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Europe's New War on Privacy

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21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#21
post #6

I can't read the full article, but I would like to remind everyone that this is not the first time the EU has done something like this. In 2006 the EU passed the Data Retention Directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive > According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of…

> can't read the full article

Reader mode seems to work.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#22

We need better leaders. Regards, a disappointed EU citizen.

Good luck removing this caste of bureaucrats through voting. This is one of the final nails in the coffin to keep power forever.

> Von der Leyen was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, to German parents. Her father, Ernst Albrecht, was one of the first European civil servants.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#25
post #2

These carrier bureaucrates of EU will split the EU apart with their needless over legislation where member state's fascist far left and far right elements would want to be done with the union.

fascism, a notably far left movement. why the nazis first went for communists, trade unionists, and social democrats.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#26

So is GDPR the "good" part of it and we should just reject Chat Control? Or is GDPR also some sort of trojan horse that sounds great, but has downsides

The EU is a big organization woth a lot of prople with different agendas. It was easier for the privacy advocates to regulate companies thsn for them to stop government surveillance. So far the Parliament has mamsged to block new surveillance.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#28

We need better leaders. Regards, a disappointed EU citizen.

[flagged]

Here, being MEP is perceived as being on a lucrative political exile - those who are there cannot do damage to local politics.

And frankly, it's the commission ordinary citizens have least control of.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#29
Hmm. So, as I read the article, they've dropped the mandatory universal scanning (which has the effect of no longer requiring on-device scanning)... but added age verification.

Voluntary scanning (voluntary for the provider, not for the serfs^H^H^H^H^Husers) is already happening under some kind of temporary directive. So that's kind of codifying the status quo.

If they had just dropped the mandatory scanning, it might even be good to see it passed, in that it could eventually, slowly, drive all the users either to providers that don't scan... or better yet to P2P. There are probably some players who accepted the lack of mandatory scanning because they're betting they can find "noncoercive" ways to coerce all the major providers... but P2P is a lot harder to pressure that way. Even "mostly P2P" is harder to pressure, just because the infrastructure required is smaller. And it's not clear that all of the people doing the horsetrading understand that P2P is even possible.

They've been coming back with this Chat Control bullshit every year, in an obvious "keep demanding it until you get a yes" strategy. But once they've passed something, it'll be harder politically for them to change it to ban effectively encrypted P2P messaging. They could end up screwing themselves.

BUT the age verification ruins the whole thing, since it torpedoes privacy in general, and it probably, depending on how it's phrased and who it binds, effectively bans P2P messaging.

I wonder how many people involved intentionally took that into account, versus how many just saw AV as something vaguely authoritarian that could be put in to placate the forces of Control(TM).

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#30
post #6

I can't read the full article, but I would like to remind everyone that this is not the first time the EU has done something like this. In 2006 the EU passed the Data Retention Directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive > According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of…

It's still a law in Denmark, despite being rendered illegal in the EU, and likewise in national courts.

It was last used to convict a murderer of the murder of Emilie Meng (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Emilie_Meng). At the time, he had kidnapped a 13 year old girl (IIRC), that he had sexually assaulted for 24+ hours, and various dashcam recordings were used to piece together what had happened. He was also convicted of attempted kidnapping of a 15 year old girl from a school.

They found the 13 year old in his home, so not much doubt about that, but the other two cases were partially proven with phone metadata logging, proving he had been in the area at the time.

In the light of that, it's hard to disagree 100% that it's a "bad idea". It's a question of balance I guess, and the mass surveillance proposed in ChatControl is way out of balance. Not only does it scan in the background, it also scans for things that are unknown to you, and alerts authorities without alerting you. That's the perfect tool for facist regimes to get rid of political dissents.

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