Any tips for what an EU citizen can do against this, beyond upvoting this story on HN?
Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
261–270 of 534 posts
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We probably all know that they will show reasons [...], whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. I don't think this is how it works, absent an already existent police state. In democracies, it really is pushed for {good reasons}. Once built, it's then used by law enforcement, because it exists and gets the job done. Pretending there's…
> Pretending there's a sinister, organized New World Order (aka "them") with decades-long plans to restrict freedom is fantasy, and doesn't help us target the actual problem. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't really believe too much in the existence of such a group, but I can argue this is really bad logic. A. Do you think such a group would be public with their ambitions? Such a group would doubtless deny t…
I dont think it will be a "secret cabal". It will simply be a bunch of powerful people arguing that their personal interests are the national/global interest. And believing this whether its true or not. And institutions falling in line with this.
You see this kind of attitude at a lower level on HN, for example, all the time. And this flaw in human nature only grows the more powerful you become.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m always skeptical of phrases like “true motives”. Sometimes people can do the wrong thing for the right reasons, or totally amorally. There doesn’t have to be a secret agenda. Framing things in terms of shadowy cabals that hide their secret motivations weakens the argument and reduces odds of successful resistance to these programs by misunderstanding the opposition.
Yeah - also sometimes there are legitimate tradeoffs and the answer is non-obvious! Stuff like Google’s CSAM detection really does detect abuse. It also can cause problems for a parent if there’s a false positive. The reason these things are hard is because it’s a discussion of what’s better on net and it’s not the case that there is no tradeoff. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb... If OP c…
There are definitely a lot of smart, reasonable people with sincerely held beliefs who nonetheless lie about their motivations and work with like minded people to draft and support legislation under false pretenses for the greater good. They say they want to stop child pornographers and I’m sure they do, but their actual motivations are to monitor political dissidents.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will immedietly vote for any politician willing to exit the EU Willing to exit EU might however be completely orthogonal to preferences regarding surveillance laws. I mean, such politician might just as well propose similar laws like Chat Control after the country leaves the EU. And looking at some of the specimens around here that would not even be unlikely.
I don't understand how this is an argument for staying though, even if so many brings it up. It feels more or less impossible to influence EU-politicians. I don't know who they are, what they do or barely how the EU system works. It is too complicated for laymen to get into in general. If a local politician proposes a stupid law as this one, I can call them up on my phone while when EU does it you don't even know it'…
I don't understand how this is an argument for staying though, even if so many brings it up.
I did not intend to use this as such argument.
Wrt not being able to even reach EU-politicians: that's a bit far fetched, no? Maybe you don't know who they are but it's easy enough to look that up, for my country the first hit is spot on and the second one is a Wikipedia entry saying the same. Likewise for questions like 'how does EU parliament work'.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
...you're not concerned about all of the other Trusted Root CAs that ship in OS/browser updates? Why would the NSA/GCHQ/etc need to compromise a high-profile target like LetsEncrypt when they could bribe any of the dozens of companies names listed in my own local certmgr.msc that I don't recognize at all[1]. 1: I'm seeing names like "Actalis", "Baltimore CyberTrust", "Cetrum" - some of these sound more like pharmaceu…
a compromised root ca allows an attacker who already has dns or ip control (via bgp, arp spoofing, a captive portal, etc.) to leverage it into a working mitm attack on a tls site, but it can't revoke certs it didn't sign, and the attack is over as soon as the attacker loses dns or ip control by contrast, the ca you chose to sign your cert can revoke it, or refuse to renew it, taking your website permanently offline w…
> a compromised root ca allows an attacker who already has dns or ip control
DNS or host/IP control is not a requirement at all: a Trusted CA is already trusted to sign a certificate for any hostname (with exceptions): that's what Trust means, and it also means that we trust them not to issue certificates for domains/hostnames without doing at-least Domain Validation - and we have schemes like Certificate Transparency to help bolster that trust, but it still doesn't prevent an already-trusted CA from issuing its own certificate for, say, google.com or microsoft.com. This is why techniques like Certificate Pinning and co/counter-signing, and others exist - but they're only useful when the client isn't a human-operated web-browser ("smart clients", "IoT", etc). EV certificates were (amongst other things...) meant to help protect against small-time crooks but again, don't help when the CA itself is compromised.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#266Every time this comes up people talk about protecting privacy and anonymity and what not and while luckily for us most of the time the laws die out they still do pass on occasion. The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy. As an example, how many people here could go on television onto some talk program or ne…
> The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy. Speaking from a U.S. perspective here. A pedophile with a cameraphone is terrible. But law enforcement without the 4th amendment is worse. A racist with a social media account is terrible. But a president without the 1st amendment is worse. There are people who do…
I had to look this up, so here's my attempt at translation for non-Americans:
> A pedophile with a cameraphone is terrible. But law enforcement that can search and seize property at will is worse.
> A racist with a social media account is terrible. But a president that can deny people their freedom of expression & assembly is worse.
I agree.
(ps. offtopic meta remark, the American enthusiasm for remembering laws by number never ceases to amaze me)
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#267How is they can make a really problematic privacy law that degrades the web in the name of privacy (would love to sue the EU on the basis that those cookie banners cause problems for people w/ disabilities) and an equally problematic law that helps embezzlers re-offend in the name of privacy but can then invade everyone’s privacy with chat control?
Is there some court that can rein it in? Can the EU be made to explode like a computer in an old movie when it is faced with a contradiction? Can the rest of the world make the EU relocate to the moon or mars so we can have some peace?
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#268We certainly need decentralized systems that cannot be controlled by EU, US, or any government/entity. Privacy is a human right. We probably all know that they will show reasons like "fighting terrorism", "preventing national threats" or "hunting down child pornography" etc, whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. Anyone who is really…
> We probably all know that they will show reasons [...], whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. I don't think this is how it works, absent an already existent police state. In democracies, it really is pushed for {good reasons}. Once built, it's then used by law enforcement, because it exists and gets the job done. Pretending there's…
> I don't think this is how it works, absent an already existent police state.
> In democracies, it really is pushed for {good reasons}.
If public servants were left to their own devices and could mandate any law they like, they would instantly prohibit any behavior that is not explicitly allowed. Because that's how they themselves must function so that public can hold them accountable.
The trouble is that they inherently push this mentality to the politicians who must rely on them to get popularity contest points and sometimes manage to win these nonsense laws that help nobody.
> Pretending there's a sinister, organized New World Order (aka "them") with decades-long plans to restrict freedom is fantasy, and doesn't help us target the actual problem.
Sure, but there actually is "them". They are clueless, individually powerless, out-of-sight, largely disconnected social class that actually makes this happen. And they can wait decades for the right situation. In Czechia, the public servant actually responsible for introducing DNS blocking was actually tasked with online hazard oversight. He pushed it through in order to block just 6 websites because it was somehow easier for him than negotiating banning payments to them, probably because of turf wars. The respective two ministries are rivals and won't ever cooperate. He lobbied for this for like 10+ years and then a bunch of idiots has gotten elected and ran with it.
So in a way, you are right. But you are also somewhat wrong. From my experience finding the actual people pushing for this (it's usually not the politicians) and outing them would work way better.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#269Strangest thing to me about the topic is that it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy and use the liberties they’re provided to actively destabilize and destroy it. To me this is the largest issue, not a given topic that results from it. Yes, I am aware current authoritarian countries wage propaganda campaigns, but in m…
Unpopular opinion: If you don't like democracy and use your democratic rights to actively work to dismantle it, you probably shouldn't actually be allowed to participate in democracy since you are operating in bad faith.
That's not unpopular, it's a typical authoritarian opinion. Every censor out there is defending us from threats to our democracy. They would love the idea of setting up the Agency for the Good Faith Belief in Democracy and Democratic Rights, who would certify individuals as being qualified to vote.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#270Strangest thing to me about the topic is that it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy and use the liberties they’re provided to actively destabilize and destroy it. To me this is the largest issue, not a given topic that results from it. Yes, I am aware current authoritarian countries wage propaganda campaigns, but in m…
> it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy Most people don't get to choose where they live. It's really a relatively tiny percentage of the population who would have the financial ability and/or skills to emigrate, and those are really the people you're talking about. They have no loyalty to where they live because they…
Understand your point, though disagree. My understanding is the majority of people on Earth stay within days walking distance from where they grew up. Further, there are numerous countries that if they wanted could easily cover the costs related to relocating anyone that desired to leave another country.
I would argue the real explanation is most likely regardless of person’s situation, most want a predictable future, regardless of how good or bad their current situation. Moving to a new culture with no home, no source of income, no family or friends, etc — is viewed as predictably unpredictable by most.