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Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

threema.ch

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Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#151

Post by sprash »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #138
sprash wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was public evidence allowed to be released nobody would be using those algorithms obviously. The point of those algorithms is to make them hard to break for the public and easy to break for the agencies . E.g. None of your mentioned products use quantum hard encryption. It is not far fetched to assume that all the relevant agencies have access to a working quantum computer. But I doubt you need even sophisti…

I seriously doubt that agencies have more capabilities than the scientific community of mathematicians. Perhaps there are weak points in implementations, but I don't believe any agency has the capabilities to crack encryption, even some of the older algorithms. There is no evidence that a quantum computer can break classic encryption yet. Even if the agencies tried, they would not have the means to stop the spread of…

Almost 100% of the "scientific community of mathematicians" is funded by the government. They can't be trusted either. If they want to publish something that is considered to be a "threat to national security" the agencies have multiple avenues at their disposal to "convince" them to not publish.

> And finally, we wouldn't get laws like this.

Codifying covert practices into law has the big advantage to make the whole oppressive surveillance state much more efficient. Gone are the days of "parallel constructions". Also the chilling effects of total surveillance alone might be enough to prevent the opposition to be effective.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#152

Post by WhackyIdeas »

cherryteastain wrote: post #137
ironSkillet wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please give examples of how the authoritarian, repressive, conformity-demanding CCP is less awful and soul destroying than Western democracy, as flawed as it is.

Want to check how many died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria between 2001 and now as a direct consequence of Western military action, versus how many people the PLA killed in foreign interventions in the same period? Hint: the former - hundreds of thousands, the latter - zero

And indirect, through the use of manufactured ‘uprisings’ which the West are great at.

But really, you can go back many more decades than that. Innocent lives are not something the West (especially USA) have historically valued.

I hate bashing the West all the time, but come on, we aren’t the good guys in the world. And it’s time we own up to who we are. I have ffs. And I do wonder if the world would have been a more peaceful place if we collectively had more soul.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#153

Post by [deleted] »

pxtail wrote: post #143
vladvasiliu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people did actually bother to vote in Germany? Here in France, the "extremists" got a bit over 30% of votes. But turnout was only 51%. According to [0] average turnout is 51%. Some countries have very high numbers (IIRC voting is mandatory in Belgium?), others ridiculously low. This, to me, means pretty much that "voters don't care". [0] https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/

> How many people did actually bother to vote in Germany? People (including me) doesn't want to bother with voting when the whole thing is a farce - it's beyond my understanding why would someone be enticed to vote for incompetent politicians who get parachuted into EU parliament to earn hefty wage - very often as a reward for outrageous behavior, there are multiple examples of this, influencer from Cyprus, that poli…

[deleted]

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#154

Post by jiggawatts »

romankolpak wrote: post #105

I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but I want to ask it because I see the same sentiment across HN and other forums and I’m legitimately confused. If we don’t hijack privacy in messaging, how do we fight crime happening on a message platform? If government doesn’t have access to message contents, what’s stopping criminals from using the platform and never get tracked down? Or proven guilty, since all the proof i…

Replace "chat" with "speak", and suddenly it is trivially obvious to everyone how horrific this is:

> If we don’t hijack privacy in speech, how do we fight crime happening in private conversations? If [the] government doesn’t have access to what you say at home, what’s stopping criminals from using their homes and never getting tracked down? Or proven guilty, since all the proof was said behind closed doors? Aren’t we hurting ourselves by being so obsessed with privacy?

Should we be obsessed with privacy, or should we let the government put microphones in every house just in case there are paedophiles talking about their sex acts and hence getting away with it?

Similar arguments can be made by substituting other things that were traditionally considered the domain of only authoritarian dictatorships, such as opening all letters and reading them before they're delivered by the postal service, or keeping tabs on what books you borrow from the library.

I grew up in one of those countries, and I can tell you that it's not at all nice that they tracked what you photocopied, you know, just in case you wanted to print out anti-party ("one" party!) propaganda... I mean... something... something distributing child porn. Yeah, that's it. That's the reason.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#155

Post by prasoonds »

romankolpak wrote: post #105

I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but I want to ask it because I see the same sentiment across HN and other forums and I’m legitimately confused. If we don’t hijack privacy in messaging, how do we fight crime happening on a message platform? If government doesn’t have access to message contents, what’s stopping criminals from using the platform and never get tracked down? Or proven guilty, since all the proof i…

The criminals absolutely will move away to something that is outside government control. Many such apps already exist and you can run what you like on Android phones with custom ROMs.

Think about it - if you're a criminal, and you know about chat control, why would you risk your chats being leaked at all? Why wouldn't you use a different app that you know to be more secure (this already happens for any serious crime already btw)

It's precisely the law-abiding people whose privacy will be invaded for no-gain

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#157

Post by defrost »

jiggawatts wrote: post #154
romankolpak wrote: post #105

I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but I want to ask it because I see the same sentiment across HN and other forums and I’m legitimately confused. If we don’t hijack privacy in messaging, how do we fight crime happening on a message platform? If government doesn’t have access to message contents, what’s stopping criminals from using the platform and never get tracked down? Or proven guilty, since all the proof i…

Replace "chat" with "speak", and suddenly it is trivially obvious to everyone how horrific this is: > If we don’t hijack privacy in speech, how do we fight crime happening in private conversations? If [the] government doesn’t have access to what you say at home, what’s stopping criminals from using their homes and never getting tracked down? Or proven guilty, since all the proof was said behind closed doors? Aren’t w…

> I lived in one of those countries, and I can tell you that it's not at all nice that they tracked what you photocopied,

That's all photocopiers & printers though, with US manufacturers being ground zero for tracking, IIRC - https://www.instructables.com/Yellow-Dots-of-Mystery-Is-Your...

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#158

Post by loftsy »

cherryteastain wrote: post #146
loftsy wrote: post #68

It should be possible to have a private chat without spying. However I have an unpopular opinion, interested to hear what others might think: We should eliminate anonymity online. If you go on the internet everything you do should be tied back to your name. This can be done using device attestation. Everyone gets a private key tied to their name/address. This is compatible with free speech. In fact it promotes free s…

What technological measures do you propose to block Tor and VPN services to achieve this? Not even China's Great Firewall completely achieves this, though not for lack of trying.

VPN is straightforward to solve. For example Apple devices already have "Device Attestation":

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/deployment/dep28afbde6...

To do TOR you would need to look at the IP protocol and signing at the packet level. Definitely more difficult.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#159

Post by oliwarner »

skilled wrote: post #36
wickedsickeune wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Greece, we recently elected as representatives for the EU Parliament: * a 71 year old lady, with no social media and no public speeches ever. * a guy who used a nickname for his last name, that matched with a military general (who is well known), and many people thought he was the general * a "journalist" that was caught twice talking on live TV, conversing with a pre-recorded video * a convicted criminal It's imp…

Also -> YouTube prankster voted in as Cyprus MEP - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nnrwr72dqo

Yup that's the problem with PR: people actually get what they vote for. And people are idiots.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#160

Post by taylorius »

This is the sort of stuff that made Brexit appealing to me. Remainers make out that we (UK) are xenophobic in some way, because we left the EU. No - we don't hate European people, they're great - we just hate the unelected, undemocratic, wannabe-communist institutions.
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