New German Government is Pro-Encryption and Anti-Backdoors

I hope this is true:

According to Jens Zimmermann, the German coalition negotiations had made it “quite clear” that the incoming government of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the business-friendly liberal FDP would reject “the weakening of encryption, which is being attempted under the guise of the fight against child abuse” by the coalition partners.

Such regulations, which are already enshrined in the interim solution of the ePrivacy Regulation, for example, “diametrically contradict the character of the coalition agreement” because secure end-to-end encryption is guaranteed there, Zimmermann said.

Introducing backdoors would undermine this goal of the coalition agreement, he added.

I have written about this.

Tags: , , , ,

Posted on December 8, 2021 at 1:19 PM • 29 Comments

Comments

Bernd • December 8, 2021 5:27 PM

It is true-ish. The CCC had published a formulation guide for digital in coalition agreements, much of which was adopted by the parties.
We’ll have to see what comes of it, especially since all three parties have been in favor of security theater in the past, especially if it benefits private security firms.

Clive Robinson • December 8, 2021 6:22 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

I hope this is true

Let us assume for the moment that it and more are true, and that communications privacy and security is alowed to be as strong as we can make it.

The question is “Will it make us any more private and secure?”

I would contend “NO” on the “weakest link in the chain” principle.

Back in the early days of high privacy secure messaging apps, I made myself unpopular by pointing out that the were not secure and the designers of the apps knew that the end result systems would be insecure. Because of the “weakest link in the chain” principle and importantly the app designs were such that the communications end point in the device could easily reach beyond the security end point in the app, by going through the OS or other apps so entirely bypass the privacy and security of the app. So the resulting systems were at best insecure and in fact more probably a liability as they “paint a target” on the users back.

Since then Apple has decided to put a “spy-in-the-phone” “cop-tag” system on their products that alow users to display and communicate pictures. Making the point, if it still needed to be, that securing just the communications link, no matter by what method or by how much, would never make a privacy preserving or secure system.

The problem in reality is no current consumer Smart Devices can be made “secure”. Right from almost the bottom of the computing stack, of the defective memory upwards, they lack segregation by which security can be obtained and maintained.

I’m not saying that what is being proposed is not a good thing, it very much is, and I would very definately like it to be put in place as urgently as possible.

However it’s just one small and hesitant step on a quite long journy. Banning what Apple has done with their “spy-in-the-box” “cop-tag” system would be a logical following step. But there are very many more steps that need to be thought through and taken.

The problem is the opponents of strong privacy and security, with their faux “think of the children” FUD arguments, are well practiced, well resourced, and never get sanctioned… So can just keep grinding away at privacy of the individual for “Profit and Gain” on the tax payer dime.

I would like to see sanctions against the FUD generators as individuals, and further actual real resource cuts to the FUD organisations they work with or within.

Maybe then the message will get through that the public value thair privacy.

Ted • December 8, 2021 9:58 PM

For me one of the most salient arguments against bulk surveillance (backdoors, client-side scanning, weak encryption, etc.) is that this data becomes vulnerable to unintended parties.

An example mentioned in the Lawfare podcast was the OPM data hack, in which China stole very sensitive personal data. As Ross Anderson said – in a Cold War 2.0 scenario – do we really want to have an architecture of pervasive surveillance?

Ted • December 8, 2021 10:27 PM

Alec Muffett has a GitHub page with a section on Apple and CSAM (child sexual abuse material) surveillance.

I want to explore it a little more.

I think it’s important to understand more about how CSAM is actually handled (prosecutions, alternate routes of detection, etc.) since it is so commonly allowed to pry open the doors of bulk and intimate surveillance.

I wonder if there is a way to quantify the issues involved with CSAM. If groups are using it is a magic key to pursue their own interests, that deserves more legitimate public attention.

https://github.com/alecmuffett/ready-made-twitter-searches#apple-csam-surveillance-proposal

Ted • December 8, 2021 11:34 PM

@Clive

Since then Apple has decided to put a “spy-in-the-phone” “cop-tag” system on their products that alow users to display and communicate pictures.

Do you know anything about how to change an audio file into text?

I remember hearing something about CSAM videos being a bigger problem than pictures, but at least in the US the videos aren’t detected?

I feel really bad saying this without remembering for sure what I heard or the context. However finding the info in an audio file feels cassette tape retro.

I’m just starting to look at the paper.

Winter • December 9, 2021 12:40 AM

@Clive
“The question is “Will it make us any more private and secure?”
I would contend “NO” on the “weakest link in the chain” principle.”

We’ll see. But the German courts have already criminalized foreign (=USA) browser cookies as violating the GDPR. There are things happening.

One thing Trump and Johnson have driven home is that Europeans (and other humans) cannot trust American and UK governments anymore than the Chinese and Russian governments. There is a strong feeling that Europe has to grow its own cyber-industry. Currently, weak privacy is a net harm for Europeans, personally, economically, and strategically.

In short, the EU[1] have understood that it is in their direct strategic and economic interest to strengthen the privacy of it’s citizen. Germany has simply put that understanding into policy. As the 4th economy of the world, it can do that.

[1] Actually, EU minus Ireland. Ireland has sold its soul to Silicon Valley.

ResearcherZero • December 9, 2021 2:08 AM

@Ted

Police and politicians have committed themselves to tracking down and punishing the perpetrators, but they spend less time considering how the images of sexual abuse can be removed from the internet.

Germany, for its part, has operated a program for the last 10 years called “Delete instead of Block,” which aims to report abusive images to internet service providers so they can remove the photos and videos from their servers. But the program only encompasses a small fraction of the images in circulation.

When asked about the issue, officials tend to react with a shrug of their shoulders. The internet just doesn’t forget anything, says one political representative. “There isn’t much you can do.”

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/sexual-violence-against-children-why-aren-t-thousands-of-gigabytes-of-abusive-images-removed-from-the-web-a-99f36312-8054-479b-8d7c-ff86679daa45

Australian prosecution hasn’t handled these issues very well, but the Australian legal system is weird, antiquated and just a little bit ‘on the nose’.
They lock up 10 year old children, and they shackle the children during transportation so they can’t run off and hurt themselves.

The prosecutions for child abuse in Australia are pretty eye opening. If the children are not properly traumatised before the court hearings, they certainly are by the time the trial is over. The prosecutors often enjoy themselves. There is a suggestions box in the foyer of the building if anyone wants to voice their opinion on court conduct and procedure.

Curious • December 9, 2021 3:00 AM

I am no expert but I think that what you people probably like to call a ‘surveillance state’ and that I am inclined to call a ‘police state’ is at odds with my basic idea of ‘initiative’.

In the movie ‘Blackhawk Down’ there is this one scene after a heli is lost inside a town nearby, by which a US base commander exclaims something like “We just lost the initiative!”, and I thought that shows such a deep understanding of war in trying to understand how you could have any hope of accomplishing any ‘strategic’ goal that would avoid moving the goal posts which would make waging war something of an activity plan as opposed to being something strategic.

My point would be that, even if you get to have encryption without backdoors, I think surveillance and monitoring capabilities basically will negate any ‘initiative’ you thought you could maintain (anything secretive).

Another point of mine, not being an expert on any of this, is that, I think with surveillance and monitoring baked into an infrastructure, police (and others) would be inclied to rely on mass surveillance as opposed to doing investigative police work. I think making that kind of generalization makes good sense.

As for cryptography, not being an expert or anything, I can’t help but wonder if what is known as ‘Noether’s theorem’ (physics) is sort of spelling doom for privacy efforts that rely on math anyway. As if relying on symmetry would be something that eventually negates complexification of things in general.

Denton Scratch • December 9, 2021 5:16 AM

@Winter

cannot trust American and UK governments anymore than the Chinese and Russian governments.

Of course. And the French and German governments are no more trustworthy.

The EU as a whole doesn’t have a government; it has a civil service, which is under the control of a rotating group of ministers from EU member-states. EU electors have no control over the membership of this bureaucracy. The EU parliament is a joke.

The “US cookies” thing is silly. Any browser can be configured to reject 3rd-party cookies, or even 2nd-party cookies. You can then click [Accept] automatically, without fear of tracking. The plague of cookie popups is infuriatimng, because it is so pointless. It doesn’t protect sites against GDPR, and it is REALLY annoying.

Winter • December 9, 2021 5:28 AM

@Denton
“The EU as a whole doesn’t have a government; it has a civil service, which is under the control of a rotating group of ministers from EU member-states.”

It does have a government that installs binding laws and a legal Cort to enforce them. The council of ministers is elected in their respective countries.

The individual countries are behaving no worse than the states in the US. It is debatable weather the USA is a “better” democracy.

And the member States realise perfectly well that their interests do lie inside the EU, not outside. Even France would take a mortal hit on its own.

The EU is not always that visible, but things like the GDPR show that a 400M trading block that is the biggest market in the world can make a point.

Clive Robinson • December 9, 2021 6:10 AM

@ Ted,

Do you know anything about how to change an audio file into text?

A little, and it’s something I try to avoid unless somebody elses wallet has paid in advance.

If you have a “clean recording” of just a person talking ina common way and the voice is known to the system then you get 95% correctness levels with the lower cost systems.

You start adding complex words and it goes south very quickly. In the UK they tried replacing medical secretaries who type up audio tapes from doctors with voice recognition software it was not a success for three basic reasons,

1, To much noise in the background.
2, Words not in the dictionary.
3, The variety of accents and pronounciations.

Such issues as “jargon” are a continuing “bug-bare” in such systems, and not clean recordings will always be an issue. But there are now systems around with between 50,000 and 150,000 words in their dictionaries.

But the systems are not cheap and a lot of the commercial ones are eye wateringly expensive, whilst the SoHo or individual consumer level ones will only work effectively in “dictation mode” not in automated “file to file mode” that can be incorporated in larger systems.

It is however changing and some systems are getting a lot of effort thrown at them because of the secondary information market.

There is a large private company that leases systems to “information gathering guard labour” organisations that has not just voice recognition to replace operators but convert dispatcher calls to transcripts and database input to generate reports etc. It also alows for those doing surveillance work to talk in reports.

It is known that the patrol/beat Police force level systems are expensive, not just directly, but because they aim to take out experienced detectives and the like so building in dependency on the systems. Less well known is that the company is also selling the information in “processed form” into other agencies at multiple levels up the Governmental hierarchy…

Which brings us to,

I remember hearing something about CSAM videos being a bigger problem than pictures

By “pictures” I ment all forms of image files that get displayed to the user so yes it would include videos even people making fantasy drawings and other “art”.

The problem with CSAM is actually that it is realy very rare indeed. So rare that whilst nearly everyone gets to “hear” about it next to nobody gets to “see” any of it except endlessly churned over as evidence.

But then about the biggest chunk is actually not realy what is implied by CSAM, but something entirely different that gets swept in under the broad skirt definitions. Your grand parents holiday snaps of your parents running around on the beach sans clothes / au naturel as were “baby on the rug” pictures are technically illegal. Lots of scenes in films and historic pictures hanging in art galleries likewise. The Australian film Walkabout, is now so decimated that it makes no sense if you see it but back in the mid 1970’s it was shown unedited by quite a few nations national broadcasters starting before the “watershed” in the evening.

If we look back in history we can see what happened with this form of “puritism” where churches etc were striped and destroyed. One modern version was what ISIS was upto with bombs and JCB’s to thousands of year old historic relics, all done for intimidation and raw “power” over the populous.

If you think this could not happen in the First World think again CSAM is the leading edge of neo-puritism that is being used especially in WASP nations to do “burning of the books” and similar to change open progressive societies into dark places where truth is what those in power say it is. Back during WWII George Orwell witnessed whilst working at the BBC “Black Propaganda” and how it was being used for quite horrendous things supposadly “for the common good”. Much of what he wrote in “Animal Fatm” and “1984” were very much based on reality he experienced through a decade and a half to two decades that led upto and included WWII. The fact that “three score years and ten” later it started again and we are living through it currently tells you why studying history tells a lot about those of your fellow man that surround you, that look on the likes of the Middle Ages as what they want society to be like as they see themselves being in the “First Estate” with all that “status” even though the reality even for them would be a short, nasty and often brutal existance. They believe that they would be at the top, they would be in control and their very existance godlike… The misuse of “think of the children” is past the leading edge of where this starts with what was once called “‘The prudery of spinsters’… whose primness has turned them rancid”. The thing that Orwell noted is you should never be alowed to meet the demons you are told to fear, otherwise you loose the fear of them, thus those that use them to manipulate you, loose their power over you. It’s why you “here much” but “see little or nothing” and “History is vilified and destroyed” supposadly “all for the common good”, whilst those in power, well “It’s do as I say, not do as I do” for them, there is no base pleasure or evil behaviour they can not experience, so they know what to “save you from”. Which unfortunately only encorages such behaviours to reappear that society had in the main already moved on from by common sense from the last turn of the wheel.

Ted • December 9, 2021 8:46 AM

@ResearcherZero, Clive

From the article:

“the weakening of encryption, which is being attempted under the guise of the fight against child abuse”

This whole we want to see EVERYTHING that you are doing to stymie child sexual abuse is nuts.

What about our intimate moments and freedoms? Do these not need (more) protection? If we are being mass surveilled, the potential for abuse is primed. And I am only talking about the survellance that is ‘acknowledged’ and as Susan Landau said ‘normalized.’

Like how many ‘known’ hashed photos from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) do you have to upload to your iCloud account to be referred to law enforcement? Five is cool? I mean don’t even tell someone not to make their own.

Like they said, any government (or company) could change the ‘flag-of-honorable-mention’ once the system is built and allowed.

@ReseaecherZero
“Police and politicians have committed themselves to tracking down and punishing the perpetrators, but they spend less time considering how the images of sexual abuse can be removed from the internet.”

So this is crap. Countries can surveill but not invest the resources in meaningful follow-up action. WTF?

@Clive

By “pictures” I ment all forms of image files that get displayed to the user so yes it would include videos even people making fantasy drawings and other “art”.

Is ‘art’ flagged? Where is my freakin’ stress ball?

With regards to targeted CSAM content, the paper said that the Five Eyes govs were talking about CSAM images with Apple, while the EU’s targets extend to images, video, and text (early reading here). So surely not art right?

Clive Robinson • December 9, 2021 11:21 AM

@ Ted, ResearcherZero, ALL,

This whole we want to see EVERYTHING that you are doing to stymie child sexual abuse is nuts.

No it is not “nuts” it is very carefully planed an orchestrated by certain people.

Look at how a high functioning sociopaths behave. They manipulate people via their emotions to coerce them into compliance with the sociopaths wishes.

It does not matter if your are the owner of Amazon, Facebook, etc or incharge of the DoJ, FBI, NSA or any other Government entity your aim is like that of a Chess player, which is to get your compliance and therby they move up in their plan.

Some of these sociopaths also have stronger than normal sadistic traits, to them using the three basic types of pain (physical, emotional, medical) come not just naturally but with pleasure.

As I noted earlier for “fear” as an emotional pain to work against people it must be “not facable”. Which is why you hear scary stories, but don’t get to actually “see” or worse “experience” first hand as then it could be confronted and brought down. So not always there in the shadows waiting to strike seemingly all powerful, both omniscient, and omnipotent, to strike without foresign or warning, to just disappear.

To the average normal adult what is the one thing they value above even their own life? Yes their children, even other peoples children. Law enforcment and Lawyers know this that is why they are brought up during interogetions of suspects, and in divorce proceadings and the like.

Thus what better tool to get compliance by the general population use children.

CSAM as I said is actually a very rare crime in most parts of the world for good reason. The people who do it are not just aberrant to the majority of the population they are an abhorrance to the point many will strike down and kill people just on the suggestion they hurt children. We actually defend those that strike out like this, we use terms like “vigilante justice” to make them sound better than sensless murders they would be. Why because inside every normal person is that fear of what would happen to their children, others children.

So CSAM as a population control tool to certain types of high functionin sociopaths is almost perfect, that is why they use it. In fact if it did not exist in reality they would probably invent it…

In fact though we do know it was used as an invention look up Pizza-Gate that despite rock solid evidence it was entirely a fabrication many thousands still believe, due in part to the way their brains are wired. Even if they admit they know it was not real they will say “no smoke without fire” it must have been covered up or done somewhere else, “we have evidence” when it’s just “cute art” they see ehat they need to see to fule their misconceptions,

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-38156985

Why? Because their mind can not face the demon that has bern raised within it, so they see it in the shadows and think even when the accept there was no evidence that it was just somewhere else out of sight or just “but it could have been”. The reason they “hate-on” those they see as “not us” it’s another primative in the hind brain that gives us tribalism and gang warfare.

lurker • December 9, 2021 11:56 AM

@Denton Scratch

The plague of cookie popups […] is REALLY annoying.

Amen brother. So I get a choice, one button takes me through a timewasting exercise on how to set my own cookie management, but the other? “I accept” grants me what unknown perils buried in the depths of a “cookie”? I can guess, but can an average user have any clue from the anodyne boilerplate on the popup that on a mobile device can cover up to 25% of the screen…

Andy • December 9, 2021 12:15 PM

Germany has always been at the forefront of privacy and data security. Probably a result of their history and still recent memories of the Stasi in what was the GDR.

Interesting how TPM 2.0(Trusted Platform Module) has been made mandatory for Windows 11. Internal documents from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) that Die Zeit obtained back in 2013 warned of the dangers of TPM.
Experts at the BSI, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and the Federal Administration warned unequivocally against using computers with Windows and TPM 2.0. Rüdiger Weis, a professor at the Beuth University of Technology in Berlin, and a cryptographic expert who has dealt with Trusted Computing for years, told Die Zeit..during production, the secret key to that backdoor is generated outside the chip and then transferred to the chip. During this process, copies of all keys can be made. “It’s possible that there are even legal requirements to that effect that cannot be reported.” And so the TPM is “a dream chip of the NSA.”

ResearcherZero • December 9, 2021 9:02 PM

@Clive Robinson

Group narcissism may be a growing trend according to a recent study.

“In its most extreme form, group narcissism can fuel political radicalism and potentially even violence. But in everyday settings, too, it can keep groups from listening to one another, and lead them to reduce people on the “other side” to one-dimensional characters.”

“Golec de Zavala is a professor at SWPS University, in Poland, and a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, leading the study of group narcissism—and she’s realized that there’s nothing fringe about it.”

“This thinking can happen in seemingly any kind of assemblage: a religious, political, gender, racial, or ethnic group, but also a sports team, club, or cult. Now, she said, she’s terrified at how widely she’s finding it manifested across the globe.”

“Collective narcissism is not simply tribalism. Humans are inherently tribal, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Having a healthy social identity can have an immensely positive impact on well-being. Collective narcissists, though, are often more focused on out-group prejudice than in-group loyalty.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/11/group-narcissism/620632/

–

“CPJ’s 2021 prison census found that the number of reporters jailed for their work hit a new global record of 293, up from a revised total of 280 in 2020. At least 24 journalists were killed because of their coverage so far this year; 18 others died in circumstances too murky to determine whether they were specific targets.”
https://cpj.org/reports/2021/12/number-of-journalists-behind-bars-reaches-global-high/

Clive Robinson • December 10, 2021 5:30 AM

@ ResearcherZero,

Group narcissism may be a growing trend according to a recent study.

You might want to look at,

Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka and Keenan, Oliver. 2021. Collective narcissism as a framework for understanding populism. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 5(2), pp. 54-64. ISSN 2475-0387

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/29181/

It’s been strongly suggested that Dec 37 participents suffer from “vulnerable narcissism” which appears to be playing out as the FBI get round to interviewing them.

It links up with work on “Authoritarian Followers” by Bob Altemeyer, I’ve recomended in the past people here should read.

See the list of “characteristics” in Bob Altemeyer’s response to a request for comment,

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/2/1494504/-A-word-from-Dr-Bob-Altemeyer-on-Donald-Trump-and-Authoritarian-Followers

It’s fairly easy to see key indicators for both those suffering “vulnerable narcissis” and the collective “group narcissism”.

Key is the suspension or inability to reason and blind faith following of mantra and dogma with a strong tendency to what they see as “authorised violence”. Which history has shown repratedly is a requirment for “guard labour” selected by authoritarians as their “cannon fodder”.

It’s not hard to see how those behind certain types of quasi-religious political “Power image” leaders can easily use “group narcissism” against the actual interests of those in such groups as has happened with the supposed “legal fight fund” that has effectively disappeared without any fight… Some assume as a hidden political fund, though it could be just to fund “the life style”, pay debts and be used as bait.

P.S. You are supposed to “declare interests” these days on anything remotely connected with accademic work. As I’ve mentioned before I know GoldSmiths for a number of reasons…

Denton Scratch • December 10, 2021 6:53 AM

@Winter

The council of ministers is elected in their respective countries.

This simply isn’t true; the “Council of Ministers” doesn’t even have a membership list. The members of the Council are simply the ministers of the respective governments who are responsible for whatever the Council is discussing today.

In this country (UK), ministers are not elected. They are appointed. I don’t know of any country in Europe that elects ministers.

It is debatable weather the USA is a “better” democracy.

I am increasingly inclined to regard the word “democracy” as a whore. Neither the EU nor the USA (nor the UK) uses a system that deserves that name.

things like the GDPR show that a 400M trading block that is the biggest market in the world can make a point.

GDPR is indeed a remarkable thing; I can’t think of any equally-striking EU accomplishment. But cookie popups has been one of its dismal side-effects.

Winter • December 10, 2021 7:12 AM

@Denton
“This simply isn’t true; the “Council of Ministers” doesn’t even have a membership list. The members of the Council are simply the ministers of the respective governments who are responsible for whatever the Council is discussing today.”

And how did these ministers get to that position? They all are put there by the respective democratically elected parliaments.

The council of ministers represent the national governments who themselves are installed and controlled by their respective parliaments. The national governments elect the European Council.

By whom do the ministers of the USA get elected? They don’t. And does this make the USA an undemocratic county?

Winter • December 10, 2021 7:38 AM

@Denton
“Neither the EU nor the USA (nor the UK) uses a system that deserves that name.”

If you only accept perfection, you get nothing.

Democracy originaly means “Rule of the people”.

The cornerstone of Democracy is, free after Popper, the ability of the people to sack their government. Every democracy where the people did&do send home the legislative and the executive is a functioning Democracy.

That the GOP in many US states effectively cannot be send home by the people anymore, and actions are taken to achieve this too on a national scale is indeed evidence that democracy is failing in the USA.

However, the legislative and executive branches of, e.g, Germany and France have just recently been sent home wholesale. Which is a sign democracy is still working there.

Gerard van Vooren • December 11, 2021 1:41 AM

@ Winter,

By whom do the ministers of the USA get elected? They don’t. And does this make the USA an undemocratic county?

The same counts for the EU. Who can you vote? Urusla von der Leyen? Her husband is a director of a pharma company. This is why I think that we in The Netherlands need a NEXIT before Europe crashes down.

Sumadelet • December 11, 2021 4:04 AM

Re: converting and audio file to text.

I confess to a category mistake here. I assumed it was a request for a simple steganographical technique, rather than transcription of the spoken word to text.

My thoughts were:
If I assume the audio file is already digital, all you need to do is produce a mapping between samples and ASCII text – base64 encoding works. If that is too obvious, the base64 encoded audio can be fed into an expansion algorithm with, for example, output as words from a dictionary. The disadvantage of such techniques is that they massively expand the amount of storage space needed to hold the data.

Transcription involving understanding the language of an audio a file and producing equivalent readable text is a whole different ball game.

Clive Robinson • December 11, 2021 6:48 AM

@ Winter, Gerard van Vooren,

I always am amazed how people think they can get out of the kitchen and then can still sit at the table and expect to be served a meal.

Actually that’s the way it works in most places.

The EU having had some one leave their party because of the EU’s “bad behaviour” think it’s OK to come around to that persons house and steal, their food, and drink so the EU can carry on partying.

Life does not work that way, it’s usually described as “theft” which is yet further bad behaviour.

Oh and with regards,

So women cannot go in politics? Or only if their partner stays at home?

In your reply to @Gerard van Vooren, is that an overly obvious and pointless “strawman” or something else?

Ted • December 11, 2021 8:08 AM

@Sumadelet, Clive

Re: converting audio file to text

Thank you both so much for your response to this. Your feedback has encouraged me to start doing a little research.

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/21368867/transcription-google-docs-live-transcribe-how-to-zoom

“To test these transcription apps, I ran each while playing a YouTube video of The Verge’s Dieter Bohn offering his take on the Pixel 4A.”

I certainly don’t want to transcribe myself, but sometimes there are some super good audio clips out there

Clive Robinson • December 11, 2021 8:31 AM

@ Sumadelet,

The disadvantage of such techniques is that they massively expand the amount of storage space needed to hold the data.

But the true information content is low, maybe as low as 50 bits per second with “clean” spoken text by a “germanic male”.

Which means a careful choice of both Codec and following Compression algorithm could significantly reduce the problem.

It depends on how much “loss” you are prepared to accept. Even with none apparent MP3 does 10:1 and some forms of Fractal Compression over multiple runs can do 50:1…

So 10M of “.wav” per minute becomes 1M “.mp3” then 50k or better with tools that have been around for a while.

But Ogg Vorbis with Speex or the newer Opus has better codecs. There is a qualiry -v- bitrate graph,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Opus_quality_comparison_colorblind_compatible.svg

Speex can go down to around 2kbps with sufficient audio quallity from a “throat mic” for “radio transmission” over VHF frequency hopping or direct sequence spread spectrum links which alows for full Encryption as well but I would not say it’s “easy listening” (it does my head in quite quickly).

And just at the begining of this year, Google has given us Lyra

https://ai.googleblog.com/2021/02/lyra-new-very-low-bitrate-codec-for.html

Though they have cheated a little…

When you play the sound clip of 3k Lyra with a man speaking over background music you can intuitively realise just how the codec works, and so why that clip works as well as it does 😉

That said I will be looking into Lyra a little further for Encrypted LPI radios.

Winter • December 11, 2021 9:12 AM

@Gerard
“But it has nothing to do with Urusla being a female. ”

But I see this complaint only leveled at female politicians who have a working husband. It is next to unheard of that a male politician is attacked for his wife’s employment.

Ursula is a German Christendemocat politician. She is neither less nor more corrupt than your average Christendemocat politician.

And you can vote for EU politicians. The EU has a parliament.

Complaining that the EU is not democratic enough suggest an easy solution: Give the European Parliament power over the states.

Somehow, I do not think you would welcome that solution.

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