EU: No Encryption Backdoors But, Let's Help Each Other Crack That Crypto (theregister.co.uk)

The European Commission has proposed that member states help each other break into encrypted devices by sharing expertise around the bloc. From a report: In an attempt to tackle the rise of citizens using encryption and its effects on solving crimes, the commission decided to sidestep the well-worn, and well-ridiculed, path of demanding decryption backdoors in the stuff we all use. Instead, the plans set out in its antiterrorism measures on Wednesday take a more collegiate approach -- by offering member states more support when they actually get their hands on an encrypted device. "The commission's position is very clear -- we are not in favour of so-called backdoors, the utilisation of systemic vulnerabilities, because it weakens the overall security of our cyberspace, which we rely upon," security commissioner Julian King told a press briefing. "We're trying to move beyond a sometimes sterile debate between backdoors or no backdoors, and address some of the concrete law enforcement challenges. For instance, when [a member state] gets a device, how do they get information that might be encrypted on the device." [...] Share the wealth. "Some member states are more equipped technically to do that [extract information from a seized device] than others," King said. "We want to make sure no member state is at a disadvantage, by sharing the tech expertise among the member states and reinforcing the support that Europol can offer."

Comments

Re:Here's a better idea.

[Jerry]

Exactly.

It's very obvious what the Marxists in the EU want to do, and it isn't about "fighting" common criminals.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

It is about muzzling the ordinary citizens who want to speak out against the immigration and political policies of the PES (Party of European Socialists, i.e., the Marxists) who currently rule the country under various pseudonyms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/0...

Increasingly, people are resorting to VPNs, Tor and anonymous email accounts to register, browse and post their opinions on line because they know, as China, Russia and the EU has repeatedly proven, that speaking the truth against the EU's new-speak can land them in jail. They are also resorting to end-to-end encryption to send messages and to keep their personal business just that ... personal.

The American political environment is progressing toward the George Orwell 1984 state as well, with Twitter, Google, Youtube and the MNM censoring comments from half the political spectrum.

Most of those under 25 are too young to remember when the Left in America pushed the V-chip as a means of controlling what people could watch on American TV. The trial run was blocking "unsuitable" content on children's programming, but if it can block one type of program, and it could, then it could be used to block any type of program, depending on who was in power. TV sets made as recently as 10-15 years ago had a V-chip in them and YouTube is filled with videos showing how to deactivate them. What killed the V-chip was the Internet.

Over the years, various technologies have been explored with the goal to enable authorities to identify the owner of a particular IP address present in a series of IP packets. Microsoft, with its GUID, and its extensive registration database combined with credit card information from point of sale transactions, had the ability to identify connection ownership and China used Microsoft more than once to identify dissidents, in exchange for the "privilege" of doing business in China. However, not everyone used Windows, so Microsoft's power was limited.

The powers that be will, sooner or later, return to a form of the "v-chip" by requiring that ISPs tag each IP packet with a special code identifying the sender of that packet. It will be easier with IPv6 because each device can be assigned its own IP address. Then it won't matter which OS, browser, or even encryption that you use. Your "fingerprint" will be on every IP packet that you send and every packet that you receive will contain the special code of the source of packets sent to you. Even P2P networks and meshes won't stop that monitoring as long as people have to go through central ISP severs to connect to the Internet. When that happens dissidents will return to radio frequency networks and to what the Berkeley campus dissidents in the 1960s used to coordinate protests -- "underground radio". I leave it as an exercise for the reader to discover what "underground" means in that context.