Live data from Hacker News

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

patrick-breyer.de

291–300 of 324 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Because if we don't have the keys to the machine, then we don't actually own our computers. It is not self-evident to me that people under 18 should "own [their] computers" or have unrestricted "freedom".

In the modern world, this is like saying people under 18 shouldn't have the freedom to be able to read and write. We would be decades back into digital stone age if we had held onto such a preposterous idea in the 80's and 90's. Virtually everything we have now is basically built by people who were hacking on their computers in elementary school and exercising their freedom of speech in terms of writing code freely at the discretion of their own imagination.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those guys only ever have a "maybe later" button.

That's pretty much how it works; there's generally no way, in a modern parliamentary democracy to say "no, and also you can never discuss it again". You could put it in the constitution, but honestly there's a decent argument that parts of chat control would violate the EU's can't-believe-it's-not-a-constitution (the Lisbon Treaty is essentially a constitution, but is not referred to as such because it annoys nationa…

I'd settle for a "no, and we won't discuss it until voters had at least one chance to get rid of you".

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

#293
post #144

Political engineering angle: "These people will not rest until they are able to read your child's messages."

Every time someone says this is to protect children, earnestly or with memes, just reinforces the lie and makes it more believable, because child protection is the distraction, the hook that works on people that are comfortable with the State reading your child's messages if it ends up protecting them.

Chat Control is, quite simply, mass surveillance of every citizen of any age. Let's call a spade a spade.

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Because if we don't have the keys to the machine, then we don't actually own our computers. It is not self-evident to me that people under 18 should "own [their] computers" or have unrestricted "freedom".

Then their parents should own it. Not the corporations, and certainly not the government.

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

#295
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite get what you mean? EPP is technically in power (whatever that means in the European Parliament). But also why would that matter? Or they wanted to force a vote just so they could vote against it (which is not necessarily a stupid strategy in cases like this)?

> in power (whatever that means in the European Parliament). It means the people who get to vote on if you have a right to privacy or not.

No, that's not what it means. Actually, it doesn't _really_ mean anything, here, as it's not correct. The EPP has 188 seats out of 720. It is the largest single party, but, ah, to some extent, so what.

(Also it is a European Parliament party, not a _real_ political party. It's not a cohesive unit and has no leadership; it's pretty much just a grab-bag of member state parties.)

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones should have no locks unless the user installs them and holds the keys.

Parents can hold the keys for underaged?

That arrangement is OK. It exactly mirrors things like car keys. The problem is giving the keys to the corporations or the government.

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

#297

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.

It was big news in Germany in middle of October leading to fact that the conservative party opposed chat control!

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

#298
post #257

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.

Ironically, just like many software users, the EU Parliament is not given the option to say "no", only "ask me later".

Anyone who’s ever been unable to dismiss a nag and forced to defer via "Ask me later" knows the feeling of powerlessness and disenfranchisement deliberately planted by those making UX decisions. .. or the EU constitutional framework.

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"> Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification. This would require users to provide ID documents or submit to facial scans, effectively making anonymous communication impossible and severely endangering…

So you are against paid services? Who manages the servers, updates apps, and distributes them?

I'm not sure about op, but as someone who agrees with their comment, yes, I absolutely am. I despise 99% of all digital """services""" that exist. Whether it's cloud, music/movies/series/whatever streaming, subscriptions of almost any kind... They're all extremely dystopian and anti-human. I sail the high seas for almost everything I consume digitally. When I want to support a creator I enjoy, I pay them directly (buy their merch, buy a physical copy of their album, purchase their game and dlcs, or simply directly donate).

In my opinion, corporations being allowed free reign and control over the internet and digital world in general without guardrails was *THE* biggest legislative mistake (although I believe it was done on purpose )in the past century, considering how the internet will most definitely be the defining factor of the era we're currently living in in future textbooks; if we make it that far at least.

I don't think most people understand the sheer magnitude of the damage that corporate slop, control, anti-competitiveness and pursuit of infinite growth at all costs has done to our technological capabilities and advancement.

Hardware is the only area of tech that continually gets better, whilst software continually regresses and gets worse. 90% of "new" code is web-based slop (and now AI generated web slop) that hogs memory and cpu usage, completely undermining all advances in hardware just because companies weren't willing to pay the extra buck to program a native solution that wouldn't force its users to purchase new machines.

If it wasn't for corporate (and many programmers') lazyness, computers from over a decade ago would still be fully functional, fully usable machines that could do the most bleeding-edge of tasks, safe for maybe the most graphically-demanding games and rendering.

And then maybe programmers could focus on actually advancing the science that is writing code, instead of building yet another fucking REST API and React UI. And don't forget to package it all in electron to fuck your users as much as possible, and dodge any need for real engineering.

Companies can just keep offloading costs unto the user, making users buy machines 10x as powerful as the ones they had 5 years ago, just to do the exact same tasks, but 20x slower. But at least they have a nice looking UI right?

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

#300
post #208
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that population immediately equates the two for good reason. Bills that are presented as "for the children" usually are a power grab. Even more unfortunately, the issue is so emotional that we can't have a reasonable discussion on it. This limits the discussion to proposals that sound good to angry people. And the opposition to those who can get angry about something else. Which limits how much reason…

> The age at which people are most likely to land on the list is 14. But a man who liked 13 year olds when he was 14, is unlikely to reoffend at 30. What is the purpose of ruining the rest of his life for a juvenile mistake? am I like misunderstanding or what does this mean exactly? I'm so confused. "reoffend" what kind of offense are we talking about here?

Sex crimes. Particularly ones involving children. Such as having sexual pictures of children.
Post reply on HN