German politicians give NSA the finger, get their own fancy phones with encryption to keep out unwan

[snookypookums]

[QUOTE][B]Germany's two main parties have agreed on measures to keep their internal communications safe – including all politicians using encrypted mobile phones, it emerged on Thursday.
[/B]
The interior ministry of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Social Democratic Party (SPD) counterparts have, Bild newspaper said, decided on “urgent” guidelines for ministers' and top ranking officials' mobile phones.

The parties are currently in coalition negotiations over forming Germany's next government.
[/QUOTE]

[URL]http://www.thelocal.de/20131121/german-politicians-to-get-encrypted-phones[/URL]

[demoguy08]

I hope this doesn't mean that the public insight into government workings itself becomes more restricted in Germany. The Swedish govt just signed some optional EU legislation into law yesterday that enables them to classify [I]any[/I] document on a whim if it is considered "harmful to the inter-EU relations", removing a law dating back a few hundered years that enables anyone to get almost total insight into government. Fuck that shit.

[Spazi]

[QUOTE=demoguy08;42945312]I hope this doesn't mean that the public insight into government workings itself becomes more restricted in Germany. [/QUOTE]

I don't see how that's the case unless your public insight into government working comes from wiretapping.

[demoguy08]

[QUOTE=Talishmar;42945374]I don't see how that's the case unless your public insight into government working comes from wiretapping.[/QUOTE]

Internal communication is a broad definition, does it also include documents on, say, spending? We've had a lot of cases in Sweden recently with unlawful spending of tax money that wouldn't have been dug up without the aforementioned law of openness. Now our government can decide these documents to be "unsafe" and hide away all their nasty shit. Not saying this ihas happened in Germany, it's just a thing to be aware of.

[RaptorJGW]

[QUOTE=demoguy08;42945312]I hope this doesn't mean that the public insight into government workings itself becomes more restricted in Germany. The Swedish govt just signed some optional EU legislation into law yesterday that enables them to classify [I]any[/I] document on a whim if it is considered "harmful to the inter-EU relations", removing a law dating back a few hundered years that enables anyone to get almost total insight into government. Fuck that shit.[/QUOTE]

No, it's merely an agreement within the parties to use this gadget to keep certain information unavailable
for foreign intelligence and other hackers. Information that's not meant to be shared anways
[IMG]http://www.prosieben.de/var/prosieben/storage/images/media/images/krypto-handy/6599808-1-ger-DE/Krypto-Handy_teaser_620x348.jpg[/IMG]
Even normal people can buy this for 2300€ (3100$), but the Chancellor and many others get custom designs which look like ordinary smart phones

[Marik Bentusi]

Whole NSA thing recently gathered quite a bit of heat here not because of privacy concerns or ethics or anything but because people start suspecting that the security vulnerabilities NSA puts in place to do their job may be exploited by private corporations to do some industrial espionage.

Probably not the motivator Snowden had in mind, but k.

[SuddenImpact]

Jokes on you!

No social life => no need for a communication device.

[Zonesylvania]

But I thought that the privacy encryption on a Blackberry was still unbroken, and thus, safe to use without needing to develop a new encryption matrix?

[Tamschi]

[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;42945575]Whole NSA thing recently gathered quite a bit of heat here not because of privacy concerns or ethics or anything but because people start suspecting that the security vulnerabilities NSA puts in place to do their job may be exploited by private corporations to do some industrial espionage.

Probably not the motivator Snowden had in mind, but k.[/QUOTE]

Honestly speaking I don't care one bit about their motivations as long as their actions are fine.

It's frustrating if there's an issue that politicians do nothing about because most people are unfamiliar with the topic or the effects are "invisible". Obviously as soon as money is involved the ball gets rolling, at least this time it's in the right direction.

Now that there's economy talk involved, maybe they'll even put in a few policies to set security standards [img]http://www.facepunch.com/fp/ratings/rainbow.png[/img]

[Big Dumb Patriot]

[QUOTE=SuddenImpact;42947790]Jokes on you!

No social life => no need for a communication device.[/QUOTE]

I'm pretty sure that antisocial behavior puts you on a terrorist watchlist. It's right up there with extrasocial behavior and [I]suspiciously average[/I] social behavior on the list of things that the US government will spy on you for.

[elix]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;42948608]I'm pretty sure that antisocial behavior puts you on a terrorist watchlist. It's right up there with extrasocial behavior and [I]suspiciously average[/I] social behavior on the list of things that the US government will spy on you for.[/QUOTE]

I rated you funny because there's no rating for "quiet sobbing". Laughter keeps the crying down.

[QUOTE=Zonesylvania;42947817]But I thought that the privacy encryption on a Blackberry was still unbroken, and thus, safe to use without needing to develop a new encryption matrix?[/QUOTE]

BBM was already broken at the behest of the Indian government (with local servers in India having taps, not the global Blackberry server grid). That we know of publicly. Blackberry is a Canadian corporation, and CSIS (Canada's intelligence service) is doing everything it can to stay out of the spotlight and keep its secrets. We are monitored just as much as the US is, but so far we don't have a Snowden to pull back the curtains and let the sun in.

The bit that we know about Canada's intelligence systems comes from being mentioned in collaboration efforts in the Snowden documents.

TL;DR I don't trust Blackberry's crypto to be pure and strong if they've already demonstrated that they will weaken and break their crypto for a national power in a world where the NSA has been exposed as deliberately weakening or subverting strong crypto. Those two are not automatically linked, but I'll bet you five Snowden USB keys that Blackberry has gotten some very scary demands from the US and Canadian intelligence services. (Compliance with those demands is a separate topic.)

[Tamschi]

By the way, Bild is one of the worst primary sources for news in Germany. It's a huge conservative tabloid that's known for running slander against political opponents and being so populist that it's spinning stories well beyond decency and legality.

Unfortunately it's really popular.

[Killer900]

[QUOTE=Tamschi;42948681]By the way, Bild is one of the worst primary sources for news in Germany. It's a huge conservative tabloid that's known for running slander against political opponents and being so populist that it's spinning stories well beyond decency and legality.

[B]Unfortunately it's really popular.[/B][/QUOTE]Like most tabloids, a shame really

[Saiko]

[QUOTE=Tamschi;42948681]By the way, Bild is one of the worst primary sources for news in Germany. It's a huge conservative tabloid that's known for running slander against political opponents and being so populist that it's spinning stories well beyond decency and legality.

Unfortunately it's really popular.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, Bild is basically Fox News.

[𝒸𝓇𝒶𝓈𝒽 ✔️]

[QUOTE=The Saiko;42949057]Yeah, Bild is basically Fox News.[/QUOTE]
Probably worse..