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The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

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

#361

Post by taink »

lordnacho wrote: post #343
taink wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the best authoritative source that I could find. The few assertions I've seen that Singapore is less corrupt than most european and north american countries quote Transparency International as a source, so I assume it might be an acceptable one. They also supplement their findings with a "GCB" survey[1] (which is less recent), and given enough time I guess there are other sources one could find. These are sur…

Yeah it's not entirely crazy when you are talking about something to quote whatever you can find. But on this particular index, I strongly suspect it is simply continuing existing biases. It's the thing people quote and by quoting it you get reinforce next year's rankings. Plus it's the kind of thing nobody can ever verify due to its nature.

Assuming what you say here is true (which in my opinion is a pretty high leap), one could then ask why those biases exist in the first place. I expect authoritarian states to enable corruption but it's the contrary in the case of Singapore. Why? Because I doubt it boils down to the salary of the ministers.

On a side note, it might be interesting to see the evolution of this index over the years for any given country; that might lead to interesting conclusions on the bias confirmation you're talking about!

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

#362

Post by whythre »

rhodorhoades wrote: post #316
Spoom wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With some select authorities being exempt from this due to national security. I fear your carveout would quickly become an "Inner Party" situation, with those with real power declaring themselves exempt due to "national security" reasons. Imagine then that anyone in any position of authority but not real power would be subject to the surveillance as an "Outer Party" member. I get that the intent is to show the peop…

That’s exactly the kind of fallacy these politicians would use to argue against this kind of thing ;)

The idea that the powerful would find a way to circumvent or corrupt such a rule is a significant problem; it isn’t a fallacy.

Fallacy =/= thing I don’t like.

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

#363

Post by [deleted] »

tlongo wrote: post #122

Does the proposal include chat services that are run by corporations only? If so, how will that prevent people from setting up their own chat infrastructure for child-abuse purposes? Besides that, how about educating people on how to do exactly that: Set up their own chat service. That would put control in the hands of those people who are not only responsible for protecting children but also have the most leverage t…

[deleted]

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

#364

Post by dragonwriter »

epups wrote: post #360
JasonFruit wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you're saying is true, then the argument that this is inappropriate to democratic societies is also undermined: what rights the people have are entirely determined by what their democratically-elected overlords grant them. The state has determined that this is appropriate; therefore, it is appropriate.

No, in democratic societies you have the rule of law. This usually blocks incumbents from changing the rules as they wish. Yes of course natural rights don't really exist, but legal rights enforcing some of them are about as real as money.

> No, in democratic societies you have the rule of law.

Democracy and legalism are orthogonal concepts, though both tend to be (rhetorically, if not always as much practically) ideals of liberal government.

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

#365

Post by Analemma_ »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #282
photochemsyn wrote: post #30

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…

This would be delightful. Being a politician should be a curse that the dedicated bear for the good of humanity, not cushy job and badge of pride.

The more unpleasant you make public service, the more you filter and select for people who want to use that power for evil ends and self-dealing. This is the same backwards thinking that causes people to want to cut legislative salaries, not understanding that this just makes it so the only people who can run for office are millionaires who can live off their accumulated wealth.

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

#366

Post by blitzar »

themitigating wrote: post #280
blitzar wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your two statements seem to be a contradiction - decision meetings should be public, but the meeting where you are getting a blowie from your assistant on the sofa in your office should be private?

What does the second act have to do with corruption or information that is useful for the public?

If a lawmaker creates a law to make something illegal, sends police to prosecute the population doing said thing, affirms that arresting people for having a cup of coffee is absolutely the intention of writing the law - that is perfectly reasonable.

If at the same time they are breaking the law they created - that is corruption. For the people prosecuted for said crime with trials pending, it is information that is useful for them to know that the lawmaker conducted themselves in this manner.

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

#367

Post by guerrilla »

teekert wrote: post #209
pmlnr wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how: by stopping you from installing the software needed, which is the part that worries me.

How are they going to stop me from installing software? Even if they force "app stores" into compliance, I've lived in a world without them. I can always git clone from-ipfs, make, make install. Or you know, install some Flatpack from some secret repo or matrix group. Or find/distribute some software using BitTorrent over TOR. Do Encryption tools/apps now have the same status as botnet control software packages: Only…

From the OP: "The EU is currently in the process of enacting the chat control law. It has been criticized for creating an EU-wide centralized mass surveillance and censorship system and enabling government eavesdropping on all private communication. But one little talked about consequence of the proposed law is that it makes practically all existing open source operating systems illegal, including all major Linux distributions. It would also effectively ban the F-Droid open source Android app archive."

emphasis mine.

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

#368

Post by anonyfox »

geysersam wrote: post #325
anonyfox wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we actually vote for the EU parliament every 5 (?) years here in Germany. Where are you from that you didn't have to option to vote?

I vote. I just think the distance between us voters and the people who end up in the EU "government" is too big. Democracy gets diluted when the electorate becomes too large and too diverse. It's important that decisions stay as local as possible.

sometimes, a decision _could_ be made local, but an _even better_ ooutcome could be achieven going a bit higher level.

Like, image some county that needs energy, has no natural gifts regarding that but has land to farm upon. Instead of exporting food and importing coal from somewhere to fire up a new plant, it could also exchange energy with a more gifted county that has plenty of green energy but doesn't need something from them.

To make this work, a higher level entity can force the exchange, and ensure that the whole area doesn't suffer from pollution despite that being the cheapest or even only possible way for the individual county. It COULD be solved there, but everyone is worse off by not cooperating.

Actually, the EU has a huge power potential if only the member states would finally cut back on individual national interests so that mutual agreements and shared legislation/taxes/military/... could be setup properly - which might worse some situations in the short term, but ensures greater wealth for everyone longterm. The "I I I" egoistic thinking of individual member states is the greatest weakness the EU has - unified we can achieve so much more!

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

#369

Post by guerrilla »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #123

Nitpicking, but this has nothing to do with democracy. I know it works as a form of propaganda to use the "democracy should not do X" but democracy in no way disallows chat control programs. Democracy it's only the system used to chose governing officials. If a majority of the people's representatives approves chat control, it would be perfectly democratic. Anti-democratic would be to remove the freedom to contest th…

> If a majority of the people's representatives approves chat control, it would be perfectly democratic.

In liberal theory, the tyranny of the majority[1] was supposedly solved with rights (encoded in constitutions.) The problem here, according to the theory, is that we don't have a right to privacy.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

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

#370

Post by Zetice »

stametseater wrote: post #338
JasonFruit wrote: post #331

A minor-seeming terminology quibble that has far-reaching effects: the chat control proposal does not belong in human society. People in democratic societies don't have different rights than those under other political systems; everyone has a right to speak freely and expect privacy in their communications, absent very specific situations where there is evidence that what is being discussed is unallowably dangerous t…

Natural rights are a kind of theology. There's no scientific evidence for their existence, they're just asserted to exist. The fact that such rights are not recognized in most countries means that for practical intents and purposes, they do not exist in those countries.

A more useful way of thinking of "natural rights" is that "The set of rights that, if everyone were to have, would maximally smoothen interaction between individuals and groups."

I don't think there's a real argument that, somewhere in our DNA, exists a list of personal freedoms every human being ought to have. Feels like an ad absurdum more than a genuine engagement, tbh...

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