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EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

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Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan over and over again. There is a certain group of politicians who are pushing for this very hard. In this case, the main thrust seems to be coming from Denmark, but from what I understand there are groups (eg. europol) pushing this from behind the scenes. They need the politicians to get it done.

I think that one problem is that politicians defer too much to "experts" in decisions like this. I cannot remember who it was, but one British prime minister, when told by intelligence services that they needed greater surveillance powers, told them essentially, that of course they would claim that, and firmly refused. Politicians now mostly lack the backbone. That does not stop them ignoring expert advice when it is…

The problem is not they ask experts. Politicians are so utterly incompetent on the thing they are putting law on, at the level they will believe openoffice is a firewall[1]. That doesn’t mean all of them are that blatantly unaware of the basics for which they are supposed to decide of some rule, but that is definitely a thing.

The next thing is, do they know how to rely efficiently on a diverse panel of expert, or do they take only yes-man/lobby-funded experts around them?

On a deeper level, are they accountable of the consequences of their actions when they enforce laws which any mildly skilled person in the field could tell will have disastrous side effects and not any meaningful effect on the (supposedly) intended goal?

What we need is direct democracy, where every apt citizen have a duty to actively engage in the rules applied without caste exception.

Let’s protect children, yes. What about making sure not any stay without a shelve to pass the winter[2]? Destroying the right of private conversation except for the caste which decide to impose that for everyone else is the very exact move to offering children a brighter future.

[1] https://framablog.org/2009/04/02/hadopi-albanel-pare-feu-ope... [2] https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20240919.OBS93798/en-europ...

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#232
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it “also about catching criminals” is a framing trick. Sure, if you surveil 450 million people you’ll find some criminals - that’s statistically inevitable. But you’ll also drag far more innocents into suspicion. Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90% detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - you’d correctly flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms. F…

> Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90% detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - you’d correctly flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms. For every offender, over 110 innocents are treated as suspects. Playing devil's advocate here, but you can skew those numbers however you want. I.e., given any classifier and corresponding confusion matrix, you can make…

We have already experience with how false positives are skewed in practice, even case goes all the way to court.

Because ostensibly good people do not want to see the CSAM material, they believe what algorithm/first reporter stated, and ofc nobody "good" wants to let a pedophile go free.

And so the algorithm tries to hang a parent for making photo of skin rash to send to doctor (happened with Google Drive scanning) or a grandparent for having a photo of their toddler grandkids playing in kiddy pool (happened in UK, computer technician happened upon the photo and reported to police, if not for lawyer insisting to actually verify the "CSAM material" the prosecution would not actually ever check what the photo was of)

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#233
This dystopian direction of the European Commission coincided with a lot of interaction between Thorn, the European Commission, and Europol. [0][1][2]

Thorn is coincidently is also the vendor of Spotlight, software which solves exactly the problem they are lobbying against.

Thiel's Palantir also has overlapping software capabilities and is also raising questions in their work with Europol. [3]

Connecting these dots was the only thing that made sense to me in order to explain why these repeated repackaged proposals keep steam rolling everything despite all the security concerns, unconstitutionality, and general lack of common sense.

[0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-...

[1] https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start...

[2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017

[3] https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/dutch-group-calls-f...

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#234
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in power as extremists? Just because their speech is more 'peaceful' doesn't mean their actions aren't extremist in nature.

or maybe let's not? their actions are clearly not extremist, absolutely not perfect and not always equally democratic, but not extremist or violent like the actual extremists...

Politics are an inherently violent affair. The government is simply a monopoly on legitimate violence. Politicians decide the laws, which result in people breaking them getting beaten up & dragged to a cell. Not to say this is always a bad thing: some people cannot be stopped from misbehaving just by talking, but it definitely is violent.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#235
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's exactly my point - it's important to understand the issue and the messaging about it. Government "spies" on you for many many things and I think HN "all government is evil" panic isn't really reflected in outlook of EU citizens and won't be looked upon positively by public at large. So again, be careful what you're calling "undemocratic" because that's not the same as "different from my opinion".

Is it still democratic if the elected representatives are trying to subvert democracy?

What are you talking about here exactly?

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#236
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in power as extremists? And what would this change?

Usually, calling things by their proper name helps change perceptions, which often triggers other reactions. Language is very powerful.

I understand that but I'm asking what might be hoped to be triggered.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#237

People are so emotive about this issue and the online safety act in the UK. They jump to conclusions that applied to any other issue would be conspiratorial. It's not about "control" and "spying". The fact is it is policing that has been made extremely hard due to technology. silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth. Silly mistake and unfathomabl…

Yeah, nonsense, bullshit, whatever you want to call it. Actual pedos will trivially bypass Chat Control by switching to a messaging service that doesn't enforce it, or even by sending encrypted ZIP files via any ordinary messaging service. > silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth Does this justify every browser reporting every URL you visit to…

> Yeah, nonsense, bullshit, whatever you want to call it. Actual pedos will trivially bypass Chat Control by switching to a messaging service that doesn't enforce it, or even by sending encrypted ZIP files via any ordinary messaging service.

Yep, and then the politicians will create laws that outlaw encrypting zip files without a backdoor etc. That's my point, there's no nefarious plot here, it's just dumb laws to solve real problems.

I don't want these laws but they're going to be pushed while everyone is just pushing back on conspiracy grounds. That's not going to win over the average person.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#238
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech is doing not great, but still OK in the US. The government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the free speech protections can and should guarantee. What now happens more is that big private companies, having huge influence on individual life in everything from communication to banking, attack people for their views. The cure for it might be to ease and speed up the way for people to push b…

> The government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the free speech protections can and should guarantee. This has absolutely started happening, albeit not yet on a large-scale, systematic basis. Mahmoud Khalil [0] resided in the US legally when he was detained with the intention to deport. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Khalil_(activist)

Khalil also gave material support to terrorists which is explicitly called out as a no-no on your residency paperwork.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#239
post #87

A few comments about the state of security and privacy in the UK so let me reply with a top level comment instead: People forget that the UK has ChatControl. It was made into law as part of the Online Safety Act 2023. It has not been enforced so far because it's not "technically feasible to do so" and because companies threatened to leave the UK with their services. You can be 100% certain it will suddenly become fea…

Worth noting that with RIPA (2000, activated in 2007) UK has enforced key disclosure. It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any data for any reason (including random data). I would say the UK has worse privacy than any other country on earth. I'm really hoping for plausible deniability to become more common to help protect against the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King…

The UK has worse privacy than ANY other country on Earth? Really?

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#240

This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever. Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the EU and democracies, or just give up on politics for good. These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held accountable, with the m…

When the government is monolithic (which it tends to become) and holds a lot of power it is just a matter of time before "some animals are more equal than others". The best safeguards I know about are 1) limiting the power of government and 2) checks and balances on what powers they do have.

Nothing is perfect, and even having the two pillars above does not guarantee eternal justice (or even that the pillars will remain in place). But we can try to keep remembering and demand better. Sincerely: Good luck, EU.

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