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Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

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Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#471

Post by dmitriid »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #2

The best way to deal with this is non-compliance and there need to be technical solutions to deny such attempts. One major factor that works against users is central authentication. Schemes like oauth2 might bring convenience and security in many cases, but will endanger net freedom overall. Google just added age restriction on blogger. Result is that you need to provide Google with ID information to access some cont…

> The best way to deal with this is non-compliance and there need to be technical solutions to deny such attempts.

You cannot solve human issues by technical solutions

> One major factor that works against users is central authentication. Schemes like oauth2 might bring convenience and security in many cases, but will endanger net freedom overall.

And what is your solution for that? Any authentication solution will inevitable converge to having trusted actors authenticating you. There's no technical solution for that.

> It just released a law (DSA) that allegedly to restrict the influence of tech giants. That their proposals will drive people into ID schemes

So what is your technical solution to this human law?

> The only defense against such laws is to make them technologically not feasible.

I also want to wish for moon and the stars. But we're not dealing with the realms of fantasy.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#472

Post by int_19h »

neysofu wrote: post #60
bartislartfast wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who is really into something illegal will use something alternative anyway. I'm not for more surveillance, but this is the exact argument that people give against gun control

If you pay enough attention, you will notice that the same argument is used to push many political agendas (for better or worse): - "You can't ban encrypted messaging. Terrorists will always find a way to communicate." - "You can't outlaw abortions, just safe ones. Women will always find a way." - "You can't uniformly enforce gun control. Dedicated criminals will keep buying weapons on the black market." - "You can't…

It should be noted tho that the easiness of "finding a way", and the difficulty of enforcing the law, varies widely between these.

For example - and I say this as someone pro-gun - gun control would likely be the easiest to enforce since it necessarily involves physical things, and not easily obtainable ones at that, at least if you want efficient guns. E.g. black powder is not hard to make, but good luck trying to make it work in anything semi-auto without constant jamming. Sure, there's an active "gun hacker" scene where people come up with designs that can be made at home with readily available tools etc, and it's great as a counterbalance to heavy-handed attempts to regulate... but there are no from-scratch designs that are even close to just about any semi-auto rifle on the market in terms of firepower or reliability (the non-from-scratch designs involve making the regulated parts of the firearm at home, and buying everything that can go over the counter; in US, the latter is everything except for one part).

OTOH if you ban encrypted messaging, how would you enforce that? It's hard to detect on the wire if the protocol is specifically designed to withstand such scrutiny, so you'd have to go after distribution of software. You could force Apple and Google to scrub their app stores, but then people can still install directly on everything other than iOS, and they'd just download it from foreign websites. So now you need some kind of a national firewall to detect and block that etc. It's not that any of that is impossible, but it's certainly much harder, and it would affect a lot more people overall, resulting in more pushback.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#473

Post by dmitriid »

klabb3 wrote: post #374
O__________O wrote: post #179

Strangest 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…

For reference, many years ago when a similar surveillance law was implemented in Sweden (the FRA law), 90% of people were against it (in random polling) but politicians voted it in anyway. It later turned out this was a diplomatic back channel direct order from the US, which was found out through that big Wikileaks dump. So, the people are not at fault in these situations imo. First, it’s politicians and after that i…

> So, the people are not at fault in these situations imo.

In 2022 elections year one of the largest parties in Sweden (Moderaterna) had "more cameras and surveillance on our streets" as one of their big campaign points, including campaign signs and bilboards. It came in second.

People are definitely at fault.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#474

Post by int_19h »

O__________O wrote: post #460
int_19h wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want rules that suppress the opportunities of someone else and are certain that the rules won't suppress them. It should be noted that some of this sentiment comes from people who used the same techniques themselves to disrupt social arrangement, and who want to suppress them precisely because they know that it can work . Here's what one Soviet dissident had to say on the subject of human rights after USSR was…

Agree, it’s very common pattern, one that in part is caused by power grabs, but also by people suddenly realizing they now the ones in control and if they fail, they’re next on the chopping blocks. Would be curious about the evolution on ACLU on free speech you referenced. Does this article cover your understanding, or is it something else? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

It's one of the many articles covering it; Wikipedia has a few more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...

But I think it's best to go directly to the source, which would be the 2018 ACLU memo that triggered the attention and judge for yourself: https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621AC...

To be fair to ACLU, they did backtrack somewhat on all this. Speaking as a member who joined years before this became somehow contentious for the organization, I hope that it'll get back on track, but I'm pessimistic about it - I think the zeitgeist is too contrary, and historically, ACLU did waver at such times (e.g. on defending rights of communists in 1930-50s).

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#475

Post by userbinator »

ur-whale wrote: post #50
raxxorraxor wrote: post #2

The best way to deal with this is non-compliance and there need to be technical solutions to deny such attempts. One major factor that works against users is central authentication. Schemes like oauth2 might bring convenience and security in many cases, but will endanger net freedom overall. Google just added age restriction on blogger. Result is that you need to provide Google with ID information to access some cont…

> The best way to deal with this is non-compliance and there need to be technical solutions to deny such attempts. I disagree. While these are good to have, they are not enough. The reason is always the same: if you are found to be using the circumventing tech., you'll likely be in breach of the law, which will give the goons a legitimate reason to come and harass you. In a civilized country, that can translate into…

The reason is always the same: if you are found to be using the circumventing tech., you'll likely be in breach of the law, which will give the goons a legitimate reason to come and harass you.

Not if almost everyone does it at once.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#476

Post by O__________O »

int_19h wrote: post #461
rwmj wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few constitutions explicitly defend democracy, so you cannot modify the constitution to remove the democratic system. Germany is the most famous example (because, you know, Hitler). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrenched_clause#Germany

But then, of course, you need some kind of enforcement. And once you set that up, it turns out that it is subject to the same problems as other law enforcement / intelligence agencies: "In 2001, the federal government, the Bundestag, and the Bundesrat jointly attempted to have the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ban the NPD. The court, the highest court in Germany, has the exclusive power to ban parties if th…

NPD being being a German far-right political party:

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germ...

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#477

Post by stagas »

kragen wrote: post #378
stagas wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with aggression using privacy doesn't seem to be solving the problem though, nor it is a solution? You shouldn't live your life hiding. We need privacy because of X, underlies the assumption that X is something different and unwanted, perpetuating that idea it's trying to protect. If everything was public then it would more easily become part of reality, part of normal. Hiding in privacy just keeps the proble…

We need privacy because of X, underlies the assumption that X is something different and unwanted, perpetuating that idea it's trying to protect this is poorly expressed, but i think you're trying to say that privacy can only be justified to hide 'unwanted' things, and so, for example, arguing that people need privacy to hide being gay implicitly accepts that it is bad to be gay; is that what you meant? this is the p…

But if you take today's societies as an example, those that do encourage being openly gay are those that have much less incidents of judgement towards gay. Societies where it's culturally fine to be naked in various situations, you forget about it, it doesn't become a thing to notice anymore. If you're at a nude beach, or at a sauna, people don't suddenly rape each other because they see them naked. It becomes normal very quickly.

I understand what you're saying but my point is if we didn't try to protect X, it would eventually be normalized, become part of daily life and not noticeable as a thing that needs to be protected AND that it seems that when putting protections for X, that protection implicitly includes the assumption that X is bad. A naked body isn't inherently an invitation for rape, unless you implant that idea into someone's mind through the ban of public nakedness, and being gay isn't a thing to judge, unless you make it a taboo and discourage its public expression.

I'm not convinced, the real life evidence in actual tolerant societies seem to suggest that the more open we are, the less secrets we keep and the more transparent we are, life improves.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#478

Post by stagas »

rrsmtz wrote: post #356
stagas wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy though is perpetuating that priviledged class because they can do their shady business in secret. If everything was transparent, that would be harder to achieve. Also the "every human society that's ever existed" isn't true, because for sure when humans were nomads, you basically knew what's happening with everybody in your tribe, transparency was at 100%, privacy at 0. It's also the case today in many places…

It'd be great to expose shady business, but somebody has to enforce the forced transparency and that's a LOT of power. Whoever has that power can pretty easily keep privacy for themselves and their friends, use it to blackmail others, and enforce it more harshly on their enemies. My point is that no matter what society you look at, the privileged get the nice things (like privacy) automatically whereas the underprivi…

Of course, it needs to be constitutional for it to work, a complete ban of privacy. There can't be any entity that is priviledged over that because that would be terrible. Keep in mind that "human rights" is a thing we invented (or those people in power invented) and also a thing we can change, my point is that the human right of privacy really only actually benefits those in power more than the common person (who is going to be subjected to the violation of their privacy anyway) and by making privacy illegal constitutionally is really going to level the playing field.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#479

Post by stagas »

boring_twenties wrote: post #413
stagas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered behind the rationale on privacy being a human right. What if it wasn't? What if instead we were enforcing transparency? Force everything to be public, starting from the government down to the local coffee shop. All transactions, all communications, everything. Make privacy a crime for everybody, including the government and the military. Just as a thought exercise, it would be a remarkably differ…

Without privacy, human beings cannot be their true, complete selves. Why do some people only sing in the shower?

> Why do some people only sing in the shower?

Because we have structured society and our culture in such a way that some people can only feel safe when inside a small thick wall cell with the door locked behind them. That's terrible though, my proposition is to invert that, what would allow people to sing in the streets without any fear of judgement, and use that as a basis. Privacy as an idea suggests "let's put more doors with locks" when in fact that doesn't help at all. It doesn't address the problem that necessitates those doors with locks to exist.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#480

Post by midoridensha »

O__________O wrote: post #353
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to slow down and look at this with level heads. 1. What is a reliable measure of this "vast percentage"? 2. Are you perhaps lumping any departure from your preferred political model as "authoritarian"? 3. Are you perhaps overattributing the level of "democracy" to your preferred political regime? 4. Have you considered the motivations behind the distaste with ostensibly "democratic" regimes? Simply de…

From the first sentence of the related post — “The European Commission is currently in the process of enacting a law called Chat control. If the law goes into effect, it will mean that all EU citizens' communications will be monitored and listened to.” Level headed person would see that the next step is logically that all communications regardless if they’re in private, in person, etc should be monitored. If that’s n…

>If there was a country that treated all humans as citizens, equally, fairly, etc - I would be happy to reevaluate my beliefs related to nationalism.

I don't see how a democratic system could possibly work without nationalism. Why would you allow people all over the world to vote in your country's elections? This runs completely counter to the very idea of democracy, which is that people should govern themselves and choose their own leaders. People outside the country being non-citizens is simply necessary for this to work at all.

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