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Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

threema.ch

171–180 of 341 posts

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#171
post #141

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…

I'm seeing more value in your comment than, apparently, the other people who have answered it here. I think you are 100% right that above-the-law communication is not good for society. This should be obvious. At the same time, allowing government to be able to spy everywhere is also not good for society. Also obvious. The correct solution is therefore something in the middle. I'm not convinced by the other arguments…

> I think you are 100% right that above-the-law communication is not good for society. This should be obvious. At the same time, allowing government to be able to spy everywhere is also not good for society. Also obvious. The correct solution is therefore something in the middle.

That conclusion is logically wrong and does not follow from the premises. You are decrying fallacies in other arguments while making them yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

> The proposed legislation is terrible: it is not balanced and does not contain any safeguard to avoid abuse.

Then the logical course of action is to try to stop this legislation. Everything else about the argument is irrelevant right now, what matters is the close very bad thing in front of us that we can do something about. Eliminate that and then we can have a reasoned discussion about what the proper approach is.

> several independent justice organizations share the set of key needed to decrypt

There’s no such thing as keys that only good guys have access to. It has been shown time and again that someone with access will abuse it or be tricked.

I won’t go long on this point, however, as I was not familiar with your specific example. I’ll read up more on it. But again, that’s a conversation that matters later.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#172
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this allow for it to be sneakily applied, as you suggest ?

Many unpopular laws are passed during major sports events, soccer world cup, olympucs and/or during summer holidays season.

> Many unpopular laws are passed

How many? Can you list some of them? I think that your assumptions are kind of the general opinion, but I am interested in facts. I couldn't find "many unpopular laws being passed during such events", can you?

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#173
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think a peer-to-peer system would not be exempt from this legislation, particularly given my understanding that the EU courts do not look favorably on gotcha-style analysis of laws that are limited to definitions of words used being twisted to claim "I'm unregulated". If you are a developer who works on a chat client as part of a decentralized service, I'd expect both you and all of the people running the net…

It's impossible for the EU to apply any meaningful enforcement action to a P2P encrypted chat system made by non EU citizen developers residing in a non EU country. Sure, the EU can declare your app is subject to this law, but then what?

Just not being available in app stores would effectively stop its usage.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#174
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this allow for it to be sneakily applied, as you suggest ?

Many unpopular laws are passed during major sports events, soccer world cup, olympucs and/or during summer holidays season.

Many unpopular laws are also passed not during these events. Without comparison it's a meaningless statement.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#175

I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.

The populace is clueless and/or ignorant, and Brussels has a well earned reputation for being a popular toxic waste dump for unpopular politicians. To give some examples from Germany, we dumped Günther Oettinger and Ursula von der Leyen there in the last two elections, and this year our far-right party managed to place a suspected traitor on the top of their list.

Thanks for that Germany.

Won't you take her back and make her Minister for Castles or something,

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong : > Mao's policies were responsible for a vast number of deaths, with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims due to starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions, and his government has been described as totalitarian. I guess according to you killing your own people shouldn't be counted.

Mao Zedong's CCP is as relevant to the present discussion as say Adolf Hitler, US treatment of Native Americans or British/French/Spanish colonialism. All awful, yet not awfully relevant.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#178
post #169
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this allow for it to be sneakily applied, as you suggest ?

This is the infamous Dead Cat Strategy[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy

More Like Bread and Games

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bread_and_circu...

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#179
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and the voters don’t care." Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? There just has been EU election in germany and the nationalist gained a lot. And none of the big parties otherwise said a clear no to that, so what could I do, except vote a small party against that, but too small to really do something? Voters care. But they see often no point in voting anymore.

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/

> This, to me, means pretty much that "voters don't care".

This is simplistic. Some have simply lost confidence in their representatives and/or cannot find a decent candidate.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#180
post #145
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worth debating the idea, exploring what it would look like. But I think there's a lot of hidden complexity there. 1. Who is allowed to detect, process or store your identity? For what purposes? 2. What about "right to forget"? Does the data need to be destroyed after a certain period? 3. Who manufacturers and sells these private keys? What happens if I lose mine, or it gets stolen? 4. How does this work…

Good points. Difficult questions. I was thinking it is tied to the physical device. So you would register a laptop when you buy it with the state and the key would be in the HSM. So the main differences would be: 1. Give my name and address to activate a device 2. "The internet" requires authentication via the HSM.

Kind of like how a car is tied to an individual, via the logbook (in the UK at least). You need to think who you let use your laptop, lest they get you in trouble. If it's stolen or you sell it, you report it. To be fair, people were against passports and license plate numbers when these were first introduced, and it hasn't lead to the problems people envisaged.

That said... I don't know if this is feasible with a laptop. It's much easier to pawn my laptop, than it is to steal my car and drive it without me knowing. And at what point does a computer become a server, and are those regulated differently?

Knowing that you're never anonymous online would certainly improve some conversations, and mitigate some of the ability for state actors to e.g. sow discontent online. But it would arguably be a huge inconvenience and risk for everybody, so I don't know if it's worth the cost.

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