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Messaging and chat control

patrick-breyer.de

171–180 of 336 posts

Re: Messaging and chat control

#171
post #33
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold your horses, put down the pitchforks. You realise the author is a _member of the European Parliament_?? And at least in my corner of EU we vote on who to send to EU parliament. You can vote on whoever you want in the national elections and then vote for the pirate party for the EU seat. Edit: from your comment history I guess you vote far right, which is usually the part of EU pushing hardest for these measures?…

> we vote on who to send to EU parliament. You are describing a representative democracy, the parent pointed out the lack of direct democracy in the process. And I would tend to agree that there needs to be more direct democracy involved at some point in the policy making process to accommodate just such a scenario where it's clear the vast majority are not happy with the result. Representative democracy has it's pla…

"direct democracy" is a no-true-scotsman type fallacy, as you can use it to keep moving the goalposts indefinitely. Even Switzerland, the much-touted example of "direct democracy" has a parliament of elected representatives.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's reported in the main government news source, the tagesschau, in Germany all the time and (at least for Germany) its also blown waaaayy out of proportion. For example, in my home-town of 170,000 the demo was 30 people… The "police brutality" used against the QAnon, Nazis, and the so called "Querdenker" demonstrators here in Germany is laughable, when you compare what the police does against left-leaning demonstra…

> its also blown waaaayy out of proportion.

Can confirm, media likes to report on it because it gets a lot of clicks. It's a loud minority that knows how to use (online) media for their means and profit.

> The "police brutality" used against the QAnon, Nazis, and the so called "Querdenker" demonstrators here in Germany is laughable, when you compare what the police does against left-leaning demonstrations here in Germany on a regular basis.

Initiators of (not only) left demonstrations like to cry about the oh-so brutal police but there is definetely truth to this. I've never seen protesters get away with so much bullshit in germany.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#173

I voted Remain in the EU referendum here in the UK but, in 2021, a few things have happened that have caused me to question whether that was the right choice and whether, with Brexit, we have the right outcome (albeit for very much the wrong reasons seen through 2016 eyes): 1. Ursula von der Leyen and the EU Commission bullying companies and non-EU countries about vaccine production and provision. A wider point here…

Also, one wonders if EU states would have been better at closing their borders at the start of the pandemic (like Australia or New Zealand did) if it wasn't for the EU. Maybe not, because there are always big trade networks on a landmass on this size, but I do think that the 'free movement' ideology played a part as well. (Free movement is wonderful in general, but why in a pandemic??)

Re: Messaging and chat control

#174
post #6

Privacy is something that people usually only care about on a theoretical level. Practically speaking, they're often happy to not care so much at all if they get something more tangible in return. --- Company: Excuse me, would you mind us profiling you through an accurate survey of most of your everyday purchases? Customer: Heck no! Company: What if we let you collect "points" that will maybe someday safe you a littl…

Regardless, robbing people of the ability to consent, even if 90% of them would anyways, should be intolerable.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This has absolutely nothing to do with socialism.

This has everything to do with socialism. Socialism is about trading individual liberty, power, and ability to consent for centrally-managed services provided with government authority. This is exactly what's happening here.

The ease and comfort with which this trade is made speaks exactly to the trend GP was referring to.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#176
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is astonishing that most liberal democracies are looking at the Chinese system of control on society with envy. In a way, mandatory covid passes to do anything are already a form of social credit system. And with so many people obsessed with virtu signalling, an actual social credit system would likely get some traction.

[flagged]

The other commenter mentioned it, but I'll reinforce it: This is completely unrelated to Socialism. If anything, whatever "Socialism" exists in China is one of the few things to applaud to them. Similarly to "Socialism" practiced in Norway, Finland, Sweden and even Germany to a certain degree.

What you are thinking of is either "Communism" or, in the case of what is being discussed here more like Authoritarism and Oligarchy. Both of those two are definitely present in China, and more and more present in Western countries who push methods of mass survelliance of the population to further advance their goals.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#177
post #19

I think this isn't getting nearly enough traction, especially considering how undemocratic EU's legislative procedures can get. Considering the lack of direct democracy in the European Union, exposure and public protest is the only viable way to oppose this legislature. There's also an ongoing petition against the legislature: https://www.openpetition.eu/petition/online/preserve-eprivac...

Hold your horses, put down the pitchforks. You realise the author is a _member of the European Parliament_?? And at least in my corner of EU we vote on who to send to EU parliament. You can vote on whoever you want in the national elections and then vote for the pirate party for the EU seat. Edit: from your comment history I guess you vote far right, which is usually the part of EU pushing hardest for these measures?…

I won't argue with you that democracy sucks.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#178
post #88
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not substantive. Please read the HN guidelines.

Alright, let me spell it out. You contend that "submitting your country[sic] laws to legislation from Brusel[sic] was a fatal error", on the grounds of a single piece of legislation. The same argument can be used to argue against any sort of government, since it's a rare government that makes no mistakes at all. The EU is top-tier in a wide range of areas spanning from human rights to food safety. So I ask again - wh…

I wish I could report passive aggressive comments like this... as they don't really belong to HackerNews.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since they don't have access to their users' email content because of encryption. Regular emails (i.e. without home-brewn encryption that Protonmail provided - and I'm yet to receive such email from any of my contacts who use Protonmail), or any inbound email received from third-party servers are of course not encrypted and Protonmail has pretty easy access to their contents.

Protonmail uses PGP and not "home-brewn encryption" and encryption is on by default between Protonmail users.

False.

Even when it does use PGP, it is meaningless, explanation:

I just created a spare protonmail account. It asked me to pick a username and password, and my account is created.

Next, I send there a message from my other account. Yes, on the receiving end it does write "End-to-end encrypted and signed message", but encrypted and signed by what exactly? I have never created a PGP keys and loaded the public key to Protonmail on either account (and never used my private key to decrypt anything. This can mean only one thing: even if there is some kind of encryption happening, Protonmail themselves generate keys, and uses it for encryption-decryption, never asking you for anything but your password. And if they can uses these keys to decrypt the messages for you, they can decrypt it for anybody.

Protonmail also gives a user an option to export his private keys. Yeah, right. Your private keys.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#180
post #98

The scary thing about this is that many people have images that look like child porn at home: Family photos of naked grandchildren playing at the sea or in the mud, as well as sexting between consenting teenagers. There is no way automatic classification can distinguish these from real child porn, because they look almost identical and thus many private pictures will be shared with the government. This not only infri…

> as well as sexting between consenting teenagers.

Good god. I can't imagine the influx of in my view innocent teens suddenly labeled sex offenders because they did what all teens do, only virtually.

This is going to be a weird time.

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