Is this law broad enough to also catch up Proton and its services?
This attack by governments on encryption is getting more and more concerning.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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They want less accountability for themselves so they can get away with more corruption.
I hope people take notes.
Proton is swiss
And gobbles Trump's knob publicly.
They won't need a law to force compliance.
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Is this law broad enough to also catch up Proton and its services?
They don't need a law, they already logged and complied on request
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And now it starts. Programs specifically designed to be encrypted getting attacked.
"Now"? Apps like Signals are constantly under fire. Whitaker already told the whole EU it would just leave if they introduced the "chat control" legislation.
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Meanwhile, the Swedish Armed Forces recently decided to use Signal for secure communication: https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/aktuellt/2025/02/forsvarsmakten-anvander-appen-signal-for-oppen-kommunikation-med-mobiltelefoner/
Half of the original article:
The Armed Forces, on the other hand, are negative and write in a letter to the government that the proposal cannot be realized "without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that can be exploited by third parties", reports SVT.
So that's covered.
There needs to be a messaging app which provides a backdoor for every government that requests it. Every time some dumbass legislator asks for a super-giga-secure-backdoor they promise not to misuse, they should be directed to that app.
Imagine the complexity of the encryption algo with 100 different custom made backdoors!
You just encrypt it with every key. It's wasteful, but not all that complicated.
At that point, you just don't encrypt things at all.
goatse.cx used to work wonderfully for that.
Hello there, fellow Internet old-timer!
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Itβs worth noting that mullvad is based in Sweden
Mullvad has proven time and time again that they don't log anything at all. Even if they give backdoor access, there's nothing to record.
Literally the first sentence of the article: "The government wants Signal and Whatsapp to be forced to store messages sent using the apps."
WireGuard protocol logs very little information by default. There is literally no way to make it log more than it does by default.
Even then, Mullvad has no customer information. You're given a customer number, which is intentional.
I stand by my initial post in that there is very little, if anything, to record on a Mullvad server. If I'm not mistaken, Mullvad recently announced they are running all VPN services through a RAM only setup, therefore, there aren't even any drives to record customer information even if they chose to.
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No wonder they pussied out and removed port forwarding
The "if" to that "then" being that if they pass a law that would make Signal illegal in Sweden, then Signal will leave Sweden.
Illegal unless they install the backdoors. They could choose to do that instead of leaving Sweden, but they are choosing to leave Sweden.
If they did that, Signal would no longer exist at all. Nobody anywhere in the world would want to continue using it.
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The Swedish politicians tried adding backdoors to encrypted apps for at least 20 years :P I don't really understand why they still (ever) think it is a good idea
The problem is that politicians don't understand cyber security, whta their asking is basically the equivalent of closing the front door of a house and leaving the backdoor open. It was already proven to be a bad idea, eternalblue is a good example.
I'm a bit surprised that the armed forces are openly opposing this, but good for them!
That is because they just decided to switch to use it for internal communications. This means that they would have to roll back that decision.
It would have been good of the article to mention that important tidbit...
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I don't get how its supposed to work...they want to require messengers to include backdoors in their software? So when a program is FOSS, then you can literally just use it knowing there is no backdoor..also, what blocks you from using a server in different country? Wtf that even means...
Then politicians would simply require for "any technical measures to ensure the backdoor to be available" or something like that, meaning it would be Signals' job to ensure the backdoor works. They don't give a shit how something is done (IT is just too complex for most of them), only that it gets done somehow. For that very reason federal digital services are such a shitshow so often, they just don't understand what they even ask for so professionals always have to work around politicians' demands constantly breaking even the most basic security principles.
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I have to ask. If Signal "leaves" Sweden because it is deemed illegal without backdoor, how would this even work regarding enforcement? Your phone gets searched and if they find Signal you get a fee? Messaging being blocked somehow by Swedish ISPs, is that even possible?
Signal will be delisted from Android/Apple store. That'll curb the majority of Signal use in Sweden. I suspect Sweden isn't going to after individuals. They could if they wanted to. ISP blocking, probably not, but yes ISPs can block Signal by blocking all known Signal servers. That's why Signal supports special proxies that allow individuals to run to allow people from blocked locations to access the Signal servers.
Thatβll curb the majority of Signal use in Sweden.
...unless a bunch of users plan to actually do something illegal, in which case a delisting from the app store doesn't stop anything. Once again, it's just to enable data collection about as many ordinary citizens as possible.
The proposed law would require messaging apps to store copies of user messages.
The law isnβt targeted at users directly. Itβs targeted at the service providers. If the cops can access your phone youβre already screwed.
Blocking Signal traffic might be theoretically feasible but it would be a game of whack-a-mole. Legally, Signal might have to stop serving IPs in Sweden but thatβs Swedenβs problem and VPNs exist.
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I'm not familiar with EU law, but wouldn't this set a precidence across the whole EU?
There is no such thing as a precedent in EU law. Any court can in general disagree with any other court. Appeals still exist, but they are only valid for that one case.
Judges don't make laws here.
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Not unless turned into EU law, or a lawsuit over it reaches EU court. Individual countries can't change the rules of the union on their own.
There's already EU court precedence against mandatory backdoors
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This law cannot go through! This is a threat to democracy in our country.
Privacy matter. You must be able to talk to your friends without needing to worry about if the government is listening to you. This will not help to catch the bad guys as they will just change to some other protocol. But it opens up the possiblity for third party doing something that they should not even be able to do. Stop this now.
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