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End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

patrick-breyer.de

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Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#281

Post by fc417fc802 »

dgellow wrote: post #216
benced wrote: post #207

> Recently, only 36% of suspicious activity reports from US companies originated from the surveillance of private messages anyway. I don't have many opinions on this but this sort of lazy logic would make me nervous. 36% is not a small number and that's before the folks doing this activity find out that private message is less patrolled.

Yeah, that number is actually really high. I’m wondering how noisy those reports are

"Recently, only 36% of violent crime happened in broad daylight in front of a police station" would be a pretty wild statistic. Even a fraction of the reports being positives would be surprising.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#282

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Zak wrote: post #257
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> further procedural steps by EU governments cannot be completely ruled out In a democracy, we don't kill our opposition. If they hold views we don't like, e.g. that security trumps privacy, they're going to litigate them. Probably their whole lives. That means they'll keep bringing up the same ideas. And you'll have to keep defeating them. But there are two corollaries. One: Passing legislation takes as much work as…

It seems to me that "no and don't ask again" should be a possible outcome of a vote on proposed legislation. Without going into full detail on the procedure I'm imagining, such an outcome would bar consideration of equivalent legislation for several years and require a supermajority at several stages of the legislative process to override.

> seems to me that "no and don't ask again" should be a possible outcome of a vote on proposed legislation

It can't be. At least not in a legislature. Defining what is the same question is itself a political question. And past legislatures being able to bind future ones is just a futurecasting veto. A single crap election could poison the pool on a raft of issues for generations.

The proper way to do this is through constitutional amendments. The fact that these are too difficult to do, currently, seems to be the bug.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#283

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mmooss wrote: post #277
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> further procedural steps by EU governments cannot be completely ruled out In a democracy, we don't kill our opposition. If they hold views we don't like, e.g. that security trumps privacy, they're going to litigate them. Probably their whole lives. That means they'll keep bringing up the same ideas. And you'll have to keep defeating them. But there are two corollaries. One: Passing legislation takes as much work as…

This perspective, not unique to the parent, assumes you have to play defense indefinitely, but (as with many beliefs) the assumption is the problem: Stop playing defense and go on offense. Pass laws that actively enhance privacy, that make it technically (e.g., require E2EE) and legally harder to surveil citizens, that require data minimization, that impose retention limits, that require higher standards for accessin…

> Going on offense not only improves privacy, it forces the other side to use their resources play defense and trying to keep up

One thousand percent.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#284

Post by raron »

Saline9515 wrote: post #266
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really think Chat Control has high public support? Yes, I can absolutely see a majority in certain countries ( e.g. Hungary) believing this is a fair compromise between security and privacy.

Hungary is small and an outlier in the EU.

Based on EU's public consultation it is not even true (but the number of responses is very small)

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#285

Post by gzread »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #272
School-Cotton wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because if we don't have the keys to the machine, then we don't actually own our computers. If we don't own our computers, then we have no freedom. Because everything the word "hacker" ever stood for will be destroyed if this nonsense gets normalized. The day governments get to decide what software "your" computer can run is the day it's all over.

The salesman would give you the key if you're over 18

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#286

Post by throwaway290 »

fh973 wrote: post #174
elephanlemon wrote: post #33

I’m confused by > This means on April 6, 2026, Gmail, LinkedIn, Microsoft and other Big Techs must stop scanning your private messages in the EU It had already passed and started?

Gmail and likely others have been scanning at least emails for child pornography since the 2010s.

as far as I know, required by US law

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#287

Post by bitwize »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #282
Zak wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that "no and don't ask again" should be a possible outcome of a vote on proposed legislation. Without going into full detail on the procedure I'm imagining, such an outcome would bar consideration of equivalent legislation for several years and require a supermajority at several stages of the legislative process to override.

> seems to me that "no and don't ask again" should be a possible outcome of a vote on proposed legislation It can't be. At least not in a legislature. Defining what is the same question is itself a political question. And past legislatures being able to bind future ones is just a futurecasting veto. A single crap election could poison the pool on a raft of issues for generations. The proper way to do this is through…

Ah, but if they were easier to do, would they be as effectice at stopping "bad" legislation?

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#288

Post by strogonoff »

E2EE works in favour of politicians, so I would be surprised if they went against it. Prior to this, if they wanted to discuss something shady, they would have to choose between a clandestine in-person meeting (sort of hard do conduct when you have many eyes on you) vs. a paper trail.

Cf. the recent Mandelson-McSweeney messages inquiry, where it was dropped at some point that messages might not be available for retrieval because he happened to have message expiration on. People are justifiey concerned how come there are completely off the record electronic communications within government offices.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#289

Post by rcbdev »

Sharlin wrote: post #25
nickslaughter02 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nice to see that democracy can work Did it work? One political party (EPP) didn't like the result of the previous vote and so they forced a re-vote. > After the European Parliament had already rejected the indiscriminate and blanket Chat Control by US tech companies on 13 March, conservative forces attempted a democratically highly questionable maneuver yesterday to force a repeat vote to extend the law anyway. htt…

EPP is appalling and I'm revolted that many large so-called "moderate, centre-right, liberal-conservative" parties are happily part of it and indeed actively pushing extremely anti-citizen, anti-human agendas with the help of the far right. (Edit: word choice)

Did you even look at the voting pattern? The far right was completely against it or extremely split on the issue.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#290

Post by rippeltippel »

What I find very alarming is that very few citizens in the EU knew about that. Mainstream media almost never reported this and other similar news, so I had to actively look for them. In this last case, I learned about it here on HN. Votes like that, with so much impact on citizens' digital lives, should be discussed in mainstream news channel.
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