Patrick Breyer (Member of EU Parliament for the Pirate Party) maintains an overview of all the ins and outs of the Chat Control legislation and things you can do to protest against it.
EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
111–120 of 201 posts
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#112I am the first person to appreciate the pro-online-privacy legislation from the EU in the last couple of years. Yet...How can the same organization be behind this? Is it a result of the sheer size of the org, with malevolent people reeking their ugly heads? A more cynical "privacy legislation as a smoke screen with totalitarian measures in the backend"?
This is probably the biggest issue with having an executive which isn't formed by the actual members of parliament, particularly if that executive has powers that the parliament either cannot challenge by design or can't really challenge in practice. The EU commission really isn't democratic at all, and this is by design because of both the origins of the EU as a technocratic-economic project but also the EU parliame…
It's arguably still democratic in that each country, through its EU commissioner, gets one vote and the power to veto unless they've given up that veto for a specific issue which is done at a summit of all the national leaders of EU countries by signing a further treaty. If a country doesn't like what is happening they tell their elected national government to do something about it then the commissioner acts on the instructions received from the national government. Going from admittedly hazy memory from back in 2016, commissioners have a fixed term, I believe, and a national government can recall their commissioner if they are not doing what they are told. I think the EU parliament can also veto legislation proposed by the EU commission, but cannot create its own legislation.
The things the EU commission can legislate are restricted by treaty, I've no idea what these restrictions are something I suspect that I share with 99.999% of people in this thread.
So I would argue that the EU commission is less democratic than a directly elected EU parliament with the power to create any legislation it wants, but more democratic than say the House of Lords in the UK or the Supreme Court in the US where members are chosen by the elected government and can only be removed if they die, resign or commit some kind of heinous crime.
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#113Hot take, cites no legal opinion. My personal view is, this is a misrepresentation of the proposed act. The act may be bad, but this interpretation looks suspicious and hyperbolic. I'd like to see cites, and counterparts.
Agreed. Unfortunately I find the European Pirate Party representatives the least reliable when it comes to reporting on privacy laws and similar. Which is pretty damning judgement considering what they see as their mission.
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was more meaning a technological intervention that prevented underage people from being able to use/consume something. Controlled substances are controlled through a legal framework although admittedly, some of the precursors to drugs are also banned which could count as a technological block on making them. I have never heard of a confiscated child due to the parent having cannabis in their bloodstream - have you…
I doubt that particular consequence applies to cannabis. It does apply to other prohibited drugs.
I have never heard of a confiscated child due to the parent having cocaine in their bloodstream - have you any source?
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#115How hard is it for repos to just "not do business in the EU" -- especially those that are donation funded in the first place? It's been awhile since we saw the amusing maps drawn by the Pirate Bay pointing to the big pond that separates where the law is enforceable and where the servers are. Perhaps it'd require IP range blocking, but honestly, if there's no ads or any business being done in the EU, even that seems unnecessary -- the EU can take the trouble to block them if they like.
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#116It seems that application stores would only be a tiny fragment of what would be affected by the law. Basically everything involving facilitating communications between users would be subject to draconian surveillance and reporting requirements. This is not the way a free or open society progresses.
EU is neither free nor open. I'm saying this as a citizen of EU member. It's getting more and more pro-big-business and pro-big-government day by day. While citizen self-governance is crushed over and over. Good example is Poland vs EU conflict for political control of judges. Meanwhile nobody bats an eye for existing political control of judges in my country. Here higher level judges have to be approved by parliamen…
Personally I don't see how your example shows EU crushing "citizen self-governance" which sounds like a liberarian charged expression for "democracy". Could you elaborate please?
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#117How hard is it for repos to just "not do business in the EU" -- especially those that are donation funded in the first place? It's been awhile since we saw the amusing maps drawn by the Pirate Bay pointing to the big pond that separates where the law is enforceable and where the servers are. Perhaps it'd require IP range blocking, but honestly, if there's no ads or any business being done in the EU, even that seems u…
With the use of VPNs, it's almost impossible to prevent someone in the EU from accessing a service.
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU is not very democratic - if they want to do something they will and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
That's not really correct. The European Commission might not be directly elected by EU citizens, but the members of the European Parliament are elected by EU citizens, and the Council of the European Union is made up of one minister from each EU member state. A law doesn't get passed without support from the democratically elected parliament members and the national representatives in the council. It's also worth not…
Those two layers of abstraction make all the difference. Directly elected officials are particularly bad, imagine that.
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#119"They" are in a dilemma, they either go total global control or they lose control. And it's clear they are going with the former.
This is just one more law that makes no practical sense even if the intentions were noble. The WHO treaty, CBDCs, and digital IDs are all in the pipeline doing much the same.
With the real-time, global, instant communication network that is the internet, "their" ONLY hope to retain control at scale is to use AI/Software and essentially force everyone to obey a computer.
They will fail, that's the good news. Mostly because of entropy - that is to say, it is far cheaper and easier to disable a structure than build it up. A $2B data center can be disabled by a fire or a virus. A "too-big-to-fail-bank" can disappear overnight when customers close their accounts.
The reason those don't happen normally is because people are mostly good, happy, and trusting. Once the trust is gone, there is anger, and self-interest trumps good-intentions - that's when the entropy and "Black Swan" events really kick in. I recommend Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies for how such processes have repeatedly taken place throughout history.
The bad news is that they are going to try and force total control through anyways, so get ready. Nobody can predict how its going to unfold.
Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems
#120How hard is it for repos to just "not do business in the EU" -- especially those that are donation funded in the first place? It's been awhile since we saw the amusing maps drawn by the Pirate Bay pointing to the big pond that separates where the law is enforceable and where the servers are. Perhaps it'd require IP range blocking, but honestly, if there's no ads or any business being done in the EU, even that seems u…
With the use of VPNs, it's almost impossible to prevent someone in the EU from accessing a service.
Is there anything preventing the ban of vpns?