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- cross-posted to:
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The vilification of computer literacy is changing gears yet again. In this article terrorism is the all to well known scapegoat. The EU is currently pushing for the criminalization of all encryption mechanisms under the umbrella of rampant pedophilia. At the same time there’s a massive push to speed up the process for an EU-wide eID. Anyone heard of the chinese social credit system? No need to read up on it, we’ll be living it in less than 5 years.
I’ve always liked the metaphor about the government not being able to enter your house without a warranted reason and investigating your belongings, it usually goes over well with computer illiterate people.
Back when the US was still treating encryption software as a “munition” and restricting it for export, France banned it entirely. Up until 1996, it was illegal to encrypt documents in France without government permission.
The UK still has a version of this where it is illegal to withhold passwords or encryption keys from the police - https://www.saunders.co.uk/news/prosecuted-for-your-password/
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Fundamentally encryption is a tool, not unlike a gun or a knife. Encryption allows you to ensure your privacy. Whether and when a tool should be considered illegal simply because it facilitaties illegal acts, and whether privacy should be unlimited, depends on context. There’s a balance to be made.
Country like Germany? They take privacy super seriously, almost certainly in large part due to historical reasons. Fun fact: this is why you’ll also find far more blindspots on google streetview in Germany. Freedom of speech? Limited, for historical reasons. Privacy? Often far less impinged upon than the US, also for historical reasons.
So what’s up with France, which this video is about? And the answer is relatively simple. France has had something like 40 islamist terrorist attacks since 2010. After 2015 a state of emergency was announced which lasted for two years. After that the state of emergency was formalised in law. If Macron hadn’t taken these draconian measures, literal fascists (with ties to the Kremlin) might have won enough votes to form a government. France would have been ruled by the daughter of a holocaust denier and a Kremlin asset, right at the moment Russia invaded Ukraine (again).
So yeah, it sucks. But once you know the context, it’s not that hard to understand the why.
A bit like how the UK is blanketed with cameras, and the UK’s security services regularly spy on their own citizens. Also sucks, but the why is also understandable. A 30 year bombing campaign and almost civil war on British soil, followed by a spate of Islamist inspired terrorist attacks, tend to make a population more amenable to privacy violations.
You say infringing on privacy is legitimized by terrorism. Yet you also state that Germany isn’t doing all that due to historical reasons. Shouldn’t Germany be a bees nest of terrorists right now?
Also those historical reasons aren’t only important in Germany. A state apparatus with widespread surveillance possibilities can be misused very easily. Mind you the Nazis came to power due to a misconstrued ‘leftist terror plot’ (the Reichstag fire caused by a misguided Dutchman).
Powers like these can be very lethal if used wantonly. American squabbles about trans rights show that the technique of ‘othering’ is still very viable. And scary.
Should modern surveillance be used? Well it’s a bit late to talk about that, as it is already used. But it should be used sparingly and reluctantly and should be very well overseen. You know, because of historical reasons (and not just in Germany).
