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EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

patrick-breyer.de

161–170 of 360 posts

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#161
post #117

It will be very interesting to see the responses of WhatsApp and Apple if this moves forward. Do their commitments to E2EE mean anything or not. Will iMessage and WhatsApp leave the EU or not. That would be extremely telling as to the actual quality of the security guarantees they purport to provide.

Wouldn't client side scanning prior to E2EE circumvent this issue? If WhatsApp or iMessage scan your messages on device it doesn't really matter if they are then encrypted during transmission.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#162
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech absolutists like myself got run over culturally with hate speech laws so for anyone continuing on the fight I wish you the best of luck.

>Free speech absolutists like myself I think one of the main problems "free speech absolutist" have is that they chose such an awkward phrase to self-identify themselves. The word "absolutist" is so unambiguous that it implies that seemingly no one would qualify for it besides true loons which makes the whole idea easy to dismiss. When you really get down to it, almost everyone supports some type of restriction on sp…

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40712506 for my argument that making child porn illegal protects abusers more than abuse victims. i guess that makes me a free speech absolutist?

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#163

I already kicked up a shit here in NL together with a few other well connected people (with success) but it's a little frustrating that there's little more to do other than hope that nerds in other EU countries can make a difference.

Looks like the Netherlands is already opposed, for what good that will do. Any useful links to share with people?

For any regulation or directive to pass, it needs to pass both the Parliament and the Council. Passing the Council means it needs unanimous approval from every member country. I don't see what "blocking majority" the article refers to, one country should be enough. Unless they mean stop it even before it reaches a Council vote, in which case that might be true.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: why would a free speech absolutist start a discussion here, on this site? I have a feeling that plenty of rules here [0] wouldn't be accepted by such a crowd. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Free speech doesn't mean you can force anyone to listen. The government should not make any speech illegal on a federal level, but individual private businesses or websites (like HN) can still decide what's tolerated on their property. And the corollary -- I believe in free speech but there are some people I'll never listen to, even though I believe in their right to speak.

What about individual private businesses like Spectrum and Verizon?

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#165
Patrick's & a number of other Pirate Party seats were lost in the last EU elections. https://stackdiary.com/patrick-breyer-and-pirate-party-lose-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40631517

It's going to be awful not having Patrick Breyer reporting these activities.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech absolutists like myself got run over culturally with hate speech laws so for anyone continuing on the fight I wish you the best of luck.

Honest question: why would a free speech absolutist start a discussion here, on this site? I have a feeling that plenty of rules here [0] wouldn't be accepted by such a crowd. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Free speech absolutism doesn't exist in a bubble, but falls under a broader civil rights umbrella. Most free speech absolutists here would likely understand that Hacker News is a privately ran forum.

Many free speech absolutists would agree that Hacker News should not be compelled to publish off-topic or rule-breaking discussions any more than a cake shop owner should be compelled to sell you a cake displaying a message that the cake shop owner doesn't agree with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_v_Ashers_Baking_Company_Lt...

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#167
The current draft would cover every kind of service that allows people to exchange information so that every DM you send on reddit, twitter, discord, steam, ... would be have to be scanned. Not even the most totalitarian governments on this planet have tried to implement something like this. Also it sounds extremely illusory that the people exchanging CSAM wouldn't simply switch to private services knowing their messages on public services are scanned.

"... As services which enable direct interpersonal and interactive exchange of information merely as a minor ancillary feature that is intrinsically linked to another service, such as chat and similar functions as part of gaming, image-sharing and video-hosting are equally at risk of misuse, they should also be covered by this Regulation. "

https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2024/05/2024-05-28_Cou...

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#168
post #117

It will be very interesting to see the responses of WhatsApp and Apple if this moves forward. Do their commitments to E2EE mean anything or not. Will iMessage and WhatsApp leave the EU or not. That would be extremely telling as to the actual quality of the security guarantees they purport to provide.

Apple is easy - they had already implemented this voluntarily until they got pushback, and decided against rolling it out.

Re: EU to greenlight Chat Control tomorrow

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech doesn't mean you can force anyone to listen. The government should not make any speech illegal on a federal level, but individual private businesses or websites (like HN) can still decide what's tolerated on their property. And the corollary -- I believe in free speech but there are some people I'll never listen to, even though I believe in their right to speak.

What about individual private businesses like Spectrum and Verizon?

This is touching on the whole obvious problem with no controls on speech: cancel culture is free speech since it's just me asking other people not to freely associate by freely speaking that I don't want to freely associate with them. Then you enter the whole "tolerance of intolerance" debate and so on.

This whole thing is a question of degrees. I think "common carrier" was a useful concept: loss of control traded for immunity.

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