Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/24/koenig-canute.html
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(In before someone violates Godwin’s Law)
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The only way we could violate Godwin’s Law would be to have an extended discussion and no one is compared to Hitler or the Nazis. 
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Never mind that it can’t be done - JUST DO IT!
Goddamnit, there goes my Boxcryptor subscription.
One of the reasons I chose them for encrypting my files on Dropbox etc. was that they wouldn’t be subject to the same pressures as US companies. If this law passes, they will probably have to shut down, because they designed their service in such a way that they don’t have your passkey anywhere on their system.
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Time to accelerate my move to open source operating systems. I always wanted to be an outlaw. Yeehaw!
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Why would anyone visit a German website with broken HTTPS?
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Putin hasn’t demanded an end to working cryptography has he?
On the plus side, this should be a boon to Enigma machine manufacture in the country.
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They can demand all they want but building a working crypto algorithm is even easier than making a zip gun in the garage. They should cut their losses and give up on that one.
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3D print your own Travel Sentry master key!
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Seehofer talks a lot…
This is mostly “law-and-order” posturing ahead of the EU elections next sunday.
Not that he wouldn’t want this, but it’s not really up to him.
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You missed one, Cory. It must become illegal to teach or do research in number theory (and possibly other subdisciplines of mathematics.) Number theory was not long ago thought to be the most useless branch of maths (and its practitioners reveled in that reputation.) Then it turned out to be the key to Really Good Cryptography. Oops. It’s also the key to a wide range of technologies that relate to reliable communications, sound design of insanely complex circuitry, and formal methods in a wide range of fields. These all have to be proscribed.
Oh, and it now looks like quite a bit of physics is going to be banned, too. Quantum computing and entangled pair data transmission, remember? Can’t be letting Brits (or Germans, or Ausssies, or …) play with those fields either. Maybe while you’re at it make solid state circuits illegal just to be safe.
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I think we’re far past the point where we can write this off as stupidity, rather than malice. The politicians supporting this are straight up totalitarians, and should be dealt with accordingly. This also applies to the other politicians in their parties who don’t drum them out, and we should all look at any policies these parties propose through that lens.
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Yeah I am in Australia and I just checked that gnupg still installs just fine, using local ubuntu mirrors. I bet its the same in Germany too.
Oops
Yeah, there is a lot of parallel evolution between crypto and compression.
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Or perhaps more importantly, error correction.
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I’d feel a lot better with that news if his party smacked him rather than an EFF member (currently) in the USA.
This. Its pre-election chestthumping of Seehofer, who is more or less a dead duck anyway. Wait untill Monday, and we will see how much of this is left.
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He’s dangerous, ruthless, calculating, and callous.
Not stupid.
It’s very puzzling to hear a German politician saying, essentially, that the State should be able to see and know everything that its citizens are doing. I mean, really???
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