cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/16595505

  • Home routing and encryption technologies are making lawful interception harder for Europol
  • PET-enabled home routing allows for secure communication, hindering law enforcement’s ability to intercept and monitor communications
  • Europol suggests solutions such as disabling PET technologies and implementing cross-border interception standards to address the issue.
  • kbal@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    PET-enabled home routing

    Oh, apparently it’s a “5G” thing. Perhaps everyone in Europe knows that already. Apparently the design of the new network is complicated enough that they’ve accidentally left room for just a little bit of user privacy. Europol claims to have become dependent on the situation where people using mobile phones have none at all.

    • The Doctor@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      De facto, if not in absolute.

      There’s a dirty secret of telecom I found out working for a telco some years back: CALEA compliance is used more by unknown third parties more than actual law enforcement. When we’d get a subpoena for a CALEA wiretap, as often as not we’d just patch our logger into a pre-existing wiretap as configure a switch to enable one on a particular trunk, cable, and pair.

    • Aganim@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      If it’s written the law, it’s lawful. You can of course (and should!) debate about the morality of the diverse forms of lawful interception, but a blanket statement like ‘“lawful interception” is a fallacy’, is a fallacy in of itself.

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        The fallacy is imagining that “lawfulness” is an attribute that can be reliably detected on an implementation level.

      • kureta@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Laws do not, did not ever, guarantee interception. It always allowed the police to try to intercept. The police hid bugs, tapped wires. Never in history the police said "for lawful interception to happen, all phones must come with preinstalled wiretap. The implication that “communications systems are too secure, there has to be a backdoor for lawful interception” is a fallacy.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        4 months ago

        What is more terrifying is when a elected leader argues against mass surveillance and then is shunned by the intelligence agency and their allies

    • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Home routing is when you connect a cable to your PC and the wall. Your home then uses that connection to join the Dark Web, and you allow hackers to stay at your home temporarily to escape the government. Those hackers jump from house to house, evading the authorities.

      (/s)

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      😂. "Oh you wanna go to the internet? Sure, let me NAT and route you to my gateway. "

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      4 months ago

      It’s basically when you drag an Ethernet cable behind you wherever you go, with the other end still plugged into your home switch.

    • onlooker@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      It’s a process of telling houses where to go. Why do you think homes never get lost?

    • SteveTech@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      My understanding after reading the article is: while roaming your phone sets up a VPN type thing with your phone provider, and routes calls and data through this tunnel, so now Europol has to deal with another country if they want to track you.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    We’re back to “privacy is a good thing even if it enables ‘criminals’”? Yesterday there was rather a lot of negativity towards GNU Taler and other means of transferring money privately because it enabled tax evasion and such.

      • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        “Enable tax evasion” = “Not let the government have 100% viewability of every financial transaction you ever made”? You mean, like cash, a system of payment we have used for over 100 years? We should get rid of that because it “enables tax evasion”?

        No thanks, I’d rather live in a world where I can give my friend $5 for buy me some snacks at the store without the government having to get involved. I’d rather not have, at a time when we are experiencing democratic backsliding, my least favorite political party, who happens to be in charge at the moment, be able to see the entirety of the inflows and outflows of the resistance organizations fighting their fascist policies. I’d rather be able to get an abortion and not wonder if my bank is going to snitch on me.

        You know who really evades taxes? Those rich fucks who lobby and pay off (or are!) politicians to give them tax loopholes. Or the people in the panama papers. But those aren’t the tax evaders we’re talking about, now are they? Because they’ll never be held accountable to these laws, even though they were doxed publicly as violating them.

        These kinds of financial surveillance powers will only be used against plebs, dissidents, and people who the people in power don’t like.

          • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            You are saying Taler is good because it “doesn’t enable tax evasion”. I am saying that’s a bad metric.

            • sexy_peach@beehaw.org
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              4 months ago

              Not let the government have 100% viewability of every financial transaction you ever made

              That’s explicitly not the case with gnu taler though.

              Edit: I checked their website https://taler.net/en/features.html and I don’t even know if sending person to person is possible. So you might have a point. I would never advocate to get rid of cash though, cash is good. Maybe in a distant future once we really have a digital equivalent working reliably.

              • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
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                4 months ago

                From their FAQ: "Taler supports push and pull payments between wallets (also known as peer-to-peer payments). While the payment appears to be directly between wallets, technically the operation is intermediated by the payment service provider which will typically be legally required to identify the recipient of the funds before allowing the transaction to complete. "

                I made a post about all the problems w Taler here if you’re interested https://lemmy.ml/post/17733761

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    Endemic end-to-end encryption just means that everyone is now protected from interception.

    I’ve been using PGP and friends since the 90s. Most people who LE should be targeting for investigation have likewise been using strong encryption since the 90s.

    Most cases get a break due to the failure of opsec or due to chance or standard gruelling detective work and the fact that people are social animals.

    So what exactly is Europol arguing here?