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Chat Control: The EU Wants to Break Encryption & Germany Is the Deciding Factor (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Sunshine@piefed.social to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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[-] Sunshine@piefed.social 20 points 1 week ago

Peter Hummelgaard supports authoritarianism by demanding that everyday people give up their encrypted messages...

[-] hemmes@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, there’s no breaking encryption. Been saying this since the first stupid go around.

All you can do is legally require that folks use encryption that someone else also has the keys to. If someone decides they’re not down with that, they’ll use their own keys (illegally if it’s against the law).

Encryption is math. They’re deciding on whether or not to legally allow use of certain math equations.

Edit: typo

[-] rbn@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago

Is there even a way to proof that certain data is encrypted? If I sent you a mail with...

HATSKNRJDHDJSKISNSJKNRURJDHJDKD

...it could be an illegally encrypted text, but also just random gibberish. How would you ever enforce such a law?

And with the use of stenography you could also make secret messages less obvious.

[-] Anivia@feddit.org 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

...it could be an illegally encrypted text, but also just random gibberish. How would you ever enforce such a law?

I case of Germany the police would knock on your door at 6 am with a search warrant and confiscate all your electronics to search for encryption software or other incriminating evidence. And even if you were innocent they will keep the devices locked up for years before giving them back, not paying you any compensation for it.

Just calling a politician "pimmel" on Twitter is enough for that treatment in Germany.

[-] hemmes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, valid point.

Further more, continuing with your theory, authorities would have something up their sleeve to get a bogus search warrant under the guise that something they intercepted or acquired one way or another, like an email which may even contain regular conversational text - doesn’t even have to be gibberish. They could claim it’s actually encrypted text and seize data and equipment.

[-] EisFrei@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Well encrypted text should not be distinguishable from random noise. Your example has repeating patterns, so it's a Caesar cipher at best.

Stenography is a type of quick writing used mostly in courts or by reporters, you're thinking of steganography.

[-] rbn@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

In my case, it's just random letters (I promise!) that I typed manually on the keyboard.

Regarding steganography you're of course correct.

[-] TheMightyCat@ani.social 13 points 1 week ago

Ive always wondered how it is ever planned to enforce it, is a police team going to bust down my door:

PUT THE UNBACKDOORED LIBSSL DOWN!

Sure companies like meta will comply instantly but everyone that doesn't use big tech (including criminals) can just continue doing whatever? Why would criminals the one the law claims to stop use backdoored clients?

[-] tocano@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Well, yeah. They have no way to enforce this on non-commercial forms of communication, like many open source projects. So the outcome will be that they will have an initial result of catching a lot of small criminals, but all real dangerous criminals will use anything else and continue business as usual. As a collateral damage everyone else will be less private and secure, as most people will not bother to switch to alternatives.

[-] jnod4@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

In Mexico the cartels built their own phone towers

https://hackers-arise.com/mobile-hacking-how-the-mexican-drug-cartels-built-their-own-cellular-infrastructure-to-avoid-surveillance/

[-] MigratingApe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

This article cites no sources at all, no?

[-] jnod4@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/special-report-drug-cartel-narco-antennas-make-life-dangerous-for-mexicos-ce-idUSKCN24G1DM/

[-] Sunshine@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

Criminals will exploit back doors.

[-] xektop@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

I was also thinking the same, but they don't really need to enforce it proactively. By making it "illegal", they can just pick up people they don't like and force them to unlock it. If they don't - believe it or not, straight to jail. Basically what is happening now in many countries, but legal.

this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025

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