Angriff-auf-Verschlu...

estaseuropano2• 5 years ago

Outgoing government! This article is about the incoming one.

wolverine8764• 5 years ago

Who are you talking about?

jillesvangurp• 5 years ago

The AFD, a right wing party with quite a few ties to known neo-nazis or nazi symphatizers/apologists and also quite a bit of ties to some of the uglier right wing extremism that pops up its ugly head in Germany every once in a while. For example, there were a few arrests near the Polish border recently of some people who took it upon themselves to do a little policing in that area.

Also, it's easy to forget that this country had active right wing and left wing terrorists not so long ago.

So, yes Germany may have slightly overstepped their authority putting AFD party members under surveillance considering it is now a major party in several of its states and of course the parliament. In that sense it's a big scandal actually. But it's not entirely without reason. There are some really shady and scary people associating themselves with that party.

AtNightWeCode• 5 years ago

"We require all government agencies to report security vulnerabilities they are aware of to the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and to undergo regular external audits of their IT systems."

If some well known agencies done this, loss of billions of dollars could have been avoided.

"In the future, development contracts will be regularly commissioned as open source, and the software will be made public as a matter of principle. There will be a right to encryption, and the state must also offer the option of genuine encrypted communication."

Personally I have a hard time to trust anything after heart bleed. A very basic attack that caused havoc. It proved that the quality of open source is nowhere close to the promises of OSS. It also tells that the automatic tests are too simple, if there are any. Fact is that a student in any class about the network stack probably already been targeted about far more complex attacks than heart bleed.

Encryption is mandatory for most things in EU. But the quality is difficult to evaluate.

wizzwizz44• 5 years ago

Personally I have a hard time to trust anything after heart bleed. A very basic attack that caused havoc. It proved that the quality of open source is nowhere close to the promises of OSS.

Heartbleed made international headlines, and got fixed very quickly. The equivalent bugs in Mike's Proprietary Encryption Layer are just another Tuesday. Which is better: being able to discover a bug like Heartbleed, or not being able to discover a bug like Heartbleed?

wolverine8764• 5 years ago

OSS is certainly no guarantee of security, but there is quality, secure OSS, such as WireGuard.

verisimi4• 5 years ago

In all honesty, I don't/can't value government provided rights. The reason is governments have no basis to grant anything more than an individual.

If you think about it, if I grant you a right to privacy - what can that possibly mean to you? If not just I, but I and 10 others (or 100, or 10000) agree to grant you a right, still - what does that mean? Do you now have that right?

In fact, the position is nonsense.

The question then, is at what point do a bunch of people become a government? What is the magic number? And on what basis does a government have greater rights than the individuals it purports to represent?

The answer in reverse, is that government does not have greater rights than individuals. It does not determine morality. A majority of people might decide to rule over others - and they may be successful via their greater or co-ordinated force - but at no point does that use of force become a right. Put simply, if someone or a group or a government initiate force, that is a wrong. Re rights, you can do whatever as long as you are not harming another.

Governments are not greater than individuals. While we might go along with government dictats or government 'granting of rights', there is no moral basis for it. It is just the labouring under an illusion. The government illusion is powerful, for sure, and there is malign threat therein, but at no point can government create a right that is not already existent for the individual. If some people believe it can, they are mistaken. If those people undertake the dictats of government, acting forcibly against other that have done them no wrong, they are acting immorally.

In answer to the main post then, individuals have always had a right to encryption, if it is not harming anyone. Governments have never had the (moral) 'right' to decrypt as that is stealing someone's privacy. Governments can of course write laws to justify whatever they like, but these laws themselves need to align with morality to be 'right'.

PS I seriously don't mind being down-voted, but would rather understand what the objections are to my argument.

ianleeclark2• 5 years ago

The answer in reverse, is that government does not have greater rights than individuals. It does not determine morality.

Morality is a rough one. Most people who study ethics and metaethics do follow moral realist positions, but positions under that umbrella are manifold. When you look outside of moral realist positions, there are even more positions.

So, the government doesn't govern morality, but even the people who study it can't form consensus.

Governments can of course write laws to justify whatever they like, but these laws themselves need to align with morality to be 'right'.

Your problem isn't with rights or governmental egregores, it's with an inability to reconcile a morality with the turtles-all-the-way-down-esque social relations that summon said egregores.

Until your moral claims can said to be true, then my rights could contradict yours, and it might not be reconcilable. Here someone smarter than me might even consider that the job of government is to reconcile the infinite, inconsistent beliefs, and to give some basis of "rights."

verisimi4• 5 years ago

Until your moral claims can said to be true, then my rights could contradict yours, and it might not be reconcilable. Here someone smarter than me might even consider that the job of government is to reconcile the infinite, inconsistent beliefs, and to give some basis of "rights."

The moral claims I make are innately true to all individuals. You can pretend that government has the right to do that which you cannot do to another individual, but you would be wrong.

You can do what you like as long as you are not harming another.

A collection of people do not/cannot have greater rights than an individual. An individual cannot grant another a right eg to privacy. An individual can respect anothers right to privacy. Or he can disrespect that privacy. If he does disrespect that right, that individual has done a wrong.

This same method applies to groups. If 10 people decide to disrespect an individual's privacy, this is still a wrong. There is no number, no implied convention that can make disrespecting privacy the right thing!

kaibee• 5 years ago

You're being down-voted because this

The question then, is at what point do a bunch of people become a government? What is the magic number? And on what basis does a government have greater rights than the individuals it purports to represent?

is a nonsense argument and it is the crux of the rest of your argument.

The answer to when adding a grain of sand to other grains of sand becomes a pile of sand is not 'never' even if there's no obvious dividing line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

verisimi4• 5 years ago

Thanks for the link. This is exactly the problem with the belief in governmental authority.

Where does government get its authority from then?

I say it is from force, and that the force comes from many individual's false belief that government is right to do as it does.

Eg, if you find you don't agree with what government does, can you withdraw? Say you don't agree with government starting a war in another country, and decide not to pay taxes, will you go to jail?

Most people do see that there is no choice, that it is based in force. However, they will also try to rationalise their acceptance of the force, and in so doing propagate the beast.

syshum• 5 years ago

For the vast majority of the population you will not get much support for the Principle of Self-Ownership which is what you are talking about when you say

The question then, is at what point do a bunch of people become a government? What is the magic number? And on what basis does a government have greater rights than the individuals it purports to represent?

To me and likely yourself the answer to this question is Never, the government never has more rights than the individuals

The US was (and I stress was) the last nation on the planet where this idea had even small roots in the ground as a foundational principle of governance, sadly that has been lost and any of those roots that may have been left were yanked out of the soil at the start of COVID.

Today the rule is "The needs of the many, outweigh any rights of the individual"

effie2• 5 years ago

Today the rule is "The needs of the many, outweigh any rights of the individual"

Yes, many people think this nowadays. I think because they did not experience the downsides of this or it is not relevant now.

I think most people tolerate manifestations of this quoted idea to some extent now, when it makes sense to them or it is close enough, and is bearable, like some of the pandemic restrictions.

True, this sets up a dangerous precedent, but I don't think it's certain most people completely bought the quoted idea in general. With some of the less sensible restrictions and mandates, many people realized just how wrong is to take that idea as gospel for every possible situation.

trompetenaccoun• 5 years ago

True. At least that's what they're told by the few who control their minds. Interestingly the many's supposed needs lead to worse and worse outcomes for them.

effie2• 5 years ago

Government effective authority does not come from accepting its role as arbiter of morality, but it comes from people belief in the system of laws and government, beliefs about who is or should be given superior powers, like tools of mind control (schools,media) and matter control (police,army).

Of course one can think of oneself as being outside the power of government, and that is very powerful. Then some principles such as human rights are naturally seen as inalienable and independent of what any government says/legislates/enforces. Such independence of thinking and actions from the government is sometimes a highly moral position, like when people in Europe helped hide and save Jews from Gestapo.

But morality is not universal, people have different views, and the government and its tools are still there, they can threaten and hurt people. So many will usually choose to comply with the government restricted version of human rights, as long as it's bearable.

tremon• 5 years ago

if I grant you a right to privacy - what can that possibly mean to you

But you do it all the time. If someone tells you something in confidence, you explicitly agree to respect their privacy. If you sleep with someone, you implicitly accept that the other won't broadcast the shape and size of your genitalia to the world. If you run into an acquaintance in public, you implicitly agree not to broadcast each other's whereabouts to the entire world. What's so difficult about the concept of privacy?

at what point do a bunch of people become a government? What is the magic number?

That question makes no sense: the magic number, if it exists, is one. If you want to fully understand why, you probably should pursue a multi-year education in international law.

government does not have greater rights than individuals

Governments don't have rights at all, so this is true. Governments have sovereignty and mandates instead.

[government] does not determine morality

Indeed it doesn't. But it does formalize and encode morality, in the form of laws. So rather than railing against this law as if it violates your tummy, maybe you'd be better served to understand the morality of the society whose government is drafting this law?

The government illusion is powerful

This is why you are downvoted, I think: you are expressing your feelings about government from a state of perpetual learned helplessness. The very idea that "the government is us", which is the core concept of democracy, seems alien to you. I know that this affliction (the feeling of not having a say in how your country is governed) is particularly prominent in the US, but it gets a bit old and trite to see commenters spouting their dysfunctional relationship with their own government onto every story, as if their traumas are universal truths. It's just noise, and adds nothing to the discussion.

verisimi4• 5 years ago

Thanks for your thoughts.

But you do it all the time. If someone tells you something in confidence, you explicitly agree to respect their privacy. If you sleep with someone, you implicitly accept that the other won't broadcast the shape and size of your genitalia to the world. If you run into an acquaintance in public, you implicitly agree not to broadcast each other's whereabouts to the entire world. What's so difficult about the concept of privacy?

No I don't. I may _respect_ another's privacy, but how can I grant that right? What authority do I have to grant a right to another? You are mistaken considerate behaviour for some magic/godly ability to grant rights.

If you want to fully understand why, you probably should pursue a multi-year education in international law.

There is nothing in law that can explain the mechanism whereby one individual can grant a right to another. Well, perhaps you can say contract law can achieve something like this - eg if I already have a right (eg of freedom of movement) and then I sign a contract with another to say I will only exercise that right if they allow it.

But there is no implied contract that can be valid. No individual can assume that they do have the ability to allow others the right to freedom of movement. The contract would need to explicit - ie you would need to have signed it. Yet this is how government works.

You did NOT provide consent to government. Nothing was signed, yet the government assumes your are subject to its laws. There is no basis for this. (Arguably you do 'buy in' when you vote, but you can also withdraw).

If 'government' is a collection of individuals that believe they should be governed by the consensus of the group, ensure their laws and management structure is adopted by others that are outside the group, that self-govern? There is no moral right. Without consent there is only force.

But it does formalize and encode morality, in the form of laws.

For sure it does not formalise nor encode my morality. Does it encode yours? Personally, I would not restrict others freedom of movement if they are not harming others. I would not force to accept my authority of their body (eg via mandatory vaccines).

you are expressing your feelings about government from a state of perpetual learned helplessness. The very idea that "the government is us", which is the core concept of democracy, seems alien to you.

Government has nothing to do with me. It sees fit to inflict its 'laws' on me - but there is no morality to this, only force. It is a helpless situation though, that is true. I am a victim - as most other people really do believe in this illusion. They do not accept my right to govern myself. Even though I am not harming them (ie I am acting morally) they do see fit to act immorally against me - they will force me to act as their government has deemed fit. Eg they will force me to pay tax or force me to take 'medicine' despite my choice, or prevent me from going where I want, etc. Legality has nothing to do with this as government can write laws to make this legal

Government is a beast based in force - and has nothing to do with rights and wrongs. It is the mechanism of an elite class to manage people collectively and has - via education - has kidded us into believing the mechanism they control somehow relates to individuals.

The illusion is so strong most of us believe it is actually right to force others to do what it says!

CRConrad• 5 years ago

Governments are not greater than individuals.

Perhaps not ethically or morally or whatever.

But that only matters in a philosophy classroom.

In the real world, they are.

HTH!

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

What about the EU working on mandating a backdoor though? EU law supersedes local law..

I remember another German email provider raising this last week: https://mailbox.org/en/post/chat-control-the-latest-eu-plans...

And https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...

Other posts here mentioned it as exaggerated but it sounds pretty detailed there. It worries me a bit because it would instantly move the EU from one of the best on privacy protections to one of the worst in the western world.

nerbert• 5 years ago

That EU thing is work in progress. Germany can probably sink that easily.

felixhammerl3• 5 years ago

Especially with the UK out of the picture.

estaseuropano2• 5 years ago

These EU law worries seem to be blown put of proportion.

But EU law is (while not legally required) most of the time adopted by consensus. I.e. a No by any EU gov can block a bill more or less indefinitely - certainly no one will try to outvote Germany or France on an important bill.

Dma54rhs2• 5 years ago

What makes you think EU law supersedes the local law? I don't know about the Germany but one old guard of EU, France, has been in supreme court since 1996 and every time they say French law supersedes EU or any intestinal law as it should be.

Hendrikto2• 5 years ago

https://www.euronews.com/2021/11/08/european-court-urges-pol...

After being fined €1 million per day by the European Court of Justice, Poland has said that it would remove the disciplinary chamber.

MinorTom2• 5 years ago

To expand on everybody elses arguments re:"EU law supersedes local law.."

The German Constitution supersedes EU law, especially considering that some parts of it cannot be changed, but the German Constitutional Court has decided to always try to read the Constitution in a way that matches EU law. The only exception is if they believe the EU has gone 'ultra vires', i.e. significantly above their power.

A recent decision by the GCC about policy of the European Central Bank has invoked this exception and has been fairly controversial because of that[0]. This situation has been defused by now, the German government has promised to reign in the GCC.

[0] and also bc some economists disagree with the economic basis of that decision, but that's a topic for another time

jollybean• 5 years ago

Then they are setting up a constitutional challenge with the ECJ, just like Poland. They were on the brink of it recently, when it got hushed it 'because Poland was doing it', but this kind of thing will highlight the fact that Germany doesn't accept ECJ Supremacy either. Interestingly enough, they may back off just enough so that the Germany-ECJ '40 year dispute' doesn't get inflamed, hoping that maybe after a few more decades it will just 'go away' with a German Judiciary, Parliament and Population that just accept the ECJ Supremacy, even though it doesn't actually say that in any treaty.

gumby3• 5 years ago

Excellent. I hope they fix the deliberate botch they made of the use of ID cards as key carriers. As far as I know the hardware is fine but the Bundestag fucked up the infrastructure.

Germany should look to Estonia who, IMHO, gets it right.

vlovich1232• 5 years ago

What are the differences in infrastructure and what choices did Estonia make that are better?

Is it possible that a 83x larger population has different infrastructure needs and it’s not that Estonia did an outstanding job but that Estonia’s problem space is much simpler?

solarkraft3• 5 years ago

Possible, but unlikely. The same principles tend to apply.

gumby3• 5 years ago

Well, this isn’t what I was talking about but to your size point: there have been security bugs in the infrastructure which Estonia has been been aggressive in addressing, unlike DE, but that also matters in EE because they actually use the infrastructure.

When the chip IDs were rolled out in DE the Bundestag didn’t put in place any rules requiring that that banks or others be required to use the PKI (even only when offered and available) to protect and authenticate personal information. So of course the banks didn’t bother. Without any major use case, nobody else did either.

This was claimed at the time to be a way to let business lead, but really it was because business were happy not to have to provide extra privacy protection so lobbied against it.

Compare that to chips in credit cards in the 1990s: they really cared about protecting money so put in all sorts of rules to make the use mandatory.

Hendrikto2• 5 years ago

I, and a lot of people I know, microwave their German ID cards immediately upon receiving them.

Bad enough that German citizens are required by law to have a valid ID card in the first place (see Ausweispflicht). Something pretty unique and a relic from the third Reich. We don‘t need more data on them. It will be leaked, it will be misused, it will have exploitable mistakes. ID cards should stay a dumb piece of plastic.

gumby3• 5 years ago

I wouldn’t bother to do that myself, though it’s harmless since there’s essentially no infrastructure support for the chip in DE, which is my complaint. The chip only contains the info readable on the card plus what you want to store there (public keys, basically) and can’t be read remotely.

I agree with you that mandatory ID cards are an affront to human rights, but you are sadly wrong to consider it unique to Germany. Quite the contrary: apart from commonwealth countries and the USA they required by all other OECD countries and many others besides (e.g. India, China, Malaysia, Russia…)

Their origin predates the nazi era too. For example passport system was introduced on a “temporary” basis during WWI but rather than revoking it several countries used it as the foundation of their ID system.

vlovich1232• 5 years ago

In the future, development contracts will be regularly commissioned as open source, and the software will be made public as a matter of principle. There will be a right to encryption, and the state must also offer the option of genuine encrypted communication

Would be neat if they also mandated that all such software must be in a memory-safe language unless there’s no available alternative or there’s a compelling performance reason or the software is well-established/reviewed by experts in the field and no reasonable alternative exists.

sennight• 5 years ago

huh, it wasn't that long ago that they outlawed the kind of "hacking tools" that would be used to verify the integrity of cipher systems... is that still on the books? My German is rustier than my Fourth, so I'm drawing a blank on a position reversal...

akavel• 5 years ago

Could someone help me understand the following sentence from the article?

Controversial hackbacks, i.e., the hacking back of attacks, are rejected as a "means of cyber defense in principle."

Does this mean "hackbacks" are seen as cyber defense and therefore rejected, or that they are refused the name of cyber defense? Or something else? Does this mean there's intention to forbid cyber defense, esp. by govt/army?!? I'm confused by what's attempted to be communicated here. (Also, who's the presumed actor of those "hackbacks" here, govt? private entities? anyone?)

iforgotpassword2• 5 years ago

They are seen as unethical or at least pointless, since 99% of attribution is reading coffee grounds anyways.

Instead of hacking back, why not try to get your security up to it in the first place.

dragonelite• 5 years ago

How are you going to trace back the hacking to country of origin?

Scan on Russian and Chinese characters or IP addresses in the code, that such a naïve take so yeah wouldn't be surprised if European leaders would totally go for it. Allies and other actors would totally not fake that as a distraction.

Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'

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