German government comes out against Chat Control

>If you look at the concrete laws, they are less spectacular.

And if you look at how these laws are used by politicians they look quite spectacular.

>And libel only applies to statements of facts. I.e. you can't (easily) be prosecuted for opinions, just for making harmful false claims.

The Wikipedia article and how the law was applied article disagrees.

Do not forget that this applies to insults. E.g. calling a politician "dumb" is enough to get sued. These laws create a way for politicians specifically to prosecute people criticizing them. This isn't a hypothetical, it is how the law is actually used.

The reaction is very weak, though. Chat Control is an act of terrorism and it should have triggered criminal investigation why this has gone this far.

Before you downvote:

If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.

The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.

It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.

The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.

You can argue legality if you like, but the substance matches the textbook definition.

These people should be arrested.

I am so happy to see this.

The German social perspective on privacy has been strongly for the individual over the state for a long time. Chat Control goes too far, and Germany should be a loud voice in the heavy moderation of state surveillance powers.

This is just lifestylist nonsense to make yourself feel better than everyone else. If you design technology to make this hard, they will hit you with a stick, and find everyone who uses your technology and hit them with a stick. If you still do it, they will hit you all with the sticks until you are dead, and also hit your family and friends with sticks. If you don't work for them, they'll find a bro who will. Teaching your neighbors just makes them another potential victim, and they will report you or curse you as they die with you. Moving off platforms when there are no alternatives just means you won't be able to bank, or file your taxes. And if you fail to file your taxes, they will hit you with a stick.

The cage is real, it's not a state of mind. It's not something that can be recycled out of. You'll know when you're really doing something when you can give people a time and a place to show up; when that showing up isn't to stand in the street and socialize with each other, burn down a Starbucks, or spit in the face of a cop who makes less than you do; and when most of you end up dead or in prison.

I always reply like this, but some people think everybody else in the world is so weak and naïve, when they themselves aren't doing anything important and have not taken a fraction of the risks or suffered a fraction of the loss of the people they're asking to speak up. Speaking against power is an impotent magic spell. You can recognize journalists who speak against real power by their deaths.

Everybody is just aping the US black civil rights struggle, where watching the violence done in their name to nicely dressed, well-behaved people filled enough people with disgust that politicians wouldn't get a boost from continuing to support it. That was how a small minority population faced with irrational restrictions in a media-saturated society was able to barely overcome explicitly unfair laws (and go no further, we're still the underclass, we're still dying.)

The history of effective, revolutionary, positive protest by what are often majorities involved people getting out into the streets as a show of strength, not a show of weakness. It always involves converting and including portions of the army and the police forces. It involves building strong shadow governments. Not this pantomime where everybody pretends to be black, and the people who are the blackest, weakest, most undeserving of their treatment win because mommy parliament or daddy supreme court are moved enough to declare them the winner.

That’s the thing about speech: It’s very hard for governments to physically prevent it, but attaching consequences to making use of that capability usually works just as well.