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European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

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Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#131

Post by cooggog »

whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #130
dingdingdang wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the almost religious attention the term limit of sitting presidents of the US has it is interesting that so very little attention is given to the fact that the EU structure has no effectual limit at all; if the current EU President were to be nominated by the European Council in a circular manner she will effectually serve for perpetuity (while the Parliament can in principle say no they are only ever given one…

The United States is religious against kings and genuinely thinks they have a holy mission of humans right, freedom, democracy, and liberalism. Obviously this doesn't always happen, but there's only an extremely small minority that think otherwise. Maybe put me in the otherwise camp. Disappointed democracy produced Trump. Maybe we need a technocracy to defend the world from China.

[dead]

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#132

Post by dmix »

trinsic2 wrote: post #102
betteryet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dictators part is false, the EU is not a structure you can easily dictate. But this encryption backdoor thing is somebody's pet project and extremely alarming. The UK has a similar bend they've already put in place with IPA and TCNs. The US is way gone on decrypted stored data and metadata, but not on encryption backdoors yet, though legislators have tried.

Can you please explain to me why you think this is the case? Can parliament make law or not? Why is the commission the only body that can make law? Its staffed with people that appear to serve special interests. I saw this during the Stop Killing Games Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games Initiative. If there is no way to challenge…

EU is less of a dictatorship and more of a technocracy. Where they rely heavily on experts to define policy rather than a democratic system. As you said:

> Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games Initiative

The experts they choose can just be anyone with a bit of authority whom the bureaucrats can find to support what they already want to do. Plus lots of paid expert consultants to make plans after the policy is enacted who know to tell them what they want to hear.

It's similar to the US media when they bring expert talking heads on their shows (academics, ex-military, etc). They come prepackaged with views the network's want.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#133

Post by woodruffw »

whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #130
dingdingdang wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the almost religious attention the term limit of sitting presidents of the US has it is interesting that so very little attention is given to the fact that the EU structure has no effectual limit at all; if the current EU President were to be nominated by the European Council in a circular manner she will effectually serve for perpetuity (while the Parliament can in principle say no they are only ever given one…

The United States is religious against kings and genuinely thinks they have a holy mission of humans right, freedom, democracy, and liberalism. Obviously this doesn't always happen, but there's only an extremely small minority that think otherwise. Maybe put me in the otherwise camp. Disappointed democracy produced Trump. Maybe we need a technocracy to defend the world from China.

I don’t think the average American voter “genuinely” thinks that they’re on a Blues Brothers-style mission from god to deliver liberalism and freedom to the world. I would be surprised if that’s even a minority view among voters.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#134

Post by bethekidyouwant »

dmix wrote: post #132
trinsic2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please explain to me why you think this is the case? Can parliament make law or not? Why is the commission the only body that can make law? Its staffed with people that appear to serve special interests. I saw this during the Stop Killing Games Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games Initiative. If there is no way to challenge…

EU is less of a dictatorship and more of a technocracy. Where they rely heavily on experts to define policy rather than a democratic system. As you said: > Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games Initiative The experts they choose can just be anyone with a bit of authority whom the bureaucrats can find to support what they already want…

The word for what you just described is not technocracy…

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#136

Post by throw-qqqqq »

TheChaplain wrote: post #92

These threads are amusing. In an earlier one about Iceland and EU, people criticizing EU were downvoted, called russian bots or far-right. I don't expect much difference here. Chat control and ProtectEU are certainly not the last totalitarian measures EU will invent, there will be more. And I find it interesting that people still defend EU without any hesitation. Now I think the initial trade union was great and a ne…

I live in Scandinavia, and I’m sad to say, but most progressive legislation comes from the EU.

Our national government only legislates on populist issues. Racist laws, more surveillance, less oversight of cops and authorities, bans on big dogs and burkahs etc. - either symbolic issues that affect very few people in reality or mostly just limiting freedom and civil rights, never expanding on it.

I don’t like that we have many unelected technocrats and the corruption sucks, but the EU changes my life for the better. I honestly can’t say that about our national governments over the past two decades.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#137

Post by birdsongs »

Neikius wrote: post #98
VorpalWay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are peer to peer (or otherwise decentralised, e.g. multiple servers operated by many different people) alternatives to Signal. I haven't tried any of them, nor do I know which ones have been audited. But if the worst comes to the worst, there are alternatives that are hard to block. In particular I remember reading about DeltaChat which piggiebacks on normal email infrastructure, making it really hard to block…

Been using matrix for years now. Even operating a server for a small community. It is slightly more involved for regular users though so that is not the best but otherwise works. Setting up your own federated instance is quite simple, there is an Ansible playbook around to make it even easier. You could even isolate it and have it only for your org. From what I know there is some traction to get it adopted in a bunch…

I loathe how difficult Matrix is for normal people though. It's a nightmare to find a client, get an account, connect to your server, set up push notifications, and then navigate to a chat, much less set up encryption.

Fine for us, my mom is never managing.

Hopefully if it gets more mainstream some of these things get smoothed out, because it's nice once it's working.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#138

Post by birdsongs »

traceroute66 wrote: post #95

This is from 2025. I don't know why someone has seen fit to repost it again in 2026.... I'm guessing they didn't look at the date. And lots of people here are spouting FUD. In the ensuing period, the EU took expert advice later in 2025, and as they say in an update a few months later in June 2025[1]: The High-Level Group recommended taking a cautious approach to designing solutions for lawful access to systems, where…

Thank you, should be top comment.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#139

Post by dmix »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #134
dmix wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is less of a dictatorship and more of a technocracy. Where they rely heavily on experts to define policy rather than a democratic system. As you said: > Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games Initiative The experts they choose can just be anyone with a bit of authority whom the bureaucrats can find to support what they already want…

The word for what you just described is not technocracy…

In practice it is. The whole idea of technocracy comes with a bunch of levers you can easily exploit with a bit of power and money (not just external corporations or donors, but internal like intelligence agencies). As long as you make an appearance of following the process of evidence being collected and experts being involved. And there is never a careful process to check if it was actually done right after the fact. Just the usual political election risk which is even more obscured by the extra layers of descion making and consultancies. It's just democracy with less public accountability. Particularly, with as I said, how it's implemented in practice (rather than technocracy on paper).

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#140

Post by philistine »

ajb wrote: post #90
p_l wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately every attempt at reforming it is blocked with "but my sovereignty!" - as EC and Council of Ministers are very much controlled and steered by member nations' governments . Not to mention it makes for perfect scapegoat

This is true. However there's a potential way to fix it, and it would only take one member state, no matter how small to start the landslide. And it's basically the same thing that happened to the US Senate. The Senate, like the Council of Ministers, was intended to represent the member states. Originally, Senators were appointed by state legislatures. A few states started to have direct primaries, with the legislati…

Look to the Westminster system for the true solution to the Commission’s lack of accountability.

Let the MEPs of each country vote on who amongst them will sit on the Commission.

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