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EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

digitalcourage.social

251–260 of 279 posts

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too different in the corporate world. I'm an owner of Apple, Google, Microsoft and others and they refuse to divulge their secrets to me. I can't see their contracts, strategy documents or root passwords.

you have a choice of whether to own Apple or Google. the government offers no such choice, it is a monopoly. the government is not a corporation.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. In a properly functioning democracy the government should be the monopoly of the people.

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#252
post #53
post #3

I am in favor of ChatControl for politicians only: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/two-agencies-... "The Ombudsman accused von der Leyen and the Commission of ‘maladministration’ for failing to produce the deleted text messages, challenging the belief that such texts did not qualify as ‘documents’ under EU law."

That would be even worse. The government only really wants to observe the messages of their political opponents, nobody else. Then they the can blackmail them as they want. As the American do in their corrupt surveillance state.

So much cynicism that doesn't actually reflect the reality; maybe it reflects the reality in a pseudo democracy.

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#253

The worst thing about this is that we the citizens have to fight this every time, but if this just passes one single time we may lose our rights on this issue forever.

Funny that some also argue that it is why the left, no matter how extreme they are, often win in the end. The left keeps fighting, always trying to change the status quo. If a legislation attempt fails this year, they will just try again the next year. Year over year, whoever keeps fighting wins. In contrast, conservatives just want to be left alone, therefore the conservatives lose often.

You can't stop progress; that's why the conservative will eventually lose.

Progress happens one funeral at a time.

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#254
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So nuclear weapons are something we should let everyone have? See, it goes both ways.

You could have just said 'no'. Equating secrecy of letters with nuclear weapons isn't helping your argument.

I merely pointed out what you were doing, hoping you’d get it, but alas.

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then perhaps you can share what other recent cases there have been of people jailed for posting stuff online. And please don’t call me a liar. You said it was recent, and they were jailed. I don’t know of anything else besides the incidents I’ve covered. Worst case is I’m misinformed. And if that’s the case then I’m sorry. But I assure you that I’m not a liar.

UK law is far stricter than you might suppose. https://fee.org/articles/uk-man-arrested-for-malicious-commu... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-...

Oh I’m well aware of how strict the uk is. However none of those articles you shared are about people getting jail time (most of those cases were likely dropped in fact) and they certainly weren’t recent.

I’m not making generalisations here. The OP made a very specific statement about people being jailed recently for posting online and I’m saying they’ve completely missed the truth behind those actual arrests.

Just as all the subsequent posts yourself and others have made are glossing over the very specific claims the OP made.

I’m not going to argue that I think the UK gets things right with its approach to online content. But the OPs specific claim of people being arrested is missing the bigger story about why they got arrested. And that’s what I’m specifically calling FUD on — not the UKs wider policy. The uk is a shit show for a great many reasons (as a UK citizen I’m not blind to this at all). But that doesn’t mean we should exaggerate the truth for the sake of gaining a little extra karma on HN.

The simple fact is the reason for the recent arrests and jail time is for similar reasons people have been arrested and jailed for online content in the US (yes, it’s happened there too). This isn’t a problem with free speech, it’s actual criminals causing actual physical damage and thus who have broken other laws besides just communicating about it online. Hence my comparison to the Capitol riots.

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK law is far stricter than you might suppose. https://fee.org/articles/uk-man-arrested-for-malicious-commu... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-...

Oh I’m well aware of how strict the uk is. However none of those articles you shared are about people getting jail time (most of those cases were likely dropped in fact) and they certainly weren’t recent. I’m not making generalisations here. The OP made a very specific statement about people being jailed recently for posting online and I’m saying they’ve completely missed the truth behind those actual arrests. Just a…

If you're trying to be precise about specific meaning, you probably should also be specific about only using the word jailed. You use "arrested" a few times there, and people do seem to be being arrested for mean tweets.

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I wish that within the EU we could just vote for the country we live in rather than the one we were born in. It would make so much more sense.

You can, in the communnal (local) elections. For the parliamentary, it is here for a reason. To prevent voting touristic. The delay of several years -- you have to live several years in the other country -- serves exactly that.

But there is no delay, even if I've been in Spain for 10 years I still can't vote for the parliament there.

I know about the local ones but it's not that important IMO.

I could go to the trouble of obtaining Spanish citizenship after 10 years but it is incredibly difficult and long.

I understand the problem of touristic voting but then they should let me vote here after 3 years or so.

Right now I can only vote for the Dutch government which I have nothing to do with in my life (and which is an extreme-right regime since the last election anyway)

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#258
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, there are EU countries like Lithuania, which have a very privacy-conscious culture, and have not had any meaningful terror attacks for nearly all their history. The last notable one was 30 years ago[0]. No one died. In Lithuania, privacy is quite meaningfully enshrined in its constitution[1]. I remember that Google StreetView faced significant regulatory challenges in simply photographing people’s…

> In Lithuania, privacy is quite meaningfully enshrined in its constitution[1]. You do realize that Lithuania is supporting chat control?

I presume you are talking about WK 10235/2022 ADD 10[0], as I found many blogs and journals[1] talking about Lithuania's position there and how it is anti-E2EE, pro-Chat Control. Some things should be clarified:

Firstly, it is a working document that someone obtained through a FOI request. So it is important to understand that this was not meant for the public, and therefore the opinion Lithuanian representatives provided there was not scrutinized as such prior to release. This is not a comprehensive position of Lithuania's government or any of its branches.

Secondly, the document follows positions expressed in and around a police (LEWP) meeting. It is difficult to imagine that law enforcement would support E2EE or stand against Chat Control in principle, because it makes their daily work more difficult. This context should be kept in mind and is also pointed out by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society article I linked.

Thirdly, the opinion of a limited group of Lithuania's law enforcement workers does not impact Lithuania's constitution, nor culture. I also believe that it is not an opinion shared by many Lithuanians who have some distrust of authority following years of state surveillance, persecution, and the trauma this entailed. So it is important to understand that the culture, the constitution, and the opinion of law enforcement workers contributed to this working document are three distinct things.

Finally, this "let's sacrifice anything and everything to protect the children" narrative unfortunately exists in Lithuania as well. It's a polarizing political issue where people have very strong opinions on each side. It seems likely to me, as I read the document, that there was a strong bias towards one of the sides in the working group.

Overall, this consultation is not the overall opinion of Lithuanian people nor their government; law enforcement working groups will generally be biased towards access to encrypted information rather than privacy; and that no country can escape today's polarizing political debates, so individual people will sometimes have strong opinions without having ever thought them through.

This is not to say that Lithuanian representatives could not have acted more responsibly. They could have. Frankly, as the Stanford article illustrates, Lithuanian reps' opinion is naive to the point of incompetence. Many other countries did better. That is evident. But does this say Lithuania is against privacy? No. It is still one of the most privacy-respecting countries I have ever been to and done business in.

[0] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23819681-law-enforce...

[1] https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2023/06/eu-member-states-...

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to that problem is simple: legalize the sale of all drugs. Extortion is a common practice of drug gangs, whether they sell online or not.

The social problems, mental health and physical health issues related to cocaine, legal or not, far outweigh the benefits of legalising it. I'll add that my cousin was stabbed 6 times by a coke head flat mate who had a psychotic episode. And I haven't started on the slavery side of the production side of the supply chain.

> And I haven't started on the slavery side of the production side of the supply chain.

That exists primarily because of the legal status. If cocaine were legal, for example, the production wouldn't be much worse than say coffee cultivation.

And that's terrible what happened to your cousin, but I don't see how those relatively limited cases, as bad as they are, compare to the millions of lives that have been destroyed globally by the war on drugs.

Re: EU ChatControl is back on the agenda

#260
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I disagree, what are you even refering to? What are these particular actions?, curiously we never refer to russian actions as anti-ukrainian, anti-polish, anti-european. Its always the other way round.

I think you should go read the comment chain again. The person was saying that you can use a “Russia” line to get the population to agree to a measure or chat control. You just went in and basically proved their point.

If he worded it like you did now "Russian line", I would agree--but he didnt. He used a word that Russia loves to use in cry bully situations. It implies that Lithuanians are doing this because they just happen to hate poor russians while they have legitimate reasons to be scared and are forced to react.

You may think that Im pedantic or whatever but Russia has history of subtly playing with words and thus dictating the discourse. For example term eastern europe was hijacked by soviets to enshrine and justify their sphere of influence which was a completely made up term which descends from germans and their ostsiedlung--the settling of lands to the east of germans states by germans.

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