It's becoming scary how dangerous legislation is passed under the guise of protecting against "child exploitation". It's basically political suicide for politicians to vote against it (since the public cannot understand the nuance).
European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
151–160 of 434 posts
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 exam…
> 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?
Of course not. That's exactly GGP's point I was trying to prove.
> The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce.
And I agree with it.
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#153Well bye bye European tech industry. Why the hell would anyone want to do business with such a risk in place?
The situation even after this, is worse in the US, correct?
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#154You 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?
This is the misunderstood part of democracies as we have them now. The only democratic parts are the process of electing your representatives, and the decisions taken between the representatives. Of course that's still a (small) win, and there's the reasonable assumption that a representative will at least partially represent the interests of their voters. But in reality there's a massive disconnect between the principles of democracy and the implementation.
We now get probably the narrowest interpretation that could still be considered a democratic process. The people have the power for the fraction of a second it takes to cast a vote, followed by years of absolutely no real power of any kind, beyond the vague "consultation", and no real obligation from their representatives to represent the people.
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#155Earlier 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
Brexit is now the EU's fault, right.
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#156Full name list ECR: Bourgeois, Jurzyca, Kanko, Melbārde, Terheş, Van Overtveldt, Zīle NI: Beghin, Buschmann, Castaldo, Comín i Oliveres, Ferrara, Furore, Gemma, Giarrusso, Gyöngyösi, Pignedoli, Ponsatí Obiols, Puigdemont i Casamajó, Regimenti, Rondinelli, Rookmaker, Sinčić, Sonneborn, Vuolo PPE: Adamowicz, Ademov, Adinolfi Isabella, Alexandrov Yordanov, Amaro, Arias Echeverría, Arimont, Arłukowicz, Asimakopoulou, Băs…
Thanks. I will be definitely contacting MEP I voted for, why he voted for this bullshit. Especially when he is from party which is supposedly all about personal freedoms.
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatsapp is end to end encrypted.
The metadata hosted on Facebook's servers is worth more than the actual content.
People keep repeating this trope about metadata being worth more than content. Where does this come from?
I can understand that metadata is valuable -- of course it is. You can learn a lot from metadata. But more valuable than the actual content? Give me a break.
Something can be bad without being literally the worst thing ever. Pointless exaggeration like this does nothing for the cause of privacy.
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatsapp is end to end encrypted.
The backups aren't. Same with iMessage. end-to-end has become a marketing buzzword, any large scale deployment gets backdoored (via either key or plaintext escrow) at the endpoints, to FISA/PRISM providers who have to turn it over to the state without a warrant. China has the same setup with providers in their country. WhatsApp and iMessage simply aren't private when the providers get ~100% of the plaintext transitin…
For the purposes of an eu law requiring facebook to scan messages, facebook can’t scan icloud backups.
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#159Well 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.
The point is really that European technology industry needs some differentiating characteristic to succeed. It is quite far behind both the American and Chinese side of things. The EU has promoted privacy and human rights first which was a very good differentiator but has instantly shot that entire concept down.
So the question on the table now is if there is no differentiating factor, do we go with the established US company or the new EU company when a product has to be selected?
It's not going to be the EU company.
Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication
#160This would also include any non EU citizens communications with an EU citizen. Also you might be an EU citizen without realising (by descent)