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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

#201

Post by tick_tock_tick »

Dah00n wrote: post #192
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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- i…

> 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.

How can you say that it's not only the stated goal but they have been making real progress towards it?

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#202

Post by AnimalMuppet »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #51
netr0ute wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While true, an adversarial government can pass new laws to restrict access or installation of software it deems dangerous. Politicians, uh, find a way.

Open source. That means that they'd have to either prevent the downloading of the source, prevent it compiling, or prevent running something that you compiled on your own box. Any of those three seems to be guaranteeing that Europe will not have any leading role in computers for the foreseeable future. Any of those three also seems almost impossible to enforce.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#203

Post by estaseuropano »

adventured wrote: post #176
balozi wrote: post #79

Maybe the Brexiteers were right all along.

Well it may not be for the British, they're not going to get less mass surveillance due to Brexit. However for some countries that could choose to leave the EU due to totalitarian laws like this, it may be a benefit, if they choose to pursue a privacy-focused path. Which are the most privacy-focused nations in the EU that might leave over a law like this?

This is such an uninformed comment. By virtue of the eu legal process this law only exists because Italy voted in favour of it, like all other EU countries. Anything else you hear is spin. Also this lae doesn't oblige anyone to anything, its a temporary law that comes in as another law ran out, and the aim is to have a more thorough piece of legislation on the books in 3 years. For the record, UK has much worse laws already on the books, as do the US or Australia.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#204

Post by swiley »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #202
BitwiseFool wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, an adversarial government can pass new laws to restrict access or installation of software it deems dangerous. Politicians, uh, find a way.

Open source . That means that they'd have to either prevent the downloading of the source, prevent it compiling, or prevent running something that you compiled on your own box. Any of those three seems to be guaranteeing that Europe will not have any leading role in computers for the foreseeable future. Any of those three also seems almost impossible to enforce.

There's no way to build apps locally on most smartphones which are the majority of end user devices.

Open source practically died with personal computers.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#205

Post by adventured »

agilob wrote: post #83
908B64B197 wrote: post #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...

The same law already exists in US and Australia

Can you point out the specific same law that already exists in the US?

What exists in the US is primarily the absence of restrictive laws. Private companies can - for the most part - freely scan your communications/data that go across their service depending on the terms of use/privacy they set.

What the EU is doing is quite different from the US approach. They're starting out from a supposed perch of claiming that they very strongly believe in privacy rights, and then they're violating that to an almost comical degree. The difference is one of remarkable hypocrisy.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#206

Post by fitblipper »

scandox wrote: post #167
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a much better source of information than the headline link. It describes how this came about, what its limitations are and just gives a whole lot more context. Of course it fails to advocate - which itself may have become a vice.

Rule of thumb: If something invokes "protect the children" to justify itself or to push it's agenda, it is advocating something. Not only that it is doing so in an underhanded and emotionally targeted way. I'm not saying politico is the primary source of advocacy in this situation, but they are at least echoing it and helping frame the debate around that.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#207

Post by aksss »

cassonmars wrote: post #189
aksss wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the chance of this happening is zero https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/471/227/dd0...

Why would a company in the US (Signal) decide to comply with the doctrine of another country, especially a doctrine antithetical to their entire business?

Well, zero is not just a really small number.

But to answer "why" would involve unpacking many direct and indirect motivations. First, I would never trust that any corporation has any doctrine that they would or could stand by ad infinitum given the right pressures.

At the end of they day you're talking about humans. A group of self-interested humans. A group of self-interested humans whose makeup changes as directors and executives rotate out. A group whose intentions can be undercut by an individual. Think you that the "Snowden" move doesn't happen the other way around? Probably more frequent that the intelligence communities infiltrate private organizations with rogue contractors than they experience it themselves. Probably really dang easy to be honest.

Since it came up earlier, I might just casually point to AT&T letting the NSA (or whomever) mirror all the traffic running through their network[0]. That would seem antithetical to their business, but obviously there are competing motivations. Where are those motivations sourced? Who makes the call? We don't know. I guess that's my point - you can't put faith in opaque decision making processes. I wouldn't rely on them, is all I'm saying. You could say the risk is low, but it's definitely not zero.

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-spying-relies-on-atts...

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#208

Post by trainsplanes »

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.

The vast majority of people do not care. Politicians will say this is to stop pedophiles, and if you speak up against surveillance, you’re labeled as a pedophile and ignored.

Plus, let’s be real, end to end encryption doesn’t exist if you’re using any sort of pre-built app. It’s encrypted-looking to most people, but the people who matter always get back door access.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#209

Post by estaseuropano »

throwaways885 wrote: post #152
jlokier wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the issue was not EU control, rather the Ireland situation. The situation due solely to brexit required checks somewhere. Do you want new riots and civil war due to checks within Ireland? Should Ireland accept to effectively leave the common market and all its benefits just so there's no check between UK and Northern Ireland? Or this option.

The UK killed all other scenarios by insisting that it wants to freely deviate from everything - if it had gone the Norway route or just stayed in the Union no such checks would be needed.

Brexit was a slim non-binding referendum run ammock for party-internal politics of the Tories. Absurd from start to finish and now you want to blame the EU for the consequences?

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#210

Post by [deleted] »

Dah00n wrote: post #192
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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- i…

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