- cross-posted to:
- censorshipnews@thelemmy.club
- cross-posted to:
- censorshipnews@thelemmy.club
- According to Whittaker, the bill requires the encrypted messaging app Signal to install so-called backdoors in the software.
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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.
Apps like Signals
This was about a different app named ‘Signal’, I think, without the s.
‘Signal’, I think, without the s.
Never heard of this ignal app
Just a typo.
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!
That’s the secret you give them all the same backdoor.
But each of them is special!
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!
That sounds like unencrypted communication with extra steps. Why not skip all of that and just give them an unencrypted service anyone can read and use. While we are at it, getting rid of those pesky passwords and unwieldy usernames is also a great idea. What could go wrong… I mean CLEARLY no one has anything to hide…
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.
I think you wildly misunderstand the average person’s motivations and how they weigh decisions.
We’re talking about Signal, not FB Messenger. People use Signal because of the encryption, and they would leave.
I use Signal because my workplace decided to default to it.
The “average person” you have in mind who obviously does not care about cryptographic security also does not use Signal.
There are a few people in my social bubble that are not technical at all, but heard a few bad things about WhatsApp and that’s why they are using Signal. Nothing more, they do not know how it works, they do not know who provides it.
And now they’ll hear something bad about Signal and move on as they did with WhatsApp, as per your example.
Seems to me one of the main things that got people to move away from Whatsapp en masse a few years ago was a rumour that they’d added a backdoor to it similar to the one Sweden is thinking of demanding. If an unfounded rumour did that much, the real thing might do substantial damage to Whatsapp as well if they were to go along with it. It probably wouldn’t completely demolish it, as it would for Signal — or at least its demise might take longer.
thats not the target audience, thankfully.
The target audience is everybody with a Smartphone.
The majority of people in my signal contacts are there because someone (sometimes me) pushed them to use it instead of WhatsApp.
While that’s generally true, one of the main reasons why people choose apps like Signal is the privacy. People that aren’t aware and don’t care generally wouldn’t have switched to Signal in the first place.
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I agree that it would destroy the reason many people use it, but they aren’t outlawing Signal specifically. What they are doing is arguably worse, but this isn’t an “anti-Signal” action.
Well yeah, they are not attacking Signal the company, just their core busibess model.
It’s 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.
There absolutely is a way to make it log more. Simply add a function to dump the data passing through it. Just because right now there is no such function does not mean one cannot be added.
Sure, add it, but good luck logging in a RAM only setup. We’re talking semantics because frankly, it doesn’t currently affect Mullvad. If it does, we’ll have to worry about it then.
No wonder they pussied out and removed port forwarding
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…
It happened like 2 weeks ago so I will forgive them for missing it.
Technically only for non-classified internal communication. Classified stuff is restricted to be discussed only using military approved locked down hardware. But still, issuing a strong recommendation for Signal above all other options when communicating using regular devices is a good thing. Lots of “regular” conversations can still leak more than you expect through metadata, timing, etc, so they trust Signal to protect that
I mean beyond everything else, any group actually interested in the safety and security of citizens (so, not politicians or cops anywhere apparently), should be pushing everything to be encrypted everywhere. In the modern digital world anything not properly encrypted is at risk for ate tracks by bad actors.
Don’t know if it’s a trustworthy source, but:
https://cornucopia.se/2025/02/forsvarsmakten-infor-krav-pa-signal-for-samtal-och-meddelanden/
Nice, I get to use the only thing I know how to say in Swedish (forgive the lack of diacritics): forlat, jag pratar inte svenska.
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.
That’ll 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 isn’t targeted at users directly. It’s targeted at the service providers. If the cops can access your phone you’re 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 that’s Sweden’s problem and VPNs exist.
They will likely IP geofence Sweden to block connections to Signal’s servers being made there.
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The question was what Signal would do though …
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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.
Its them just being idiots, like illegal activities will kedp going using old good pgp, and normies will get spied by political shit, as always…no privacy for honest people.
What about Threema? 🤔
I found the other Threema user! 🎉
I use it too and am happy they finally added emoji reactions!
Next in line should be matrix. People say it’s hard to use but the devs have gone through like 3 app revisions since then. Main instance requires email but a lot are fully anon.
DeltaChat makes so much more sense imho for texting. It is based on E-Mail. You can either use their e-mail service (requiring only a username) or you can use your existing imap-email account. End-End encryption is handled automatically.
Did they figure out forward security and metadata yet? Last I saw they sort of handwaved it.
Good point
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.
Don’t worry we stopped that in the US too. Congress doesn’t make laws either. We are post-laws.
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
Is there a supremacy clause like what the US has? Like, if the EU court has a ruling, does a member country get to override that?
The EU in general uses civil law, not common law. Courts in general don’t establish precedents, so it does not matter what a court rules beyond that specific case, laws are wrtitten to be super specific, and you generally can’t challenge laws in court like in the US.
The EU works through a double process of lawmaking.
It can create directives that are like how US laws work as they need specific interpretation, except it’s national legislatures, not courts doing the interpretation.
And there are regulations - like the GDPR - that have to be adapted and enforced verbatim.
This is a cornerstone of the ongoing Big Tech dispute, they thought they can forum shop by buying the Irish judiciary, but they can still get indicted, even for the same violation, in any other EU court if that court also has jurisdiction.
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-making-process/types-eu-law_en
Each country may still have the equivalent of a constitution, and the majority of EU laws are directives which the country may translate to fit their local law, also there’s various negotiated exceptions to EU laws. But the general idea is that the treaties establishing EU are meant to require full cooperation
no.
Nice PR move, but when do you announce leaving the US, which is the much bigger issue right now?
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 a
The US as of now is not threatening to kill end-to-end encryption.
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.
i am searching their link to Sweden
no link found yet, i will search again
.
https://signal.org/
© 2013–2025 Signal, a 501c3 nonprofit. “Signal”, Signal logos, and other trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Signal Technology Foundation in the United States and other countries (more info here).
.
https://signal.org/donate/
Signal Technology Foundation is a nonprofit under section 501c3 of the US Internal Revenue Code..
“Leaving a country” for digital services usually means not providing services there anymore.
Thanks, this makes a lot more sense.
… i keep, time and again, searching for things, only to discover my “search goal” is not based in reality.Yeah, but why do they feel forced to? I understand the EU is imposing fines on Meta and Google because they have branches in member states. But Sweden can do to Signal as much as the US could do to The Pirate Bay.
