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European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

patrick-breyer.de

191–200 of 434 posts

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#191
post #144
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It represents sovereign states.

not in every case.

>How, exactly?

There are a variety of good articles out there should you choose to examine the subject. I'll concede the point because I dont have time.

>Please expand on this.

This is seemingly a very unpopular law.

The EP's support from citizens in the eurozone is dubious at best

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#192
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Saying otherwise is hyperbolic. The European Commission uses and recommends Signal themselves. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observato...

> ...has already announced a follow-up regulation to make chat control mandatory for all email and messaging providers. Previously secure end-to-end encrypted messenger services such as Whatsapp or Signal would be forced to install a backdoor. It's easy to recommend "end-to-end" when you're about to force a backdoor into it.

>It's easy to recommend "end-to-end" when you're about to force a backdoor into it.

I'm not surprised that HN readers think politicians are all so dumb that they recommend their own staff use Signal and then recommend to break Signal. This kind of news pop up all the time and in almost all instances it turns out it isn't what is actually happening. Discussing it on HN -especially when it is the EU, Russia or China- is a complete waste of time as almost every single comment is low effort or trolling. We all know that the EU won't have backdoored Signal any more today than the next ten times this gets discussed on HN. It's all smoke and mirrors.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#193

Whatever this law or proposal is, it sounds bad and I don't like it. The only one good thing would be if the ones who draft, pass and implement it are not exempt and equally subject to the invasive tentacles of the buerocrats. I can kinda understand how and why crime happens, but I never understood the motives or way of thought of the people who want this kind of stuff implemented.uch less the ones who vote for it.

Yeah, it's pretty funny how we have the government literally wiretapping and spying on journalists, and that's okay, but when it comes home to roost, the representatives don't like it when it happens to them. Funny probably isn't the right word.

Obama: https://www.wired.com/2013/05/doj-got-reporter-phone-records...

Trump: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/trump-doj-reporter-s...

Surveillance for thee but not for me: https://www.rt.com/usa/nsa-probably-congress-greenwald-arres...

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#194
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can do what we did in the UK: the non apathetic portion of propagandised society collectively decided to exit the EU backed by some dubious political and financial motives, immediately followed by slow deregulation and privatisation of everything while embracing corruption and nepotism. So you can live in a rising socialist surveillance dystopia or robocop style capitalist dystopia. It's political hysteresis…

What has been privatised recently? Train operating companies have been nationalised, but I'm not aware of any privatisation taking place. There is talk of Channel 4 but that is it as far as I can tell.

They haven’t finished the deregulation bit yet. They need to do that so they can hide the funding streams and private market involvement. Watch this space.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's important to consider scale when discussing metadata vs raw content

Getting high precision is difficult when done on "all content", especially considering the multitude of languages and dialects in Europe. At a certain point, more data does not result in better output, sometimes it's actually detrimental

The patterns that arise from metadata are much more generalisable and there's less of it, so it's easier to search through

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#196

Can this be true? I'm having a hard time understanding how they can stand for internet privacy and legal mass surveillance simultaneously.

There's no contradiction if you take the privacy part as what it is: marketing BS. It's not something the EU would ever actually defend or protect on principle. Any appearance to the contrary is coincidental, like the GDPR.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#197
post #184
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit is now the EU's fault, right.

The EU's behavior during Brexit is at the very least suspect.

Yes I agree. However neither side left with their dignity intact if you ask me. It was depressing to watch and the media circus around it was a train wreck.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#198
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> someone with a chloroform infused rag and a wrench can visit any of us at any moment

That's where engineering comes into play, maybe materials science to build suitable systems to defend against such physical attacks. And, you can't just ban engineering.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#199
Every time a surveillance system and violation of privacy rights is advertised in the EU as a solution against child abuse and trafficking I ask myself how such a system could have changed the outcome of a case like Dutroux. Would have been the dozens of witnesses and police officers involved in the investigation suicided a way sooner, later, more silently, or at all? We will never know...

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#200
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pen and paper.

If you send a letter, the USPO automatically takes and stores a picture of the envelope, and will show it to law enforcement upon request - no warrant required. Pen & paper has is a meta-data leak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tra...

But you can mail letters without return addresses...
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