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Comment by prof-dr-ir | Hacker News Reader

Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which was adopted with the Lisbon treaty, reads (in its entirety):

"Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications."

On the short term a change to the treaties of the Union is not realistic, in my opinion. So I am afraid we might be stuck with having "to fight over and over again", using the above as a foundation. I guess I think of it as educating the politicians.

Fortunately the pro-privacy voices in the EU seem loud enough. For example, in this case the Belgian national privacy authority had already complained about the proposed law. And Germany seems to have adopted the right to encryption in its latest coalition agreement.

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Yes, but this article of the Charter (and other laws) does not prevent lawful interception.

This is the crux of the issue: the so-called "pro-privacy" camp wants absolute privacy of communications.

Law enforcement and intelligence services are not against privacy, they are against systems that provide absolute privacy because these systems prevent even lawful interception.

Voice calls on your smartphone are private but may be lawfully intercepted. This is so because mobile networks are in the hands a few licensed and heavily policed operators. On the other hands, we've reached a point where it is simple to develop and publish software apps that allow anyone to communicate in a way that is impossible to intercept as far as we know.

This is not a simple issue. There is a valid concern but at the same time the potential ways to address it (e.g. backdoors, etc) are not very satisfactory.

There's no such thing as kind of private. Either you cannot decrypt private citizen communications or you can. And if you can for any reason you also can for no reason at all.

>And if you can for any reason you also can for no reason at all.

This doesn't follow. We can require law enforcement to need a valid warrant before they can decrypt this information.

> We can require law enforcement to need a valid warrant before they can decrypt this information.

We have that requirement in the US, but if they have the capability, they use it, warrant or not.

You can require whatever you want. Doesn't mean it will happen the way you want to.

The problem with "lawful"-whatever is that the lower the apparent impact on the target, the wider the net that is thrown. So the tool ends up having an outsized impact on the innocent rather than the guilty. Unlike the lawful use of a firearm by law enforcement officers, lawful decryption of data when an innocent person is targeted is a "safe", "victimless" abuse.

Imagine the uproar if a person being shot and killed during a court approved raid turns out to be completely innocent. Now imagine the silence when the same person just has their private chats or nude pics decrypted and seen by investigators.

Exactly.. That argument died when dragnet surveillance and secret courts were introduced.

We're still here, fighting.

The right to a private home is the most basic right a creature is compelled to protect.

It should be as hard as humanly possible for them to intercept anything. They cannot be trusted with that power. They should have to literally move mountains in order to do it.

> Law enforcement and intelligence services are not against privacy

Name a LE or IS that hasn't repeatedly been caught doing surveillance for personal or political reasons and we'll talk.

In the US at least, they keep telling us that there are many cases that they thwart that they can't tell us about. However, we do see lots of "known wolf" attacks and shit-shows like Epstein.

> I guess I think of it as educating the politicians.

What about the other way around? What makes you think it's not police hackers who value privacy just like us, and who strive to protect us, who requested this to politicians? That seems more likely.

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