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

patrick-breyer.de

291–300 of 338 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a bunch of other rules, and not get kicked out, or even sanctioned. So you're saying you voted for Brexit because the EU didn't have enough power to punish member states? Do you think that these new entrants were the only ones breaking the rules with no consequences?[0] > I don't want to be in a union of governments with authoritarian racists. Leaving the EU doesn't help make Hungary (for example) become any le…

> the only ones breaking the rules Of course not. Rules get broken all the time. But as the years went by, I came to realise that the EU didn't embody the principles it claimed to stand for (and of which I approved). > Leaving the EU doesn't help make Hungary (for example) become any less authoritarian Moderating the atavistic instincts of other countries isn't a good reason for being in a political union. > Boris Jo…

Thank you for your honest answers. For what it's worth, I don't think you're a bad person for voting the way you did.

> the EU didn't embody the principles it claimed to stand for (and of which I approved).

But is it possible that you were holding it to a higher standard than you hold your own country to?

> Moderating the atavistic instincts of other countries isn't a good reason for being in a political union.

Turning that around, though: reducing the moderation on those atavistic instincts is not a good way to further the principles you claim to support. In any case, there are other, more positive, reasons to be an international trade and peace agreement than just a duty to look out for your neighbours.

> I have half a chance of voting them out. It's not possible to vote Hungary and Poland off the EU Commission.

But the problem isn't the nationality of the commissioners, because you're not a racist, right? The Council of Ministers only nominates the various members of the Commission, in agreement with the nominated President, and the 27 members as a team are then subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament.[0] So you had more chance of voting out an atavistic Hungarian or Polish commissioner (through your MEP, and President) than you had of determining the composition of Boris Johnson's cabinet (especially considering the more proportional voting system used by the EU).

> Greece acceded despite not meeting the financial requirements for membership; it was then financially crushed by Germany (more specifically, German bankers)

If Greece did not meet the financial requirements, it is because of fraud carried out by Greece itself, without the EU's knowledge[1]. Greece abusing its position in the Eurozone to leverage itself into an unsustainable economic position is not something you need to be ashamed of, no matter the nationality of the bankers who were Greece's creditors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece#Eurozone_ent...

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

#292
post #2

If EU really wants to curb risk to children: -significantly raise the penalty for sexual child abuse -provide clinics and medications for people with this mental disease However, that’s not really the goal here is it…

> -significantly raise the penalty for sexual child abuse I'm sure some dark comic (Boyle, Gervais?) made a joke along these lines, but presumably the problem with this tack is that you end up with more dead children? Biology, consensus-morality-abiding or otherwise, is a hard thing to ignore and little befearing the meagre laws of man in those that suffer from it. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I don't see 'st…

I guess the usual child abuser doesn't think along the line that they do it for potential 10 years but not for 25 years in prison.

While I believe that the schedule of kids is vastly overstuffed with senseless crap, more eyes on the target probably helps identifying cases of abuse. That means funding child care and schools. But that is more expensive and doesn't have positive side effects like a law for content control. UvdL is known to have had and probably still has many private gatherings to discuss policy in a privileged group. Maybe we should ask her what her secrecy was about and where the chat protocol is from these meetings. I suspect more criminal behavior than in the average internet chat.

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

#293
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean Exodus 21:22-24? That's not what it says at all: "When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for…

As with any ancient text, translations will vary. The one you've quoted seems to play up the ambiguity, which is non-standard for English renditions. The Common English Bible renders this passage as, "When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage but no other injury occurs, then the guilty party will be fined what the woman’s husband demands, as negotiated with the judges. 23 If t…

> I'm not sure what you're taking "so that her children come out" to mean

I took it to mean that the children are born prematurely. In any case, it doesn't say "so that the bundles of cells come out".

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

#294

The moment this shit passes is the moment I straight up tell people I will not discuss about anything meaningful in our private online chats and if they want to talk we will have to arrange with proven FOSS tools.

I think there has never been good reason to believe that most proprietary tools are properly encrypted at all. The most common form of this is that while the messages may indeed be end-to-end encrypted, the keys are stored in the cloud, which allows them to be given to the authorities upon request, perhaps secretly.

A real concern. I suspect the chain of trust is already undermined by states to a large degree. At least that should be assumed if secure communication is required.

Still, policy decision like this should be rejected and used as an example of bad policy crafting in the future. It isn't the first deed of UvdL on this topic.

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

#295
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is full of this kind of “drop bomb” and run crap. Hello. I usually keep responding to people. I'm not from the EU, so if you disagree with me I'll respond. It's not unlikely I'm wrong. I am a crazy anti-government guy though, so you've got me there.

Well, I'm going to take this argument in good faith then and assume you're not trolling, but I'll be extremely disappointed if I'm proven wrong. I'll start by saying that the EU does have issues, I can talk fairly about what the EU even is first, why it evolved and then talk about those issues as fairly as I can. FD: I am pro-EU but it's not like I can't understand that people can have exactly the same information as…

No post body was provided.

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

#296

This looks like a scare-story. Firstly, the EU produces directives and regulations; it doesn't produce "laws". Secondly, the phrase "child pornography" is in quotes, as if there's no such thing. There is such a thing. Thirdly, the imputed "law" requires service providers to scan encrypted messages. That's impossible, unless the proposal is to ban properly-encrypted messages. If that were the proposal, then surely tha…

> Firstly, the EU produces directives and regulations; it doesn't produce "laws".

Even in legalese these are one and the same. And we have proposals like this regularly, so when is the time to get involved? Not that I would recommend that to anyone if I look at the state of the EU.

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

#297
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the recent crackdown on “misinformation”. Skepticism and dissent can’t be prevented, but its spread can be suppressed. Many otherwise good people have fallen hook line and sinker for the “misinformation pandemic” propaganda campaign.

There's a huge difference between skepticism (expressing some contrary opinion) and misinformation (putting forward lies as facts), although I have to admit the spreaders of misinformation have gotten very good at innocently claiming they're "just asking questions."

Skepticism is not "expressing some contrary opinion". It is a rationalist discipline, very much rooted in logic. A true skeptic will do one of two things:

- put forward sound arguments why a specific viewpoint or presented fact could be wrong

- reserve judgement altogether

Expressing a contrary opinion is not in the skeptic's playbook, because it would be self-defeating: they would be making the same categorical error as they're arguing against.

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

#298
post #5

Ah the classic "But think of the children" appeal... Anybody know how this will impact proton?

I don't appreciate the way privacy advocates attack the "think of the children" cliche. It comes off as a flippant rejection of the importance of protecting the vulnerable. The issue isn't the justification, it's that the ends don't justify the means. Sometimes you can't take an action even if you perceive it'll have a good result (spying on people [immoral means] to protect children [moral end]).

This isn't a debate about the merits of that. Europe has a lot of problems with human trafficking in general but this is about information control. And the strategy to get that realised with emotional topics was correctly predicted decades ago.

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

#299
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the recent crackdown on “misinformation”. Skepticism and dissent can’t be prevented, but its spread can be suppressed. Many otherwise good people have fallen hook line and sinker for the “misinformation pandemic” propaganda campaign.

There's a huge difference between skepticism (expressing some contrary opinion) and misinformation (putting forward lies as facts), although I have to admit the spreaders of misinformation have gotten very good at innocently claiming they're "just asking questions."

That isn't a viable critique. You have to prepare the right answers and bad faith questions are easy to counter. Or maybe not, but you still have to be able to do that. I have seen much more instances where no answers could be provided when people asked legitimate questions that weren't in bad faith at all.

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

#300
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I just lacking imagination? Yes. The EU is becoming a totalitarian regional government of elites. Originally it wasn't even supposed to have a military presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_forces_of_the_European... It was supposed to prevent the need of passports. https://www.covidpasscertificate.com/europe-digital-green-pa... All the good things are going out the door and all the bad things are walki…

In the interest in saving peoples time when responding to this: don’t. It’s trolling at worst and nerd sniping at best. The author of this comment knows this full well. His comment history is full of this kind of “drop bomb” and run crap. “covid passports” being required is not exactly the fault of the EU, if anything it’s because of the freedoms the EU still has. Anti-covid rhetoric needs to die, anti-EU bad faith p…

You don't answer for him but for those that read the chain of arguments.

It is a valid approach to naively ask for the obvious repercussions even if it isn't done honestly.

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