Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

techradar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 259 posts

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#131

Post by arghwhat »

Orange1688 wrote: post #20
mvdwoord wrote: post #3

Maybe they can lead by example and show us the chats from Ursula first...

Better still, the chats between Danish PM Mette Frederiksen and other members of government concerning the (possibly illegal) culling of all mink in Denmark. The chats were coincidentally deleted for security reasons as the press were catching on - security reasons that apparently do not apply to regular people simply texting their dad, girlfriend or anyone

I mean, it's not like you, your dad, girlfriend or anyone would be planning to perform possibly illegal culling of some species, now would you...???

There's lots of little privileges like this that only seem to apply to politicians. Like, lifelong retirement after just one year of work in parliament and government provided tax-free apartments in central Copenhagen.

The argument for the latter is that it is needed for them to be near the work, but if a private company provides the same to their employees the employee will be taxed by its full value.

Granted, it's less corruption than other places, but definitely still corruption.

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#132

Post by akk0 »

isaacremuant wrote: post #89
inglor_cz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not one freak from Denmark putting this forward where it will die" Not true. The truth is that Chat Control has returned several times already and the majority of the EU states were actually always for, but a blocking minority has been reached each time - barely so. Worryingly, one of the blocking minority countries used to be Germany, where privacy-minded smaller parties (Greens, FDP) are no longer in government. T…

> Fuck, I don't want to live in a China with a blue flag instead of red. This is absolutely dystopian. I think it's too late. People already showed they'd loudly support this if propagandized enough like during COVID times where the most draconian and anti constitutional of policies were enacted, literally following and lobbied by China. Unless people recognize that they did a terrible thing in supporting covid polic…

I don't think this kind of discourse helps and I don't agree with the point. I am vehemently against chat control, but at least in my country (Netherlands) I saw nothing beyond the pale re: covid measures given the situation. I also don't see how those measures, regardless of whether you agree with them, reflect on chat control, as I'm not aware of any covid measures targeting encryption, nor of any EU-level measures you might be referring to here. Maybe you care to elucidate? Regardless by equating the two I think you alienate people, because as far as I can tell most people are still broadly understanding of COVID measures taken and the core demographic that's not is also generally in favor of Chat Control.

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#133

Post by throw_a_grenade »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #127
HPsquared wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a stochastic process with a ratchet. Eventually it'll pass in a moment of temporary fervour.

Curious if there is any push on the other direction

European courts, of course: ECJ (so hated by UK), ECHR, and a handful of others judiciary and non-judiciary bodies.

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#134

Post by wobfan »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #94
wobfan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Realistically if countries want to read encrypted messages, they can already do so. How? Are you implying adynchronous and synchronous encryption is broken? Because last time I checked since Snowden our encryption is basically the one single thing in the whole concept of the internet that has been done very right, with forward secrecy and long term security in mind. AFAIK there are no signs that someone or somethin…

>How? A couple of guys with 5$ wrenches can be pretty effective at extracting cryptographic secrets.

I mean yeah, why break crypto when you can break kneecaps?

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#135

Post by sunshine-o »

HPsquared wrote: post #71
westpfelia wrote: post #14

"the EU wants to scan your messages" implies its every member state and not one freak from Denmark putting this forward where it will die. The EU has always been 90 days from passing mass surveliance for the last decade. Until member states start actually backing this these articles are nothing but click bait.

It's a stochastic process with a ratchet. Eventually it'll pass in a moment of temporary fervour.

It is a bit like asking a girl to show you her private parts for years until she has a moment of weakness. That would make you a real creep.

The EU parliament is fake, and the unelected commission has become a pathetic clown show. Their latest VP addition, Antonio Costa, had to be removed from office in Portugal because he was too corrupt. But good enough for leadership of the EU commission.

They had a violent rhetoric, prolonged artificially to this day the Ukraine war and watched the population being slaughtered without sending any troops. So instead of loosing a few territory, the Ukrainian population is now dead demographically. If you prolong enough a war and the population is wreaked, the war is lost. This is what happened in WWI.

Just in the last few days they managed to be humiliated by both the US and China. China went so far to park them in a bus, arrive with no welcoming and have a walk of shame with in silence on a faded carpet.

The EU was about democracy, peace and prosperity. Today it is is pursuing the opposite objectives.

Downvote me if you want, I care more about staying alive than any internet karma points.

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#136

Post by roenxi »

emptysongglass wrote: post #104
pakitan wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You picked a really bad time to defend a "politicians will eventually do what is best for us" position, given that such a law just came into effect in UK. And I think it's you who don't understand how the EU works. It's the biggest countries that must agree to something. Then they coerce/convince the rest. At best, the smaller countries can put on some kind of resistance until they extract some minor exception. This…

Sometimes I think the HN contingent just willfully buries its head in the sand on issues of the EU, because they prefer to think of the EU as some idealist version of whatever they've lost as leftists in the US. What this person is writing is correct. The reality of EU politics is anything but democratic. The EU is crowned by an unelected commission that does not serve the interests of the governed.

It seems reasonable to theorise it is actually a timezone-dependent effect and there is probably a slightly weird sample of English-speaking tech-focused Europeans who spend a lot of their day checking social media. When the US is up and about the tone shifts.

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#137

Post by Ekaros »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #111
44za12 wrote: post #5

Honestly, the fact that “scan everyone’s encrypted messages” keeps coming back like a bad sequel says a lot about how governments see privacy, as a speed bump, not a right. Every time this proposal pops up, it’s wrapped in “think of the children” language, but the end result is always the same: less security for everyone, more power for people who already have too much. At some point, you have to wonder if the real g…

Maybe constitutional amendments in the member states/ ECHR amendment might help? Article 8 [1] goes some of the way , but has some clear weaknesses. We do have a right to secrecy of correspondence in most member nations, it's kind of silly that we don't have a strict equivalent for phones or computers yet, despite the fact that most people hardly send letters anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_th…

In some member state secrecy of correspondence also covers phone calls and any other communication. So the rules are already there. It is just that totalitarians do not want to respect them.

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#138

Post by pluto_modadic »

westpfelia wrote: post #14

"the EU wants to scan your messages" implies its every member state and not one freak from Denmark putting this forward where it will die. The EU has always been 90 days from passing mass surveliance for the last decade. Until member states start actually backing this these articles are nothing but click bait.

same logic as "fixing the clocks wasn't that big of a problem, the world didn't set on fire", well yeah because we warned you and fixed it. This is also the logic behind the no-win scenario of IT/security budgets:

things are working: why do we pay so much for IT/security or XYZ tool, we don't need it.

things are on fire: we pay so much money for IT/security or XYZ tool and it didn't help us

Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

#139

Post by vladvasiliu »

saubeidl wrote: post #118
emptysongglass wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not disinformation. The Commission is unelected by the people. I specifically called out that the Commission does not serve the interests of the governed. That is a correct statement. What's more the Commission is more than one person, unlike the US presidency.

Again, the commission is appointed by elected officials. Do you call ministers in your country unelected? Would you call the US president unelected? I agree the Comission doesn't serve the interests of the governed, but that's because the people keep voting against their own interests and vote in right-wing governments, which in turn appoints a right-wing commission, which then does the right-wing thing of selling ou…

> Do you call ministers in your country unelected?

Don't know about emptysongglass's country, but in France, ministers are absolutely unelected. The president is directly elected, who then appoints the prime minister, who then "proposes" the other ministers of his government. There is no strict rule by which the prime minister is chosen, only a "habit" to choose from the "winning camp", which was not respected by Macron these last two times. There's also no rule for how the ministers are picked. As you can imagine, this is largely backroom deals.

The last two prime ministers have all been deemed unsatisfactory by the parties with the most votes in the last legislative elections and by those who voted for them (people voted directly for their representatives in the lower chamber of parliament). These prime ministers were from parties that scored lower in the elections.

Post reply on HN