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The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

mullvad.net

161–170 of 425 posts

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#161
post #65
post #7

Why every 12 months the European Commission comes up with a total dumb and authoritarian proposal and we have to actively fight it? It’s just tiring

Because EU residents allowed them to continue to legislate themselves into irrelevancy. Nobody spoke against GDPR, which is an utterly toothless annoyance. GDPR achieved nothing notable for data security and privacy, except by spamming cookie prompts and training users to accept anything. The EU is an incompetent, lumbering, bureaucratic hellscape. It expanded FAR beyond its original remit of a customs union, and in…

I got Google to reinstate my locked account thanks to the GDPR. Conversely, my brother in a non-european country was locked out of his Apple account and is SOL because his country doesn't have the same protections I do and Apple can simply ignore him. And the fact that companies have to tell me how they are tracking me has been eye-opening.

As far as I'm concerned, GDPR is great.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#162
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, culturally- and regionally-specific. My anecdotal evidence is that the people I've talked to (a narrow, biased group of people) have more nuanced views than the surveys pick up. Where I live, more people support the death penalty than are transphobic (according to polling , no less!). Most people don't know the first thing about anything. Ask them what we should do about climate change, and they'll say "househ…

[flagged]

…? No? It indicates that the anti-discrimination law permits you to discriminate, so long as you have a good reason for it.

I'll add: the current fuss about "protecting women's spaces" is pointless, because the right they're arguing for already exists, and the people running shelters by-and-large aren't invoking it. If they want domestic violence shelters to refuse service to trans people (who are, btw, more often victims of domestic violence than their cisgender counterparts), they should be campaigning against the charities that run the shelters, not campaigning, protesting and petitioning to change laws that are already the way they want them.

If helping the vulnerable were causing actual problems, they'd be able to cite instances of those problems over the past three decades, rather than just appealing to hypothetical situations that might even have happened, once, somewhere in the world, but probably haven't.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#163

Suggested alternative: The "End Political Corruption Proposal" "Given that political corruption is rife in European countries, with great detriments to the healthy function of government, all politicians in positions where they may be engaging in corrupt behavior must submit to 24-7 audio and video surveillance, which will be piped over public platforms for crowdsourcing of corruption detection. All personal communic…

It would be a start to do away with diplomatic immunity.

This is a complicated one, because it runs the risk of both harassment of diplomats under fake crimes and also the elevation of real petty crimes to diplomatic incidents. The Okinawa business is difficult enough _without_ real diplomatic immunity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-42048473?ocid=socialfl...

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#164
post #94
post #2

This is especially important in the age of LLM's. Large scale surveillance while abusive and harmful has historically been limited in scale by the ability of those in control to trawl through data. Automated "moderation" of dragnet communications collection with modern AI holds the potential for a scale of abusive privacy invasion at unprecedented scales.

Interesting… I was thinking the opposite… My personal ability to generate millions of real-looking messages has now exploded and I wonder how these proposed structures will function if everyone sends each other 1k suspicious messages every minute of every day ? Maybe attach a zip-bomb to every message just for good measure?

The first people getting onboard the idea have to be brave and assume that others will follow suit to reach useful noise levels, otherwise those few will end up in a world of trouble.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#165
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes because we saw how easy it is to leave the EU for the UK even though it still has its own currency. Realistically current EU countries are locked in. They aren't allowed to reintroduce their own currency, but doing so is step one towards leaving.

EU has no army so it can't keep EU countries locked in if they don't want to stay.

Violence isn't the only punishment.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#166
I keep asking, who is going to stop me from encrypting a message and sending it to my wife? Who, and how?

I can only conclude that some utterly dystopian tech needs to be developed to uphold this law.

Why is everybody so focused on the "Oh this is so bad!"... What if this law passes? It's completely impossible right?

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#167
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

…? No? It indicates that the anti-discrimination law permits you to discriminate, so long as you have a good reason for it. I'll add: the current fuss about "protecting women's spaces" is pointless, because the right they're arguing for already exists , and the people running shelters by-and-large aren't invoking it . If they want domestic violence shelters to refuse service to trans people (who are, btw, more often…

> I'll add: the current fuss about "protecting women's spaces" is pointless

> rather than just appealing to hypothetical situations

These aren't hypothetical situations. In some jurisdictions, prisoners are housed based on their self-declared "gender identity". So men who declare themselves as women are being incarcerated in the female prison estate. Women inmates have been raped, sexually assaulted, and even impregnated by some of these men.

This is what happens when this polite fiction becomes law and policy, abusive men take advantage of it - undermining the very reason why we have sex-separated spaces in the first place. Protecting women's spaces from men who call themselves women is very important for the safeguarding of vulnerable women.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#168
I think it's time for me to look for a new home, and just leave EU behind to rot. Kind of how people leave/left Putins Russia. Unlike Russia (where Putin eventually will have an "accident" or die of old age), I don't believe the politics of EU will ever change for the better.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#169
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting… I was thinking the opposite… My personal ability to generate millions of real-looking messages has now exploded and I wonder how these proposed structures will function if everyone sends each other 1k suspicious messages every minute of every day ? Maybe attach a zip-bomb to every message just for good measure?

You won't be able to do that. Spam filtering exists and mostly isn't based on message contents looking real or not.

You can't use current spam filters to fight against this, provided the system is implemented correctly.

Let's assume you send 1000 automated messages periodically, and they contain a mixed bag of normal looking (so that your genuine comms could hide in plain sight) and malicious messages (to make their detection systems sweat).

All the messages are sent from the same origin (e.g.: a messaging app capable of this), with a specific interval (the genuine msg is timed accordingly), etc..

Let's see a small sample of normal looking messages, with an added genuine manually written message:

- Let's meet up at the Riverside Park soccer field at 5 PM sharp.

- Hey, can you grab a gallon of milk from the corner store on your way back?

- Good morning! Wishing you a fantastic day ahead, especially during your 11 AM meeting!

- Just a reminder: our dinner reservation at Luigi's Italian Bistro is at 7 PM tonight.

- Could you pick up the kids from Maplewood Elementary at 3:30 PM today? Work is keeping me busy.

- Caught in traffic near Main Street, but I'll be at the coffee shop in about 10 minutes!

Which one is the genuine one?

Just like you cannot discern which msg is genuine (are any of them?), you can generate plausible maliciously looking messages as well.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#170
post #132
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting… I was thinking the opposite… My personal ability to generate millions of real-looking messages has now exploded and I wonder how these proposed structures will function if everyone sends each other 1k suspicious messages every minute of every day ? Maybe attach a zip-bomb to every message just for good measure?

But who actually does that? We need billions of people doing that every day to have an effect.

How did you arrive at this number "billions"?

The equation is more like # of ppl × # of msgs in a time period = noise

We can increase the # of msgs to bring down the other side from "billions" I think.

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