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Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

digitalcourage.social

131–140 of 377 posts

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#131
post #19

Entire world seems to be making a pivot to surveillance state :(

The entire world realized that now that the Internet has killed off all of the third places / IRL meetings, and social media killed off the decentralized Internet, it's quite easy to fully control the discourse around any topic, since only a few social media organizations effectively decide what everyone sees (even if you're independent, Social Media decides which ideas/content gets traffic). Question is, how do we g…

Was it really the internet that killed third places?

Among all candidates, it seems the least likely here. It didn't even happen at the same speed the internet grew.

(The issues with monopolized editorial powers are still valid, it's just this one that I think is wrong.)

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, the pressure for a surveillance state comes from the EU, right? While Germany and countries in their cultural sphere like Austria are fundamentally opposed to that. If that's the case, it won't ever change unless the EU changes

I'm afraid Germany ('s government) is not opposed at the moment and there is enough internal pressure as well. We had our fair share of moments getting surveilance like that and fighting it. I bet my ass off, that Ursula von der Leyen, the c... who tried to make it German law had her hands in that as well.

If any other country should know better, you'd think it would be Germany. Ursula in particular married into a family which was both persecuted as Anabaptists and participated in persecution by being Holocaust enforcers, so how on Earth is she not aware of the slippery slope here?

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#133
post #119
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a great idea. I for one want to enable our governments to track down criminals and punish them for it. If they're not doing everything they can do so in this technological and digital age, then they are breaking their part of that pesky "social contract" I am being upheld to. And to people like you that oppose this and propose even more authoritarian laws that prevent me as a citizen from protecting my…

What do you plan to do when definitions of crime start getting fuzzy? Crime is not just petty crimes where it's a clear cut to tell if someone did something bad in definitive terms. Other crime types exist that are crime only within a structure. The crime of sharing copyrighted files is a crime within a framework of intellectual rights but then training AI on the same files and and producing alternative files bypassi…

Crime has ALWAYS been political in nature.

I steal $100 from the cash register. Cameras are pulled, and I'm arrested and charged criminally.

Company edits timecards and steals $100 from me. Its instead a civil matter, and maybe I might get paid back. Then again, probably not.

Person shoots and kills a home invader. Murder trial ensues, and they spend piles of money to defend themselves.

Cops shoot and kill person (likely black). They get away with it with 2 week suspended-with-pay because 'I thought I saw a weapon'.

Insider stock trading is illegal, unless you're congress. Then completely legal.

Highway patrols (read: state sanctioned gangs) confiscate cash for no reason. You have to sue the cash and prove good intent. You usually lose.

Illegal immigration: ICE goes to places including workplaces and arrests (in various legal issues) illegal immigrants for illegally holding a job. None of the managers or owners are ever charged with immigration fraud, identity theft, or similar laws.

There are 2 types of laws in our system: for those in power, and for those who don't have power.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#134
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people don't like this.

A lot of people feel they have nothing to hide and don’t feel strongly one way or the other on privacy, but they do like feeling safe and secure from crime and “bad things”. It’s a dangerous and destructive worldview, because they benefit immensely from the small percentage of society that absolutely does need privacy.

> A lot of people feel they have nothing to hide and don’t feel strongly one way or the other on privacy

People think that, but once you tell them they will lose their drivers license since they chatted to their spouse about bad eyesight they bark differently. Or shrug it off with "that will never happen to me" and you can start the "and then they came for the [next group], but I did nothing" line of talk.

Everyone has something to hide, they might just not know yet what it is but they will when the option to hide it has gone away. There is a reason my country stopped recording religion since 1946 in the citizen records, it was fine to do so decades before.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#135
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for any legislation piece. A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with $1M. Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 nor the time. And at the same time, very profitable for the 100 to spend hundreds of thousands and great effort lobbying for. It's just the power structure of any representative legislature. "In vain do we fly to the many"...

Plato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history) and every justification in that book and every book citing it is trotted out to argue for how bad direct democracy is. Now we act like it's not good because Athens got its shit pushed in by Sparta during the Peloponnesian war. Direct democracy is good. One person one vote, on all legislation, actually could work. We haven't even tried at scale in thousands…

The average person (and more if younger) is illiterate these days and unfit to hold any position of significant power. Source: I work with them.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#136
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deck is stacked. They only have to win once, and it's law. You have to win over and over every time it's introduced.

Heinlein in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress proposed a bicameral legislature, where one half needs a 66% majority to pass a law. The other half’s only job is to repeal laws, which they can do with a 50% majority.

This is a dumb and outrageously anti-democratic idea, and is a much worse cure than the disease it's attempting to fix. If 65% of the population supports a law it's favored by 30 points-- far higher than the margin of most elections-- and yet would not exist under this system.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am Danish and I fucking hate my government for this. Nationally, the minister of justice Peter Hummelgaard is also pushing for a law which gives the police intelligence agency (PET) the right to basically do mass surveillance of everyone without prior suspicion of any criminal activity. If passed, they will be allowed to build a database of everyone which correlates social media activity with health care data and a…

> This will be a machine for automatically generating suspects. According to proponents, this is untrue. The intent of that database is that looking into it will still require a warrent, and will thusly require the suspect to already have been identified. I'm no expert, but that sounds reasonably similar to how we treat other investigative means.

There is no reason to believe it wouldn't eventually be used to generate leads as opposed to needing a warrant to sift through.

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire world realized that now that the Internet has killed off all of the third places / IRL meetings, and social media killed off the decentralized Internet, it's quite easy to fully control the discourse around any topic, since only a few social media organizations effectively decide what everyone sees (even if you're independent, Social Media decides which ideas/content gets traffic). Question is, how do we g…

Was it really the internet that killed third places? Among all candidates, it seems the least likely here. It didn't even happen at the same speed the internet grew. (The issues with monopolized editorial powers are still valid, it's just this one that I think is wrong.)

Say more?

Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to stop it is to have positive rights written in law, like right to online privacy and privacy of communications.

Yes, like the Soviet Union. Whereas the West has predominantly negative rights, the USSR had positive rights. And due to their campaign, even got the UN declaration of human rights to mostly include USSR's positive rights. https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/regional_perspectives_on... Part of USSR constition indicating positive rights: https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.... Women and men hav…

While the idea is great I'm not convinced that the Soviet Union is the best example to demonstrate the concept. Yes they had a "right for leisure", unless the State decided that you were a slave and sent you in Siberia to knock hard rocks for the rest of your life. Or your "rest days" were in fact forced, unpaid labor (subbotnik), no different than their previous feudal serf system.

Same for a "right to a house", where the State provided you with a filthy, overcrowded slum and call it a day.

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