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Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

patrick-breyer.de

181–190 of 338 posts

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the Old Testament does say you can stone your belligerent child to death outside the city walls if you like (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 [1]) - after all, what is the death penalty if not a very late abortion plus some due diligence? However, more interestingly, do you think you could cite where (a) the Bible forbids abortion or (b) the Bible makes clear that life begins at any point prior to birth? [1] https://www.biblegat…

I have no interest in discussing The Bible further with you given that you blatantly misrepresented a passage and then shifted the goal posts when questioned about it.

You may disagree with OP's interpretation, but they would hardly be the first to interpret Genesis 2:7 as equating breath with life. Job 33:4 is a more direct assertion of the "life comes from God's breath" hypothesis, and Ezekiel uses a similar metaphor about God's breath giving life to dead matter.

Jumping immediately to an accusation of dishonesty is uncalled for.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#182
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stipulation comes at the definition of what life is and what taking life away is. It’s a very difficult thing to define what life is, thus legally it is for lack of a better phrasing “a can of worms.” If you’re programming minded, you may see how such a definition is ambiguous and opens many attack vectors for interpretation. After seeing it this way, I began to understand why it’s so hotly contested.

Best legal definition I've heard involves death. When is a person considered dead? Brain activity ceased irreversibly. In the opposite end you have first brain activity (around three months since fecundation) as the best milestone. Of course there is philosophical discussion that goes beyond that, but since making it a crime is a legal matter, it's probably within reason.

> Best legal definition I've heard involves death. When is a person considered dead?

Even that can become fiercely political.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_and_activism_in...

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#183
I am not surprised. The EU consists of a bunch of bullies that force their views on member countries. Abide, or be sanctioned and bullied into compliance. Leaders of members countries are being bought to encourage membership. And when the people vote against it, there will be a new vote next year. And once you've joined, you can't leave out of fear of sanctions.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#184
post #133

This plan is useless. In this day and age it's trivial to create a system for private communication that works outside the mainstream apps.

Yes, it's so very obviously useless for the stated purpose that you've got wonder why they want it so badly.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#185

I went three indirections down and I still can't find any actual quotes or even summaries of concrete proposals, so I'm surprised how many people can confidently judge that these unexplained proposals are a dumpster fire solely on the basis that they aim to precent child sexual abuse material... The most specific thing I found was a linked document that laid out three possible legislation options, all in very loose l…

Here's one regulatory measure that's enforced already and seems to fit within the criteria being described: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1232/oj

(agreed, it would be nice to have direct links to the enacted and proposed regulations to compare and understand the language used)

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#186

These tyrants have to be stopped. A tyrannical government is far more dangerous to people, including children than your regular criminal. Ironically, by giving the state too much power and therefore increasing the symptoms of corruption, we allow the same sort of crimes to be practiced by corrupt state officials with little means for people enact accountability. China, the country with the most mass-surveillance in t…

[deleted]

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#187

These tyrants have to be stopped. A tyrannical government is far more dangerous to people, including children than your regular criminal. Ironically, by giving the state too much power and therefore increasing the symptoms of corruption, we allow the same sort of crimes to be practiced by corrupt state officials with little means for people enact accountability. China, the country with the most mass-surveillance in t…

Well said. If there's no true freedom of speech, we've lost everything. The last two years offered already a glimpse... Now look at China. It's mind blowing. Poor people.

As time goes on, China will appear less authoritarian, and more desirable to people with a certain (warped one I won't name) ideology, as it continues towards its logical conclusion.

China's one child policy now seems "reasonable"

Their mass surveillance is almost desired now, with our new "Ministry of Truth"

Jail time for speaking out against the government -- something I saw plenty of people vouching for when dissenting views about the pandemic were offered up.

Re-education camps for speaking out against teaching certain ideologies and concepts to young children are almost implicitly implied.

There's more, but it's clear this is where we are headed. The slippery slope isn't a fallacy, and 1984 was a prediction.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#188
post #74

This looks like a scare-story. Firstly, the EU produces directives and regulations; it doesn't produce "laws". Secondly, the phrase "child pornography" is in quotes, as if there's no such thing. There is such a thing. Thirdly, the imputed "law" requires service providers to scan encrypted messages. That's impossible, unless the proposal is to ban properly-encrypted messages. If that were the proposal, then surely tha…

The EU has many types of legal acts and the European Commission is responsible for planning and proposing law. Also EU regulations are legal acts that apply automatically to all EU countries without needing to be transposed into national law. For scanning encrypted messages, they can be scanned on device before encryption, like Apple’s approach to CSAM.

It's true that "regulations" are effectively laws. They are also quite rare, compared to directives.

Directives have to be implemented in national legislation; it is customary for nations to ignore deadlines on implementing directives they don't like, and to finally implement them in a way that serves the interests of the party in power. So the national legislation is often full of loopholes, or provides zero mechanisms and funding for enforcement.

The EU does nothing to ensure that the implementing legislation actually implements its directives.

I welcome the GDPR (which is a regulation); I can't think of another occasion on which a piece of EU legislation I thought was good, has been handed down as a regulation.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#189

These tyrants have to be stopped. A tyrannical government is far more dangerous to people, including children than your regular criminal. Ironically, by giving the state too much power and therefore increasing the symptoms of corruption, we allow the same sort of crimes to be practiced by corrupt state officials with little means for people enact accountability. China, the country with the most mass-surveillance in t…

The most shocking thing for me is this is happening after the events of late Feburary; you know, when a dictatorship which started the biggest land war since WWII silenced all internal dissidents using their over-encroaching surveillance network. How does an organization shuffling untolds amount of resources into protecting a nascent democracy that they really didn't care too much about six months ago come to the conclusion that, yes, we do need to model our web around murderous dictatorships.

Re: Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you're pre-informed on the issues, whoever presents it to you can just pick the side that gets you to the answer they want. This summarizes a good 75% of modern political discourse.

Ironically, this is why a lot of people argue everyone shouldn't vote. Basically, if you add some minor barriers to voting you'll get only those who know and care about what's going on to vote. Otherwise, you'll have lemmings. Where people with a bit of propaganda will drive everyone else off the cliff.

> Basically, if you add some minor barriers to voting you'll get only those who know and care about what's going on to vote.

You'll get people with a lot of time on their hands for sure, that's about the only thing one can say with certainty.

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