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

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

#121

Post by palata »

goobma wrote: post #22
jjulius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a solution is not a prerequisite for providing criticism. It is okay to see a flaw but not yet have an answer.

No but it makes it an empty criticism. It's like the activists who say "abolish the police!" but either have no insight into or are deliberately ignoring why the police exist, and have no ideas regarding who would perform the equivalent function instead.

An empty criticism is: "this sucks, it should be improved".

A constructive criticism is: "this sucks because ". It is constructive because it may not be trivial to explain why something sucks, yet it is mandatory if you expect to find a solution.

A solution is: "This sucks because . Doing would make it better".

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

#122

Post by bobthepanda »

tablespoon wrote: post #56
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…

> Don't trust old-school typewriters and the postal system either. Letters are routinely opened and typewriters can be matched. For example, the Stasi (secret police of the former GDR - German "Democratic" Republic) had an archive of type samples of all sold models of typewriters for re-identification of political pamphlets. That's theoretical. I highly doubt anyone extends that much effort to target typewriters anym…

I mean, photocopiers have the exact same technology so the US Secret Service can see who’s trying to photocopy dollar bills. (Which is what they were originally created for, not as bodyguards)

https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2005/10/16

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

#123

Post by Aeolun »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #106
Kretinsky wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for my government, in the EU, and participated in the creation of such laws. The vague wording and the complexity is here to give the legislator a lot of freedom in the interpretation of the text. Bear in mind that those “technical” laws aren't written by MPs – they are written by lobbyists and private consultants like McKinsey, in cooperation with high-tier civil servants. Therefore, they usually follow an…

> very few laws to completely shut down dissent except it would mean silencing millions of people, which is frankly more similar to the intro of a sci-fi novel than modern France. See what's happening in Israel, not even the omnipotent Netanyahu could go against the huge popular protests. > Von der Leyen refuses to show the private texts she exchanged with Pfizer' boss, That's the same right everyone has in Europe. N…

> privacy still exists without secrecy

It can, but if the goal is to —in one fell swoop— remove both secrecy (encryption) and privacy (scanning of de—encrypted information) then clearly that isn’t true.

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

#124

Post by Aeolun »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #90
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 craf…

I think you are assuming too much competence. If lawmakers are anything like other employees, then 80% of them are there just for the paycheck. They’re not going to expend any extra effort to fully understand a complicated law that they’re not particularly invested in.

Chances are very few of them actually consider where this could lead, not because they’re malicious, but because they just cannot be bothered. They’re probably working on their own fancy laws that will be much more popular with their voters.

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

#125

Post by labster »

transcriptase wrote: post #113
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…

Careful, if any HN folk reside in Ottawa they’ll be all over you implying that honking horns is psychological torture and that everything is the fault of the RCMP and Provincial government for not shutting down protests first.

Hey, post your street address online here. Me and some buddies will camp outside your house honking horns all night long for a month or two, all in completely harmless good fun as we all agree it’s simply free speech.

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

#126

Post by Aeolun »

randyrand wrote: post #95

> Above all, she continues to claim that it’s possible to scan end-to-end encrypted communication without breaking the encryption. This is trivially possible. 1. send an end to end encrypted message to the recipient 2. also send an end to end encrypted copy of the message to the government. I’m not agreeing with it. But you can clearly send end to end encrypted messages to multiple parties without fundamentally break…

I think by the point you encrypt the plaintext twice the idea of end-to-end is broken.

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

#127

Post by Aeolun »

cowpig wrote: post #7
seydor wrote: post #2

The purpose of most eurocrats is to write long reports to other eurocrats justifying their time and expenses. It's normal to see people claim authority on things they have very little idea of. The recently-caught MEP who took bribes was apparently in charge of science and tech, AI & blockchain , and the things she would say in public were astounding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylCxsN3qlkU?t=5m30s

Making cynical blanket statements about large groups of people doesn't do anything to address any kind of issue, and instead normalizes negative behaviors both within that group. Within the group, the more people believe that it's the norm, the less social impetus there is to address individual bad actors. Outside that group, people are less likely to treat people fairly if they are perceived to be part of a group of…

I think the problem is that humans are going to be human. We hold our bureaucrats to a high standard, so if the group contains a few bad eggs it spoils the reputation of the whole group.

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

#128

Post by mananaysiempre »

rfrey wrote: post #119
mananaysiempre wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Am I misreading, or are you arguing that people are more free to protest in Russia than in Paris?

No, I’m not. What I’m saying is that as long as laws on protests are being followed in full (which in the case of Russia means we’re... somewhere in the late 90s, probably? early 00s at most), the authorities in Paris seem to have much wider latitude to stop people from protesting than would be allowed by the Russian constitution, and that latitude was exercised as recently as 2018.

That doesn’t mean the French system doesn’t work right now (certainly there’s a lot of protesting in Paris), but from my paranoid viewpoint it seems extremely exploitable, and it’s chilling to see people shrug at government actions that would have every post-Soviet human rights activist up in arms. I don’t know how else to put this; it just seems fundamental that the government must not (have the ability to) start to prohibit protests, because sooner or later it won’t stop.

Maybe I’m just too unwilling to believe in a reasonable government, I don’t know.

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

#129

Post by labster »

MrPatan wrote: post #101
CamelCaseName wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"peaceful" is absolutely not the word I'd use for 18-wheeler trucks blaring their horns around the clock in a city center.

Of course not, "peaceful" is reserved for burning buildings and cars.

I remember the good old days when people could be against riots regardless of their politics without getting canceled. But those days are long gone.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m pro-BLM. I’m not a racist or anything.

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

#130

Post by rfrey »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #128
rfrey wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I misreading, or are you arguing that people are more free to protest in Russia than in Paris?

No, I’m not. What I’m saying is that as long as laws on protests are being followed in full (which in the case of Russia means we’re... somewhere in the late 90s, probably? early 00s at most), the authorities in Paris seem to have much wider latitude to stop people from protesting than would be allowed by the Russian constitution, and that latitude was exercised as recently as 2018. That doesn’t mean the French syste…

Thank you for the clarification.
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