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Chat Control Must Be Stopped

privacyguides.org

21–30 of 272 posts

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#21
Even without Chat Control, I still self-censor even in private communications. The majority of people you chat with show complete disregard for your privacy. They piss on it. There are very basic requirements that a minuscule amount of people follow, like: full-disk encryption, using a password manager, being aware of your rights to protect yourself against searches, having good computer hygiene and competency. The level of incompetency and ignorance when it comes to privacy & security makes me deeply angry and frustrated to a level that brings me to nihilism and misanthropy

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a scroll past the probably justified but still alarmism is the actually bad proposal. > The most recent proposal for Chat Control comes from the EU Council Danish presidency pushing for the regulation misleadingly called the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR). Despite its seemingly caring name, this regulation will not help fight child abuse, and will even likely worsen it, impacting negatively what is alr…

ah this is the relevant piece, which I did skim over given I was getting annoyed at paragraph after paragraph not telling me what it is: > Chat Control would make it mandatory for all service providers (text messaging, email, social media, cloud storage, hosting services, etc.) to scan all communications and all files (including end-to-end encrypted ones), in order to supposedly detect whatever the government deems "…

> including end-to-end encrypted ones

How the hang are they planning to do that?

I mean, if someone has an end to end encrypted conversation, it's encrypted when it gets to the carrier, and the carrier shouldn't (technically, not anything related about whether they are allowed to or not) be able to decrypt the conversation.

If the carrier is terminating the connection, then it's either not end to end encrypted, or it's broken.

edit: sorted the grammar/punctuation at the end to improve clarity

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#23
As many, many critics have pointed out, the EU claiming to defend human rights, protect free speech, and respect personal privacy, is demonstrably nothing more than a fictional moral high ground.

Russia and China are in your face and obvious about where they stand, and don't mind being a boolean of true. The EU just prefers some subtlety with more politically correct and polite wording, and prefers a float of 0.92.

Part of me almost prefers the Singapore model. Clear rules, even harsh rules, but near-total do-whatever-you-want if it's not on the list. None of this gray-area nonsense. Uncertainty is a form of oppression, and the US/EU are masters in that regard.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#24
post #15

> Chat Control would make it mandatory for all service providers (text messaging, email, social media, cloud storage, hosting services, etc.) to scan all communications and all files (including end-to-end encrypted ones), in order to supposedly detect whatever the government deems "abusive material." I wonder why there has been such silence on this, with the exception of a handful of well written blog posts. The scop…

Having the service provider handle the encryption is very convenient for the users. And, it turns out, the government.

Sure, but the way this was written it also includes everything from Gmail to root access servers hosted by Hetzner. Gmail has been doing this for years, but (I assume) not Hetzner. If even hosting providers are dragged into this the scale grows dramatically. Can Hetzner really not even be bothered about having to comply with such ridiculous requirements?

To give a simple example: imagine a script that constantly dumps /dev/urandom into JPG-like files nonstop onto a 16 TB disk, then repeats. I've seen enterprise systems that aren't so dissimilar. If indeed the EU commission wants all files scanned, then will Hetzner need to spy on all of their machines at least enough to check for compliance? I'm guessing their board members think it can't possibly be so dumb, or stand to gain handsomely and privately.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#25
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah this is the relevant piece, which I did skim over given I was getting annoyed at paragraph after paragraph not telling me what it is: > Chat Control would make it mandatory for all service providers (text messaging, email, social media, cloud storage, hosting services, etc.) to scan all communications and all files (including end-to-end encrypted ones), in order to supposedly detect whatever the government deems "…

> including end-to-end encrypted ones How the hang are they planning to do that? I mean, if someone has an end to end encrypted conversation, it's encrypted when it gets to the carrier, and the carrier shouldn't (technically, not anything related about whether they are allowed to or not) be able to decrypt the conversation. If the carrier is terminating the connection, then it's either not end to end encrypted, or it…

I imagine they'll push for apps to do the scanning prior to encryption and directly after decryption.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#26
post #18

> Chat Control would make it mandatory for all service providers (text messaging, email, social media, cloud storage, hosting services, etc.) to scan all communications and all files (including end-to-end encrypted ones), in order to supposedly detect whatever the government deems "abusive material." I wonder why there has been such silence on this, with the exception of a handful of well written blog posts. The scop…

Big tech would be for this -- it would create a huge moat in terms of costly and complicated compliance overhead that would keep small challengers and startups out. Complicated or costly regulation is a regressive tax -- it affects smaller companies a lot more than larger ones and tends to prevent new entrants to a market.

I hadn't thought of the regulatory capture implications. As if this could not get worse.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#27
post #18

> Chat Control would make it mandatory for all service providers (text messaging, email, social media, cloud storage, hosting services, etc.) to scan all communications and all files (including end-to-end encrypted ones), in order to supposedly detect whatever the government deems "abusive material." I wonder why there has been such silence on this, with the exception of a handful of well written blog posts. The scop…

Big tech would be for this -- it would create a huge moat in terms of costly and complicated compliance overhead that would keep small challengers and startups out. Complicated or costly regulation is a regressive tax -- it affects smaller companies a lot more than larger ones and tends to prevent new entrants to a market.

That's exactly my point though. Google, AWS, Meta etc all stand to gain from this. But plenty of middle tier providers are entirely silent even if it poses a potentially existential threat. Some people are going to get rich from this of course, but many will be ruined.

And that's before even accounting for the lives to be destroyed by a blurry photo of a tree being classified as abuse material.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#29

> Chat Control would make it mandatory for all service providers (text messaging, email, social media, cloud storage, hosting services, etc.) to scan all communications and all files (including end-to-end encrypted ones), in order to supposedly detect whatever the government deems "abusive material." I wonder why there has been such silence on this, with the exception of a handful of well written blog posts. The scop…

We've been mostly deplatformed for any kind of organized action against it, there's just writing an email to your MEP or... a change.org petition. Yes really. Nothing official one could sign their name under. But even so, the commission does whatever it wants anyway, they are complete autocrats when it comes to law proposal, it's up to the parliament and the courts to something about it afterwards. And they should gi…

Would it be correct to compare the EU's autocratic pronouncements to Presidential executive orders in the US? In the sense that they can pass whatever they want with little feedback but then the courts can tear them apart?

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped

#30
post #14

Looking at the long list of faces for my country, it boggles my mind how all these people are fine letting the police just scan their phone, photos, messages at will, as if they don't have significant others or medical pictures on their phones, including of their children. Do they think they're above it? Are they stupid and don't know what they vote for? I do not understand.

From Patrick Brewer's analysis [0] it seems like written into the proposal is to enable members of the government to have access to excepted systems, if applied for things like law enforcement or "national security." If I had to guess, at least a few MEPs expect they will be able to use such an exemption for their personal communications. [0] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

But won't they hqve to email people @gmail, for their personal communications?
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