Where are all those "as an EU citizen" commenters? You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.
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The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
231–240 of 432 posts
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#232Let’s migrate our apps to the EU! Trump Derangement Syndrome is widespread in Europe. Quality of life has gotten so bad and continuous to decline except for mainly Poland and Hungary. And what do systems cling to especially in situations like these? Surveillance. Another massive not so funny joke once again hit Germany the week ago - a smear campaign and hit piece to justify even more censorship. Germany is going dow…
Yes, yes, let's all rally around the free speech haven that is Hungary, which only five short years ago banned "the discussion of gender and sexual diversity in schools, the media, advertising, and other public places."
Let's all take this person extremely seriously, as they are advocating for free speech.
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're doing God's work mate. It's really surprising to me that this issue keeps coming up time and time again, until I realised that it's non-voted in parties actually trying to pass this stuff! I didn't realise that the EU parliament simply says yes or no to bills and doesn't actually propose new laws, whilst the EU Commission are appointed and decide on what bills to push through.
The Commission consists of the Member States. So obviously they are also voted-in parties since the government of the Member States is democratically elected
True but it's a step removed. The MEPs are directly voted in whilst the EC are not, they're "voted in" on account of "voted in" people assigning them to the EC.
I mean nobody argues that the FED governor is voted in, right? In reality a lot of people argue that they're unelected and yet making decisions that affect everyone.
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is in fact the only way most laws work: freedom of movement, except if you’re arrested and detained in accordance with law. Freedom of speech except when you are falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater or slandering someone. In general all rights have exceptions carved out by law. And any way you carve that exception out (eg to cover those convicted of crimes) can be twisted by a legislature or judicial body t…
You're fuzzing the crucial distinction between well defined and narrowly tailored exemptions, which are of course normal, and these exemptions, which are complete blank cheques that effectively neuter the rule they attach to. No laws are absolute, some laws are more holes than cheese, but a law that says "A government must not punish you for doing X, except in accordance with duly passed criminal laws that make X ill…
And then they laugh at naïve engineers who express hopes that laws can be a proper formal system.
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is, in all of those member states, they all have carve outs for "national security." Germany, for exmaple, has secrecy of correspondence that extends to electronic communications, but allows for "restrictions to protect the free democratic basic order" and outlines when intelligence services can bypass the right to privacy. Italy, France, and Polan also have similar carve outs. Having it as a right isn't…
>National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy. This is overly absolutist, or maybe idealistic view. National security and public safety IS more important than individual right to privacy. As an extreme example, if your friend was dying, you had a password to my email, and you knew that you can use information in my inbox to save that perso…
> National security and public safety IS more important than individual right to privacy.
I disagree.
Because as soon as you open the door to governments reading your mail, they will read your mail. They can't help themselves. [0]
The only way of stopping them from doing this to excess is to stop them doing it at all.
The "National Security and Public Safety" thing is what they say to justify it, but that's not what the powers will actually be used for. They will actually be used for far less noble purposes, and possibly actually for evil.
We are actually much more secure if we don't let the government read our mail.
[0] In the UK, anti-terrorist laws passed in the post-9/11 haze of "national security and public safety" are routinely used for really, really, minor offences: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/anti-terror...
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am always curious when I see these kinds of movement. It seems abundantly clear that the options on any vote in any legislature for a proposed bill are always “yes” and “ask me later”. So when I see things like Fight Chat Control, it feels like the call is “we must tell our legislators to press the ask later button!” Why? Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights go…
Also curious, as much as the American amendments are problematic, they do at lease create a hard position on things. We are devolving into a space where I’m genuinely scared that the future will become entirely controlled by big money, and it will be too late to change it.
From my understanding Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is somewhat similar to US Constitution & amendments. Both do still allow government to restrict the freedoms granted by those in some situations though I do think the US Constitution does tend to set higher bar on the interference.
There have been EU laws which get struck down because they violated the Charter (e.g. Data Retention Directive).
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because we can barely stop new legislation we don't like, let alone pass new ones we do. You're out-monied by lobbyists at all levels. Maybe a movement could match a lobbyist in terms of money. I hope so.
> we can barely stop new legislation we don't like, let alone pass new ones we do These are literally the same process.
Is it? Stopping is a matter of ground swell support contacting representatives and saying "please don't". Enough people do it to enough receptive reps and they'll vote no.
Passing new ones that "you like" requires lawyers to write laws, get those laws in front of reps, get them to agree to try and pass it, stake some of their reputation on pushing it, get the ground swell to support it -- which might be difficult when the current law is "dont scan messages", you can easily say "hey dont scan anything! support that!" vs "hey scan somethings sometimes", cause many people will call that a slippery slope. I don't see how they are at all the same process.
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#238> The "Chat Control" proposal would legalise scanning of all private digital communications, including encrypted messages and photos. How would this be enforced in practice? In other words, what would prevent E.U. users from using encrypted services outside of the jurisdiction of the E.U., to "illegally" encrypt their hard drives or to run their own private encrypted comms servers?
The same way you can't send money to the best Korea and watch porn on youtube. There is a long chain of actions that ends with you having e2e on your phone (or what not). At the starts of it there is your physical body living in jurisdiction and transacting with (mostly) other people being somewhat present in the same jurisdiction using government-captured money. There are multiply choke points, controlling which wil…
I am not sure I follow. I can't watch porn on YT because YT decides not to host it. But I can absolutely use a VPN and access porn in a jurisdiction that does not block it. I can also, and in fact do, encrypt my hard drives. Even China can't reliably prevent communication over private encrypted networks or services hosted overseas.
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn’t remove the “right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.” The law cannot be random, it must ensure “fair processing” and be limited to “specific purposes”, and the European Court of Justice as well as the ECHR will decide what constitutes a “legitimate basis” in that context. Furthermore, “Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her”, which ens…
Secrecy of correspondence only applies to sealed physical letters, so it has zero applicability to this law and provides zero protection against scanning of private messages. Also it isn't respected in most types of criminal trials. If a sealed physical letter is opened and proves fraud, for example ...
Secrecy of correspondence doesn't necessarily only apply to physical letters as far as Constitutions go. In Finnish constitution it is defined as "The secrecy of correspondence, telephony and other confidential communications is inviolable" meaning it also applies to any internet message.
Unfortunately large majority of parties in Finnish Parliament do not really care about that provision and have passed multiple laws which create exceptions to it. They do it via the proper protocol (which is essentially the same as modifying the Constitution itself) so it's technically legal.
Re: The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
#240Where are all those "as an EU citizen" commenters? You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.
As an EU citizen I hate this but I know it‘s a „when?“ not an „if“ topic.
I realise the EU is our only hope to defend ourselves against big players like China and the US and smaller bullies like Russia.
But at the same time I realise the EU we have in this timeline is one of the worst possible: a criminal venture, a safe heaven for the corrupt elite + their lobbyists and an organisation that‘s hell bent on harming and controlling its citizens.
Majorities for sane parties are not possible. Democracy is too slow, too indirect. Hell, this is barely a democracy at all, just like on the national level. As EU citizens we as powerless as every other citizen in the world.