Germany must stand firmly against client-side scanning in Chat Control [pdf]

“Apple cannot access your data.”

The quiet part:

“But selected agencies and partners in certain unspecified countries can.”

"For Signal, Chat Control is also an existential threat."

Perhaps it would not be if users could write their own clients and run their oown servers

Perhaps the commercial third party intermediary model of "private" and "secure" communication over the internet (cf. the free, open source, peer-to-peer model) is fundamentally-flawed. This is the model where a third party like Meta or Signal controls the software and requires connections be made to its servers in order to communicate over the internet. It is not an internet service provider, it's just a middleman trying to attract internet subscribers to use its software and connect to its remote servers

Perhaps this proposed legislation is simply leveraging that fundamental flaw

Acording to the latest draft I have seen, "Chat Control" does not attempt to regulate peer-to-peer communication, it does aim to stop internet subscribers from encrypting messages and sending them across the internet. It aims to regulate third party intermediaries providing "messaging services" to the public

The proposed legislation leverages the "centralisation" or "intermediation" of "private" messaging (the opposite of peer-to-peer) in Silicon Valley companies

> ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ misses the point

It's meant to express that our "democratic" governments use the same tools as dictatorships. For example, every time somebody in a position of power (not even just politicians) gets shot, other people in power say "ViOlEnCe DoEsN't BeLoNg In PoLiTiCs". Completely forgetting how many of today's democracies were created by widespread acts of violence against previous oppressive governments.

In fact, many countries celebrate their revolutions and their assassinations of dictators. So violence clearly does belong in politics, under some conditions. But instead of openly talking about those conditions, they are trying to brainwash the populace into docility.

---

(Tangent:

For example, reasonable people today agree today that by the end of the war, Hitler deserved to die, whether by assassination, execution, or suicide. But he was just a politician. In 1933, his party got 40%, he was a popular politician. So when was the line crossed from "violence does not belong in politics" to "Hitler is a dictator and mass murderer and must be shot"?

The reality is that once a person becomes dictator he immediately increases his own protection and surrounds himself with people just as bad or worse than him. So it's not just more difficult to kill him, it's also less practical. Reasonably people today say that Putin deserves to die but should not be killed because he purposefully made sure anybody in the line of succession would be even worse than him.)

---

Back on track, it's my belief that a government which is truly dedicated to remaining democratic and making sure the power comes from the people would make sure that the population is armed to a sufficient level that if a hostile takeover from within happened, the population would be able to successfully revolt and restore democracy.

And this is more true today than ever. Abusive governments used to have to employ people to spy on other people. They needed a certain ratio of sympathizers or the system would fall apart. Now much of it can be automated. The ratio of sympathizers a dictator needs is much lower than it used to be and potentially violent revolt can be detected much earlier and each invasion of privacy like Chat Control moves the needle towards resistance being harder and harder.

So those who believe violence does not belong in politics today should be very well aware than it might be necessary against the government tomorrow but it'll be impossible if nobody has guns and privacy to organize with other people who to use those guns. And yes, the price is some terrorist attacks. I am OK with that.

The level of surveillance which would stop a pressure cooker bomb at a public event or a lone gunman or a car ramming attack is completely unacceptable to me.

In fact, you will notice that most recent terrorist attacks would not be stopped by Chat Control. What would be stopped is organized resistance. That's a feature, not a bug.

I can't believe how infrequently this point comes up, given how fundamental a flaw to the whole scheme this point out. So long as you're allowed to have a computer and run code on it, you can run programs that do your bidding. ChatControl cannot be effective, at least I can't imagine for longer than a few months until the first 2% of CSAM handlers are caught who didn't get the memo and spread the word to the remaining 8% who didn't get the memo, until we outlaw computers

It's mind-bending levels of absurdity. Surely nobody intends to (be able to) truly outlaw computers? That cat is out of the bag and people will build them or get their hands on them if they wish

The only possible outcome is that only honest citizens have their chats scanned and devices locked down. The latter has as side effect that Google, Apple, and Microsoft can do whatever the heck they want because open OSes are illegal now