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Messaging and chat control

patrick-breyer.de

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Re: Messaging and chat control

#281

Post by jokethrowaway »

fabbari wrote: post #90
jokethrowaway wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Individual countries are equally corrupted by big businesses and authoritarian leaning, but you can generally count on inefficient flip flopping right-left parties to not do too much damage in any direction. The EU seems to be way more efficient in getting us straight to 1984 or Soviet Russia V2.

I am replying to all the posts pushing this defeatist agenda. Not only it's wrong, but it's also dangerous. It is representatives of the countries in the Council of the EU voting these legislations through: hold them accountable as you would hold them accountable locally. Don't fall for the narration of the EU as a third party where your local representatives have no say. If four countries veto the bill, the bill is…

Every layer you add between who's making laws and who's voting diminishes the power of the voter. What ends up happening is that laws are not what votes want but what people who are skilled at the politic game want - or more likely, what the people who sponsor them want.

I don't think a central government for a single country is a good solution and I think an entity who can force countries to legiferate is even worse. Countries got pulled in into Europe because of the trading opportunities, not because they wanted a quasi-Federal Government.

We're witnessing a slow decline into dystopia and making the 0.1% richer and richer every day. VATMOSS and European regulations killed small business favouring Amazon. Covid lockdowns killed small business favouring Amazon.

I'm not sure whether the representatives are complete idiots who believe to the propaganda or who assume their voters are complete idiots (eg: I can't vote against protecting children, no matter what or people will think I'm a monster; I can't vote against massively complicating VAT laws or people will think I'm favouring Amazon) or malicious entities who just want more power in the hands of the government, but the net results has been always negative (not only in Europe).

I don't care how representation works in Europe or anywhere else, the facts speak for themselves: most governments end up behaving in ways that benefit big businesses.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#282

Post by sneak »

aj3 wrote: post #131
sneak wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage has an e2e backdoor on by default in the form of plaintext escrow via iCloud Backup (not e2e). iMessage is, in practice today, no longer e2e. Apple knows this and intentionally preserves this backdoor for the FBI: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1ZK1CT

Meh. Compared to 10 years ago we still live in a bright future where e2ee is available to everyone who needs it. Yeah, you might need to enable some options (like in Telegram) or disable some other options (like iCloud in iMessage), but it's still there. Even with this on-device CSAM thingy, Apple knows less about you than they did 10 years ago and random staffers at FAANG can't just go and spy on their spouses (the…

Disabling iCloud doesn't enable e2e as the other end of your conversation still has iCloud on by default and is escrowing your chat plaintext to Apple.

Apple has access to all of the plaintext iMessages for almost all devices/conversations and can turn them over to the USG at will.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#283

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

smarx wrote: post #231
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 P…

That experiment shows that whatever is stored on ProtonMail's servers plus your password is sufficient to decrypt your emails. This could be explained by the private key being derived from or encrypted with your password. ProtonMail's documentation says it's the latter ( https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/how-is-the-pri... ): > Your ProtonMail private key is generated in your browser. Before sending the pr…

The most likely attacker against proton mail are various law enforcement or intelligence agencies.

Such agency can force PM to modify login process to derive password from submitted form, or to just switch private keys for non-encrypred ones, because the user won't even notice it.

Truly secure entity just wouldn't have private keys on a server at all. Users would have to go through an an uncomfortable process of generating and uploading keys to clients, but they would be truly safe.

To sum it up, you can't really have security and convenience at once. besides skipping a proper key management process, PM also mail skips such important steps as verification of email partner identify and key verification, so you have to trust PM that you are really talking to a person you think you are talking.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#284

Post by jokethrowaway »

xtracto wrote: post #176
jokethrowaway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 Ol…

You may have things switched up.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

> Communists agree on the ultimate withering away of the state but disagree on the means to this end, reflecting a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist state.

I think communism is the ultimate utopia and it is unlikely to be ever achieved because people are generally unhappy to have the surplus they produced to be redistributed. Without coercion of a socialist state you won't get redistribution.

At the same time, a government is not an abstract entity. It's just other people who make decision in your place and often get some extra privileges on top because of it - negating the communist goal of achieving a classless society.

That said, I understand your point of view. Socialism is an economic philosophy based around social ownership and doesn't dictate anything about privacy.

That said, the centralisation required to achieve socialism (similar to what we see in our society: you need a taxman to forcefully steal profits from all the citizens and build some roads) implies the creation of a strong state who has all the interests in surveilling citizens.

Socialism and redistribution imply authoritarianism. All the socialist libertarian and left wing anarchists doctrines can't work unless you have perfect, not greedy, law abiding and honest citizens happy to give away exactly the surplus they produce. Which is to say, it will never work in a normal society, it may work in a small village with like minded people.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#285

Post by zibzab »

dang wrote: post #277
zibzab wrote: 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?…

Please keep name-calling and personal attacks out of your comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Exactly where is this name calling? Please unflag this so we can continue the discussion.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#286

Post by dTal »

effie wrote: post #206
dTal wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is either - an unstoppable authoritarian juggernaut to which countries have foolishly ceded their sovereignty and are now paying the price in the form of draconian regulation - a weak and ineffectual symbolic union which issues empty proclamations that countries are free to ignore without consequence Which is it?

False dichotomy. It can be both, depending on the issue. This is similar to U.S., although U.S. is much stronger on the federal level than EU is.

Do you regard the ceding of state sovereignty to the U.S. federal government to also have been a fatal error?

Re: Messaging and chat control

#287

Post by jokethrowaway »

jq-r wrote: post #265
thegrimmest wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically about surrendering individual power/consent to collective decision making, isn't it?

That's actually called living in a civilization.

I disagree.

Your statement is true only because in the present day socialist governments control most of the desirable space.

The Vikings in the middle age moved to Iceland exactly to avoid kings and lords (not that far from our democracy) and they built a decentralised society which lasted 300 years.

They had private courts and private law enforcement. Strategic decisions were happening at the local level with local leaders.

I believe a decentralised society is possible - but there is just no interest in doing so and dismantling the status quo.

First, you need money to get elected in a position where you can do that. Your sponsors will likely want something in return. If you throw away all the power after getting it and create a decentralised society, you won't be able to return any favour or reap any benefit.

You may just as well become the next corrupted leader and get rich from the politics scam.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#289

Post by slickrick216 »

scrollaway wrote: post #275
slickrick216 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all I’m vaxed. Second of all it is in fact the same people. I live in an EU country and it’s the EU political establishment and their allies that are doing this. The fact you had to call out my grammar shows how weak your argument is. You are a literal grammar nazi. With language like “parasite” you really are showing your facist side aren’t you.

> The fact you had to call out my grammar shows how weak your argument is What on earth are you talking about? I don't call out people's grammar.

Sorry misread your message. You aren’t a grammar nazi.

Re: Messaging and chat control

#290

Post by matheusmoreira »

honkdaddy wrote: post #267
matheusmoreira wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article mentions that 40% of CP investigations in Germany are started against minors (implied: through sexting), which shows that this concern is not purely theoretical at all. I've read news about this. Teenager sends nude photos to her boyfriend, calls the cops after the break up and they proceed to nearly ruin his life by threatening lifetime sex offender registration. The implication that the girl produced…

That's a terrifying story. Do you have a link or any other details?

I'm searching for it but I can't seem to find the source anymore.
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