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Europe's New War on Privacy

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Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#61

Post by qcnguy »

hollow-moe wrote: post #7
baiac wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they did, what are they going to do about it?

True, it's sad to see activists needs to be on duty 24/7/365 and yet it's useless if they can't get normal people to follow them and spam the inbox of every single EU employee just to delay more whatever chains they're trying to pass.

Spamming EU employees (the correct term to use) is useless not because it requires 24/7 attention but because there is no reason for any EU employee to care. The EU is constitutionally designed to eliminate democratic mechanisms. And as we saw with Brexit, citizens are kept in line by massive threats of punishment if they leave (although in the case of the UK the EU chickened out and showed itself to be a paper tiger).

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#62

Post by stinkbeetle »

alephnerd wrote: post #50
stinkbeetle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania). No they haven't. It's just not what the build up to to war looks like. At all. > But counterespionage is equally critical. No, probably not equally critical once you have decided there is likely to be war. Important sure, but: 1. Broadly spying on your own citizens is not "counterespionage". 2. Spying on your own citizens wit…

> No they haven't. It's just not what the build up to to war looks like. At all Depends European state to state. For example in 2018 [0][1], most Eastern states were spending close enough to what was needed. The biggest laggard remained Germany due to constitutional issues, but even they along with other Western European nations have gotten back on track following the 2022 escalation by Russia [2] > Broadly spying on…

> Depends European state to state.

No it doesn't because the claim was that most of them have prepared for war. Most have not.

> Dragnets absolutely are. Every piece of intelligence matters.

This isn't, and it's not even marketed as such because that would be too patently ridiculous. It's sold on the lie of keeping children safe.

> Yet the dramatic rise in defense expenditures across Europe after 2022 and my own personal experience working with people in this space has shown a mixture of both.

There is no dramatic expenditure rise which indicates a build up for war across most of Europe. It's gone up a few points across the EU over many years and has just now barely breached the global average.

The claim was that this is justified because it is an adequate preparation for war, and preparations are being made for war, and therefore it is being done to prepare for war and is good.

None of those things are true. At best they're wild conjecture which are at odds with other facts. They are not an adequate preparation for war. Preparations for war are not being made. And they are not being done to prepare for a war.

> A major conventional war will happen in the next 5 years, and everyone is in the midst of preparation for that.

Almost no countries in Europe are preparing for invasion. If anything they are slightly upping deterrence factor, but they are not behaving though they fear being invaded, nor do they have any serious capability to participate in a major conventional war outside their borders, which is likely to involve China and be centered in the Pacific.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#63

Post by qcnguy »

canyp wrote: post #11

Who are these fucks working to further mass surveillance when the people have already said 'no', twice?

People can't say no to the EU. That's such a common misconception on HN. The EU has a body it lyingly calls a parliament, which doesn't get to decide what laws are proposed or passed. It's more like an upper house that can only slow down or veto legislation, which is why it fills up with political nobodies who either just cheerlead for the EU or want to see their countries leave it. It's not like they can do anything else.

So people say no and they just bring it back again, or get activist judges to discover that it was legal all along. It's not like voters can kick them out.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#64

Post by TeMPOraL »

stavros wrote: post #59
TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always a tradeoff. Nothing is ever going to have zero benefit Realizing that is the first step to having any kind of productive discourse, much less a chance of influencing the outcome. It's also the step I see most commenters in discussions on this and related topics here, are unable to take. But then, the follow-up step is: > the problem is that these laws use the marginal benefit as an excuse to institute s…

Eh, I don't know, I feel like "is complete population surveillance a net good?" has been answered a million times, I'm not sure we need to go into it from first principles.

"Complete population surveillance" is an ill-defined category; depending on how you slice it, it's something very undesirable, or a status quo we've been living in for the past couple decades.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#65

Post by stavros »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #64
stavros wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't know, I feel like "is complete population surveillance a net good?" has been answered a million times, I'm not sure we need to go into it from first principles.

"Complete population surveillance" is an ill-defined category; depending on how you slice it, it's something very undesirable, or a status quo we've been living in for the past couple decades.

I can't see anything in the intersection of "desirable", "status quo" and "complete surveillance", can you think of some examples?

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#66

Post by torginus »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #30
Aerroon wrote: 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 als…

I'm sorry but this whole thing stinks

- The data was collected in 2016, and was used in 2023 - a retention period of 7 years, way longer than the specified maximum of 2

- I'd argue that the basis of lawmaking is weighing the advantages versus the costs - supplying partial evidence in a case once a decade does not meet the requirements for introducing mass surveillance with infinite retention

The police work was sloppy, the facts as they stand are:

- The guy was on a list of 1400 or so of suspects, and was convicted of abducting a 13yo in 2023, a different crime. It bears mentioning that the town had a population of 5k and the municipiality 63k, halving that just to count the men doesn't give you a short list

- A white car was seen at the 2016 scene of the crime, suspected to be a Hyundai i30, but with a degree of uncertainty, just to illustrate how uncertain they were, the article mentions the police confiscated a white van

- The guy owned and sold his 2016 Hyundai around the time

- Thanks to Big Brother dragnet perma-retention surveillance (mobile cell info), it was established that the guy was in the area (a train station!) of the 2016 crime at the time (which is a large window considering the exact time of the disappearence of the first girl is not well known)

From this it's unclear to me whether the same guy was the perp in the 2016 and 2023 cases. If he was, I'd argue the dragnet-collected evidence is only circumstantial. I feel like it was possible that the police wanted to pin the crime on him as they had an expectation to catch the 2016 killer and he was obviously a pedo.

Even if he did it, I'd say the digital evidence was neither necessary nor that important in convicting him.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#67

Post by metalman »

it makes no difference how far "governments" go down the authoritarian openly fascist path. Real world pressure from climate change, demographic changes, the effect of the developing world rising, and all of it happening in a world where hydraulic despotism is no longer viable, as there is no way to force the world's continuing reliance on pipe lines and sole sources of technology. The last gasps of the colonial gentocratic cleptocracy are going to be uggly. The adsurdity of trying to hide the enslavement of the entire worlds population behind exactly ONE case of technology bieng used to prosecute (not catch) ONE murderer is only going to highlight the thousands and thousands of cases that are, and never will be investigated at all.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#68

Post by zoobab »

Aerroon wrote: 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…

In 2006, when it was discussed, FFII made the analysis that it was violating fundamental rights. It took 10 years to reach the CJEU.

And cherry on the cake, countries like France decided to ignore the CJEU ruling using the joker card of 'national security'.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#69

Post by zoobab »

zoobab wrote: post #68
Aerroon wrote: 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…

In 2006, when it was discussed, FFII made the analysis that it was violating fundamental rights. It took 10 years to reach the CJEU. And cherry on the cake, countries like France decided to ignore the CJEU ruling using the joker card of 'national security'.

Found some press releases from 2005/6:

https://ffii.org/ffii-asks-meps-to-reject-big-brother-direct... https://ffii.org/eu-law-making-process-cracking-under-pressu... https://ffii.org/eu-adopts-big-brother-directive-ignores-ind...

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#70

Post by TeMPOraL »

stavros wrote: post #65
TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Complete population surveillance" is an ill-defined category; depending on how you slice it, it's something very undesirable, or a status quo we've been living in for the past couple decades.

I can't see anything in the intersection of "desirable", "status quo" and "complete surveillance", can you think of some examples?

Cellular telephony. Electronic banking.

Both have been "status quo" for decades, and subject pretty much everyone in the western world to significant, continuous surveillance. We can discuss whether it's desirable, but it's been like this for a while and people very much like benefits both provide.

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