https://www.europarl.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/en/news-and-pre...

They aren't under these types of laws. Typically the government would need to get a warrant first before this is possible. You don't have to let them be able to read your messages by default.

If the purpose of encryption is to make data unreadable, but a back-door exists that allows anyone with access to it to bypass the encryption, can the data ever really be considered unreadable?

The trick is you don't do that. Ideally you would only want people with a valid warrant would be able to also decrypt the message (bypass the encryption). So the problem is that you want to design a system where this is possible. Perhaps it takes the cooperation of someone from the government and someone from within the company to verify the warrant. Perhaps you have a list of people who need to cryptographically sign the warrant.

There are so many moving parts to manage, infinite possibilities for abuse, and it would require an absolute massive amount of trust in companies with numerous convictions for abuse of precisely that.

Basically, "the victims don't matter as long as I'm fine".

The victims here are these that get arrested for the victimless crime of taking drugs. A society is less secure if anyone who takes drugs runs the risk of being arrested.

Also loving the unrelated "think of the children" argument.

The "think of the children" argument is based on personal experience, mind you, I sincerely hope for you that you will never understand the relation, ever.

Because it's illegal?

"The "think of the children" argument is based on personal experience, mind you, I sincerely hope for you that you will never understand the relation, ever."

1: I doubt it

2: You too, I hope that you (or your children!) will never be prosecuted for a victimless crime.

Same with this law: if you're not seriously suspected of any felony then the state will not be able to request decryption of your data.

I'm sorry to say my children and myself have suffered from a criminal that took years to catch, I hope we will fully recover one day but sincerely doubt it, but I'm glad this makes you laugh at least that makes two people laughing about it.

The funny thing is that this is basically what this and any other anti-e2ee regulation is about.

"If you take drugs at your home and don't cause any incident, there is absolutely 0 chance that you get arrested."

Yet it is still illegal and people are still being arrested for ordering drugs and producing their own, how curious.

"my children and myself have suffered from a criminal that took years to catch"

Did that criminal use drugs or end-to-end-encryption?

Responding to your edit:

"Same with this law: if you're not seriously suspected of any felony then the state will not be able to request decryption of your data."

We both know that this is simply not true.

"but I'm glad this makes you laugh at least that makes two people laughing about it."

Not laughting, and if it is true I hope that you recover. I am just (hopefully understandably) a sceptic when it comes to anecdotes in this sort of arguments.

Because you refuse to understand that we only want suspect communications, not all of them, and also that we don't want to break encryption to acheive that because the person might as well be innocent.

> Yet it is still illegal and people are still being arrested for ordering drugs and producing their own, how curious.

You won't until there is a problem that alerts the authority.

> Did that criminal use drugs or end-to-end-encryption?

Yes and yes, add much more.

> We both know that this is simply not true.

I disagree.

Anyway, I've been prosecuted on wrong basis myself, and got out winner, I'm not affraid this is going to change. I trust my state, my police, my judges, who are independent and who will have to issue a mandate based on serious suspicious before they read my communications.

Because, that's how present reality works.

Yet you are endangering all of the communications, not only the suspect ones. Kinda like having a mandatory camera in every home and promising to access it only when you claim that the person living in the house is a suspect. (Yet always having the ability to access it)

"You won't until there is a problem that alerts the authority."

In that case

* Why is it still illegal then?

* How are you so sure? I remember various cases from the US where they jail someone (usually an african-american) just for having some hashish on them.

* "a problem that alerts the authority" such as your neighbour noticing that you are growing some and calling the police on you, or just ordering some online.

"Yes and yes, add much more."

Kinda hard to believe this anecdote but oh well.

"I've been prosecuted on wrong basis myself, and got out winner, I'm not affraid this is going to change. I trust my state, my police, my judges, who are independent and who will have to issue a mandate based on serious suspicious before they read my communications."

If this is true then I am glad that you are fine, it must have been a very stressful, expensive, and tiresome process. Sadly a lot of people (espesially these living in authoritarian countries or these with a judical system biased towards the prosecutor or the police and against poor people and racial minorities) did not have the same luck.

"that's how present reality works."

No offense but it sounds like propaganda to me. Anyone who has been monitoring the news (or who just check HN once in a while) knows that this is not the case.

It's illegal because we don't want to increase consumption because it's not good for society.

Because here we're talking about a european country, where we have very different problems from USA.

Don't grow in front of your neighbours. The police here will not search you if they can't justify a suspicion.

You don't believe then do you want the links to my private youtube video? You will see a guy that looks like a nazi without any teeth that he lost consuming crack saying he's the real father of my son, that I shouldn't be trans, and that he's going to fuck me up in front of the police. Is this something you want to see to believe it? Because you believe we're in a world of good guys maybe?

It wasn't stressful, my lawyer wiped the floor with them. What are you talking about, we're talking about Belgium and France, there are all ethnicities in the police and the justice and all, there is no racism there like there is (apparently) in the USA.

This article is propaganda making our states weaker which does not benefit any of us. Quit thinking we have the same problems as the US because that's not the case.

Earlier I was against legalizing drugs but I have come to my senses there too, but the last 80 or so years has proven that there is only one group that benefits from drugs being illegal in the long run: the criminals.

As for guns, yes just like with insurance we pay, but compared to the alternative it is a small cost.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do illegal things that don't harm others, I'm saying we should catch criminals who actually do harm.

Most of Europe will send you straight to jail. Several states in the US will as well. It's disgusting.

Drugs, I believe some of them probably should be legal.

> the proposed passage that would have forced companies to decrypt encrypted data upon request by the authorities got removed from the draft law.

I guess the article is pretty confusing.

Also, I imagine a lot of non-nefarious encryption is done to hide data from the same entities that would be in control of the proposed back-door.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_encryption

You're very active in this thread and making quite strongly opinionated statements. Probably worth a quick read.

That is not a technical explanation.

We can still have encryption on both ends of a communication, and at the same time have suspects using two keys instead of one to encrypt. We can encrypt a message for multiple users with GPG, why couldn't we here? As far as I understand E2EE still works, except that users suspected of a felony would also have the state key in their encryption, that doesn't mean removing other keys!! Which we should definitely not do because we do not want to compromise the privacy of innocent people!!

Technical or not it does not matter. It is clear and specific. If you encrypt the messages for someone else too (or if you leak the keys) it is not end-to-end encrypted.

"and at the same time have suspects using two keys instead of one to encrypt"

And regular citizens.

"except that users suspected of a felony would also have the state key in their encryption"

And regular citizens :)

Anyway, in that case it is not end-to-end encrypted because the state is not one of the people communicating.

"that doesn't mean removing other keys!!"

This is not what was claimed.

Maybe that's not what was claim, I beg to interpret this law differently, and anyway I disagree with the response that has been given here.

And ... I'm not the only one who interprets the law in question this way:

https://www.nextinpact.com/lebrief/48261/chiffrement-bout-en...

https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_un-projet-de-loi-be...

So, you've been under the influence of fake news.

Sorry.

It is a great form of meditation; for an analogy I refer the curious to "Zen and the Art of Archery"

And many of my friends are hunters. This is a nice way to put food on the table. Esp with deer populations not having much other control on them since we got rid of most of the other large predators.