Some Americans like to make fun of the French but they’ve recently shown that they’ve got it together a lot more than many governments. The EFF is reporting that France recently rejected a backdoor mandate greatly desired by the Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry was full of high sounding words about drug dealers and doubtless about protecting the children but the French legislature was able to see through the fog and realize what a terrible idea such a backdoor really was.
Everybody here already knows the arguments for why backdoors are:
- A bad idea for personal and national security, and
- Will not work.
One of my favorite stories is the probably apocryphal story of some legislature trying to legislate the value of pi. The same mindset is in play with legislators who believe that they can simply will a secure backdoor into existence. The fact that experts everywhere say, “No you can’t.” makes no impression.
France’s rejection of this nonsense is good news indeed but other governments are still yearning for the ability to snoop on everything and everybody. The worst current example is the UK trying to force Apple to give them the ability to spy on any Apple user in the world [1, 2]. Apple said no and simply withdrew the secure messaging product from the UK while the U.S. government, far from amused, is making various threatening noises. It’s still unclear how that drama will play out but I don’t see Apple—or the U.S. government—acquiescing.
Sadly, many governments—even putatively democratic ones—can’t resist the siren song of universal surveillance. They’ll keep pushing until some legislature says that, yes, pi really is exactly 3.14.