Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the US democratic by any sensible nature? Their president, too, is appointed by electors. Is there any democratic power by your standards? You are moving the goal posts so far I don't think anything fits your narrow definition.
That's just ridiculous. The US president is directly elected by the people, modulo the weirdness of state-level FPTP. Flawed as the electoral college is, there's no comparison whatsoever.
The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
161–170 of 259 posts
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the US democratic by any sensible nature? Their president, too, is appointed by electors. Is there any democratic power by your standards? You are moving the goal posts so far I don't think anything fits your narrow definition.
> Their president, too, is appointed by electors. While there have been a tiny numbers of faithless electors in the past, they have never influenced the outcome of a presidential election. Furthermore, about 80% of electors are from states that have laws that require their electors to vote for the candidate who wins the state's popular vote.
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like this is an absurd position to take when people are literally being snatched off the street and being sent to torture camps in the US. The tyranny is much closer there than in the EU.
> I feel like this is an absurd position to take when people are literally being snatched off the street and being sent to torture camps in the US. That is of course a gross misrepresentation of what is happening (and I'm being charitable here).
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are not unelected. They might be appointed but the parliament is elected and can block this. Go vote in EU elections. A parliament that is not full of conservatives can block this.
The EU is not some US from 30 years ago. It is not "conservatives" that push these totalitarian proposals over here. Look at the DSA voting record. Digital Services Act: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/139040
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#165I just don't get it - criminals will just continue to use "real" encryption. Why are some of these people so obsessed with reading everyone's chats?
It really depends on the "use case." Regulators are primarily concerned about grooming, which involves criminals using apps that teenagers frequent. Also, criminals usually have poor operational security—far from perfect. The seriousness of the offense isn't related to the quality of their opsec. Regulators and law enforcement are generally rational. They may be short-sighted, but they often have reasonable explanati…
The sad truth is that law enforcement doesn't have the resources to go after a huge chunk of the cases - particularly before anything serious happens.
For this reason giving them even more power won't markedly increase prevention, but will introduce more cases of people abusing said power. Ultimately the government is run by people, and people are fallible:
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/09/loveint-given...
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Denmark is very liberal in some ways but very much not in others. MitID -- digital id-- is a gateway to everything and is very much gated in terms of access; it took me months to sort out. It's a crime to not tell the state where you live, or to have too many people living in your house (I'd love to know what happens if you give birth on a "full" house -- is there a grace period, or do you have to move?). The work la…
>>Denmark is very liberal in some ways True like not banning bestiality until 2015.... https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-32411241
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#167If I want to casually keep in touch with a friend, I am supposed to have the following options:
- SMS/RCS: no need for an app but is controlled
- WhatsApp: no good to many reasons
- Signal: how can you believe it is not controlled once it becomes the mandatory app in the US Gov.
- Matrix: great but you need to self host a server, create accounts, etc.
- SimpleX: very interesting, but centralised and I feel it might just be the next Signal. Might be a solution since you can exit at some point by self hosting a server and I guess have alternative implementations.
- Delta chat: great but I guess email fall into the mass surveillance target.
Now most people do not have crazy security requirements and just want to be able to send a simple text message to a friend and be notified instantly without participating in mass surveillance. So why even using a formal Chat app that will be target by a regulation like Chat Control or kicked out of the App store?
Something like Gotify [0] or ntfy [1] are almost enough for most users. It has the whole free from Google and Apple push notification system figured out. You would just need to modify a bit the app to exchange keys with a QR code for individual topics (that you would use as contact or groups).
In a way we just need MQTT servers, a client with reliable push notifications and a manual key exchange mechanism. That would be really hard for govs to target.
- [0] https://gotify.net/
- [1] https://ntfy.sh/
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#168"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.
though, because lawful intercept is also a thing in EU, its stupid to assume they do not already have access if they want it.
despite not having 'dragnet' surveillance , they have effective and deep targeted surveillance and laws that allow them to do that fairly freely.... (most countries are more strict with their own citizens, but then its handy to have allies to do it for u -_-... wonderful world!)
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 see what Covid has to do with this. Covid prevention measures were always meant to be temporal and they all were taken back.
Re: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025
#170I was reflecting on the whole chat apps and protocols the other day and felt we might just have trapped ourselves artificially. If I want to casually keep in touch with a friend, I am supposed to have the following options: - SMS/RCS: no need for an app but is controlled - WhatsApp: no good to many reasons - Signal: how can you believe it is not controlled once it becomes the mandatory app in the US Gov. - Matrix: gr…
cryptography?