Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mullvad.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 219 posts

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

#81

Post by max51 »

sjy wrote: post #75
max51 wrote: 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…

Rather than assuming bad faith, I think it makes more sense to treat these documents like the codebase for a large open source software project. Perhaps there are reasons, not apparent to someone who hasn’t spent months working on the code and the systems it integrates with, for what appears to be unnecessary complexity. And perhaps it’s reasonable for people to advocate for or against using the project without havin…

The way I see it, there is also good reason why keygens are encrypting their payload. But that doesn't change the fact that getting viruses from them was extremely common until we got reputable repack site (eg. fit-girl) that tests them for us.

You also have to keep in mind that it's not just the average people who can't understand them, even the people writing and voting on them can't understand the content. The journalist reporting on them also don't understand the content.

It's like downloading an installer from a hacker on 4chan who can't remember exactly what it does, why it's so big and why it has a big encrypted payload. Would you install it on your production environment? His package will probably solve whatever problem you wanted to fix... but who knows what else is in there or if a friend that collaborated with him put a virus in there. The reason why viruses spread so much with cracked content is that the crack were actually working.

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

#82

Post by fsflover »

gizmo wrote: post #63
jll29 wrote: 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.

> Do you trust your bios?

Yes, it's Coreboot with disabled and neutralized Intel ME.

> Your usb stack?

No, it's isolated in a dedicated, hardware-virtualized VM on Qubes OS.

> Your network card firmware?

Same as above. And it's FLOSS.

> surrounded by cameras and microphones

For those, I have hardware kill switches. On the phone, too.

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

#83

Post by robopsychology »

908B64B197 wrote: post #70
dahwolf wrote: 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…

The UK doesn't even have a constitution

Also, as a European living in the Bay, part of it is for the higher salaries. If I can take my Bay rate and bring it back to Europe I'm going to do that.

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

#84

Post by mananaysiempre »

seydor wrote: post #71
dahwolf wrote: 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…

I 'm actually shocked that people are OK with that. People in countries that have had dictatorships recently probably remember that. Snitches everywhere, the police raiding houses again and again for no reason, with no recourse and people were just accepting it.

As a Russian student studying in Paris, it was a terrifying realization that the mayor can, apparently, prohibit any and all mass protests by simply issuing a decree, no higher authority needed. (This was in 2018 IIRC.) This is apparently part of the anti-terrorist law or something? I dunno, and nobody seemed to care except for the participants of the protests that were happening at the time.

Compared to the constant, unceasing reminders by Russian activists that the de facto prohibition on protests in Russia is a legal sham and the actual thing would require the president declaring a state of emergency (that only happened in 2022 and then not fully), the silence in an established democractic society was deafening.

The tired “freeze peach” responses on HN evoke similar feelings, as do the “private businesses can deny anything to anyone”. (Never seen a less-than-loyal artist’s concert cancelled the day before because the venue received a suggestion—not a command, mind you, a suggestion—from a city official’s phone? Have I got news for you.)

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

#85

Post by gweinberg »

robopsychology wrote: post #83
908B64B197 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The UK doesn't even have a constitution Also, as a European living in the Bay, part of it is for the higher salaries. If I can take my Bay rate and bring it back to Europe I'm going to do that.

Yes it does. It doesn't have a Constitution, but that's not the same thing as not having a constitution.

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

#86

Post by denton-scratch »

nicoburns wrote: post #76
voxic11 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may trust untrusted hardware with your encrypted content Couldn't someone still capture them from the untrusted hardware, wait until quantum computer technology is available, then decrypt them?

You’ll probably be dead by then anyway.

Some people guard secrets that they think need to stay hidden for more than a lifetime.

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

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

robopsychology wrote: post #83
908B64B197 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The UK doesn't even have a constitution Also, as a European living in the Bay, part of it is for the higher salaries. If I can take my Bay rate and bring it back to Europe I'm going to do that.

> The UK doesn't even have a constitution

It doesn't have a single written document titled “the Constitution”; but it has a constitution.

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

#88

Post by masfuerte »

legitster wrote: post #30

For all the faults that lobbying brings with it, there is something to be said for actually bringing in outside experts into the legislative process. You can seek intellectual purity all you want, but at the end of the day you are going to have to have some trust that farmers know where seeds go and tech companies know how encryption works. Similar bills have died several times in the US, if only because there were a…

Lawmakers obviously need the assistance of outside expertise. The problem with lobbying is that most of the assistance comes from the people with most of the money. Lawmakers could (and in some jurisdictions do) seek out assistance rather than relying on moneyed interests to offer it.

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

#89

Post by robopsychology »

gweinberg wrote: post #85
robopsychology wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK doesn't even have a constitution Also, as a European living in the Bay, part of it is for the higher salaries. If I can take my Bay rate and bring it back to Europe I'm going to do that.

Yes it does. It doesn't have a Constitution, but that's not the same thing as not having a constitution.

Okay to put it another way the constitution is uncodified and weak - parliament can change constitutional laws at a whim due to no separation of powers and no-one could sit down and write it out anyway. So it's a pretty weird constitution if you can call it that, and many legal scholars argue it isn't one.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/764688

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

#90

Post by peoplefromibiza »

max51 wrote: 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…

> By creating these massive overcomplicated bills, they make sure only a handful of individuals are capable of reading them and the rest of us

Of course it is by design, not necessarily for evil purposes though.

First of all, the fact that laws are written in a "natural language" doesn't imply they can be fully understood by everyone, they are more like a math formula, it's only less obvious that laws need to be crafted in a way that requires an extensive knowledge of the subject. They're readable, but not always intelligible.

Natural languages are ambiguous, laws try to avoid it as much as they can, changing a word can often change the law intentions completely.

Secondly, exactly like scientific papers, if they have some kind of impact in the community, experts are gonna look at them, you can bet on it (also don't forget the army of lawyers companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, etc. have on their payroll).

And they will cover the entire spectrum from the most complacent to the biggest opponents and everything in between, so it's not actually like they will pass unnoticed. There's too much to gain in exposing your political opponents (and sometimes allies) to not take advantage from it. No professional politician would miss the opportunity.

It's no secret that many politicians have a training in law and the reason is obvious.

For example in the US of the 535 members who make up Congress, 40% had attended law school. For senators, nearly 54% have obtained a law degree. The House contains 37% law degree holders

> We should assume that they are trying to hide something

To assume this we should also assume that they - whoever they are, it's not clear to me - are all on board with the "evil plan" which is arguably very far from the facts we can prove.

In the game of assuming bad faith, we could equally assume that the opposition to this particular proposal is paid by the big tech corporations to avoid investing a lot of money to update their systems and losing the vendor lock in (WhatsApp messages are readable only by WhatsApp, Instagram messages only by Instagram, and so on...)

Post reply on HN