From Crypto AG to digital democracy and peace: why large EU nations should to co-lead the creation of the first global democratic public sphere.

We analyze the root and historical causes behind the fact that current western digital communications systematically foster divisions, disinformation, misinformation, distrust and authoritarianism. We then argue how larger EU nations, especially Germany, should co-lead an open initiative to create and govern a democratic digital infrastructure for fair and effective dialogue - within and among nations, at all levels of society - to increase democratic sovereignty, national security, civil rights, and counter authoritarianism, foreign and domestic.

Executive Summary

In this first five-pager executive summary, we synthesize our case. Via the following ten, we elaborate it further with references, including a few chapters dedicated to a special case for Germany.

We are all exposed to continuous hacking by innumerable unaccountable entities, mostly undiscovered or unreported, and enmeshed in a media environment where it is impossible to agree on shared truths, and escape inadvertent or engineered manipulation. Even ministers, elected officials, and journalists can’t escape the same fate.

The market for exploitation of IT systems is exploding into a hybrid Cyber Cold War, heating up into an obscure mess of nations, their private proxies, and hackers of all kinds.

For decades, nations have invested billions in discovering, purchase, and insert vulnerabilities at birth in all IT and IT security standards, just in case access may be needed for such systems. They had no other choice but to defend against criminals and adversary nations.

This race is accelerating and spiraling out of control as it undermines and erodes trust and accountability within and between nations, just as humanity is facing its existential challenges of the age.

Any prospects for accountability for irresponsible cyber behavior, or enforceable cyber treaties, are proving to be a pipe dream because the attribution and impact assessment of the most sophisticated hacks are nearly impossible to ascertain or prove - given how complex and broken by design, even critical IT systems are, and how sophisticated and persistent some attackers are.

Through their Crypto AG project, the CIA and its German equivalent BND proved that IT can be made ultra-secure, i.e., resisting even the most powerful attackers at relatively moderate R&D costs. They also proved that 3rd-party access to encrypted data and communications - solely for such ultra-secure IT systems - can be reliably restricted to intended parties - contradicting widely shared ideas about the impossibility in all cases of a secure-enough "front-door.”

For years, this arrangement between western and aligned played a crucial role in enabling a more democratic geopolitical block to prevail over a lesser one.

Can we learn from that experience to build such ultra-secure IT systems and make them available in an affordable and user-friendly way to all law-abiding citizens and private organizations?

Can their model be changed in a sort of Crypto AG 2.0 so that both their security levels and their “front-door” mechanisms are specified and certified not surreptitiously by two intelligence agencies, but instead a transparent, democratic, international, and multilateral way, mobile and even for consumers, to radically mitigate its potential abuse both by users to commit crimes and by nations for illegitimate spying?

Could we replace the hidden role of those intelligence agencies with a new ultra-resilient international democratic IT security certification body for human communications, operating across more neutral countries and within existing national and international laws?

Such a body would enact time-proven and novel extreme socio-technical safeguards - down to the hardware fabrication - to ensure both ultra-high levels of user security and privacy AND the resilience of a procedural in-person "front-door" mechanism - involving highly resilient and representative international judges and citizen-jury processes.

Such a body will evaluate cyber-investigation requests submitted by participating nations in return for their binding commitment to disclose to such a body, and only such body, the vulnerabilities they find in those systems.

Key benefits for participating nations would be to foster the availability of much more trustworthy ITs for their most sensitive systems, public and private, while retaining their ability to access when there is a legitimate need or mandate.

Participating nations would also enable their politicians, journalists, activists, and elected officials, with the utmost protection against all attackers, foreign and domestic, to protect national sovereignty and democracy.

Participating nations could eventually extend those certifications as preferred or mandatory for the critical subsystems of the most sensitive public and private systems - such as elections systems, critical infrastructure, and dominant social media platforms - to further protect democracy and national security.

Since those certifications will not only ensure much higher security but also embed “by design” requirements to achieve very high forensic-friendliness - participating nations would also ensure a much improved and internationally-recognized cyber attribution capability for eventual hacks to such critical systems.

As an additional benefit, in the longer term - as the number of participating nations increases and more of their critical systems are certified to such standards - those nations would realistically be able to engage in more enforceable cyber treaties and/or in fair and responsible retribution for grave violations of international norms.

This is what we are proposing via our Trustless Computing Certification Body and Seevik Net.

Why not only citizens’ privacy but also national security would greatly benefit

Yes, under this new proposed scheme, powerful participating nations would renounce to their arbitrary ability to hack into such IT systems.

For international investigations, they would have to ask authorization to some international democratic multi-lateral body in order to be able to intercept someone like a Swedish parliamentarian or journalist.

For local national investigations, they would need to convince a private jury of 5 randomly-sampled US citizens, accountable to such international body (instead of a company's attorney like in Apple's case) - to have lawful access to the private data of a local journalist or businessman.

Why would that be overall in those agencies’ benefit, in addition to the more general national interest?

In a gist, their cyber-investigation capability would overall improve because cyber-investigation requests - by participating nations, for a legitimate suspect for using such IT systems - would (a) produce a sure response promptly, even 1-2 hours if justified; (b) produce evidence that is more reliable and attributable, and so likely to stand in the highest courts.

Let’s break it down in more detail why they would benefit:

Firstly, those nations already work in multilateral and bilateral ways to manage those issues, albeit in an obscure and complex patchwork of written and oral agreements, and de-facto practices:

For example, the NSO Group, the state-regulated Israeli leader in spyware for nations in the World - recently publicly declared that it has technical limitations that prevent it from spying on US mobile numbers or mobile users while on US territory. So, similar agreements are likely in place between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies and other allies.
It is today's news that NSO Group - after being sued by 3 Big Techs, trashed by Financial Times on a weekly basis, and blacklisted by the US government (A similar story as that of Inslaw Promis in the 90s) - is negotiating a sale to a company owned by US-soldiers and the executive chairman of KoolSpan, the leading Israeli endpoint security company, Elad Yoran, practically making NSO Group "a multinational state-controlled company that will continue to serve national security and other geopolitical interests in the Arab World.

Secondly, the current way such cooperation happens still creates collateral damage to national security, citizens’ privacy, critical infrastructure security, and the resilience of the democratic system.

The evidence acquired through targeted endpoint hacking often has dubious validity, and standing in the court, as it is often very hard to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that others may have tampered with the device or evidence. For these reasons, the highest courts of Italy, France and Germany for years consistently refused to accept evidence so acquired, forcing security agencies to break the law by engaging in parallel construction to acquire evidence that will stand in court, but at a variable cost in terms of compliance to regulations.
Firmware or software upgrades, or sophisticated tampering or behavior by the user, make access to user data or comms at times unavailable.
The sustenance of this process and access requires those nations to ensure that all IT and standards be weakened, in plausibly deniable ways, which causes critical infrastructure and citizen communications to be vulnerable to criminal and state adversaries.

Thirdly, in addition to all that, democratic nations that join as early governance partners to TCCB would enjoy many additional benefits:

Be able to access all needed data at rest or in transit on the device, if a valid rationale is shown: with a near certainty of actually obtaining access; within 1-2 hours if the urgency is warranted and with much higher evidence integrity assurance.
Radically increase the protection that law-abiding journalists, politicians, elected officials, political activists can enjoy against hacking by enemies "both foreign and domestic" for their communication, within and across nations, while at once having higher assurance to be able to investigate if duly legally authorized, as validated by a trustworthy democratic international body. For example, NSO Group was allegedly abused to spy on political opposition inside Israel without judicial authorization.
Increase the protection of their most sensitive governmental agencies and officials from hacks of the most democracy-critical or national- security-critical systems, [such as those involved in OPM hacks, SolarWinds, DNC hack, 2016 US Presidential election hacks, feed and recommendation sub-systems of dominant social media.
If you think that only a few thousands are those law-abiding citizens that are hacked on their iPhone, we invite you to read this sobering White Paper that we have compiled with the latest information on how wide and unaccountable the client endpoint hacking problem most likely is..
By joining early on, they can have more influence and control in the body's governance - than other nations that will join later to - to best ensure its continued ability to ensure both systems security and legitimate lawful access.
For a detailed case for why the US and other leading democratic nations would benefit from joining as early governance partners of the Trustless Computing Certification Body, please refer to this page on our Trustless Computing Association website.

Why is Germany best positioned to lead EU and like-minded nations in such initiative?

Among many other objectives, our Trustless Computing Certification Body and Seevik Net, are realizing what Germany should have enacted when its BND intelligence service - right after the end of the Cold War - bailed out of its 50% partnership with the CIA in the Swiss company Crypto AG.

Germany could have (and possibly did!) created a new version of Crypto AG - multinational, open, democratic and for all - so that the West could lead global diplomatic and civil society dialogue, in a manner coherent with its values and in support of a new fair global order.

It could have done so via a "soft" cyber power (i.e. lead by values and example) rather than a "hard" cyber power (i.e. spying on all), by enacting a transparent way (at least among allies). A way to ensure both the security and privacy of communications and their cyber-investigation when warranted - through transparent technologies and processes, and international democratic and resilient governance.

Back then, there were many valid and practical reasons why it was hard or impossible for Germany to do it, including a lack of knowledge by a large part of the political establishment.

But what about now?

Isn't a secure, fair, and effective platform for global dialogue, within and among nations, direly needed, to get out of the ongoing propaganda and Informational war between great powers that could turn into a nuclear confrontation?

The German foreign ministry already has plans to share with allies and third nations a new digital secure communications infrastructure that is now being built for the German ministries. Yet, wouldn’t an open, transparent and multilateral approach make such infrastructure more trustworthy for other nations, as well as more resilient against internal abuse?

Couldn't Germany and/or a critical mass of EU nations lead the way this time, in coordination with key allies, such as Italy, France, the US, Israel, and other democratic third nations?

Next steps and an actionable path

Visit our Trustless Computing Association website for our plans for a Trustless Computing Certification Body and Seevik Net to realize the above proposal.

The Trustless Computing Association finalized the governance and socio-technical paradigms and established the TCCB last June 24th in Geneva during the 8th Edition of its Free and Safe in Cyberspace conference series.

See here a detailed case for democratic nations to join as early governance partners of the Trustless Computing Certification Body, listing in fine detail all the benefits.

Join us in Rome next September!

Next September 9-11th, in Rome, we’ll hold the 9th Edition of our Free and Safe in Cyberspace to help us bring a few leading nations, tech partners, and NGOs - that have shown variable interest - come together to shape and take ownership of this initiative, sign on and commit.

If you have read so far, and think we are on to something important, read on here below for a more detailed elaboration of what we describes in the Executive Summary above:

The Impossibility of Dialogue without Shared Truths

As the war in Ukraine rages on, we all moved to the Internet to seek information and sources to try to make sense of it.

After weeks of digging through the endless troves of information available via my search functions, as many others, I came to realize even more that my favorite media sources (Wikipedia included) - while much better than the outright dictatorial media and subversive propaganda machine in some jurisdictions - are chock full of fundamental biases, omissions, distortions, partial accounts, and outright falsehoods.

These are fomenting deep artificial divisions, contestations, and escalations in language and actions - at all levels of society including their leaders - ushering an intense Propaganda War that is becoming the main factor contributing to the alarming rise in risk of Nuclear War among great powers.

Only after Putin had invaded Ukraine last February 24th, most people learned that a mix of war or civil war had been ongoing already since 2014 in the eastern region of Donbas, a situation that had to now already claimed 13,000 lives.

The killings and battling started in 2014 after a “regime change” in Ukraine - the third after the fall of the Berlin Wall - that was and remained heavily contested. Was it a democratic revolution? Or was it a coup by the CIA or neo-nazis? Or was it something else? Divisions on what happened grew over time, with a lack of sufficiently neutral and exhaustive judicial and media investigations, and intense propaganda and psychological operations on both sides.

No wonder peaceful dialogue within and across nations is not possible! How can it be possible when current media systems do not allow reasonable open persons to agree on even some basic facts?

How can we have a constructive dialogue to agree on basic facts, let alone find a middle ground, when citizens are forced into dominant social media systems that are designed to divide us, manipulate us, anger us, trap us inside filter bubbles - and when leaders and civil society on both sides, are unable to meet in person for two years due to COVID and lack the interoperable digital means that can foster a fair, effective and confidential dialogue?

The Weaponization of Digital Media Systems

How did we get here?

By 2000, it was widely believed that digital media systems would surely make us more knowledgeable, and wiser, and bring us closer to one happy global village. They just had to be made more widely available.

As exemplified by the US Capitol Attack and the invasion of Ukraine, the contrary has happened. While economic development and entertainment opportunities increased, we’ve seen an overall increase in disinformation, division, and conflict, within and across nations, among state leaders and ordinary citizens.

As a result, we’ve seen a decisive regress of liberties and democracy worldwide, when it is urgent that nations come together in a critical mass to agree on enforceable commitments to tackle global challenges.

Truth is that since WW2 - and evermore in the last two decades - digital media systems have been weaponized by nations to foster Informational Superiority, spying on other nations’ most sensitive communications and protecting their own, and Propaganda Superiority, to prevail in influencing public opinion inside and outside their borders, with their version of facts, however biased, partial, unbalanced or outright false.

An Informational Cold War

During WW2, with the rise of mass media and encryption machines, the Allies’ better propaganda and ability to intercept German secret communications became key factors in their victory.

Given such success, at the onset of the Cold War, a key focus of great powers became to extend control over their editorial power and (in)security of digital communications, media, and social networks, for both citizens and diplomats - while also propping closer parties and factions in third (and allied) countries with money, intelligence and weapons.

On the diplomatic communications front, Germany and the US used their hidden ownership of the Swiss company Crypto AG to affirm a standard for internal and external communications of dozens of non-aligned countries through network effects.

On the propaganda side, the US cultural industry, appealing social model and economic development boosted them vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.

An Informational Post-Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War, and the Internet Boom, a handful of US firms have acquired dominance and semi-monopolies in internet switches, app stores and operating systems, social networks, and mainstream secure mobile devices, like the iPhone.

This control has enabled the US to determine the private and governmental policies governing the dominant private digital messaging apps and social networks - even supposedly neutral ones such as Wikipedia - and to weaken the security and privacy of all IT and all IT standards with plausible deniability, at all stacks levels and throughout the entire supply chain, to foster their informational superiority.

On the positive side, this control brought to the US, and its allies, an astounding informational and propaganda superiority against authoritarian regimes, criminals, and terrorists. It has also fostered advances in freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in democratic and authoritarian countries.

On the negative side, the choice by the US, and indirectly its allies, to retain such control via the weakening of the security of mainstream IT devices, apps, and social networks - rather than via formal, controlled, transparent, and democratic processes - has produced huge abuse and huge collateral damages.

It resulted in the empowerment of one set of unaccountable entities to deeply manipulate the majority to push onto them their products, candidates, opinions, and “alternative facts” - including by Putin’s Russia, US anti-democratic forces, and the US government - and another set of unaccountable entities to spy and control global civil society and elites, like journalists, elected officials, activists, and business leaders, by continuously and undetectably spying them or their close associates.

The result is that both citizens and diplomats are unable to agree on basic truths about important historical and current affairs facts - and unaccountable entities push biased and false versions of reality, leading to failures of democracies and to war.

Digital infrastructure for fair global dialogue and understanding

So, therefore, an interoperable digital infrastructure is needed that enables a global dialogue that fosters the emergence and approximation of truth about relevant facts and events, and a fair and effective dialogue around those facts, ways to resolve disagreements, and co-draft plans to cooperate and coordinate to solve disagreements and global challenges.

Any global dialogue will have to start by building a shared basis of facts. Wikipedia has much that can be learned from, though it suffers from a severe lack of sufficient neutrality and global representativity: most contributors and editors are from very niche demographics; anonymity enables abuses by disguised corporations and nations operatives; high-level governance is in the hands of a US entity with much US private funding. Such “new wikipedia” would be open to editing by nation-state employees with a disclosed profile, like diplomats and journalists from state media organizations. Each item, say “War in Donbass”, would have a “shared version”, more prominent, a version maintained by each nation-state, or any other entity or group of entities whose funding, profile and identity as deeply verified.

Creating and maintaining a shared basis of facts, and then having a fair and effective dialogue on them cannot be achieved via the inadequate web and app-based messaging, and social and collaborative editing systems. Enabling democratic and constructive dialogue requires much more.

And its user experience design and processes need to maximize, not only engagement, but even more effective and civil deliberative discourse. And that is reasonably easy to do.

But it also requires the possibility to confidently hold off-the-record and ephemeral digital dialogues, as we can in-person in hallways, back rooms, and lunch meetings. Such features will need to be provided to provide sufficient security levels of the authenticity, confidentiality and pseudonymity of communications - while ensuring legitimate lawful access - to prevent their abuse. Not an easy feat indeed!

Can the EU lead the way?

With the invasion of Ukraine, Germany has approved a 40% increase in defense spending plus a one-off 100 billion euros boost, which will be likely followed by smaller increases by other EU nations, as well as as forms of stronger coordination of foreign policy and defense - constrained today by a consensus requirement - or among some EU member states, to bypass and lead the reform of those constraints.

There is therefore an opportunity that such an initiative will initially be advanced by and among the latter, as a dual-purpose initiative that will be contributing at once to an EU-led transatlantic cyber/informational military/civilian defense capability building initiative and, just as much, a digital platform for global dialogue, that remains open for joining by all nations, globally, even adversarial ones at a later stage, but on a completely equal basis, motivated by adjacent intentions of the UN to act as a vehicle for dialogue amongst nations.

Problems even with current Top Hardware-based Systems

Apps on mainstream client devices cannot provide the required security levels. While specialized ad-hoc solutions like the US-Russia so-called “Red Phone” are in place between the leaders of great powers - but still incredibly not in place between US and China - secure client devices are available to top diplomats and governmental officials for communications within and across nations.

Yet, these solutions are often limited in interoperability with a given geopolitical alliance, such as NATO or EU. Also, both their security against illegitimate interception, and security for legitimate interception (i.e. mechanisms for internal legitimate lawful interception) are built according to standards and certifications that are not fully transparent and comprehensive, that is developed mostly by one nation in a non-fully transparent way, and so are not trusted by third nations and nations of third alliances, and often doubted even by members of the same alliance.

The shortcomings of such communication infrastructure, even those certified by EU and NATO countries for their highest levels of secrecy, are still not ensuring the levels of actual and perceived trustworthiness, that would be necessary and achievable to sufficiently mitigate both the risk of spying on such communications and the risk of the inability to intercept them if legitimately authorized to do so.

To achieve the required levels of actual and perceived trustworthiness on the IT and IT providers, all blind or “non sufficient verified” trust should be eliminated, moving from a “trust BUT verify” to a”trust OR verify” approach.

Germany and France converge on Open App-based Security for Governmental Use

Since 2019, both Germany and France have developed open-source secure messaging solutions for their soldiers, the German BwMessenger and the French Tchap, based on the open-source app Element for mainstream mobile operating systems, and its related open protocol Matrix, suitable for decentralization, security, and client interoperability.

It has been called by the German Data commissioner as a possible new secure messaging platform base for Europe (and beyond as a new dominant standard?!) "Possibly we could even set up a data protection-friendly messenger service in cooperation with France, which could represent a real alternative to existing products on the market as a pan-European solution in the medium term”.

It was revealed last December that Wire App, an open-source end-to-end encryption secure messaging app, was used as the de-facto standard for mobile communications for the security of coalition government negotiations, and was also endorsed by the German IT security standardization body, BSI.

Wire is one of the World's leading open-source end-to-end encryption secure messaging apps. As opposed to its competitor Signal, and similarly to its Swiss competitor Threema, it provides server-side management and logging - and for enterprise and governmental control, compliance and lawful access use to ensure both security and accountability.

Although Wire App public security track records and history are significantly less solid and clear than Signal.

Concerns have emerged in the past from known external security reviews. Its claim for security levels does not come from adherence to some high-level security standards, but mainly by its being open source, being suggested by BSI, and from being moderately adopted in the market, especially in Germany.

Originally based in Zug, Switzerland, the same city as Crypto AG, their development was moved to the US, and over the last few years, mostly in Berlin. Meanwhile, over the years, ownership moved from Zug to the US and Germany in 2020. Ownership and funding are also hard to understand.

Nevertheless, Wire App or Element - similarly to Threema and Signal - seems to be a very solid open-source basis for EU/Germany to build sovereign app-based IT for its institutions, politician, and citizens if supported by suitable, certifications for such IT that are deep and trustworthy in their governance, and are not just ex-post but also include the life-cycle of the apps, ownership, history, and more.

“Made in Germany” hardware-based secure communications for all?

These initiatives are very encouraging. There are multiple solid, open, battle-tested secure messaging solutions being developed in an open and multinational way.

Great. Problem solved? Let’s just incentivize EU diplomats and citizens alike to use those solutions for messaging and social networking, as in Telegram. Not so easy!

In fact, as promising as such plans are for secure messaging apps, they are far from sufficient - both for their deployment inside government and outside - on two fronts: (1) they leave unresolved the need for sufficient enabling legitimate cyber-investigation; (b) the do not ensure nearly the security and privacy needed by sensitive users.

On the first front, given the levels of metadata and data security reached by those apps, they create very serious problems in preventing their abuse - such as stifling investigation of illegal far-right activities within or outside government. A problem recognized by Matrix/Element community leaders and for which they have proposed solutions, but hardly solved or solvable with current paradigms.

On the second front, it is widely known that a secure app can never be more secure than the device it runs on, and it is now widely known that innumerable actors that acquire such capabilities or rent them can undetectably compromise such communications.

Even the need for more secure hardware solutions for German Foreign Service communications was strongly denounced by Sandro Gaycken, the Chief Scientist of Hensoldt Cyber AG, the spinoff of Airbus, building the ultra-secure open-source CPUs and OS for the most critical EU IT infrastructure.

In acknowledgment of such truth, last October 2021 the German Foreign Service announced that by the IT department of was charged with procuring a new HW-based solution, inclusive of dedicated client devices suitable for video conferences, text editing and calls, for everyday secret and classified communications of German diplomats and other ministries, starting from management and then for lower-level staff.

The plan includes, for later in 2024, a Diplo Version whereby “representatives of other countries will be provided with the solution for direct protected communication.” Then in 2025, there will be a "company version" for the private market in Germany, and then presumably abroad. There will be a private procurement for such solutions, under the guidance of BSI.

The article above reads (in its google translate version): "An expansion beyond the federal authorities is already firmly planned. In 2024, participants from abroad are to be involved in the “Diplo version”. The vision: Representatives of other countries will be provided with the solution for direct protected communication. This would enable the federal government to confidently and independently set up confidential channels with partners and allies around the world."

Challenges of “Made in Germany” international IT security standards

Why is the German government creating a “Diplo Version” hardware device for secure diplomatic communications, and seeking to “provide” it to its allies, instead of pursuing EU solutions through EU standards, using mechanisms like the EU Cybersecurity Certification Framework, EUCC or SOGIS.org, or via NATO? Why go at it alone?

Evidently, after many years of trying in such fora, the German BSI and its EU equivalents were unable to do so yet, due to their governance constraints (consensus decision-making and distortions in the bureaucratic process) have proven to be unfit to achieve yet the actual and perceived IT trustworthiness levels of the IT systems that are needed for the most demanding IT systems for communications - and mechanism for managing their legitimate lawful access.

Back in 2019, there was still hope. That is what we understood: we were told ultimately by the President of BSI in its office in September 2019 when we were invited to Bonn to present our Trustless Computing Certification Body, and he concluded they were going to pursue goals similar to our initiative through the newly established EU process. It is therefore very understandable how Germany, in the face of seemingly unfixable inadequacy of such international institutions, may be planning to "go it alone", in order to provide itself and its allies, and EU citizens, with the IT that they urgently need to sustain democracy.

Crypto AG and German international leadership

Germany's history during the World Wars and the more recent Crypto AG intelligence operation, stands as proof to the World of German prowess in IT security, but also of the need for external oversight.

It is I would argue very unlikely that Germany's allies nations and their citizens, and even their own German citizens, would sufficiently trust and widely adopt the resulting standards and technologies as planned by Germany, unless they will equally, democratically, and fully be involved in the governance of such certifications.

By Crypto AG scandal we refer to the fact that last February 13th, 2020 it was revealed, that in the year 1970 the German secret service BND and the CIA secretly became 50/50 owners of the Swiss company Crypto AG, the World's leading company selling secure IT systems that were selling the most widely IT used for the most secure communications by heads of state, top diplomats and intelligence agencies of third countries, and many German allies. Crypto AG was based in the small city of Zug, the same as the original and current headquarters of Wire App, mentioned above.

It sold to over 130 nations, becoming a de-facto standard which forced even those not trusting it to use it, by leveraging the network effects: a dynamic similar to what happens today with most citizens being basically forced to use WhatsApp as everyone else does.

The Crypto AG demonstrated that IT can be made ultra-secure, i.e., resisting even the most powerful attackers, at relatively moderate R&D costs and low marginal costs. It also proved that 3rd-party access to encrypted data and communications - solely for such ultra-secure IT systems - can be reliably restricted to intended parties - contradicting widely shared ideas about the impossibility in all cases of a secure-enough "front-door.

The Crypto AG intelligence operation was likely very influential enabling a more democratic geopolitical block to prevail over a lesser one. Right after the Cold War, Germany gave or sold its stakes in such a company to the CIA, likely because the main mission was achieved, and therefore its continued involvement in such an operation would be incompatible with its role in the EU project.

Germany's internal fight against far-right subversion

But then any substantial or radical increase in the level of IT security of communications of German public officials and citizens can have very serious consequences in favouring terrorism, political extremism, or other grave crimes unless means to intercept them are available in case end users are found by a civilian judge to be suspect of grave crimes.

Given the rise of far-right around the World, in the US, and in Germany - and repeated German oversight failures (or “failures”) of illegal or potentially illegal far-right activities, which lead in 2012 and in 2020 to the resignation of the German Head of intelligence - it is understandable how the new German government has elected Ms. Nancy Faeser to the post of Ministry of Interior, who stated at the inception of her acceptance speech “The fight against right-wing extremism has brought me personally into politics”. As of March 2022, the far-right activities of AfD, a 10%-strong German party, were deemed so substantive by a German judge to authorize the German Internal Intelligence Service to place the entire party under surveillance.

It may in fact be a good idea if German democratic processes could have more visibility when authorized by a civilian judge, the parliament or Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution concludes there is "probable cause", to keep on check suspected German citizens, and groups, and public officials, especially elected and security agency ones - to mitigate the risk of their abuse of encrypted apps or devices to attempt to subvert democracy.

Could Germany, instead of going at it alone, co-lead in the creation of a multilateral democratic venture to foster secure and democratic IT for all?

The initiative by the German government to fill in a void of secure and sovereign human communications for its institutions, its citizens and that of its allies, is highly commendable.

Yet, the constraints highlighted above point to the fact that it may be much easier to achieve such goals in a multilateral and transparent manner, leading to the creation of a new open international certification body (not a treaty), rather than going at it alone, or relying on existing multilateral institutions.

Instead of being driven only by the German Foreign Service IT Department, influenced by a wide web of national agencies, lead by the BSI technical guidance through the Ministry of Interior - the definition and governance of such standards and certification, and their future governance could be delegated in a to-be-create new democratic and transparent transnational body, lead by a few like-minded democratic and neutral nations, and eventually open to all nations on equal terms.

Such a body would set standards, certify and services and devices that are suitable both for secure and accountable diplomacy, as well as for secure and democratic citizen digital communication and social networking, as well as take the responsibility to govern the resulting digital sphere of communications, as democratic nations have been doing for communication in public spaces for centuries, taking on the kind of decisions that Facebook Oversight Board (but mostly Mr. Zuckerberg) does for the digital space created by Facebook.

Both citizens and officials will have a choice to go for certified “App & Cloud” solutions or “Device & Cloud”, depending on computing use cases, and the levels of their actual or perceived risk profile. The app and cloud components can be based on EU technologies like Wire and Hensoldt Cyber, (Germany-based spinoff of Airbus, controlled by several large EU nations) which are in turn based on high-security open-source technologies like Signal, Sel4, and Risc-V. Such technologies are also widely used by the USA via DARPA and Galois, as well as by China, whereby billions are invested in Risc-V in China and Chinese nationals are part of the Sel4 Foundation, so that the most critical low level computing base can be made trusted to them.

Given today's semiconductors miniaturization, such devices can be conceived in the form of thin tablets that can be used in desktop formats and be carried in a users laptop bag, or as 2mm-thin specialized mobile device to be carried in the user's leather wallets or encased in the back of every citizens smartphone.

Provided that the socio-technical principles and the governance of such a body are appropriate - and healthy safeguards against multi-state overreach - such an arrangement could greatly increase the foreseeable acceptance and wide international private and governmental adoption of such new standards and ITs for secure communications and social networking.

Such standards, governance and IT could become the basis of the first democratic transnational human and social computing infrastructure, on top of which private persons and firms can innovate, within a democratic frame directing innovations towards the global public good.

The initiative would be inspired by the goals of previous multinational and certification initiatives, such as the GSM initiative in EU - which provided the EU a unique competitive advantage through mandatory interoperability for mobile text and voice communications that enabled it to lead the industry globally in the 90 and early 2000s - and ARTE - the channel created by the German and French state/public broadcaster to promote cultural education and analyzed among cultures that bitterly fought each other through centuries.

It would also be inspired by the creation of state/public broadcasters in EU social democracies after WW2 - to provide a unified basis of basic facts and education for citizens, unbiased from commercial interests - and of the US Federal Aviation Administration - created in 1929 provide extremely high levels of safety, that became both a protection and a huge enabler for adoption and innovation in the commercial airline industry.

We are pursuing something along those lines with our Trustless Computing Certification Body and the resulting Seevik Net.

Can we be Both Free and Safe in Cyberspace?

But the realization of such digital infrastructure not only needs to be democratically managed, but also needs to solve a huge unsolved problem: it needs to ensure both the utmost security and privacy AND enable legitimate cyber-investigation.

Yet, we live in a world where ever smaller groups of people can wreck ever-larger damage by combining powerful emerging techs to weaponize biological, nuclear, genetic, AI technologies, so such infrastructure must guarantee unprecedented levels of security and confidentiality for legitimate closed-doors dialogue, but at once it needs to ensure legitimate digital investigative capabilities and surveillance with pervasive global reach.

It requires building win-win socio-technical solutions to the apparent dichotomy of personal privacy and public safety for the Digital Age, and building governance models that are very highly democratic, resilient, competent, federal, and democratically decentralized - just as we did in the Pre-digital Age within nations, using battle-tested technologies, checks, and balances, and safeguards.

A deeper analysis of why such a body would increase both privacy and legitimate lawful access is detailed in this other long post, titled “Calls for lawful access mechanisms, the need for much better IT security, and the Trustless Computing Certification Body initiative”

Walking the Fine Line

As described in a bowling metaphor by Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology - and co-lead in The Social Dilemma documentary - this requires us to structure an EU-led social democratic model of digital society along a shrinking alley between two gutters of a Chinese-style “centralized dystopia” and US-style neo-liberal “decentralized chaos and catastrophe”.

It surely is a difficult endeavor, maybe even a moon shot, but we’ve done it before, in the pre-digital era, and not trying will guarantee we’ll fall in one of the two gutters.

Given the current geopolitical context, with Russia and China on one side, and EU and the US and other social democratic countries, on the other, such initiative will need to be brought forward to one block and NGOs, while remaining always open to joining by any nation, at any time, and on an equal basis.

Trust ultimately resides in the governance

Although the socio-technical paradigms and guidelines guiding the IT security certification and governance of the resulting digital media sphere are important, the trustworthiness of compliant IT systems ultimately resides entirely on the quality current and long-term governance, and the design of the constituent processes that will lead to its fully operational phase.

We have therefore carefully conceived a constituent process and planned governance whereby Germany, Italy and/or a few other EU nations can initiate a constituent process aimed to sustainably maximize democratic accountability, competency, and resilience from state pressures.

We’ll be hosting our 9th Edition of the Free and Safe in Cyberspace to promote such an initiative, and as a way for Germany and/or other pioneering nations to bring together other interested nations.

Key Benefits for Participating Nations

We have also analyzed in detail the advantages for a nation like Germany to be among the early governance partners of such an initiative.

Participating nations could eventually extend those certifications as preferred or mandatory for the critical subsystems of the most sensitive public and private systems - such as elections systems, critical infrastructure and dominant social media platforms - to further protect democracy and national security.

Since those certifications will not only ensure much higher security but also embed “by design” requirements to achieve very high forensic-friendliness - participating nations would also ensure a much improved and internationally-recognized cyber attribution capability for eventual hacks to such critical systems.

As an additional benefit, in the longer term - as the number of participating nations increase and more of their critical systems are certified to such standards - those nations would realistically be able to engage in enforceable cyber treaties and/or in fair and responsible retribution for grave violations of international norms.

Under this scheme, powerful participating nations would lose their arbitrary ability to hack into such IT systems arbitrarily. Yet, arguably, their cyber-investigation capability would overall improve because lawful requests for such IT systems would be: (a) ensured to timely produce the data of a legitimate suspect or criminal; (b) produce evidence that is much more attributable, and (c) stand as valid evidence in the highest courts (where Italy, Germany and France do not accept evidence acquired via Trojans). Also, requests can be processed within 1-2 hours, in urgent cases.

What about China and Russia?

Given the current shifting geopolitical context, with Russia and China on one side, the EU and US and other social democratic countries on the other, such initiative will initially be advanced by and among the latter - as a dual-purpose initiative constituting at once a joint defense capability building initiative and a digital platform for global dialogue - but always remaining open for joining by such nations on a later stage on a totally equal basis.

In the meantime, Russia and China would be represented till then by “democratic proxies” that can best approximate representation, such as former Russian or Chinese lawmakers or persons that are chosen to as much as possible represent their current governments. Also, their citizens would be represented, per quota, via random-sampled global citizens (from abroad and from their country) in the TCCB governance, and other means, to approximate representativity as best as possible via scientific methods.

More information on TCCB and Seevik Net

Visit our Trustless Computing Association website for our plans for a Trustless Computing Certification Body and Seevik Net to realize the above proposal.

The Trustless Computing Association finalized the governance and socio-technical paradigms and established the TCCB last June 24th in Geneva during the 8th Edition of its Free and Safe in Cyberspace conference series.

See here a detailed case for democratic nations to join as early governance partners of the Trustless Computing Certification Body, listing in fine detail all the benefits.

Join us in Rome next September!

In late Fall 2022, we plan to hold the 9th Edition of our Free and Safe in Cyberspace to help us bring a few leading nations, tech partners and NGOs - that have shown variable interest - come together to shape and take ownership of this initiative, sign on and commit. .

A longer case for nations on why TCCB and Seevik Net are needed to save democracy and counter authoritarianism is available in a long post published 9 days after the US Capital Attack of Jan 6th 2021, titled ”Why building a new democratic digital media platform is key to protect and enhance our democracies, and how we can do it.”

Rufo GuerreschiApril 26, 2022