Live data from Hacker News

The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

netzpolitik.org

81–90 of 443 posts

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#81
post #27
post #3

The commission does not seek to break encryption Okay. Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals No. It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption i…

Before I miss it. Here are the "good guys" at work (paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... We can see "AI" at work. And even if a human checks it you are doomed, because you don't fit in the business plan. Therefore never upload private data on a strangers computer. The cloud is by definition a strangers computer! It is nice that you can find your lost phone with their website but y…

> Does someone have recommendations for US based E-Mail providers which are reliable and "not free"?

Buy a refurbished server rack and mount it anywhere in US, install and configure email software with everything else that you need.

> The situation changes somewhat if you pay with money for service instead with data

Yeah, now company is profiting not only from your data, but from your bank account aswell, that's the difference.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#82
post #3

The commission does not seek to break encryption Okay. Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals No. It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption i…

>No. Assume for sake of argument that it were possible to develop an encryption regime which protected bona fide users, but did not protect criminals. That would be a good thing. As a matter of public policy, criminals shouldn't be given the right to communicate for the sake of furthering criminal activity without the possibility of lawful interception. It's here that some technologists lose sight of the real world.…

You sure you want to deprive anybody who has ever been allocated the tag "criminal" the right to private communications? You might want to think long and hard about the members of that class, and what fate they are subject to when they are laid bound at the feet of their prosecutors in the state, who were also the party responsible for defining who they are, sometimes for no offense more complex or voluntary than being born.

And then if that still doesn't dissuade you, you want to think again even from a position of pure self interest, because you are very likely technically a criminal yourself. (https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...)

Be very, very careful about handing power to the state, there's a reason they're the largest cause of non natural death in the past century, and it's not their innate benevolence.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#83
post #6

If this ever gets into production I hope the tech community can come together and work on a system to generate false positives until this system is no longer viable. Let's hope its a typical EU project and will take at least a decade to complete, or better, let's just hope it will outright fail.

The problem is this project already in pipeline for a good decade :)

As the old drunktard Juncker said... We'll keep pushing unpopular solutions over and over again till it slips through once. And then nobody can get rid of it :)

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#84
post #68

Actually 10% false positive rate is not that bad if the system really has a 90% chance of detecting child abuse. Keep in mind that it only raises a flag, it doesn't automatically results in a false conviction. I don't have the numbers but I think that during an investigation, way more than 10% of suspects did nothing wrong. In fact, some people estimate that 10% of convictions are wrong (though I think that's an over…

[deleted]

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#85
post #3

The commission does not seek to break encryption Okay. Encryption is not only important to protect private communication, but would also help perpetrators/criminals No. It is there to protect us from perpetrators, criminals and all the people which think they are on the good side. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Authoritarian regimes on our planet always thought they were the "good guys". Encryption i…

> The mothers and fathers of the German Grundgesetz (~ constitution) learned that the hard way

repetita iuvant: secrecy is not privacy.

encryption makes conversation private but not totally secret, WhatsApp knows if I write to the person named "dentist" on my address book only when the phone number connected to "wife" is out of town.

Or if I dial the number of a tow truck service at 4 am after my phone has been for hours inside a club and my CC was used to pay for half a dozen alcoholic drinks.

that's more than enough to imply what everyone is implying by reading this.

no need to know the content.

on that matter cheating was easier and safer before encryption was a common thing, nobody actually listened to our calls, and we did not leave around clues strong enough to rebuild our entire life in exchange for a messaging platform.

Secondly, that article clearly states, as any other deliberation of the EU, that the law can override the right to secrecy and that's what happens all the time: the authorities ask the permission to a judge that can grant it or deny it.

It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#86
post #42
post #4

Disgusting. Wonder if people working on these commissions ever consider the thought that they are "the baddies". In any case, the gestapo would have _loved_ this service.

I know a few, and these people genuinely and completely unironically without a doubt in their mind consider that they're doing the right thing for the greater good of humanity.

That's scary. Where to even begin to convince them?

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to be so rude. From the law enforcement side, that is the system working as it should - the police investigated and cleared him of any wrongdoing. That Google can close someone's account for any reason and without any recourse is a wider issue, and one separate to this EU regulation.

> and one separate to this EU regulation. no, not separated at all laws have to take the implicit effects they have into account they could have added a clause to require providers to not close the account until the police investigation finishes. They didn't. Which means they are implicitly partial responsible for such abuse.

That is a broader consumer rights issue which, I agree, the EU should do something about too.

But adding a clause to this regulation would not solve that wider problem.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#88

So the TL;DR is the EU Commission wants to implement surveillance in Chat applications to "protect and combat sexual abuse of minors", because nobody is against "combating sexual abuse of minors", right? Probably later they extend that to "protect and combat right wing opinion", because nobody is against "combating the right wing opinion", or even "protect and combat the climate changes", because "Who are against it"…

> EU Commission wants to implement surveillance in Chat applications to "protect and combat sexual abuse of minors", because nobody is against "combating sexual abuse of minors", right?

> Sounds like the a lot of "paranoid people" were just right, i guess?

Yes they were. The privacy activists are yet to realise that they have lost the battle decades ago.

It is that dire that you have companies and governments pretending to care about privacy but it is always about mass surveillance in the end.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#89

That old adage " if you've nothing to hide, then you've nothing to fear " is oft berated in these sort of discussions, but it really does apply here. This regulation is for the purposes of criminal investigation into serious harms against children, not for spying on whatever innocuous messages you happen to be sharing with friends and family. The privacy fears are being way overblown for us ordinary people. Paedophil…

It's never about the children.

Re: The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

#90
post #73
post #48

How many EU beaureaucrats got their training in East Germany, I wonder? Or is it rather that they are too young and do not know about/remember what constant surveillance does to trust in a society?

Rather a lot of them were young and naive left-wing supporters who looked at USSR through rose glasses. Wouldn't you want to be bureaucrat in late USSR? No threat of purges above you, only endless opportunity to play with your minions as you see fit.

> Rather a lot of them were young and naive left-wing supporters who looked at USSR through rose glasses.

The EC is dominated by conservatives.

Post reply on HN