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European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

patrick-breyer.de

221–230 of 434 posts

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

> 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?

I'm not saying that I agree with how things have turned out, nor am I blaming the EU, rather, just pointing out that they do have much control over global commerce.

And this is anecdotal evidence of that.

The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off. Both the EU and UK had the same desire, but the EU had the upper hand due to their economic size and control.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#222
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. 'der…

In [1], pages 10 and 11 are the actual directive, the rest is the reasoning. And, although I don't know the previous directives and regulations, it reads as if this is essentially an extension of an exception to the ePrivacy directive for another five years.

Birgit Sippel says in her statement to the president of the parliament [2]: > Dieses Gesetz ist eine Übergangslösung für drei Jahre. Die Kommission hatte versprochen, noch vor der Sommerpause einen neuen, dauerhaften Rahmen für die Aufdeckung von Kindesmissbrauch vorzuschlagen. Jetzt dauert es noch bis September oder Oktober. Dafür erwarte ich einen deutlich verbesserten Vorschlag. Die langfristige Lösung muss sich mindestens an den Datenschutzgarantien der temporären Lösung orientieren. Sie muss zwingend Lösungen für das gezieltere Scannen privater Kommunikation finden, sonst wird sie vor nationalen und europäischen Gerichten kaum Bestand haben.

Translated (by myself): > This law is a short term solution for three years. The commission promised a permanent solution to combat child abuse before the summer break. Now, this will take until September or October. Thus, I await a much better proposal. The long term solution must have at least the same guarantees for data protection as the short term solution. It [the long term solution] must have solutions for purposeful/targeted ("gezielt") scanning of private communication, otherwise it will not hold up in front of national or European courts.

So maybe things do not change that much right now.

But back to [1], I am especially curious about article 3(e): > the provider annually publishes a report on its related processing, including on the type and volumes of data processed, number of cases identified, measures applied to select and improve key indicators, numbers and ratios of errors (false positives) of the different technologies deployed, measures applied to limit the error rate and the error rate achieved, the retention policy and the data protection safeguards applied

Do you know if and where such statistics are published? (today?)

[2]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2021-07-...

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#223
post #197
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The media circus was definitely not unbiased. It is kind of odd how citizens in the EU regard it as a 'victory'

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#224

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

As a reminder of what the EU has done previously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

>According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store citizens' telecommunications data for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months.

And they knew that this was illegal. They did it anyway. Same political body that now talks about protecting privacy.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#225
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but how much of that boring stuff requires the full matter of what the EU has become? That’s why I could see a rump sticking around or getting folded into some other institutions, if full dissolution never quite happens.

Again, Brexit shows, imho, that you can’t have the boring stuff without the tight integration. There are no duties because taxes are harmonised. There are no import/export controls because norms are identical pan-EU. The UK wanted to drop the tight integration and acceptance of common goals, but keep all the tax and trade benefits. But the logical hurdles turned out to be insurmountable. Want to sell fish tax-free? W…

"Brexit shows, imho, that you can’t have the boring stuff without the tight integration"

This is definitely not true. There are tons of 0-tarrif trade agreements in this world, and even those without border checks for commercial goods - all without political integration.

NAFTA/USMCA have been doing this for 35 years and it's very effective.

Brexit doesn't show 'how good the EU is' it shows the opposite: that UK, Switzerland and Norway well get along quite well outside of the political body.

The EEC was entirely uncontentious - everyone wants some version of that. No arguments from anyone there.

But the argument that the 'Political Layer over the EEC, i.e. the EU, is necessary' might have some merit, but it's probably more complicated, and it might not even be true.

The real comparison is no between EU/US/China - but between the EU and a more comprehensive version of the EEC - i.e. some kind of 'deep trade integration' but without a political body, and without an ECJ with 'Legal Supremacy'.

This surveillance issue highlights one of those areas where I'm not so sure the EU would be perfectly ideal for supranational laws. Treaty-based regulation - for sure. But laws under ECJ Supremacy ... I'm not so sure. It's going to be interesting to see how this jives with the German Basic Law and their de-facto opt-out over constitutional issues.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#226
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Think you're glossing over the distinction between compelling material (by warrant, subpoena, &c.) -- what the Fourth Amendment covers -- and private entities voluntarily giving the government material that third parties have entrusted them. Nothing regulates the latter: that's the third-party doctrine.

The people you're replying to aren't glossing over it, the posted article (and the comments predicting the end of the European tech industry) is glossing over it. "European Parliament approves mass surveillance" really means "European Parliament suspends portion of privacy law that prevents third parties from voluntarily monitoring information entrusted to them" - as they're able to do in the US.

The European Parliament isn't (in this action, at least) compelling anyone to surveil anything.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#227

Maybe brexit has it right - Europe isn't a good place to be a member of.

You are aware that every EU country votes on this, right? Every single piece of EU legislation you might have disliked was voted on by the UK government while it was a member. The Tory spin might have given you a different impression but its incredibly rare that an EU law doesn't have the assent of all countries.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#228
post #6

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

Protonmail is already compromised.

You’ll have to send coded messages with manual encryption if you want something secret.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#229
post #147
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the 'carrot' for Spain, France, Italy that goes beyond what the EEC provided?

Why would a 'really great trade agreement' not provide 'most, if not all of the carrot' with respect to economic upsides?

Does the EU political apparatus an ECJ, i.e. beyond comprehensive trade agreements, provide carrots?

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#230
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?

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