European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication • Hacker News Board

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#141

Post by jlokier » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

throwaways885 wrote: post #98

oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I believe GP is referring to the EU 'forcing' the UK to put a border between Britain and Northern Ireland, because the EU wanted a hard border somewhere and wouldn't budge on that.

Well, the UK wanted Northern Irelend to benefit from a have-your-cake-and-eat-it semi-membership of the EU, while actively denying that to the rest of their own people elsewhere in the UK.

The EU have offered many opportunities for the UK to harmonise with the EU on many issues, while continuing with Brexit. For the most part, UK rejected repeated offers that would grant UK people and businesses more rights.

For example, the rights of British people to freely travel in EU countries could have been kept, but the UK said we don't want our people to have that, as the price of mirroring it by allowing EU citizens the ability to travel in the UK is too high.

EU offered to let students from the UK travel through EU under the Erasmus scheme. UK said no.

EU offered a customs union, where standards were more harmonised and the would need to be far fewer checks at borders. That would have been far cheaper for every business in the UK that sells into the EU. UK rejected that. UK actively wants to diverge from EU standards (e.g. for things like food). It shouldn't be surprising that EU will protect businesses that conform to those standards over those seeking to undermine them.

Businesses in Northern Ireland currently have advantageous access to the EU in ways no other part of the UK does. I don't mean the physical access to Ireland, I mean administrative access to the EU markets. You can see it in tax and import/export forms. There are currently reasons to set up businesses in Northern Irelend to get that foot-in-both-worlds advantage.

A lot of businesses in the UK mainland would love to have the same rights as businesses in Northern Ireland. Especially those in Scotland who didn't vote to leave anyway, and see it as an England-imposed harm on them.

What would you expect should happen, that UK should be allowed to use Nothern Ireland as backdoor to send unchecked goods to the EU, imported from say the USA and Australia and re-exported into the whole EU market with no border checks anywhere?

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#142

Post by oblio » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #125

oblio wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://xkcd.com/538/

xkcd is a just a comic - please don't make it a conversation killer.

Well, to revive this conversation.

States have access to "a monopoly of legitimate violence". We grant them that in order for them to be able to keep the peace, you know, law and order.

Everything else can be boiled down to this. No matter how many bits of encryption keys are used, someone with a chloroform infused rag and a wrench can visit any of us at any moment. And it's actually part of what we, collectively, as citizens, have granted as a power to the state.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#143

Post by gman83 » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

hughrr wrote: post #19

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

Wait, this is something that American and Chinese companies do on a regular basis, but when European companies do it it would mean the end of the industry? I'm certainly not in favour of this, but I don't follow your logic.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#144

Post by oblio » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

Goety wrote: post #122

oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The EU is not a sovereign state. The EU chopped up UK business marketshare, business leadership, professional lives for little more than a gram of power. I feel like it is necessary to point out the similarities between the CCP and European Parliament. >72% of citizens oppose digital monitoring, while 77% of their representatives vote for laws they emphatically do not want

> The EU is not a sovereign state.

It represents sovereign states.

> The EU chopped up UK business marketshare, business leadership, professional lives for little more than a gram of power.

How, exactly?

> I feel like it is necessary to point out the similarities between the CCP and European Parliament.

Please expand on this.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#145

Post by koolba » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

dekrg wrote: post #90

jude- wrote: post #6

Do they want everyone to switch en masse to end-to-end encrypted communications? Because this is how you encourage that.

More end to end encryption use only means more laws banning encryption faster. Or do you really think that when for example DoH gains wider adoption all the countries using DNS based blocking will go "Oh well guess the techies got us".

The world has a poor history on banning the application of math.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#146

Post by aksss » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #57

Just to clarify a point for discussion: this is already the law in the USA, and always has been [0]. European privacy law formerly prohibited private entities from reading personal communications, and handing them over warrantlessly to governments (as I understand it (?)); but this was never a thing in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

From that source:

In 1986, the United States Congress updated the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 by enacting the Electronic Communications Privacy Act which included an updated "Wiretap Act" and also extended Fourth Amendment-like protections to electronic communications in Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, known as the Stored Communications Act.

In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court ruled warrants are needed for gathering cell phone tracking information, remarking that cell phones are almost a “feature of human anatomy”, “when the Government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user”. and that

[cell-site location information] provides officers with “an all-encompassing record of the holder’s whereabouts” and “provides an intimate window into a person’s life, revealing not only [an individual’s] particular movements, but through them [their] familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”[5]

AND

From https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/e-mail-and-wa...

Are there Any Laws that Protect Your Email Privacy?

Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), police can access emails without a warrant if the emails are stored in the cloud and at least 180 days old. However, this law is outdated and lawmakers are attempting to pass the E-mail Privacy Act. This would update the ECPA by requiring warrants for all email searches. At the moment, in July 2018, the ECPA has yet to pass.

E-mails that are in remote storage and opened or older than 180 days do not require a warrant. Instead, the police only need to obtain an administrative subpoena. Administrative subpoenas are issued by federal agencies without any approval by a judge, so they are much easier to obtain.

So.. run your own email server in your basement if you're concerned (which would require a warrant). Or try end-to-end encryption solutions.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#147

Post by pcrh » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

krona wrote: post #123

rich_sasha wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU gets a lot of stick but deep below, the boring stuff keeps it together. Brexit showed just the enormous depth of high quality glue keeping all remaining countries together. So I don’t think the EU will be collapsing any time soon, certainly not for rational reasons.

It's all stick, no carrot. Unsustainable.

The EU has a lot of carrot for countries like Poland or Lithuania. Even longer term members such as Belgium, etc, that don't have such history with the Soviets know they are better off being in the EU than splintered.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#148

Post by bitdivision » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

edrxty wrote: 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.

I have not been able to find anything about final legislation either, though I did find some references [0] to the chat control legislation from June: [1].

I haven't read through it all, but the notable paragraph seemed to be:

  This  Regulation  therefore  provides  for  a  temporary  derogation  from  Article  5(1)  and Article    6    of    Directive    2002/58/EC,    which    protect    the    confidentiality    of communications  and  traffic  data.

'derogation' being a partial repeal of a law.

[0]:https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/European-chat-control...

[1]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/docs_autres_instituti...

Edit: It does seem that the intention here was to allow tech companies that were previously scanning for child abuse to continue to do so after December 2020, see politico.eu article

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#149

Post by oblio » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

throwaways885 wrote: post #98

oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I believe GP is referring to the EU 'forcing' the UK to put a border between Britain and Northern Ireland, because the EU wanted a hard border somewhere and wouldn't budge on that.

You have it the other way around. Brexit was FOR a hard border. One that would keep the EU out.

But the central British government, which does not seem to care much about their Northern Irish citizens, either forgot or just didn't care at all, about the fact that Northern Ireland is in limbo, stuck between Ireland and the UK. So any kind of EU - UK split would have reopened old wounds.

Wounds which actually the EU helped heal, back in 1998.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#150

Post by dogecoinbase » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

netr0ute wrote: post #38

sergimansilla wrote: post #15

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.

Signal didn't publish the source for their server-side from 20 April 2020 to 6 April 2021 while they secretly added a cryptocurrency payment system. Open source is only open if the source is available (and yes -- if their end-to-end encryption system is working properly than even a notional malicious server would not be able to intercept message contents, but could of course provide metadata, and also you have no way of verifying that the app you install via whichever app store you install Signal from was built from any given source).