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European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

patrick-breyer.de

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Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#72
post #67

This is what people mean when they say “turnkey surveillance states”: you end up 1-3 laws away from almost instant total government surveillance of all citizen activity. The trillion dollar infrastructure was built by you and me for free from their POV (we paid them to do it with taxes), and now they can just say they want to use it

So what do we do?

It will probably take another World War before people collectively remember why privacy even existed in the first place.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mentions in the article that even apps like Signal would have to install backdoors that they can use.

That can't happen with open-source, whether it's "free" or not.

https://xkcd.com/538/

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#74
post #54

Warning - this is a work of fiction, or satire. Mods - perhaps you want to adjust the title.

How is it satire? Wikipedia[0] says that Patrick Breyer is a real MEP and this is his official blog. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Breyer

Yes he is. Here are twitter and fediverse accounts:

- https://chaos.social/@echo_pbreyer

- https://twitter.com/echo_pbreyer

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#75
post #67

This is what people mean when they say “turnkey surveillance states”: you end up 1-3 laws away from almost instant total government surveillance of all citizen activity. The trillion dollar infrastructure was built by you and me for free from their POV (we paid them to do it with taxes), and now they can just say they want to use it

So what do we do?

Use GPG. Don't use smartphones, don't use any closed software (especially non-free OSes.)

Vote.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#76
post #53

Are there any primary sources for this? I'm having trouble finding anything talking about any final legislative action involving chat control/ePrivacy etc. that isn't this random pirate party blog.

https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-platform...

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#77
post #60
post #19

Well bye bye European tech industry. Why the hell would anyone want to do business with such a risk in place?

The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce. Notice how they chopped up the UK during Brexit. EU adopting this measure means the enforcement will likely be corrupt and impossible to enforce standards.

> The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce.

Unprecedented compared to who? Every sovereign state has more control than the EU does: US, China, etc.

> Notice how they chopped up the UK during Brexit.

How did the EU chop up the UK?

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#78
Something I'm wondering is how this will affect Europe's ability to attract and retain top tier talent.

Europe already seems to be losing to the US. Will this accelerate this brain drain or slow it? [0]

[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-br...

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#80

You do have to wonder about the long term stability of a nominal democracy where 72% of citizens oppose digital monitoring, while 77% of their representatives vote for laws they emphatically do not want. Put more bluntly, is this even a democracy in anything other than the trappings?

Well, they have a better voting track record than the US vis-à-vis citizens vs politicians, so I guess the answer world be No if the US is authoritarian but Yes if it is democratic.
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