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German government comes out against Chat Control

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#101
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they pushing for it?

No, they position themselves against it, because they have a narrative similar to the (former) “deep state” narrative in the US, but you can be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it.

I'm not familiar with the far right in Germany. Why should we be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#102
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they pushing for it?

No, they position themselves against it, because they have a narrative similar to the (former) “deep state” narrative in the US, but you can be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it.

[flagged]

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#103

This is strange, because not long ago it was Germany (!!) that pushed heavily for mass-sniffing of people. I don't trust this. People should watch very, very carefully what Germany is actually doing next. I would not be surprised if the mass-sniffing comes in a few months when nobody is looking.

I can't remember where I read it, but I read that Signal's popularity was high (highest?) in Germany. Assuming I'm not misremembering or that the situation hasn't changed, it seems that Germans care enough about the issue to stake out a position.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#104
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws can be changed, can be reinterpreted, there are no absolutes. What matters is who is in power, and how powers are kept in check. There is no finality to any of that. It’s a constant process of keeping things up, or failing to keep things up.

This is actually one of my own fears for efficient organization at state level and above: - any new technology, any new opportunity either has checks and balances or gets exploited by smart optimizers with no regards for the commons or human flourishing - checks and balances are as you say a constant drain on public attention and resources: you need smart people doing the checking (finite resource), and receptive eye…

I agree. There's an old saying: those who want to become president (leader of a country) should in no way be allowed to do so.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#105
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you missed the reference. as a history lesson, the deCSS code was written on a t-shirt and was deemed acceptable. having the deCSS compiled as an executable was deemed not acceptable.

I got the reference. Seems like it worked out quite nicely for the government/court though, given that deCSS isn't much use printed on a t-shirt, compared to in a binary on a computer?

you can't share the compiled binary, but you can share a shirt. if you have the shirt, you can compile on your own. the t-shirt became the sharing network

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#106

This is strange, because not long ago it was Germany (!!) that pushed heavily for mass-sniffing of people. I don't trust this. People should watch very, very carefully what Germany is actually doing next. I would not be surprised if the mass-sniffing comes in a few months when nobody is looking.

Germany will not abandon chat control just like the data perseveration they're so keen on. Europe is preparing for war so they need ways to make opposition more difficult. They're just waiting for the opportune moment where the opposition to these acts won't be as organized or is distracted with something else.

What war, against who? I don't know what kind of narrative you are tying to push here but know that any attempt would immediately meet strong opposition (I've seen the graves of Verdun and I for one would do anything to actively undermine and sabotage any kind of active war effort)

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If running a mesh network is illegal, does it matter that the traffic is just math? Without a network, there's no data transmission of that math. The government controls the airwaves. It doesn't matter if you're broadcasting Top40 or encrypted messages, if they say no to your transmitting, you're going nowhere.

> if they say no to your transmitting, you're going nowhere. > if they say no to your forgetting to scan the case of water on the bottom of your cart, you're going nowhere. > if they say no to your hacked cable box, you're going nowhere. > if they say no to your speeding, you're going nowhere. > if they say no to your weed, you're going nowhere. > if they say no to your growing a mushroom and mailing it to your frien…

In the hypothetical world that you've set out, where surveillance is so extreme and overreaching as to help finish off the entirety of the internet for good, there's no way it would stop at the internet. The goal isn't controlling this set of standards and protocols that defines just the internet, the goal is controlling communication and the internet is the #1 way of communicating between people at the moment.

If people all started talking through letter mail, you'd get Letter Control, they wouldn't just forget about it because it's not the internet. If the people somehow become smart and coordinated enough to move to some cryptographically-secure method of communication, your government will probably outlaw the equipment and actions associated with using it in the first place instead of trying to decrypt all communications.

The goal is control of information, and the way of doing that is to force everyone to use unsecured communication with no feasible alternatives. I wouldn't expect kid glove treatment with that, unlike speeding or minor shoplifting.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#108
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a warrant, they can install a virus on the device that will then do targeted surveillance Yeah, and that sponsors an entire malware industry! I don't really know how I can make my position any clearer, but... -Malware: bad! -ChatControl (encryption backdoors): bad! -Inability to do any kind of law enforcement involving "the Internet": double-plus bad! -Enforcement of existing lawful interception laws in the fa…

"I don't really know how I can make my position any clearer, but..." You could state in plain words what do you propose as an alternative. I read what you wrote, but have no idea what you propose.

> I [...] have no idea what you propose

It's literally the last item in my list?

But to further clarify: I would like existing lawful interception laws to be extended to services like Signal.

Not in the sense that any EU country should be able to break Signal crypto (as ChatControl proposes, and which I think is an utterly ill-advised idea), but that competent law enforcement agencies should be able to demand unencrypted Signal communications from/to an identified EU party, for a limited time and purpose, upon a (reviewable) judicial order.

Most, if not all, EU countries currently have similar laws applying to telegrams, snail mail, email, telephony and whatnot. If you don't like those either, that's fine, but that's the status quo, and I would like to see that extended to services like Signal, as opposed to incompetently dumb measures like ChatControl...

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#109
post #101
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they position themselves against it, because they have a narrative similar to the (former) “deep state” narrative in the US, but you can be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it.

I'm not familiar with the far right in Germany. Why should we be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it?

Because, similar to the US, they have authoritarian tendencies - strong nationalism and anti-immigration. How are you going to round up the bad people if you don't have surveillance everywhere?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#110
post #67

This is strange, because not long ago it was Germany (!!) that pushed heavily for mass-sniffing of people. I don't trust this. People should watch very, very carefully what Germany is actually doing next. I would not be surprised if the mass-sniffing comes in a few months when nobody is looking.

There is considerable opposition in Germany against these things. It’s true that some political circles keep pushing for it, but there is also a strong constitutional and civil basis against it. It’s exceedingly unlikely to happen that “nobody is looking”. The biggest risk is the far right coming into power.

There is a lot of censorship in Germany. People do not care.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany

https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/russia-today-verbot...

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