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Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

patrick-breyer.de

61–70 of 338 posts

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#61
post #6

I don't understand who wants this. does any of their actual constituency want it? Or is it literally just the actual elected officials getting power hungry? Stuff like abortion, etc where I don't really understand the other side. I've at least met real people who are pro life. I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways.

Abortion is especially strange since a supermajority of Americans, across the political spectrum, of both genders, generally agree that some abortions should be permitted [1]. 70% want to keep the status quo. [2] It's even arguably a violation of the religious freedom of Jewish folks to ban abortion [3]. It's not forbidden by the Bible either - the Bible makes it clear that life begins 'at first breath' (Genesis 2:7) [4]. Super weird. [edit] Feels like the anti-abortion folks are the dog that caught the bus.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/06/about-six-i...

[2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-americans-stand-o...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/abortion-bans-may-violate-je...

[4] https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/26087-abortion-nontract#w...

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#63
post #6

I don't understand who wants this. does any of their actual constituency want it? Or is it literally just the actual elected officials getting power hungry? Stuff like abortion, etc where I don't really understand the other side. I've at least met real people who are pro life. I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways.

I assume some corporations are lobbying for it. So they can harvest more data, and maybe sell the tech that will do this. In the past some stuff like this has either gotten through of been attempted, and its usually in some trade deal with the US. So apparently the US really wants this all over the world.

There is a difference between having your data intercepted by statal agencies or by having it intercepted by private entities. The latter would be harder, in absolute terms, to justify.

(And still PSD2 has given private entities accesses to dashboards of financial details of individuals - some of us have not yet understood in which terms.)

Moreover, there is a matter of legal boundaries for each involved agent, and also a matter of a will for those legal boundaries to be actually enforced (as opposed to being expressed as an appeasing veneer).

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#64

These tyrants have to be stopped. A tyrannical government is far more dangerous to people, including children than your regular criminal. Ironically, by giving the state too much power and therefore increasing the symptoms of corruption, we allow the same sort of crimes to be practiced by corrupt state officials with little means for people enact accountability. China, the country with the most mass-surveillance in t…

Well said. If there's no true freedom of speech, we've lost everything. The last two years offered already a glimpse... Now look at China. It's mind blowing. Poor people.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#65
How is this law supposed to work with text encryption? Write text, encrypt, copy to clipboard, paste into chat app? Will such encryption applications be prohibited? That seems unenforcable, these apps are everywhere, I've even written one with symmetric encryption myself.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Louis CK. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Fy8zVp63w

Ah, 'Thank you'! Yes that's the skit I remembered, and by golly, as fucked up an idea as it is, he's entirely right. "I don't know what to do with that information. I don't have way to apply that to anything that's helpful", indeed.

He’s not right.

Lowering penalties makes it more acceptable to society. I think we do agree that allowing child abuse is a net negative for society.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#67
post #6

I don't understand who wants this. does any of their actual constituency want it? Or is it literally just the actual elected officials getting power hungry? Stuff like abortion, etc where I don't really understand the other side. I've at least met real people who are pro life. I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways.

> does any of their actual constituency want it?

While one can technically argue that the EU Commission has constituency, it's worth noting that it's a few layers of abstraction away: Commissioners are typically people with industry background who are nominated by the "EU Council". The EU Council is in turn made up of state leaders. (The "EU Parliament" is a separate body that is actually elected by voters).

Lobbyists also have much more direct access to commissioners than any constituents ever would.

For some context, Thierry Breton is the current EU Commissioner for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Defence Industry and Space, Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. His background is running France Télécom & acquiring Xerox IT outsourcing. (He's also the former French Minister of Finance, but ministries are not elected positions in France).

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#68

Here's the uncommon opinion. Google/FB, by extension US government, already performs mass surveillance. There are actually 2 solutions to this problem. One is stopping Google/FB. The other is making mass surveillance more common, lessening the impact of mass surveillance. In that sense non-US govs taking mass surveillance is a boon to power balances and competition amongst nations and economies. Does this opinion hav…

How does making mass surveillance more common lessen it's impact? To me, that's like saying making COVID more common will lessen it's impact.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#69
post #6

I don't understand who wants this. does any of their actual constituency want it? Or is it literally just the actual elected officials getting power hungry? Stuff like abortion, etc where I don't really understand the other side. I've at least met real people who are pro life. I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways.

> I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways. Try looking past IT-affine circles, there the mindset of "nothing to hide, my info is not worth anything anyway" is shockingly prevalent. Particularly once the virtue signaling starts along the lines of "People who oppose this, support organized crime, terrorism and child abuse!" , once these topics are brought up…

> risk being accused being one of those nasties

"Risk"?! If in your environment that is part of survival, I encourage to reconsider the value of survival.

Edit: interesting that this post, disparaging social conformity that would bow to the demands of what is low, was soon hit by a sniper - such silence is consistent with what a side disagreeing on such principle could look like.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#70
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways. Try looking past IT-affine circles, there the mindset of "nothing to hide, my info is not worth anything anyway" is shockingly prevalent. Particularly once the virtue signaling starts along the lines of "People who oppose this, support organized crime, terrorism and child abuse!" , once these topics are brought up…

I really hate to fall for zoomer stereotypes but I do get the feeling that this generation is (on average) broadly more open to all forms of authoritarianism. It seems to apply across the political spectrum with the zoomer right being NatCon/alt-right and the zoomer left being what you describe. They also seem comfortable with a lack of privacy in general and with hyper-centralization of businesses and services they…

I mean, who can really blame them? Most of them only know the web in this centralized state [0], and most people older than them keep telling them how much progress, and how everything is so much better, with that "digital economy" revolving around a handful of fat unicorns.

So from their perspective, it's easy to see it as the natural progression where things should head even more.

[0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...

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