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EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

mullvad.net

61–70 of 219 posts

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#61
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much that. Your average politician on this side of the pond is not much better than the ones on the other side And to be even more honest, technical people have a very hard time getting their point across non-technical people and engaging in politics

Perfect use case for ChatGPT. Sure, I'd be as surprised as anyone else if it could straight up write good laws, but it can almost certainly talk in political jargon better than any of us software developers can manage .

Perfect use case for ChatGPT.

You lunatic!! You have damned us all! The genie, it is released, the bottle broken, forever unstopped.

PoliticianGPT, oh the humanity!

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#62

Someone commented something along the lines of 'but then how are we supposed to tackle organized crime'. As I typed the comment below the comment got flagged and I could no longer reply. Still, I think the bit below may contribute to the discussion. TL;DR; I think that as a society we should more often ask ourselves if something is actually worth fighting if it means sacrificing a lot of our human rights. That may no…

This shouldn't even be a foreign concept to the HN audience. Not long ago these was a post about "the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero".

Those interested in the legal system out there should also be familiar with the idea of how some criminals will get away in the attempt to prevent any innocent person from going to prison.

Sometimes it costs more to fight a problem than you get back from solving it.

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#63
post #50

Don't believe vendors' lies about "end-to-end" encryption. If caught red handed, they will always say it depends on how you define where both "ends" begin. Do not trust a cloud service that you have not developed and deployed yourself. You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content, but only if you have given it your content pre-encrypted by yourself, not trusted a third party to encrypt it on your beha…

Do you trust your bios? Your usb stack? Your network card firmware?

I get the desire to control the entire chain, but nowadays you’re surrounded by cameras and microphones 24/7, every smart device is a surveillance sleeper agent waiting for the magic word. Certificate chains are the least of your worries.

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#64
post #50

Don't believe vendors' lies about "end-to-end" encryption. If caught red handed, they will always say it depends on how you define where both "ends" begin. Do not trust a cloud service that you have not developed and deployed yourself. You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content, but only if you have given it your content pre-encrypted by yourself, not trusted a third party to encrypt it on your beha…

> You can trust your Linux box with your self-compiled kernel

Can you? If we're going this far, you can't trust the compiler either.

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#65
Software is flexible which seems to result in our human rights being equally flexible.

Imagine the police regularly raiding your apartment without announcement. The post office opening all your mail. Storage box companies searching your unit.

You wouldn't be OK with that. You're innocent until proven guilty and a search requires a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing and an approved warrant. Private communication is private and absolutely nobody else's business. It's a crime to open somebody's mail.

In the digital domain, we're fine with all of these illegal searches, either we don't even know they happen or we do know yet let it pass, as it feels "invisible" and not intrusive. Plus, you're a standup citizen so all is good.

And that's how one day you end up as a bankrupted outcast for having insulted the king.

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#66
post #63
post #50

Don't believe vendors' lies about "end-to-end" encryption. If caught red handed, they will always say it depends on how you define where both "ends" begin. Do not trust a cloud service that you have not developed and deployed yourself. You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content, but only if you have given it your content pre-encrypted by yourself, not trusted a third party to encrypt it on your beha…

Do you trust your bios? Your usb stack? Your network card firmware? I get the desire to control the entire chain, but nowadays you’re surrounded by cameras and microphones 24/7, every smart device is a surveillance sleeper agent waiting for the magic word. Certificate chains are the least of your worries.

Anything your monitor displays or sound system outputs is subject to ubiquitous surveillance. And, when there's a gap in the surveillance that's also is subject to interpretation.

Privacy already is (mostly) lost and the battle now simply is to reliably establish authenticity that can't be impersonated or doubted. That's where encryption remains helpful.

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#67
post #50

Don't believe vendors' lies about "end-to-end" encryption. If caught red handed, they will always say it depends on how you define where both "ends" begin. Do not trust a cloud service that you have not developed and deployed yourself. You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content, but only if you have given it your content pre-encrypted by yourself, not trusted a third party to encrypt it on your beha…

> You can trust your Linux box with your self-compiled kernel Can you? If we're going this far, you can't trust the compiler either.

At some arbitrary point you just decide that the risk is small enough for you to be comfortable with it.

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#68
post #61
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect use case for ChatGPT. Sure, I'd be as surprised as anyone else if it could straight up write good laws, but it can almost certainly talk in political jargon better than any of us software developers can manage .

Perfect use case for ChatGPT. You lunatic!! You have damned us all! The genie, it is released, the bottle broken, forever unstopped. PoliticianGPT, oh the humanity!

We can also use it to TL;DR the laws and turn them into non-jargon, help us find and work against bad laws more easily.

I've lost track of which version passed which exams, but recent news suggests v4 scores highly on (at least one) bar exam (I don't know if bar exam is "noob lawyer" or "good lawyer", but either way, even v3.5 can do more than me).

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#69
post #48
post #44

This is so common (not just in the EU) that it makes me feel like it was done by design in a lot of cases. By creating these massive overcomplicated bills, they make sure only a handful of individuals are capable of reading them and the rest of us (including other politicians) will never read them and instead have to rely on faith. It feels to me like they want to give you the illusion that it's all open/public but a…

Legalese is like that thanks to a long history of people looking for and abusing any and all loopholes. That led to the natural conclusion of legal words holding standardized definitions that might differ from common understanding, and extreme specification of all details in an effort to preemptively close off any and all loopholes. Anyone who tries to make legalese simpler finds themselves immediately torn asunder b…

> That led to the natural conclusion of legal words holding standardized definitions that might differ from common understanding, and extreme specification of all details in an effort to preemptively close off any and all loopholes.

And yet they end up with unintended consequences all the time (some of which were predicted by outside observers), outdated laws are kept on the books, tax advisors keep finding loopholes, laws are regularly taken down by constitutional courts over concerns that opponents pointed out in advance etc. etc. If that obtuse legalese is helping at all it's barely so.

I don't know what would help. Maybe laws should start with outcome specifications and a bunch of policies that are applicable conditional on achieving the stated outcomes? More adversarial testing in advance, involving some game theory?

Re: EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill

#70
post #65

Software is flexible which seems to result in our human rights being equally flexible. Imagine the police regularly raiding your apartment without announcement. The post office opening all your mail. Storage box companies searching your unit. You wouldn't be OK with that. You're innocent until proven guilty and a search requires a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing and an approved warrant. Private communication is pr…

Lots of places don't have strong constitutional protections, for anything.

Not that long ago, the government in Canada started freezing citizen's bank accounts on suspicions they donated small amounts to a certain peaceful organization organizing protests the government didn't like. They just decided to suspend the constitution (because that's a thing over there?).

But what's interesting to see is people from Europe and Commonwealth nations voting with their feet and deciding that they too want more constitutional protections (which they are entitled to!). Here in the Bay it seems there's a constant interest from EU nationals to move to America (judging by the volume of applications we get). But I've never heard anyone interested to do the reverse.

Top destination for EU nationals in Academia was... right here in the US [0].

Interesting to speculate what impact the policies imposed by these non-elected EU bureaucrats will have on this demographic. More brain drain? Is it the intended goal?

[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...

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