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URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided
coretx wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
Since it's politically incorrect to write nazi germany, ill just write
Soviet Germany.
This type of bullshit is rooted in their culture.
tomgag wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
I like to think I wrote a good analogy of what ChatControl/client-side
scanning really is. They say "it's not a backdoor, it doesn't break E2E
encryption", and they're right.
> It's like asking to an alcoholic schizo with a history of corruption,
who only speaks Russian, and that you are forced by law to feed and
host at your place at your own expense, to check your private letters
before you're allowed to put them in an envelope. [1]
URI [1]: https://gagliardoni.net/#20250916_clientside
URI [2]: https://infosec.exchange/@tomgag/115213723470901734
russnes wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
This insane push for surveillance and privacy infringements could be
the catalyst needed for the next state exit from the EU
saubeidl wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
and thus further decline of the only democratic superpower left? Why
would that be desirable?
russnes wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
The EU is accelerating into a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine
that does nothing except say the word Democracy out loud and tax
their citizens
DoingIsLearning wrote 4 hours 35 min ago:
This dystopian direction of the European Commission coincided with a
lot of interaction between Thorn, the European Commission, and Europol.
[0][1][2]
Thorn is coincidently is also the vendor of Spotlight, software which
solves exactly the problem they are lobbying against.
Thiel's Palantir also has overlapping software capabilities and is also
raising questions in their work with Europol. [3] Connecting these dots
was the only thing that made sense to me in order to explain why these
repeated repackaged proposals keep steam rolling everything despite all
the security concerns, unconstitutionality, and general lack of common
sense.
[0] [1] [2] [3]
URI [1]: https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-sl...
URI [2]: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start-u...
URI [3]: https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017
URI [4]: https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/dutch-group-calls-for...
jcarrano wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
It's sad to see Germans have not learned the lessons of the past. If
you are in Berlin I highly recommend the Stasi Museum to understand how
dystopic mass surveillance can get.
rdm_blackhole wrote 6 hours 49 min ago:
Whatever happens, at least Signal will not be complicit in this shit
show. Will WhatsApp and IMessage bend the knee? I guess we will see.
topranks wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
I mean itâs not hard to predict. Inevitably they will as their
parent companies wonât give up such a big market.
How well a ban on signal would be enforced if they donât comply
would be interesting.
I still feel like this will fail to come into effect like all the
other times. But we gotta keep eyes on it.
AAAAaccountAAAA wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
I have understood that Whatsapp is not a terribly profitable
product for Meta, so it is possible that it would just be withdrawn
from Europe, instead of making expensive and controversial
modifications.
iMessage is not really a thing in Europe. Apple phones are simply
not popular enough here for it to be an useful feature. I guess
Apple would just disable it for European users.
rdm_blackhole wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
Apple did not bend the knee in the UK, it forced the hand of the UK
to reveal it's goals. Obviously we will see, I don't have much hope
either. As for Signal, I hope they pull out as it will get media
coverage somewhat on this issue.
bgwalter wrote 7 hours 28 min ago:
It should be implemented for politicians: [1] "Von der Leyen previously
used her phone to award contracts worth several hundred million euros
while acting as defense minister of Germany, effectively bypassing
public procurement processes. She subsequently deleted all messages
from her phone when investigators probed her. While awarding the
COVID-19 vaccine contracts worth billions of euros as head of EU
commission, she similarly bypassed procurement processes via her phone
and withheld messages on it."
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate
AndyMcConachie wrote 8 hours 59 min ago:
As a Dutch citizen Chat Control is the first time I genuinely wish the
Netherlands was not part of the EU.
Freak_NL wrote 8 hours 48 min ago:
That seems naive â this was pushed by several Dutch ministers over
the past decades. It would have been made law here in any case.
Law and order, tuff-on-crime political parties (PVV, VVD, CDA¹) just
love the idea of control over citizen's chat messages.
This is not 'because of the EU'. We are part of the EU and influence
its policies.
1:
URI [1]: https://chatcontrole.nl/stemwijzer2023/
DonHopkins wrote 9 hours 0 min ago:
Wish we the public could read all the private chat logs of all the
people who decided to be undecided.
brainzap wrote 9 hours 6 min ago:
Why cant they just record meta data and hand it out on courts order.
Why must it be a backdoor
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
A few comments about the state of security and privacy in the UK so let
me reply with a top level comment instead:
People forget that the UK has ChatControl. It was made into law as part
of the Online Safety Act 2023. It has not been enforced so far because
it's not "technically feasible to do so" and because companies
threatened to leave the UK with their services. You can be 100% certain
it will suddenly become feasible if EU does the same.
> The Act also requires platforms, including end-to-end encrypted
messengers, to scan for child pornography, which experts say is not
possible to implement without undermining users' privacy.[6] The
government has said it does not intend to enforce this provision of the
Act until it becomes "technically feasible" to do so.[7] The Act also
obliges technology platforms to introduce systems that will allow users
to better filter out the harmful content they do not want to see.[8][9]
[1]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
URI [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66028773
yuumei wrote 8 hours 57 min ago:
Worth noting that with RIPA (2000, activated in 2007) UK has enforced
key disclosure. It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any
data for any reason (including random data).
I would say the UK has worse privacy than any other country on earth.
I'm really hoping for plausible deniability to become more common to
help protect against the government.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...
Tenemo wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
The UK has worse privacy than ANY other country on Earth? Really?
Gud wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
No other country has willingly turned itself into a total
panopticon, no.
Perhaps others would like to - but they don't have the resources.
You can't walk a fucking meter on the streets without being
recorded by the nanny state.
rollcat wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
> It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any data for any
reason [...].
So it's also illegal to not know the password?
I've forgotten my own debit card PIN or phone unlock code on a
couple occasions.
> (including random data)
Encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data. The only hint
is the presence of metadata (GPG armor, bootloader password prompt,
etc).
This law is catch-all BS designed to persecute people for no other
reason.
nickslaughter02 wrote 8 hours 50 min ago:
More countries will follow after they ratify Russia's "United
Nations Convention against Cybercrime" which has key disclosure
explicitly stated in the text.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_ag...
littlecranky67 wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
Can someone please explain to me how that law will prevent anything or
anybody from encrypted messaging, if I can just whip up a website and
use javascript plus websockets/webrtc to implement encrypted chat?
Like, yes, you can prevent the FANANG from implementing it, but
criminals will just use the secure one...
sandstrom wrote 2 hours 30 min ago:
This is the part that I think most politicians simply don't
understand.
I've been trying to argue this point with my government several times
(some MPs even replied friendly, so they'd actually read it, but
still don't understand or believe it).
topranks wrote 6 hours 25 min ago:
It wonât.
It makes no attempt to outlaw encryption. We can still legally use
PGP and completely avoid eavesdropping.
What it does mandate is that messaging providers who they will name
(think WhatsApp, Signal), will be obliged to have people reviewing
the content of all messages sent.
All but the stupidest of criminals will thus work around it,
encrypting themselves over the top. While the average Joe gets all
their messages read.
rollcat wrote 6 hours 56 min ago:
> [...] I can just whip up a website and use javascript plus
websockets/webrtc to implement encrypted chat?
HTTPS relies on centralised authority. It's right there in the name:
Certificate Authority.
Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call when you are unable
to speak?
probably_wrong wrote 8 hours 4 min ago:
I believe the concept is that I may not be able to jail you for your
criminal activity but I can still jail you for breaking the
encryption law.
But more generally I think one has to account for the power of the
default option - with so many criminals posting their crimes on
social media and/or their Venmo descriptions, the likelihood of
criminals abandoning (say) WhatsApp and coding their own is rather
slim.
nickslaughter02 wrote 8 hours 59 min ago:
It will not. Criminals will move elsewhere and they will be spying on
regular citizens. As intended.
flumpcakes wrote 9 hours 13 min ago:
People are so emotive about this issue and the online safety act in the
UK. They jump to conclusions that applied to any other issue would be
conspiratorial.
It's not about "control" and "spying". The fact is it is policing that
has been made extremely hard due to technology.
silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding
on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth. Silly mistake and
unfathomably good luck that someone in the investigating team was just
googling around.
The politicians are lay people, and only have one tool in their
toolbox: laws. So every solution is a legal one.
"Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million children
every year because they use a VPN." Solution? Create a law requiring
VPNs to be registered to a user with their address. There's no
conspiracy here - it's simple cause and effect. This is a contrived
worst case example because this level of accountability? is not
currently proposed.
I would prefer other solutions, but these solutions are firstly much
easier for the politicians to understand and also much cheaper to
implement and see results.
alexey-salmin wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
> Silly mistake and unfathomably good luck that someone in the
investigating team was just googling around.
No, this is not "unfathomably good luck", this is how the system
works. Most of crimes are repeated crimes, most of the criminals are
serial criminals. People who obey the law, then break it once, then
obey it ever since -- are very rare and even if they're not caught I
wouldn't care much anyway.
And if you're a normal criminal doing your criminal stuff day after
day and year after year you'll make mistakes. One of them will get
you caught.
Never in the history of humanity did the law enforcement cast a net
that caught 100% of crime, it always had been the game of
probabilities, luck and persistence. Steal once and you'll likely
walk away. Steal every day to make a living and you'll get caught
many times in your lifetime.
dns_snek wrote 7 hours 24 min ago:
Yeah, nonsense, bullshit, whatever you want to call it. Actual pedos
will trivially bypass Chat Control by switching to a messaging
service that doesn't enforce it, or even by sending encrypted ZIP
files via any ordinary messaging service.
> silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy
responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth
Does this justify every browser reporting every URL you visit to the
government, and implementing a government-controlled blocklist of
URLs on the off chance that a criminal might use Chrome for their
criminal activity?
flumpcakes wrote 4 hours 21 min ago:
> Yeah, nonsense, bullshit, whatever you want to call it. Actual
pedos will trivially bypass Chat Control by switching to a
messaging service that doesn't enforce it, or even by sending
encrypted ZIP files via any ordinary messaging service.
Yep, and then the politicians will create laws that outlaw
encrypting zip files without a backdoor etc. That's my point,
there's no nefarious plot here, it's just dumb laws to solve real
problems.
I don't want these laws but they're going to be pushed while
everyone is just pushing back on conspiracy grounds. That's not
going to win over the average person.
dns_snek wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
> That's my point, there's no nefarious plot here, it's just dumb
laws to solve real problems.
You don't know the plot any more than we do. Whether the current
government is nefarious or not is quite irrelevant.
Chat Control is a surveillance and censorship tool that we're
being pinkie-promised will only be used "for good". In reality it
is a tool which can be repurposed for domestic oppression,
political persecution, and crowd control overnight at the
government's sole discretion.
> everyone is just pushing back on conspiracy grounds.
That's not a conspiracy, that's just a factual statement about
the indiscriminate capabilities of this technology. Governments
across the world have a near-100% track record of abusing their
power. It's not a matter of "if", it's only a matter of "when".
Otherwise what should we do next? Abolish freedom of speech? You
wouldn't be silly enough to believe that the government would
imprison you for your political speech, would you? That's
conspiratorial thinking.
> That's not going to win over the average person.
Why should we care? If the fact of the matter has been explained
to them and they're still gullible enough to give up their most
essential civil liberties in exchange for nothing, they're a lost
cause and a waste of time.
I don't count on the average village idiot to save the day here,
I expect the EU courts to strike the law because it clearly
violates the charter of fundamental human rights.
flumpcakes wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
Sovereign governments already hold the ultimate power in
society. By your reasoning any and all laws are an attack on
your liberty.
dns_snek wrote 28 min ago:
If you're going to engage in bad faith then I'm not
interested.
My "reasoning" is firmly rooted in the founding principles of
liberal democracies and our legally recognized fundamental
rights.
Our previous run-ins with fascism is why they exist, and
anyone working to delegitimize them needs to be treated with
utmost suspicion.
pakitan wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
> "Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million
children every year because they use a VPN."
Bullshit. The UK police basically ignored a pedophile ring under
their noses, with zero VPNs involved. I'm not expert on the matter
but I'm pretty sure a E2E is not an essential part of sexual abuse.
graemep wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
And the politician ultimately responsible for (as in "she was in
charge and failed to prevent/deal with it") the worst child abuse
scandal in the UK went on to hold more senior positions and Blair
wanted to make her minister for children at one point.
account42 wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
Exactly. Where is the outcry from the same politicians about the
Epstein client list being shoved under the rug by the US? Nowhere?
Then they don't actually care about protecting children.
ethin wrote 9 hours 0 min ago:
This is utter nonsense. The "technology and encryption make law
enforcement harder" narrative is pushed by people to gain power.
That's all there is to it. Technology has, if anything, made
surveillance and law enforcement so much easier than it ever has been
before. Law enforcement always wants to look helpless and like the
victim though because they want absolute control over your life.
Bairfhionn wrote 9 hours 6 min ago:
But they do find them without the tools. Every other week there are
terror suspects arrested. Every week some pedophiles are arrested.
If something does happen later it comes out that the suspects were
known already but they just didn't act on the suspicion.
tietjens wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany? I can't imagine the
courts would let this stand.
eqvinox wrote 9 hours 17 min ago:
Datenschutz doesn't prevent court-ordered telecomms surveillance
either. This would presumably fall in the same category. (Or in
fact be unconstitutional, as BVerfG has already ruled several times
regarding blanket data collection in other context.)
tietjens wrote 9 hours 12 min ago:
Ah, so my email address is highly private info. But all of my
communications are not. Great.
DocTomoe wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
No, you see, you can trust Father State. He would never ever do
anything bad with your data. Trust him. 1933-1945? 1948-1990?
Those were ... different times. He's been on a twelve steps
program. He's better now.
Data to private companies? That baker that remembers your
telelphone number that's DANGEROUS. He could sell the info how
many breadrolls you buy per week to the FSB or the MSS. Also, we
would lose a chance to add extra fines to small and medium
companies, and no-one wants that, do we? ⸮
The older I become, the more 'government' - regardless of the
colors it is wearing at the time - looks like Thénardier to me.
aleph_minus_one wrote 9 hours 17 min ago:
> What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany?
Datenschutz - Schmatenschutz.
"Datenschutz" is something that politicians talk about in their
"Sonntagsreden" [Sunday sermons; a term hard to translate into
English]. During the rest of the week, the politicians pass laws to
gouge out civil liberties (because of "think of the children",
"terrorists", "child abusers", "right-wing movements" - whatever is
opportune in the current political climate).
tietjens wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
I get what you mean, but Datenschutz and the bizarre processes
built to appease it make an appearance almost every day here.
codeptualize wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
One interesting line in the proposal:
> Detection will not apply to accounts used by the State for national
security purposes,
maintaining law and order or military purposes;
If it's all very safe and accurate, why is this exception necessary?
Doesn't this say either that it's not secure, or that there is a likely
hood that there will be false positives that will be reviewed?
If they have it all figured out, this exception should not be
necessary. The reality is that it isn't secure as they are creating
backdoors in the encryption, and they will flag many communications
incorrectly. That means a lot of legal private communications will
leak, and/or will be reviewed by the EU that they have absolutely no
business looking into.
It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan
over and over again.
I also wonder about the business implications. I don't think we can
pass compliance if we communicate over channels that are not encrypted.
We might not be able to do business internationally anymore as our
communications will be scanned and reviewed by the EU.
max_ wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
> If it's all very safe and accurate, why is this exception
necessary? Doesn't this say either that it's not secure, or that
there is a likely hood that there will be false positives that will
be reviewed?
Its all a scam! No one cares about you.
They are just setting up the new infrastructure to manipulate &
control the docile donkeys more effectively (working class)
Unfortunately, they will be successful.
philwelch wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
âFalse positivesâ is the most likely explanation. A common tactic
for government agents is to pose as criminals and extremists, either
to more effectively infiltrate existing criminal or extremist
networks or to run sting/entrapment operations.
topranks wrote 6 hours 32 min ago:
If you read it closely they are not mandating backdoors in
encryption.
WhatsApp could still have messages end-to-end encrypted. What they
would be mandated to do is for the app to send copies of the messages
to WhatsApp for their staff to review the contents.
This obviously breaks the point of end-to-end encryption. Without
actually making it illegal for them to use encryption, or add any
âbackdoorâ so it can be reversed.
Itâs a weasely way of trying to have their cake and eat it.
hsbauauvhabzb wrote 6 hours 28 min ago:
So⦠a backdoor?
DaiPlusPlus wrote 6 hours 23 min ago:
Not a backdoor, but a built-in snitch.
WithinReason wrote 5 hours 59 min ago:
isn't that a backdoor?
mcv wrote 4 hours 51 min ago:
I think this is more the entire front of the house being open
to the street.
baobun wrote 4 hours 54 min ago:
To me, a backdoor is passive. There for someone to enter.
What's under discussion here is sonething active, so in some
sense worse.
rightbyte wrote 5 hours 0 min ago:
Backdoor kinda implies it is not used very much or it would
be a front door.
trilogic wrote 3 hours 14 min ago:
But it is available for use. Corruption is not a fantasy
but a reality. Usually who reach the top on political scale
have seen it all, I mean all. Being polite to describe this
reality use cases, (inside trading, political targeting,
discrimination, monopoly etc). Who would know, who can stop
it, who would dare!
What are the protection mechanisms?
Are we suppose to hope that the untouchable/s is 100%
honest?
It feels uncomfortable to say the least.
general1465 wrote 6 hours 46 min ago:
It is pointless exception. If chat control will pass, everything is
vulnerable by design. Or how do you distinguish if WhatsApp is
installed on a phone of Joe Nobody or or a phone of a politician? You
won't, unless you have some list, which can be leaked and from "do
not touch credentials" will turn "target these credentials"
eagleal wrote 6 hours 5 min ago:
The exception means legally, that category of people, can't be
prosecuted even if incriminating stuff were collected through such
channels.
The next logical step, after a prosecutor or political push, would
be for the Highest Order Courts of Member countries to invalidate
evidence collected through such channels for those categories of
people.
jeltz wrote 2 hours 53 min ago:
Nope, not in Sweden. Anything can be used as evidence here, even
illegally obtained stuff.
codeptualize wrote 6 hours 33 min ago:
Haha thatâs a good point, I guess another sign that they really
have no clue what they are doing
hopelite wrote 7 hours 28 min ago:
I think you may be looking at this wrong if you think itâs a
ridiculous plan. Itâs no more âridiculousâ than when anyone
else is lying, deceiving, gaslighting, manipulating, and controlling
and trying to hide and obscure that fact.
Pardon the comparison, but this mindset reminds me of a person that
makes half hearted rationalizations and excuses for their abusive
partnerâs clearly hostile, vile, enemy actions when they are being
cheated on. Itâs just that the victims usually cannot see the trap
they are in, especially not from within that trap that has been made
to look very appealing for deceptive purposes in the first place.
Europeans in particular, especially anyone under 30 who does not even
know anything other than a world of the EU and all the shiny EU
PR/Propaganda that makes you not want to trust your lying eyes that
they are constantly being groomed and love-bombed with, intentionally
are deprived of the very tools necessary to recognize the danger of
the situation they are in. Because after all, you have a common
currency now and isnât that great, right? And donât you like
traveling, you like traveling and taking drugs and having sex; you
like the sex right? So pay no attention to the cost for the deal with
that devil is losing self-determination and real freedom as people
fall hard to the typical patterns of abuse and love-bombing. Itâs
affection and gifts today, abuse later when the trap has sprung!
And thereâs no polite asking to be released from a tyrannical,
abusive totalitarian system later when the trap has been sprung and
your culture and people has been polluted and intentionally mixed up
to destroy it. Or even now for that matter, as people like I am doing
right now, who simply point out that the EU is an illegitimate
abusive subversion of legitimate national statehood and ethnic
self-determination and thereby an objective tyranny, are aggressed
against hard and immediately.
The people of what would become the Soviet Union or even communist
China also thought the wonderful bright eyed Bolshevik/Cultural
Revolution communist revolution would solve all the problems with
equality for all. Now the system does not even teach what a bait and
switch hell and destroyer of cultures and people the Soviet Union and
Maliâs China were anymore because those ideas and the people who
hold them and perpetrated those evils upon humanity are now in
control of the EU and are trying hard to get their vile hooks deeper
into the USA too.
maybelsyrup wrote 2 hours 26 min ago:
> and ethnic self-determination
Didnât know where this was going but Iâm glad you told us
baobun wrote 4 hours 51 min ago:
You got me in the first half.
actionfromafar wrote 5 hours 51 min ago:
"intentionally mixed up to destroy it"
Can you expand on that.
throw-the-towel wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
As a Russian whose parents actually remember the USSR, I'm
genuinely horrified by the Brezhnev vibes the EU's giving off.
jacquesm wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
As someone who lived in a country under the russian boot at some
point and who remembers the USSR from direct experience, you
probably have a lot of stuff to study up on. But be careful on
what internet connection you do it.
throw-the-towel wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
Direct experience of the USSR, in the Netherlands? I must be in
the wrong timeline because mine certainly didn't have the Dutch
Soviet Socialist Republic!
Anyway, it's cute that you chose to respond with a personal
attack on me. Looks like you don't have any other argument, and
you know it :)
jacquesm wrote 41 min ago:
You have no clue.
FirmwareBurner wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
Maybe you could also say why you think he's wrong instead of
sending him to brush up on.
munksbeer wrote 8 hours 24 min ago:
> It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous
plan over and over again.
There is a certain group of politicians who are pushing for this very
hard. In this case, the main thrust seems to be coming from Denmark,
but from what I understand there are groups (eg. europol) pushing
this from behind the scenes. They need the politicians to get it
done.
graemep wrote 5 hours 48 min ago:
I think that one problem is that politicians defer too much to
"experts" in decisions like this.
I cannot remember who it was, but one British prime minister, when
told by intelligence services that they needed greater surveillance
powers, told them essentially, that of course they would claim
that, and firmly refused.
Politicians now mostly lack the backbone. That does not stop them
ignoring expert advice when it is politically inconvenient, of
course.
psychoslave wrote 4 hours 41 min ago:
The problem is not they ask experts. Politicians are so utterly
incompetent on the thing they are putting law on, at the level
they will believe openoffice is a firewall[1]. That doesnât
mean all of them are that blatantly unaware of the basics for
which they are supposed to decide of some rule, but that is
definitely a thing.
The next thing is, do they know how to rely efficiently on a
diverse panel of expert, or do they take only
yes-man/lobby-funded experts around them?
On a deeper level, are they accountable of the consequences of
their actions when they enforce laws which any mildly skilled
person in the field could tell will have disastrous side effects
and not any meaningful effect on the (supposedly) intended goal?
What we need is direct democracy, where every apt citizen have a
duty to actively engage in the rules applied without caste
exception.
Letâs protect children, yes. What about making sure not any
stay without a shelve to pass the winter[2]? Destroying the right
of private conversation except for the caste which decide to
impose that for everyone else is the very exact move to offering
children a brighter future. [1]
URI [1]: https://framablog.org/2009/04/02/hadopi-albanel-pare-feu...
URI [2]: https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20240919.OBS93798/en-e...
graemep wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
> The next thing is, do they know how to rely efficiently on a
diverse panel of expert, or do they take only
yes-man/lobby-funded experts around them?
Unfortunately, I know the answer to that!
> The problem is not they ask experts
I think with with IT they do realise that they do not know.
They also believe someone who says something is feasible, or a
good solution over someone who says it is not.
ulrikrasmussen wrote 6 hours 33 min ago:
Our current minister of justice in Denmark, Peter Hummelgaard, says
"yes" to everything proposed by the police and intelligence
agencies. Meanwhile, he has demonstrated no ability whatsoever of
understanding the technical challenges of implementing something
like this, and he firmly insists on the false claim that it is
possible to let the police read encrypted communication without
compromising the security model. He also directly spreads
misinformation and downplays the significance of this by falsely
claiming that Meta and others already scan E2EE chats to show us
advertisements. He has said that he wants a crime-free society, and
I don't doubt that that is his goal. I just also think he is too
stupid to understand that a crime-free society has never existed,
and if it is attainable, then it is probably not a very free
society.
All in all, he seems to be a scared, stupid sock-puppet of Europol.
johnisgood wrote 5 hours 9 min ago:
And I doubt you achieve it by taking away people's privacy. There
are bigger issues that need to be addressed and have nothing to
do with E2EE. If they cannot address that, then ...? They just do
not seem to care about what they are claiming to care about.
codeptualize wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
Maybe we should scan their communications for corruption and undue
influence. I'm sure it's all above board, so it should be fine if
we get an independent group to review them right? (Just following
to their reasoning..)
ThrowawayTestr wrote 8 hours 20 min ago:
Trolltrace is becoming real
erlend_sh wrote 8 hours 46 min ago:
That one line on its own should be enough put the illegitimacy of
this proposal on clear display. Privacy for me (the surveillance
state) but not for thee (the populace).
p0w3n3d wrote 8 hours 46 min ago:
Oh Harry, don't worry! Everyone can happen to have bloated his aunt
by an accident!
(quoting from memory), and also
I like Ludo. He was the one who got us such good tickets for the
Cup. I did him a bit of a favour: His brother, Otto, got into a spot
of trouble â a lawnmower with unnatural powers â I smoothed the
whole thing over."
Bairfhionn wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
The exclusion includes politicians because there would suddenly be a
paper trail. Especially in the EU there were lots of suddenly lost
messages.
Security is just the scapegoat excuse.
dsign wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
I think the surveillance state is gonna stay; we have been slipping
into it just so and every electronic system out there wants to spy on
us, beginning with our Windows and Mac computers and even the Sonos
speaker. Small mystery that police forces want their slice of pie so
badly.
Freedom of expression has been of a limited nature already for some
years (just cast Israel in a bad light in USA and see what happens).
With the coming wave of AI-powered surveillance, which may be even
powerful enough to read your sexual orientation from examining
direction and duration of glances in survtech feeds, we just need a
small misstep (say, another twin towers-type catastrophe) for even
freedom of thought to become a privilege to be had in isolated and
protected places.
Source: I write dystopias on the subject.
URI [1]: https://w.ouzu.im
p0w3n3d wrote 8 hours 41 min ago:
It's been constantly weakened and people were always saying "don't
worry, we will find a workaround, we should do nothing".
ptero wrote 9 hours 22 min ago:
Freedom of speech is doing not great, but still OK in the US. The
government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the free
speech protections can and should guarantee.
What now happens more is that big private companies, having huge
influence on individual life in everything from communication to
banking, attack people for their views. The cure for it might be to
ease and speed up the way for people to push back against that. From
de-monopolization to government mediators and arbitrage binding for
companies (but not for the individuals so they can still sue), etc.
ookdatnog wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
> The government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the
free speech protections can and should guarantee.
This has absolutely started happening, albeit not yet on a
large-scale, systematic basis. Mahmoud Khalil [0] resided in the US
legally when he was detained with the intention to deport.
[0]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Khalil_(activist)
vorpalhex wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
Khalil also gave material support to terrorists which is
explicitly called out as a no-no on your residency paperwork.
ookdatnog wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
That would be a crime. Khalil was not charged with any crime.
The only conceivable reason to not charge him at this point, is
because there is no evidence of him committing a crime.
DocTomoe wrote 9 hours 9 min ago:
Between 'the government is no prosecuting for speech' and 'the
government makes up unrelated charges when they do not like your
speech', as seem to happen a lot these days is only a very, very
thin line. Rümeysa Ãztürk comes to mind [1]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Rümeysa_Ãztü...
ptero wrote 6 hours 6 min ago:
Using another pretext to target someone for their views is
definitely a thing. This is not new (e.g., the Assange case) but
its frequency is increasing.
I am going to offend both sides with what comes next (and curious
how many downvotes it will attract), but I put only a small
fraction of the blame for the increase in the above on the
government which always wants to do this unless they feel a
strong, popular pushback.
The real blame goes to the population that is happy to tolerate
the government abuse of the laws as long as they think the blows
are landing on their opponents. Silencing covid restriction
protesters and BLM riots critics? Well, we are not defending
antivaxxers and racists. Throwing out any idea of a due process
in ICE raids? Well, we need to do something about the crime. And
so on... Whereas 50 years ago, at least in the US, any jury would
have thrown an attempt to break laws for a good cause out of
court so the government would not even try to prosecute any of
it.
In order to roll back government overreach we need to fight
government overreach, even in cases where we strongly dislike the
current target of that overreach. My 2c.
stateofinquiry wrote 4 hours 11 min ago:
Tribalism eroding the rights of all. Makes sense to me! I think
you are on to something here.
flanked-evergl wrote 9 hours 44 min ago:
EU must go.
russnes wrote 3 hours 14 min ago:
down with the EU
0xy wrote 9 hours 8 min ago:
The EU began as a simple customs bloc and negotiating tool. It has
morphed into a blood sucking behemoth preventing growth and
discouraging progress.
anthk wrote 9 hours 9 min ago:
No, just Ursula and lobbies among the Denmark wacko against privacy.
gpderetta wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
No EU means that most states would already have implemented Chat
Control. Case in point, the UK.
rdm_blackhole wrote 6 hours 45 min ago:
No EU means that this law would have to passed in 27 different
countries whihc would make it much harder to put this many people
under surveillance.
So, in this particular case no EU would be a clear benefit because
it would give us time to see the effect on this law on the
neighboring countries first, just like we saw with the UK and the
OSA.
I am becoming more anti-EU by the day and this is just one more
nail in the coffin.
flanked-evergl wrote 9 hours 27 min ago:
If the UK citizens want Chat Control they should have it. If they
don't, they should not elect a government that wants it. Same goes
for almost every issue the EU is pushing. Not everyone in the EU
needs Chat Control just because the UK citizens really want a
government that will give them Chat Control.
fwsgonzo wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
Is there any living person that thinks the UK people want
ChatControl? No? Me neither.
waxyalan wrote 8 hours 11 min ago:
With 69% of people supporting the Online Safety Act [1] I'm
confident there are people in the UK that would also support
Chat Control
URI [1]: https://yougov.co.uk/technology/articles/52693-how-hav...
hsbauauvhabzb wrote 6 hours 9 min ago:
Didnât the surveys indicate a brexit as a pretty big regret
once people understood what it meant?
flanked-evergl wrote 8 hours 34 min ago:
If the UK no longer has democracy then that is not something
the EU can fix by giving UK chat control.
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
Good luck. EU has been producing one Europe crippling law and
regulation after another and it still enjoys wide support for some
reason. Ursula is facing two more no confidence votes in October so
hopefully the tide is changing.
flanked-evergl wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
People were told the lie that without the EU there will be war
again. Like the economic stagnation and decline of Europe is
somehow the final solution and the end of history.
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
You don't have to convince me. You have to convince people who
will immediately reject anything negative about EU, even here on
HN (see the coming downvotes).
phtrivier wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
EU is not enough. I'm sometimes not happy with the decision
taken by governments in France, so what really has to happen is
HauteGaronnExit, where my departement is freed from the
influence of borders decided in a Revolution two centuries ago,
of which I was never explicitly asked to approve.
And, come to think of it, I don't like all the decisions taken
by the departement either. Surely things will work great when
my street is responsible for the electrical grid, immigration
or international commerce.
And when I say "my street", I obviously mean "my half of the
street". I'm not against odd-numbered houses "per se", but, you
know...
patates wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
Well that escalated quickly, didn't it?
jtbayly wrote 9 hours 20 min ago:
Yes, the EU did escalate things to such an extent that absolutely
countries should be considering leaving over the EUâs insane push
to destroy all privacy and thus free speech.
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 48 min ago:
> "I find it extremely worrying that the German government is so
shirking its responsibility to take a position on this," said Left
Party MP Donata Vogtschmidt, who chairs her group's digital committee.
"Because in the Council of the EU, the current blocking minority
against chat control depends directly on Germany." If the German
government does not stick to the position of its predecessor, "the dam
could break and the largest surveillance package the EU has ever seen
could become reality."
> Jeanne Dillschneider, Green Party spokesperson on the committee,
wrote to netzpolitik.org about her impression of the meeting: "The
CDU/CSU, in particular, has often shown in the past how little the
protection of fundamental digital rights means to them. I fear the same
thing will happen now, even more so, with the CDU/CSU-led Ministry of
the Interior." She therefore considers it "all the more crucial whether
the Ministry of Justice upholds our fundamental digital rights during
this legislative period."
> "I'm cautiously hopeful that some colleagues from the coalition
parties apparently share my criticism of chat control," Dillschneider
continues. "The question now will be whether they can actually bring
themselves to reject chat control. However, I'm not particularly
optimistic here."
> Dillschneider's committee colleague, Vogtschmidt, wants to ensure
that the Bundestag is forced to take a position on the issue beyond
statements made in committee meetings. This is permitted by Article 23
of the Basic Law, which allows parliament to adopt European policy
statements. The government must then consider these in negotiations.
Vogtschmidt believes: "Now I think chat control will have to be brought
back to the Bundestag plenary session to raise awareness of this
monstrous danger among a wider public. I will work towards this in the
coming days!"
Longhanks wrote 9 hours 54 min ago:
This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many
jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever
again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the EU
and democracies, or just give up on politics for good. These EU
politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held
accountable, with the most powerful punishments available.
burnte wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
> and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
And who is going to hold them accountable? They make the laws,
they're the ones who should know best this is illegal, so if they
don't care no one else will. Voters? I live in America so I've lost a
lot of faith in people voting for politicians who will protect their
rights.
I legitimately have no idea how to fix this type of problem. We spent
the better part of the 20th century setting up systems to enable
people to thrive and have expanded rights. And now the generations
that benefited from all of that want to tear it down and take us back
to feudal times with unelected, unaccountable, all-powerful leaders
and a nobility class that owns everything and leaving 95% of people
live in poverty and sickness. It's like we forgot how to raise strong
people with good morals.
stateofinquiry wrote 4 hours 15 min ago:
When the government is monolithic (which it tends to become) and
holds a lot of power it is just a matter of time before "some
animals are more equal than others". The best safeguards I know about
are 1) limiting the power of government and 2) checks and balances on
what powers they do have.
Nothing is perfect, and even having the two pillars above does not
guarantee eternal justice (or even that the pillars will remain in
place). But we can try to keep remembering and demand better.
Sincerely: Good luck, EU.
zosima wrote 5 hours 22 min ago:
Maybe those you call extremists are now the only sane people.
oaiey wrote 6 hours 32 min ago:
Politician can not face consequences when they discuss something
illegal. Politicians in parlaments literal job is to define legal and
illegal. That they repeat that until success and against the
perceived will of the general population is maybe a procedural
problem (as in: do not disturb the legal body with stupid stuff) but
it is still their job.
I 100% agree with your position. Chat control is basically an attack
on every conversation everywhere because modern social habits are
using it like my chat with my neighbors over the fence. It is not the
same as mail interception it is much worse.
scythe wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
>Politician can not face consequences when they discuss something
illegal.
Politicians can't face consequences from the legal system when they
discuss something illegal. They can, and should, face consequences
from the voters.
izacus wrote 7 hours 22 min ago:
I think the result of a referendum that would pose a question
"Do you want law enforcement to be allowed access to your private
messages when investigating child molesters or would you like to
listen to folks who put furry teen girls in front of their websites?"
would have results that you certanly wouldn't like. And they'd be
democratic.
So perhaps before calling something undemocratic, first make sure
that the majority of voters actually agree with you.
moltopoco wrote 6 hours 40 min ago:
The results of this past survey are not quite as gloomy:
URI [1]: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/poll-72-of-citizens-oppos...
rollcat wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
Phrasing the question is half the battle.
"Do you want to be spied on by your government?"
Yes is yes, no is no, anything more comes from evil.
izacus wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
Yes, that's exactly my point - it's important to understand the
issue and the messaging about it.
Government "spies" on you for many many things and I think HN
"all government is evil" panic isn't really reflected in outlook
of EU citizens and won't be looked upon positively by public at
large. So again, be careful what you're calling "undemocratic"
because that's not the same as "different from my opinion".
tracker1 wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
Since being on the wrong side of supporting The Patriot Act in
the US... I'm pretty firmly on the side of, if the government
has a power that can be abused, it's only a matter of time
until it is abused and in creative ways you never expected.
I'm generally against all reactionist legislation as an
instance "no" stance as well.
rollcat wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
Is it still democratic if the elected representatives are
trying to subvert democracy?
izacus wrote 4 hours 31 min ago:
What are you talking about here exactly?
potato3732842 wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
>This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many
jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever
again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
Politicians are basically whores that only use their mouths. They'll
say whatever gets them in office and keeps them there. Whether
that's simping for extremists, special interests, the teacher's
union, etc, etc.
The state(s) wants to snoop on the peasants' messaging and the state
itself is an interest that politicians can get ahead by pandering to,
no different than any other interest (from their perspective as
politicians and more equal animals generally, not our perspective as
less equal animals under the boot). When you're talking about
elections like the EU's big interest groups, like the state, tend to
dominate.
p0w3n3d wrote 8 hours 44 min ago:
European Commission is not a democratic body. No EU citizen voted for
them.
izacus wrote 3 hours 6 min ago:
Good thing that elected parliament needs to vote for this. So
what's your point?
munksbeer wrote 8 hours 22 min ago:
The European Commission is a civil service drafting these proposals
on instructions from elected politicians.
I am going to keep banging this drum because there is too much
ignorance on this topic and it harms the fight against it more than
helps.
qnpnp wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
By this logic, most of EU governments are not democratic bodies
either.
bondarchuk wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
In my country I vote for a person and that person gets a seat in
parliament. That is democratic according to this definition.
jonp888 wrote 7 hours 25 min ago:
The EU Commission is a group of permanent employees who sit in
an office and write reports, administer projects and draft
legislation. They have no voting rights. They are organised
into departments, each headed by a politically appointed
Commissioner.
Your country has an identical group of people with a similar
role who you also do not vote for, organised in just the same
way.
For some reason it's only "undemocratic" when the EU does it,
even though literally every country in the world has some kind
of permanent establishment of administrators and no country
could function without them.
that_guy_iain wrote 8 hours 45 min ago:
> This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many
jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever
again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
How is it undemocratic? Arresting terrorists, drug dealers, child
abusers, etc have no impact on democracy. And it's legal for the
government to intercept your communications and has been for decades
and in fact your communications have been mass monitored for decades
and we still have democracy.
> allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany)
Germany is one of the leaders in data requests in the world. They're
right on it.
> keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no
consequences whatsoever.
That's because we have a democracy and people vote on who they want.
And if they do what people want they get another few more yeears. So
these politicans just following the will of the people.
> Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the
EU and democracies, or just give up on politics for good.
Those people we can just ignore, they were always going to be on the
fringe.
> These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy
must be held accountable, with the most powerful punishments
available.
They are not. You've just been blissfully unaware of the world you've
been living in, and think this is something new. Nah, the only thing
new is that everyone's messages are encrypted. That's the only new
thing.
ookdatnog wrote 8 hours 46 min ago:
It's not undemocratic. The behavior of the parliament reflects the
reality that only a tiny minority of the population care at all about
this issue.
One might be tempted to blame a lack of media attention, but I don't
think that's it. For example in the US, the Snowden revelations
attracted tons and tons of media attention, yet it never became a
major topic in elections, as far as I'm aware. No politician's career
was ended over it, and neither did new politicians rise based on a
platform of privacy-awareness. No one talks about mass surveillance
today. No one cares. There is no reason to believe that the situation
is different in Europe.
bondarchuk wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
Parliamentary democracy just fundamentally has a weakness when it
comes to single-issue voting. After picking a party to vote on
based on housing, economic policy, crime, ..., how much voting
power so to say is left for.. which guy the party says they'll send
to the european commission? And what that guy's stance on
chat-control is? If they're even publicizing that...
ookdatnog wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
I think the primary positive feature of democracy is simply that
we have regular peaceful transitions of power. I'm not sure that
the fact that the people choose their own leaders by itself leads
to higher quality leadership, or even leadership that cares more
about said people. But the fact that the baton passes every
couple of years is absolutely invaluable.
tracker1 wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
How many people participate in party candidate selection at
all... it's a mixed bag to "primary" out an incumbent...
sometimes it's easy as they don't see it coming or a threat...
others the entrenchment goes deep.
Ntrails wrote 7 hours 8 min ago:
> how much voting power so to say is left for.. which guy the
party says they'll send to the european commission?
Short of a direct (referendum based) democracy how do you resolve
that?
gpm wrote 6 hours 29 min ago:
In principle [1] is an interesting idea to address this sort of
issue.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
account42 wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
Not to mention that once voted in they are not bound by their
campaign promises.
tracker1 wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
It can sometimes happen...
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America
robertlagrant wrote 8 hours 44 min ago:
> The behavior of the parliament reflects the reality that only a
tiny minority of the population care at all about this issue
Then it's not very democratic to change it.
tjpnz wrote 8 hours 50 min ago:
They need to be named. Shouldn't be able to go anywhere in Brussels
(or any city in any member state) without seeing their photo and name
on a giant bus shelter poster. I would throw some ⬠in the
direction of that.
nickslaughter02 wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
Start with these:
Ylva Johansson from Social Democrats [1] Peter Hummelgaard from
Social Democrats
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylva_Johansson#Surveillance_...
URI [2]: https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115204439983078498
outime wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
>Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists
Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in power
as extremists? Just because their speech is more 'peaceful' doesn't
mean their actions aren't extremist in nature.
AlecSchueler wrote 8 hours 19 min ago:
> Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in
power as extremists?
And what would this change?
outime wrote 7 hours 24 min ago:
Usually, calling things by their proper name helps change
perceptions, which often triggers other reactions. Language is
very powerful.
AlecSchueler wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
I understand that but I'm asking what might be hoped to be
triggered.
pclmulqdq wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
The people in power.
fsflover wrote 8 hours 27 min ago:
> current individuals in power as extremists
Those who support and push anti-constitutional laws, maybe. All
individuals in power, no.
outime wrote 7 hours 20 min ago:
There's something called implicit context (this submission and
the entire ongoing discussion), which clearly refers to the first
group of people you mentioned. Why would I be talking about
people who aren't involved in pushing this?
fsflover wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
singulasar wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
or maybe let's not?
their actions are clearly not extremist, absolutely not perfect and
not always equally democratic, but not extremist or violent like
the actual extremists...
AAAAaccountAAAA wrote 4 hours 34 min ago:
Politics are an inherently violent affair. The government is
simply a monopoly on legitimate violence. Politicians decide the
laws, which result in people breaking them getting beaten up &
dragged to a cell. Not to say this is always a bad thing: some
people cannot be stopped from misbehaving just by talking, but it
definitely is violent.
Gud wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
Define "extremist". Many people would argue mass immigration is
an extremist position but was the normal accepted position for
the people in power within the European Union but was never a
popular position with the populations of Europe.
So these so called <> represent the normal position.
raxxorraxor wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
I do think the ambition to spy on all private communication to be
quite extremist.
Especially Germany should know better. If you build two
autocratic dictatorships on average per century, maybe start to
take care that state powers are restricted.
The US is fully correct in its criticism of Germany regarding
freedom of speech and house searches. Sure, on surveillance their
arguments would be very weak...
Absolutely nothing positive will be gained by this surveillance,
so there isn't even the smallest security benefit. On the
contrary.
jokethrowaway wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
Democracy is incompatible with freedom by definition, it's the
dictatorship of the majority over the minority.
Especially in a time where controlling public opinion is just a
matter of running targeted ad campaigns on social medias and buying
newspapers and tv stations.
If we like freedom we need to get rid of power centralisation, as
much as possible, and give back the power to the individual by
removing as many laws as possible and relying on privatisation and
decentralisation.
But there is no one left to fight in the western world, everybody is
glued to their smartphone and we're doomed to become the next China.
the_gipsy wrote 8 hours 7 min ago:
> it's the dictatorship of the majority over the minority.
That's very naïve.
uncircle wrote 1 hour 29 min ago:
Yeah; it's even worse than that.
kace91 wrote 9 hours 4 min ago:
The people doing the public opinion control you mention are
powerful private interests.
What makes you think those people would be any less dangerous to
your freedom when unbounded by law?
Quarrel wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
I'm not a fan, but in what was is this, or any other topic,
undemocratic to have debates and votes on?
The sanctions politicians should face for bringing up unpopular
topics should be that they don't get voted for.
> These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy
must be held accountable, with the most powerful punishments
available.
Yes. Vote them out. Keep raising it.
Xelbair wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
How do i vote out representatives not from my country? In this case
my country is vehemently opposed to this.
How do i vote out representatives if all of them support the
measure despite it being unpopular in my country, no matter the
faction? That was the case with centralized copyright checking.
EU parliament, and especially EC, are so far removed from any form
of accountability, that frankly votes are almost irrelevant - same
factions form no matter who's there, and EC runs on rotation.
Lobbying takes prime spot over votes.
EU is sitting in the middle ground between federation and trade
union... and we get downsides of both systems.
rollulus wrote 9 hours 11 min ago:
> Yes. Vote them out. Keep raising it.
How do I vote out hostile countries? Iâm Dutch, what can I do
with my vote to have effects on Denmark, which seems to be the
biggest proponent of this BS?
munksbeer wrote 8 hours 20 min ago:
> How do I vote out hostile countries? Iâm Dutch, what can I do
with my vote to have effects on Denmark, which seems to be the
biggest proponent of this BS?
The same way you can vote out other politicians in your own
country - you can't. Assuming you live in (say) Amsterdam, you
have no right or control of who people from other regions of the
Netherlands vote for.
LikesPwsh wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
This topic is undemocratic because it's part of the constant
attempts to rephrase and resubmit the same unpopular proposal.
It's p-hacking democracy. If a proposal has 5% chance of passing
just resubmit it twenty times under different names with minor
variations.
It wastes time that lawmakers could spend on proposals that the
public actually want.
Arnt wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
It hasn't been resubmitted yet, has it? The proponents keep it
alive without putting it to an actual vote, AIUI. They try to
wait until they think they have a majority, and keep their
proposal ready for a vote on short order before their majority
dissipates.
Which is many things, I' might call it cynical, but it doesn't
seem undemocratic.
Xelbair wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
This is at least 3rd time similar measure has been tried in EU
parliament, form my memory.
izacus wrote 7 hours 25 min ago:
And the fact that it didn't pass tells you something didn't
it?
Xelbair wrote 2 hours 49 min ago:
yeah, for now - it was always close. And they need to
succeed only once.
the issue is that they try to push it despite citizen
protests, and each time they try people just grow more
fatigued.
FirmwareBurner wrote 9 hours 36 min ago:
>Yes. Vote them out. Keep raising it.
OK. How do I vote out Ursula vd Leyen?
fhd2 wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
She was elected by the European parliament. As an EU citizen, you
elect that one.
jokethrowaway wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
after how many layers of voting does democracy just becomes
plain oligarchy?
fhd2 wrote 7 hours 30 min ago:
Fair question. I'm personally a big fan of what I believe is
called direct democracy - getting the populace to vote on a
more fine-grained level and individual issues. Not just
generic representatives with a bucket list of stuff they say
they do and what you suspect they'll actually do. I admit
that the EU level feels quite indirect, but I would still
carefully call it democratic.
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 19 min ago:
You vote for a few people from your country to become MEPs.
Anything beyond that is out of your control.
munksbeer wrote 8 hours 18 min ago:
> You vote for a few people from your country to become MEPs.
Anything beyond that is out of your control.
Just like in your country's own elections.
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
She's facing two more no confidence votes in October. You just
need to convince all 720 members of European Parliament from 27
countries to get rid of her and her commission. Easy.
FirmwareBurner wrote 9 hours 6 min ago:
You mean the exact people that put her there in the first place
despite her unanimous lack of popularity in Europe and
especially in her home country of Germany where she failed
upwards?
Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good about this type of democracy.
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 2 min ago:
Yes. The same fractions which put her there (EPP and friends)
will also pick another puppet who will do their bidding.
aleph_minus_one wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
>
How do I vote out Ursula [von der] Leyen?
This can only be done indirectly.
Under [1] you can at least find a chart ("Von der Leyen 2
Commission: How political groups voted") how the political groups
in the European parliament voted regarding Ursula von der Leyen's
second mandate as European Commission President.
URI [1]: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/11/27/which-meps...
FirmwareBurner wrote 9 hours 9 min ago:
>This can only be done indirectly.
So the short answer is "YOU can't".
eqvinox wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
Next European Parliament election will be in 2029.
Edit: there was a copypaste of voting requirements here, from [1]
. This is apparently wrong; you can also vote if you're not
residing in the EU, only EU citizen. (I thought this was the
case, and that link not saying that made me suspicious.) How it
is possible that they've put up incorrect information on voting
rights, I have no clue.
Actual reference, this time legal text: [2] Any person who, on
the reference date:
(a) is a citizen of the Union within the meaning of the second
subparagraph of Article 8 (1) of the Treaty;
(b) is not a national of the Member State of residence, but
satisfies the same conditions in respect of the right to vote and
to stand as a candidate as that State imposes by law on its own
nationals,
shall have the right to vote [â¦]
So either citizenship or residency is sufficient.
URI [1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/votin...
URI [2]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELE...
FirmwareBurner wrote 9 hours 19 min ago:
I was talking about voting for the position held by Ursula, the
president of EU commission, not the EU parliamentary elections.
gadders wrote 9 hours 48 min ago:
It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the
result that we want."
SAI_Peregrinus wrote 6 hours 16 min ago:
Not exclusive to the EU, the US does the same, as does the UK.
Flatterer3544 wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
While the EU foundation was laid out in a time much different to
our modern times and the faults that rise with it, especially that
the majority of the EU doesn't have the sway as a union should and
that a single state can block all others.
But at least when it comes to Chat Control, it is not EU level,
it's member states pushing for it and at least for now EU blocking
it, so at least for once it is a good thing and the minority of ~8
states can still block it for the majority, block it for all 27
states..
moffkalast wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
Yeah the Commission really needs to go, MEPs need to be able to
propose laws. That's really all there is to it to fix the entire
situation.
jonp888 wrote 7 hours 47 min ago:
Every country in the world has a "Commission". It's no different
to the UK Civil Service or the various US Federal Governments. If
it didn't exist then the EU would be unable to implement any of
it's policies.
Can you explain how MEP's directly proposing laws would affect
this? I really don't get it.
In parliamentary systems it's normal that virtually all
legislation originates in the executive. In the British
parliament at least, that a law is privately proposed and then
becomes law is rare and normally restricted to very simple
legislation on specific issues.
moffkalast wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
The EU doesn't implement any of its policies by itself, ergo it
should not require an executive branch of its own. There is no
EU army, no EU police. We already have an instance of that in
each member state which is required to implement EU laws on its
territory, the Council of Ministers coordinates on that afaik.
The general process is a bit like this, simplified:
- the Council of heads of state appoints the Commission
- the Commission proposes laws
- the Parliament approves laws
- the Council of ministers implements them
- the Court blocks any unconstitutional laws
The problem has been for the longest time that the Commission
appointments are not elected, somewhat mired in cronyism, and
they keep proposing nonsense laws while the elected parliament
can just stand there and vote no while not being able to
suggest any legislation we actually need.
munksbeer wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
> It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the
result that we want."
Please inform yourself or you're in danger of letting things happen
through your ignorance. The commission is not pushing this. They're
acting on instructions from a certain number of elected
politicians.
And, you're misleading others when you post stuff like this.
None of us posting in these topics wants this proposal to pass. And
in order to fight it, you've got to be correctly informed.
p0w3n3d wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
It's Not Who Votes That Counts, It's Who Counts The Votes
- J.Stalin
Y_Y wrote 7 hours 54 min ago:
> In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your
count that votes.
- Mogens Jallberg
Regarding your Stalin "quote", please see [1] .
URI [1]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stalin-vote-count-quot...
bluecalm wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
Don't forget "if we let people vote by some misfortune and their
vote is opposite of what we wanted we will overrule it anyway".
yohannparis wrote 9 hours 11 min ago:
And who runs the EU? The MEPs and members of the countries
government.
It's not like it's a different country imposing their way onto us.
Talk/contacts your ministers and MEPs if you want your voice to be
represented.
zx10rse wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
You can't be serious.
There should't be a discussion at all.
This law proposal is explicitly against the EU Charter of
Fundamental Rights, the allegedly institutions that are supposed
to upheld the charter are CJEU, European Commission, FRA, NHRIs,
where are they?
yohannparis wrote 56 min ago:
I'm totally opposed to this law. My comment was about the fact
that the EU is imposing their view on EU countries, like we
have no say on the matter.
I emailed all my MEPs to oppose this proposal.
yeahforsureman wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
I'm pretty sure that if this passes, the EU Court of Justice
will eventually find it more or less in violation with EU
fundamental rights.
That will take time, though, so I guess they are either hoping
that some impossibly secure, reliable and unerring technologies
emerge in the meantime, or they are prepared for a forever
battle with the Court, coming up with ever new adjustments as
soon as previous schemes get struck down[1], meanwhile allowing
European law enforcement agencies to keep testing, developing
and iterating on whatever client-side scanning or other
techno-legal approaches they may come up with. I think this was
roughly what they â ie, basically a group of a dozen or two
law enforcement reps from different member states agencies and
ministries along with like one lonely independent information
security expert â said themselves in some working group
report as part of some kind of Commission roadmap thing
presented by von der Leyen not too long ago.
[1] On the data protection side we've already seen this kind of
perpetual movement through the years with respect to different
âsafeguardingâ mechanisms made available to enable
transfers of personal data to the US without too much hassle,
from Safe Harbor through Privacy Shield to the current Data
Privacy Framework.
pixelpoet wrote 6 hours 25 min ago:
I did send hand-written mails to several German representatives,
and this is how I was rewarded.
Obviously I'm not expecting that my actions alone are enough to
get the outcome I want, but it's difficult not to feel the bite
of "if voting changed anything, they would make it illegal." It's
just going to be some other paid-for dickface in corporate
pockets, every time.
somenameforme wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
You don't make it illegal, you simply ban who the people are
voting for, even retroactively if necessary.
shiandow wrote 8 hours 48 min ago:
Right, because a commission that keeps bringing legislation to a
vote until one of those two vote pools gets a majority, despite
the law being against my government's constitution (in strong
terms), and me having no way to stop it if all representatives of
my country voted against, is totally not the EU imposing its way
on my country.
like_any_other wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
The problem is the indirection. Only the European Commission can
propose legislation [1], so the legislative direction of the EU
is entirely determined by them - MEPs can only slow it down.
And citizens don't vote for the Commission directly, meaning
there's a lot of backroom dealing in its selection.
[1] Which also covers, I think, the act of repealing prior
legislation.
yohannparis wrote 54 min ago:
True, but this is the same as with most EU countries
government.
In France, I can contact my Ministers... but to what avail!
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
> And who runs the EU?
How difficult is it to run? How much money do you need? What are
the barriers to success? Is it set up so that only the already
rich and powerful can run and win (and therefore they are just
pushing their own interests), and if not do you need considerable
financial support (and therefore are beholden to the already rich
and powerful who funded your campaign)?
FpUser wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
>"Talk/contacts your ministers and MEPs if you want your voice to
be represented."
And be told to sod off.
From Wikipedia: [0]-"Currently, there is one member per member
state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent
the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home
state."
[0] -
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission
aleph_minus_one wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
>
It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the
result that we want."
Exactly. There is a reason why more and more EU-skeptical movements
gain traction in various EU countries.
delusional wrote 9 hours 19 min ago:
EU skepticism is at a 15 year low, and general approval hasnt
been higher since 2007.
Europeans in general like or is indifferent towards the EU.
Hamuko wrote 8 hours 32 min ago:
My EU skepticism is gonna skyrocket if Chat Control goes
through and I will start voting for the anti-EU party. Whatever
benefits the EU has is not worth losing our freedoms.
aleph_minus_one wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
> EU skepticism is at a 15 year low, and general approval hasnt
been higher since 2007.
My observations are different.
Insanity wrote 6 hours 54 min ago:
Sure, and to add more anecdata, my observations are different
from yours.
It's easy / tempting to extrapolate from our limited bubble /
point of view, but it doesn't tell you anything about a
population at large.
barrenko wrote 8 hours 53 min ago:
If public opinion and vote was honored there never would have
been an EU, just ask the French.
qnpnp wrote 8 hours 34 min ago:
This is wrong though.
France held a referendum on the creation of the EU in 1992,
and approved it.
You're thinking of the 2005 referendum, which was about the
TCE. The EU already existed before that.
cianmm wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
Hereâs some data. Skepticism is pretty low and approval is
pretty high
URI [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1360333/euroscep...
graemep wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
Do those numbers include the UK when it was in the EU?
Obviously removing a large pool of sceptics would shift the
numbers.
The "positive" number has recovered from a low in the wake
of the Eurozone crisis but is still fallen significantly
from the pre-crisis level of around 50%.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown by country - The
EU's own report suggests very big variations between
countries:
URI [1]: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publi...
delusional wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
The current "positive" number from spring 2025 is
actually 52%, only 5 points down from the highest number
in the past 20 years, and the second highest trust number
in the same time period.
Sure, the eurozone debt crisis of the 2010s was rough for
the trust mumbers, taking them down to 33% but they've
fully recovered from that.
izacus wrote 7 hours 26 min ago:
Did you already forget that Brexit went through on a
razor thin margin?
graemep wrote 6 hours 1 min ago:
It happened at all because the UK was the most
Eurosceptic big EU country so it could still have an
impact on the numbers.
Also, negative and positive feelings are not the same
thing as a vote. For example, some people who felt
negative about the EU voted remain because they were
worried about economic disruption (the government was
predicting a severe recession in the event of a leave
vote - not after leaving, merely as a result of a
vote). I am sure people can think of other examples and
both ways, but the point is that "feel
negative/positive" and "would vote to leave/remain) are
not the same number).
danieljacksonno wrote 9 hours 12 min ago:
Your clique might be more skeptical. Statistics show the
population at large is not.
justinclift wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
That approach has spectacularly backfired for the UK, as they used
to do the same thing too. ;)
cynicalsecurity wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
UK is much worse than EU in terms of privacy and encryption.
hardlianotion wrote 8 hours 21 min ago:
how so?
Xelbair wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
It is, but i would rather take toothless UK's one over EU's
Orwellian nightmare.
UK's one is easily avoided.
But reality is that NONE of those options should be even
considered.
fluxusars wrote 9 hours 2 min ago:
It might be easily avoided now, but it's easy for them to
tighten the reins in the future.
graemep wrote 9 hours 19 min ago:
It will not be if chat control passes, and I am not sure it was
true most of the time before (there was no significant change
between Brexit and the Online Safety Act)
There were similar problems in areas other than privacy and
encryption, or indeed technology.
nickslaughter02 wrote 9 hours 6 min ago:
See
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274678
graemep wrote 5 hours 56 min ago:
Key disclosure was law at least a decade before Brexit, so
was compatible with EU law, and the other change (the chat
control like one) was in the Online Safety Act (and has not
been enforced so far because its not technically feasible),
so that does not contradict my claim (if that was your
intention).
FirmwareBurner wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
What do you mean by backfire?
tonyhart7 wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
as another comment suggest "A massive unrest and protests."
but not for chat control but another things, they have going
much worse
anticensor wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
A massive unrest and protests.
Yokolos wrote 9 hours 55 min ago:
I can't believe with our history involving the Third Reich and the
Stasi that we aren't staunchly opposed. Especially with the impending
political upheaval when AfD finally gets enough votes to form a ruling
government. Our politicians are insanely shortsighted and somehow don't
understand the danger they're enabling.
jjani wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
It's about as believable as a country with history involving the
Third Reich and Stasi openly standing behind a country that the UN,
and every relevant scholar on the subject, confirms is committing
genocide.
In other words, it's very believable. It is incredible how billions
of hours have been spent on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, and nothing
has been learnt. Potentially the best phenomenon in existence at
showing that humanity is, after all, so much less intelligent than it
believes it is - that even after such a destructive event and so much
performative effort at analysis and learning, the key takeaway did
not become part of the social psyche whatsoever.
Stevvo wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
You say this while Germany is actively supporting a genocide in
Palestine. The world has really turned on its head.
selfunaware wrote 9 hours 12 min ago:
AfD is under the watch of spionage agencies but somehow they are THE
risk, not the legacy parties and bureaucracy.
DocTomoe wrote 9 hours 17 min ago:
You see, we the people are staunchly opposed. But the interests of
our political leaders (we all know what 'leader' translates to) do
not align with out interests. So ...
The problem is that this is not a party issue. This is a leadership
issue. Power corrupts. The only way out of his is a massive overhaul
of the political system that makes 'professional politicians' a thing
of the past.
munksbeer wrote 8 hours 16 min ago:
> You see, we the people are staunchly opposed.
Doubtful. We on hackernews are staunchly opposed. Most regular
people either support or don't care.
patates wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
I didn't think this was even possible. Can EU laws actually override
the constitutional rights of member states? I was under the
impression that the principle of supremacy isn't absolute and doesn't
extend to overriding a country's fundamental constitutional rights.
If that's not the case, the danger isn't limited to just Germany.
With authoritarian regimes gaining power everywhere, it would only
take a few of them working together to pass an EU law that makes
everything fair game.
piltdownman wrote 8 hours 15 min ago:
For the most part yes, with caveats.
Specifically for Ireland, we are the only EU member state where the
Constitution ordains a referendum to validate ratification of any
amendments that result in a transfer of sovereignty to the European
Union; such as the Nice Treaty which we can prevent from passing on
an EU level. Ratification of other Treaties without the sovereignty
component is decided upon by the states' national parliaments in
all other member states.
Ireland, Netherlands, and Luxembourg also have veto powers when it
comes to EU wide regulations. That's why Article 116 exists.
In the particular, the Seville Declaration recognised the right of
Ireland (and all other member states) to decide in accordance with
National Constitutions and laws whether and how to participate in
any activities under the European Security and Defence Policy. [1]
It's enshrined in German Case Law as 'Identitätsvorbehalt'. [2]
The Polish constitutional court has also ruled that EU law does not
supercede national law. Thus, primacy of EU law is wholly rejected
in Poland.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Declarations_on_the_...
URI [2]: https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/lexika/das-europalexikon/309...
URI [3]: https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/07/polish-court-rules-som...
impossiblefork wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
No. The EU isn't a federation, there's no supremacy class. The
member countries are sovereign and obviously can't go against their
constitutions or basic laws.
nickslaughter02 wrote 6 hours 33 min ago:
> The member countries are sovereign and obviously can't go
against their constitutions or basic laws
False.
> The principle was derived from an interpretation of the
European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has
priority over any contravening national law, including the
constitution of a member state itself.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_...
patates wrote 7 hours 21 min ago:
I'm completely out of my depth but this is not what I understand
after reading here:
URI [1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/prim...
philipallstar wrote 7 hours 59 min ago:
> there's no supremacy class
What does "supremacy class" mean?
teeklp wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
I assume he means something like "supremacy clause."
aleph_minus_one wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
> Can EU laws actually override the constitutional rights of member
states?
Sometimes yes.
> I was under the impression that the principle of supremacy isn't
absolute and doesn't extend to overriding a country's fundamental
constitutional rights.
What are a country's fundamental constitutional rights can be
"dynamically adjusted" depending on the political wishes. :-(
> With authoritarian regimes gaining power everywhere, it would
only take a few of them working together to pass an EU law that
makes everything fair game.
There is a reason why more and more EU-skeptical movements gain
traction in various EU countries.
p_l wrote 9 hours 37 min ago:
Privacy of communications is usually a normal law not
constitutional principle, so slots perfectly fine without any
supremacy issues between constitution and EU law.
gpderetta wrote 9 hours 32 min ago:
It is indeed a constitutional principle in many EU countries.
It is also part of the Treaty of Lisbon via the EU Charter of
Fundamental Rights, which is the closest thing to a
constitutional level law for the EU.
Not that this has ever stopped anybody.
p_l wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
I think the issue lies with how do you define "privacy of
communications is respected".
Because that would technically make any present day wiretap
illegal too.
So the detail is written in normal law tract...
varispeed wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
> Third Reich and the Stasi
It looks like German population actually enjoys these things. Third
time lucky?
edit: how would you explain lack of protests or that the authors of
proposal don't face criminal investigation? After all this is
authoritarian regime refresh, just without the labels.
WinstonSmith84 wrote 8 hours 5 min ago:
Yes, Germany is very hypocritical, a lot of people have short
memories.
On another hand, Germany is on the spotlight because it's the
country which is going to decide at the end. Less critics about the
usual suspects who love to restrict personal freedoms like France,
Spain, Italy ..
dmix wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
Spain is particularly bad for meddling with the internet, mostly
with regards to piracy.
While Germany has arrested many thousands of people for online
speech, similar to the UK. But the UK gets much more media
attention over it.
> Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any
other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they
say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet.
URI [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-in...
varispeed wrote 3 hours 3 min ago:
Chat Control is extremist - a terrorist attack on civil
liberties. If Germany were serious about its commitments, the
architects behind this assault would already be facing
prosecution. Instead, authorities focus on token speech
prosecutions while leaving the machinery of mass surveillance
untouched.
The optics are chilling: yesterday it was door-to-door searches
under authoritarian regimes; today itâs device-to-device
searches for wrongthink. That isnât protecting against
extremism - itâs repeating it with new tools.
dmix wrote 2 hours 59 min ago:
Yes the arguments for free speech and privacy are
self-evident. People always think they can add conditions, as
if those conditions won't perpetually expand to greater and
greater areas. Or become a power given to dangerous
individuals who form future governments.
amelius wrote 10 hours 1 min ago:
> This is not about catching criminals. It is mass surveillance imposed
on all 450 million citizens of the European Union.
I think it is also about catching criminals. And they should change
their wording to make it more correct, otherwise they will certainly
lose this fight.
Lio wrote 7 hours 30 min ago:
It seems to be mostly about mass survellance. The quote I've seen
from Danish Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgaard seems to make that
clear:
> We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is
everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging
services, [1] What they want is everyone to be watched, all of the
time. Crimes will be determined later.
URI [1]: https://www.ft.dk/samling/20231/almdel/REU/spm/1426/index.ht...
maybewhenthesun wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
I agree. The opponents (I am one for sure) are often saying 'This is
not about catching criminals'. And they are correct in the sense that
it goes much further than catching criminals alone.
But there are a lot of people who are no experts in the matter (even
among the politicians deciding this matter) and they will discard
reasoning which start with 'it's not about catching criminals',
because in many cases that is where the idea originates. Law
enforcement has the problem that they can't really do (analog)
wiretaps anymore in the digital age and they want to remedy that.
However, everybody needs to realize that 'restoring the ability to
wiretap' has side effects which are way more dangerous than the loss
of the wiretap ability.
Okawari wrote 6 hours 19 min ago:
I think 'restoring the ability to wiretap' is misleading as this is
not 'restoring the ability', its more akin to 'wiretapping everyone
all the time'.
Wiretapping requires probable cause and a court order in order to
be used chat control does not. It will report thousands daily and
no one will be blamed or punished for false reports which turned
out did not have probable cause. It was a reactive tool in the
police's arsenal, it was not proactive like this is supposed to be.
Wiretapping requires/required significant manpower investment in
order to surveil a single potential criminal which rightfully
forced the police to prioritize their resources. Chat Control is
automated and will enable the same amount of police to police more
people.
Wiretapping was not retroactive. This system will create records
that can be stored for a long time for very cheap.
This is not restoring wiretapping, this is supercharging
wiretapping.
varispeed wrote 9 hours 50 min ago:
Calling it âalso about catching criminalsâ is a framing trick.
Sure, if you surveil 450 million people youâll find some criminals
- thatâs statistically inevitable. But youâll also drag far more
innocents into suspicion.
Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90%
detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - youâd correctly
flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms.
For every offender, over 110 innocents are treated as suspects.
That imbalance isnât collateral damage - itâs the defining flaw
of mass scanning. It would overwhelm police, damage lives, and
normalise suspicion of everyone. And âcompromiseâ here only means
deciding how much of that broken trade-off to accept.
amelius wrote 8 hours 57 min ago:
> Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90%
detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - youâd correctly
flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms.
For every offender, over 110 innocents are treated as suspects.
Playing devil's advocate here, but you can skew those numbers
however you want. I.e., given any classifier and corresponding
confusion matrix, you can make the number of false positives
arbitrarily low, at the cost of more false negatives.
p_l wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
We have already experience with how false positives are skewed in
practice, even case goes all the way to court.
Because ostensibly good people do not want to see the CSAM
material, they believe what algorithm/first reporter stated, and
ofc nobody "good" wants to let a pedophile go free.
And so the algorithm tries to hang a parent for making photo of
skin rash to send to doctor (happened with Google Drive scanning)
or a grandparent for having a photo of their toddler grandkids
playing in kiddy pool (happened in UK, computer technician
happened upon the photo and reported to police, if not for lawyer
insisting to actually verify the "CSAM material" the prosecution
would not actually ever check what the photo was of)
amelius wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
Yeah but that wasn't my point.
My point is that "this isn't about catching criminals" is the wrong
wording.
You don't start a debate by twisting the words of the other party.
No matter how right you are. Otherwise you will be seen as a
pariah.
varispeed wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
But this isn't about catching criminals.
amelius wrote 8 hours 3 min ago:
For _you_ it isn't.
If you want to be heard in a heated debate, choose your words
wisely.
varispeed wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
Thatâs a common derail - shifting from the substance to
âwatch your wording.â Itâs a form of concern-trolling:
pretending the problem is rhetoric while sidestepping the
actual flaw.
The numbers donât change based on phrasing. Mass scanning
at EU scale inevitably flags orders of magnitude more
innocents than offenders. Saying âthis isnât about
catching criminalsâ isnât twisting words, itâs
highlighting that the stated goal is statistically
self-defeating.
The âcatching criminalsâ line is deliberate gaslighting.
Itâs crafted to reassure people who donât understand how
these systems work, while the real function is mass
surveillance of everyone.
amelius wrote 6 hours 12 min ago:
> Thatâs a common derail - shifting from the substance to
âwatch your wording.â
You're acting like I'm trying to derail the argument. That
is not the case.
You are putting a lot of assumptions in your wording. This
will not help you.
varispeed wrote 2 hours 53 min ago:
Classic gaslight: accuse me of twisting and âactingâ
while youâre the one twisting. The wording isnât the
issue - the substance is. And youâve avoided it
entirely.
amelius wrote 2 hours 46 min ago:
That's because literally everybody here agrees with the
substance.
There is no discussion here other than how to best
bring the point across to those who do not agree.
pcrh wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
Agreed.
Targeted surveillance of individuals under suspicion can be
legitimate, however it surprises me that such mass surveillance
continues to be promoted again and again, despite it being
demonstrably harmful. Along with breaking encryption, which would
introduce risks of large financial and commercial harm.
I often wonder what arguments are actually deployed behind closed
doors in favor of mass surveillance, apart from the ever-present
"think of the children" argument. It can't be the case that the
downsides of such surveillance are unknown to those supporting it
(or maybe it can?).
bux93 wrote 9 hours 8 min ago:
It's the same reason police (in every country) are always asking
for more powers, and then end up not using them effectively. It's
a cycle where crime is not perfectly prevented/punished,
politicians blame the police, police blame not having enough
powers, and then they get more. But the wrong ones to prevent the
next tragedy, well, in hindsight of course. So new powers are
needed yet again. (And no-one needs to examine why the existing
powers are not used effectively, since the underlying problems
there would probably be a lot more expensive and boring to fix,
e.g. better pay/hours, better management, education, outreach,
blahblahblah.)
Then those powers are abused, curtailed a bit, and the cycle
starts again.
aleph_minus_one wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
> however it surprises me that such mass surveillance continues
to be promoted again and again, despite it being demonstrably
harmful.
Because citizens don't send the respective politicians to hell.
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