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The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats

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

#381
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they try to aggressively regulate the sale, import and manufacture (at this point, many hobbyist level homebrew retrocomputers are powerful enough to run a VPN) of general purpose computer devices or aggressively firewall all of the EU and punish anyone using to obscure encrypted data flows through approved protocols, this will of course only stop the people who actually don't have anything to hide. It'll be t…

> It'll be trivial to work around for anyone actually up to no good I never claimed they were motivated to actually stop these crimes. If the real ultimate goal is to prevent the spreading of "state secrets" (i.e. journalists exposing government malfeasance), or reduce copyright infringement, or limiting the spread of "disinformation", or banning memes that insult public figures, then the government needn't worry abo…

If the goal is to create an authoritarian dictatorship, then sure, controlling "most people" is usually enough because you can control the press by sending thugs to their offices.

But your "next step" is far beyond what even China does.

It would kill off any ability for software development. I'm all for being vigilant, but these scenarios are not realistic. As for a general purpose computing device being useful, as long as you can send or receive text or sound or images in any format that can be intercepted, you can tunnel arbitrary data. After all, we have a long history of using acoustic coupled modems. No, it's not practical for regular users, but if we get subjected to that kind of authoritarianism, it's worth doing for the sake of it.

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every country spies on their nominal allies. no. they have sources and intelligence officers share information, for various reasons, not excluding political beliefs. but spying the way USA was doing it on Merkel (for example) is not common, at all. It would also mean that American intelligence is more incompetent than French or Italian intelligence, never caught spying an ally, which cast some doubts on why CIA is…

France has been caught spying many times. There was a huge scandal in the 90s when the French intelligence services were caught bugging American business leaders. WikiLeaks cables make the claim France is actually the “evil empire” of state-sponsored industrial espionage. France also has an enormous NSA-style spying apparatus. https://www.france24.com/en/20130702-france-usa-spying-snowd... https://www.theguardian.com…

> Why do you think any country would handicap itself?

why do you think I think that?

As a person from Rome I have no respect for France.

The point is not that secret services spy on each other, but that mass surveillance of the scale US has built has no equivalent in the west.

They have been spying their citizen too.

Televisions, smartphones and even anti-virus software are all vulnerable to CIA hacking, according to the WikiLeaks documents released Tuesday. The capabilities described include recording the sounds, images and the private text messages of users, even when they resort to encrypted apps to communicate

Add to that most of the corporations amassing people data are American and manufacture the most popular devices around (not limited to but including clouds, voice assistants, even roomba now) and have close relations with NSA (they have to or are willing to do it it doesn't matter) and the only logical conclusion is that they either are incompetent and got caught or they have been doing it too aggressively and the allies got pissed. Right now I believe they simply stepped up their game and catching them is just gone be harder.

Wiretapping looks like child's play in comparison.

But in the end my comment was about the fact that EU Parliament is not the CIA and it's not advocating for mass surveillance.

There's a reason why secret services are called secret, because they are not doing it because the laws permits it.

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> F. that, the only viable solution I see for my country is an exit from the EU Genuine, not loaded question: and then what? What do you expect to happen?

Probably what Brexiteers expected to happen, that everything they don't like disappears and nothing gets worse.

What amazes me is how few details were in the referendum. The question asked was "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" and the possible responses were "Remain a member of the European Union" and "Leave the European Union".

There are a lot of ways Brexit could have been implemented. One extreme would be to make it so the UK has no special arrangements with the EU. It would be just another non-EU country, like say Mexico or Japan, that trades with the EU. Agreements and treaties would arise eventually to deal with issues as needed.

The opposite way would be to make it more like say Norway. Norway is not a member of the EU but is part of the Schengen area along with many EU countries greatly easing travel. It's part of the European Economic Area, easing trade.

Are politics in the UK stable enough that at the time of the vote one could predict which kind of Brexit would be implemented? I don't think anyone seriously thought that Brexit would be fast, so implementation would be years after the referendum.

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

#384

As an EU citizen I didn't know exactly what that Chat Control thing was, so I web searched it: > The EU wants to oblige providers to search all private chats, messages, and emails automatically for suspicious content – generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. [1] Yeah, that will go down well, a central government checking our private conversations for "suspicious content". Of co…

> F. that, the only viable solution I see for my country is an exit from the EU Genuine, not loaded question: and then what? What do you expect to happen?

> and then what? What do you expect to happen?

When the Government did do shitty things in the past we used to go out in the streets, we last did that 4-5 years ago. It helps that the main Government building is only two tram stations away from where I'm living and from where I'm writing this comment, so that helps. I wouldn't even know where in Bruxelles to protest against this, never mind that I'd have to take a plane to get to said protest.

Granted, laws like this one are mostly a clear pass-through for any party that holds power, mostly because the "liberal" middle-classes (the ones who usually go out to protest against a Government they don't like) basically support laws similar to this (unless instructed otherwise).

There are people though who do protest against this sort of stuff. I remember joining a protest against electronic IDs about 10 years ago (give or take), organised by a local religious organisation (I was and still am an atheist), which protest was of course derided by member of said "liberal" middle-classes with stuff like "look at these religious n.ts! they think they're going to have the number of the devil imprinted on a chip located inside of their brains" (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much).

Also, the only consistent movement (for lack of a better term) against electronic centralisation (including surveillance, of course) of most of our lives comes from the same religious and traditional fringes. If they will go out in the streets to protest against it, and they might, I'll most surely join them, while, I repeat, I wouldn't even know what European-wide movement to join in order to combat this, to say nothing of its effectiveness (by "joining" I mean physical presence, not only just an online petition thing).

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has been caught spying many times. There was a huge scandal in the 90s when the French intelligence services were caught bugging American business leaders. WikiLeaks cables make the claim France is actually the “evil empire” of state-sponsored industrial espionage. France also has an enormous NSA-style spying apparatus. https://www.france24.com/en/20130702-france-usa-spying-snowd... https://www.theguardian.com…

> Why do you think any country would handicap itself? why do you think I think that? As a person from Rome I have no respect for France. The point is not that secret services spy on each other, but that mass surveillance of the scale US has built has no equivalent in the west. They have been spying their citizen too. Televisions, smartphones and even anti-virus software are all vulnerable to CIA hacking, according to…

Multiple EU countries have mass surveillance programs and spy on their own citizens. One of my links described the French mass surveillance program in detail.

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

#386
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he'd be okay with it, he has nothing to hide after all, not even the fact that his phone got stolen and was used to send bomb threats to 30 nearest hospitals, then destroyed, in the area where he lives with court ruling that he's guilty + getting extra time for destroying all evidence. Literally NOONE would ever do such a thing, it's not like criminals already communicate using stolen devices and even buy things…

If my phone got stolen, the police would be investigating the person who stole it. Inventing outlandish scenarios isn't really a good argument here.

No post body was provided.

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

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I trust them to investigate fairly and proportionately. Should we trust authorities with unlimited power because... you said so? (no snark intended) The last 2000 years of history show it's not a good idea. Prove me wrong.

It's not unlimited power, this is a specific power for a specific scenario - detection of probable CSAM in a person's messages.

No post body was provided.

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

#388
post #302
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sky hasn’t fallen?? Have you read https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... ?

Google found an image of potential cp, literally a naked child, and forwarded it to the authorities to figure out if it was legit. Other than the person having their Google account suspended which is a separate issue from the surveillance I see zero issue with the events as they happened. In a bygone era where you had to get photos developed I would have expected the 1 hour photo employee to do the same.

A photo of a naked child isn’t automatically CP

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

#389
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially because in the US we already do this and the sky hasn’t fallen. Storage providers and hosting services already scan for it and popular chat apps block sending matching images client side. Like everyone saying this is the spiral to dystopia has to contend with the fact that we’re already apparently living in one.

What? The US doesn't do this. What's the law that mandates scanning chat messages?

I think the US does it without the law. They’re proactive like that

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

#390
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google found an image of potential cp, literally a naked child, and forwarded it to the authorities to figure out if it was legit. Other than the person having their Google account suspended which is a separate issue from the surveillance I see zero issue with the events as they happened. In a bygone era where you had to get photos developed I would have expected the 1 hour photo employee to do the same.

A photo of a naked child isn’t automatically CP

Which is was forwarded to the police for them to make that determination, do you want the alternative where Google decides?
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