131–140 of 578 posts
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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?
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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...
1. Censorship in German constitutional law is only defined as the state pre-screening before publication. That's a very narrow area and rarely applies. Most people from an US legal tradition will consider censorship to include other things such as mandating removal of certain content after the fact, but that's different legal branches with different mechanisms (i.e. libel).
2. What Schulz is talking about in the second link definitely is state censorship (blocking a TV station), but it's not implemented by Germany but on the EU level. (Germany is still involved - complicated matter).
Finally we should appreciate that the US government's opinion on censorship seems to have pivoted quite a lot, so I would expect free speech maximalism to not remain a very popular position on the government level (even though many people may still support it, either naïvely or with robust arguments).
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> A hot take: removing protections guaranteed by constitution Lawful intercept laws exist in most, if not all, EU countries. It's just that super-national overlay services like Signal don't entirely fall within the framework of those. So, there is now a choice: expand interception powers indefinitely (a.k.a. ChatControl, which, to make things crystal-clear, I'm 100% against), or bring new services into the fold of ex…
No existing legislation requires proactive interception of mail, physical or electronic. Bringing new services into the fold of existing legislation would mean forbidding any proactive scanning by civilians and forbidding such scanning by authorities without a warrant or court order.
Lawful interception is not proactive: it requires a judicial order to collect plaintext communications from/to specifically identified individuals (resident in the country demanding the interception), for a limited time and for a specific purpose.
ChatControl, which I strongly argue AGAINST would sort-of be what you describe. But: I. Am. Arguing. AGAINST. That.
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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?
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"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 unencry…
Or would you go extreme and outlaw decentraliced encrypted communication alltogether?
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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?
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Yep, good thing nobody has ever been jailed for wearing a t-shirt with the wrong slogan.
Even a blank sheet of paper I think was enough to get someone in jail.
More than anything, this is a good lesson in information theory. A blank sheet of paper isn't devoid of information just because it doesn't contain ink - rather, it is the context of the current situation that defines the information being conveyed. This is true in all forms of communication.
This reminds me of a story I read once about when Victor Hugo had just published Les Miserables. Just after publication, he went to his vacation home due to the controversy he was sure was going to follow the publication of the book. Wanting to know how the reception was going, he mailed his publisher a letter simply containing a question mark. The publisher responded with only an exclamation mark, and Hugo immediately understood - he had written an eternal classic.
(BTW, I read this in the book The User Illusion - a fantastic read)
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> -Yet, there is a growing and legitimate demand for lawful interception of 'chat' services. I mean, "sure, your bank account got emptied, but we can't look into that because it happened via Signal" just isn't a good look Why on earth would mass intercept be necessary or even help in that? If you got scammed by someone, then you can contact the police and hand over your message history. Why would the cops be interest…
> Why on earth would mass intercept be necessary Lawful interception is not "mass intercept." It's the ability to surveil traffic from/to a clearly identified party, upon a judicial order for specific reason, for a limited time. ChatControl, on the other hand, is mass interception. I'm against it. Most people in the EU are against it. But to prevent things like ChatControl coming up over and over again, a basic tool…
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OK, you be you, But please note that I did not list "online banking becoming impossible" as a likely outcome. Merely malware continuing to be state-sponsored, or certain communications to be surveilled. Not all of yours, unless you draw an especially vinidicative judge (and yes, I'm assuming a functioning rule of law here -- if that's gone, what's left?)
> OK, you be you I don't know what you mean by this. > But please note that I did not list "online banking becoming impossible" as a likely outcome. No, but it should be a likely and maybe even desired outcome, especially if a justification for surveillance is the prevention of online banking fraud among other crimes. > Merely malware continuing to be state-sponsored, or certain communications to be surveilled. Norms…
Yeah, but laws tend to be more constant, and lawful interception laws are, 100% guaranteed, a thing, right now, in the country where you live.
They apply to telegrams, postal mail, telephone conversations, and a whole bunch of other things nobody really does anymore. They don't really apply to the things people do tend to do these days.
ChatControl is an incompetent attempt to remediate the lapses in law enforcement that this has caused. I strongly oppose it. But I also strongly oppose the idea that the Internet should be off limits for any kind of law enforcement, unless it is through dubious mechanisms like state-sponsored malware.
Your "slippery slope" argument is much more compelling in the absense of extended lawful interception than in the situation where Signal messages would somehow be equated to postcards or SMS messages...
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At issue here is... what exactly "freedom" is Speech is restricted the world over for things (fraud, threats, libel/slander, secrets, and more), and we're almost universally in favour of that. It's a balancing act, and the point where we set the balance is difficult, and constantly changing (should we allow speech that encourages the persecution of other people, sometimes called "hate speech" or should people be allo…
I'm not sure that's relevant to Chat Control. What's at stake here is not a definition of 'acceptable communication' in public, but the possibility of all private communication being scanned. That's not to say that private communication can't already be illegal; mere 'conspiracy' is a crime in many places. Yet the level of surveillance that would be enabled by legislation like Chat Control is greater than any other i…