Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Can you please link an article or something explaining what you're going on about? When was this announced?
Edit: guessing it's related to this. https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2023/06/eu-member-states-still-cannot-agree-about-end-end-encryption
If so, banning E2EE because of CSAM is like cutting off your hand because you stubbed your toe. Banning E2EE won't stop child porn nor will it prevent the use of E2EE.
Unfortunately, It's not about ending CSAM. It's about ending encryption.
If they cared about ending CSAM they'd ban...checks headlines...police officers
Yes, [https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-eu-governments-set-to-approve-the-end-of-private-messaging-and-secure-encryption/](https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-eu-governments-set-to-approve-the-end-of-private-messaging-and-secure-encryption/ This is exactly how I feel I don’t understand the logic behind this at all.
Understanding is simple. Every few years, 5 or 8 or 10, there's a big marketing push and brain wash around trying to destroy encryption by using the excuse of CSAM. Nothing new, a play as old as ever. It's basically (and really the whole point) trying to pass mass surveillance into law hoping that people forget the arguments of the last time or that people are not paying attention or trying to put it wrapped into a different gift wrapping and see if it goes into effect before anyone notices. The time frames for these things are getting smaller and smaller and more and more people don't care at all about privacy and basic rights and are ok with things like mass surveillance. It will eventually pass.
It's a real shame the eu is doing this. I've agreed with most of their policies recently regarding IT and phones.
I don't agree with that stupid cookie shit though.
I just felt that there was a lone voice of reason trying for a better future but I guess we are on our own.
As a fellow cookie warning hater, the Firefox extension "I don't care about cookies" is great. It'll dismiss the box.
And please keep the reminder that most cookie popups are not required and it's mostly bad actors/companies that keep insisting on being annoying by saying they are just complying when in fact they are forcing all that on purpose on us users so we turn out heads to hate on the law instead.
Pretty sure signal won't be forced to do anything:
Encryption plays an essential role in securing communications. The international human rights law test of legality, necessity and proportionality should be applied to any measures that would affect encryption. Both the UN Commissioner for Human Rights[1]and the European Data Protection Supervisor[2]have concluded that the EU’s proposal for a regulation on child sexual abuse material fails this test[3].
this is from May this year, when Spain proposed this. How in the everliving fuck the EU can get away with violating human rights?
So yeah I'll eat my hat unsalted if this actually will break encryption
If they actually ban E2EE, I’d like to see all banks, for a start, and most web sites, downgrade https to http. See how long the ban will last then.
“I was just following the law!”
It’s ok the banks have a “too essential to be punished” card
I give it a month before either the ECJ steps in or they quietly change the law/interpretation (Article 13/17 says hi)
Well, they don't need to break encryption, since the scanning of messages is supposed to happen client-side.
I'd just like to point out that if Signal leaves the EU, it will most likely just mean that it's not available through the official app stores. With Signal updating itself, it's just a little inconvenient to install it on a new device, though, they even said that they'll try to make it as easy as possible.
Yup. At most, Signal gets removed from the Play Store. There's no meaningful way to block Signal, especially now that big CDN providers are starting to rollout Encrypted Client Hello.
Much has been said about the idea of 'signal leaving UK or EU'. Little has been said about how exactly that would happen.
AFAIK, Signal has no business presence in the UK or EU. IE, no offices, no registered corporate entities. Thus, they (arguably) have no more requirement to comply with UK's or EU's regulations than, say, Iran's or China's or any other jurisdiction where they do not do business and have no presence.
Signal's leadership has a record of giving any regional restrictions the middle finger, so I doubt Signal would voluntarily block EU countries. So that means the EU would either pressure Google and Apple to delist Signal (easily worked around, at least on Android, and soon on Apple too as EU is trying to force sideloading) or they'd pressure ISPs to block connections to Signal (more or less impossible).
If EU tried to do that, it'd just create a giant game of whack-a-mole. And people doing real CSAM shit would just move to even more private distributed systems.
expired
XMPP or SimpleX. It's easy to block signal, given they require a phone number and the servers are centralized. But it's quite hard, potentially impossible, to block the federated XMPP network or the decentralized relay structure of SimpleX
You need to add encryption on top with OTR plugins or equivalent
Or use Matrix where it's on by default
i would argue that matrix is not decentralized enough (almost everybody is on matrix.org)
also all popular XMPP clients (conversations, gajim etc.) supports OMEMO and OpenPGP/PGP out of the box
I would still use Signal. By ignoring bad laws you are turning the EU government into a laughing stock
You can just continue using Signal. All the alternatives will disappear from the app stores too unless they spy on you.
A recent alternative with even better privacy is SimpleX: https://simplex.chat/
Both are E2EE. Unlike Signal, they also have the benefit of not requiring a phone number, so your account isn’t linked to you that way. In my experience, Session feels more mature, having apps on more platforms and more reliable notifications. However SimpleX has some really nice features, like the ability to have multiple profiles (including hidden profiles).
Signal. Any restriction can be bypassed
I caution mentioning both Matrix, and Element as if they are synonymous -- they are not (I'm quite certain that that wasn't your intent, but the usage of the forward slash could be interpreted as such). It may lead to confusion for newcomers. It would essentially be the same as saying "I recommend ActivityPub/Thunder" to someone who you want to introduce to Lemmy. Matrix is the protocol, and Element is simply a client that interacts with the Matrix protocol.
I personally think that it's sufficient to recommend Matrix if one is mentioning chat-app alternatives. Of course, nothing is stopping one from also recommending a client, but I don't believe that it's entirely necessary.
Take a look at the matrix network. Its decentralized like lemmy and the cryptography is on point. And it cant really be cencored due to this reason.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/
If signal is banned all of these other apps will be banned, but maybe they'll not enforce it completely
Your best bet is to start using a privacy respecting VPN today, always on on your phone. Like Mullvad
This, I already set Mullvad as an always on VPN and turned on all the content blockers there.
The only alternative that's FOSS and not centrally controlled is Matrix. By being decentralized, anyone can run their own server and good luck stopping that.
There may be 200 other "alternatives", but they're irrelevant to the point where I consider then non-existent. Nobody has heard of them. Nobody is using them. Trying to push them on normal people will most likely result in them no longer talking to you as often or at all, and none of the other ones has any chance of reaching a critical mass. Matrix at least has some recognition among nerds and some, tiny amount of adoption outside.
Stop pushing random niche shit, it does privacy a disservice.
Briar, xmpp with omemo, matrix, jami...
I've been using DeltaChat (available on F-Droid) for a few months now.
What I like about it is that because it's email based, it uses OpenPGP for encryption, making it easy to have compatibility with other email-based solutions.
If you want to go the extra-secure route, you and your contacts can even self-host your emails - as long as you're not going to send messages to people on Gmail or other big providers, you can avoid your messages being treated as spam.
The multi-device support is still a bit rough around the edges, but has gotten better in the last few months since the app is under active development.
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.amnesica.kryptey/ This looks like a good backup plan that can't be banned very well.