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German government comes out against Chat Control

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#111

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…

running an actively transmitting network is an easy thing for them to come and shut down. you doing any of the other things can easily be done without them knowing about it. you can be flippant about it all you want, but you don't look intelligent by doing so

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#112
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?

In simple terms, because the far right is about authoritarianism and control, not about civil liberties.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#113
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law enforcement of which countries, under which sets of laws? Should Thailand be granted access to enforce their lease majeste laws, for example? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Th... Who gets to decide what gets made available to who?

> law enforcement of which countries, under which sets of laws? We're taking about ChatControl here, so law enforcement of EU countries, under their respective laws, into which EU law should have been incorporated > Should Thailand be granted access to enforce their lease majeste laws Same answer as "should Thailand be granted arrest rights to enforce ": they submit a legal assistance request to the country where the…

And when some other countries pass laws demanding access to the same mechanism that the EU gets?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#115
post #112
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In simple terms, because the far right is about authoritarianism and control, not about civil liberties.

Interesting. So they have a history of attempting to legislate authoritarian rules that restrict civil liberties for citizens?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#116
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am unclear on how strong nationalism is an authoritarian signal. Can you go into more detail there?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the malware industry benefit from digital message privacy? If you're the victim, just hand over the relevant chats yourself. Otherwise, just follow the money. And if the attackers are sitting in a country whose banks you can't get to cooperate, intercepting chat messages from within that country won't do you any good either. Also, if someone has malicious intent and is part of a criminal network, the people…

> Why would the malware industry benefit from digital message privacy? Because if lawful interception of in-transit messages is not possible or permitted, hacking either the client or the server becomes the only option. You may enjoy reading https://therecord.media/encrochat-police-arrest-6500-suspect... . Or just downvoting me. Or both.

Sure, if you want to read the messages, but the whole point is that that's rarely necessary and the price isn't worth the minimal gain.

Of the serious criminals, the only ones you'll be catching are those with low technical knowledge (everyone else will just be using their own applications) and the Venn diagram of those with little tech knowledge and those whose digital privacy practices could deceive law enforcement resembles AA cups against a pane of glass.

Regarding Encrochat, it is no surprise that an (unintentional?) watering hole gathered up a bunch of tech-illiterate, the fallacy is that those people wouldn't have been caught if they weren't allowed to flock to a single platform for some time.

Would some people have not been caught until much later or even not at all? Sure, but if LE would do its job (and not ignoring, or even covering up, well known problem areas and organizations for years to decades), only those of low priority.

Is that little gain worth creating a tool to allow Iran or similar countries to check every families' messages if they suspect some family member might be gay?

Hard nope.

> Or just downvoting me.

Don't worry, I rarely do that and that's not just because I can't...

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not be surprised if the mass-sniffing comes in a few months when nobody is looking. That's the problem with these proposed laws. We (privacy advocates) have to constantly fight and win over and over again. The nations that want this mass spying only have to win once. We need a way to permanently stop these proposals once defeated the first time so that they cannot just continue to try over and over again un…

> We (privacy advocates) have to constantly fight and win over and over again. We do have a way to reinforce our position, though! We can design and consume technology that makes this hard. We can stop working for companies that build centralized platforms for messaging. We can teach our neighbors how important rights to privacy and speech are in language that they understand. There can be enough friction that this b…

Yes to all of the above! I just want to whine a bit that every time I try to educate anybody about this, I am promised a tin foil hat in return (even from Software Engineers!).

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#119
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…

Well, where's the megaproject to raise the public's IQ by 50 so that basic game-theoretic checkings become child's play?
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