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The disguised return of EU Chat Control

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Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#211

Post by 0dayz »

ntoskrnl_exe wrote: post #204
klabb3 wrote: post #137

This can backfire bigly for the EU. The whole union is sustained on shared values and interests. Sneaking in surveillance is extremely offputting for the sentiment towards EU in many circles. Every member state has plenty of skeptics who want to brexit and this is gasoline for them. And rightly so. This isn’t a fluke from some misinformed non-technical stray politician who ”wants to save the children” (yes, they exis…

This legislation has a potential to "radicalize" a lot of people. I don't agree with many of the decisions by the EU, but at the end of the day the pros do outweigh the cons and in a hypothetical Brexit-like referendum I wouldn't consider agreeing with leaving. If this passes, however, the pencil in my hand would definitely hover above the YES checkbox for a while and, actually, maybe even tick it. This alone would b…

Unfortunately I don't think so, it'll be more the writing on the wall or the canary ik the coal line but it wont radicalize a lot of people I think because this legislation won't rock the boat enough unless they fuck it up a la UK age verification law.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#212

Post by pcrh »

Muromec wrote: post #200
pcrh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any mechanism for preventing the introduction of a law that violates the ECHR? It would seem obvious that that should be the case, no?

Not under ECHR, which has twice as much signatories as EU has members and the other half is twice less chill compared to the EU. I don't remember whether the EU top court can repeal EU laws, but general answer is no. It's politics -- if the government is full shitheads that somebody voted for and then haven't protested hard enough to boot out -- then they can ignore constitution, jail judges, behead journalists in a…

Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be relevant to privacy?

It seems axiomatic that legal systems contain provisions that prevent their violation. However, democracy requires that laws are voted on by elected representatives or plebiscites, which can of course mean repealing prior laws.

However the EU institutions are not sovereign, which might be the loophole here?

Edit: I'm aware that the EU is only afforded "competences" given to it by treaties, so perhaps human rights don't fall into any of these...?

However, I also wonder if legislation such as Chat Control, etc, might fall outside its competences.

In the end, the question is whether there is a legal mechanism by which the introduction of laws such as those in question here can be prohibited?

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#213

Post by amarant »

Again? Seriously? We shut them down, what, last week? They really are going for the activism fatigue approach aren't they?

I wonder if one could train an LLM to automatically protest all the new chat-control? This is getting ridiculous.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#214

Post by Y-bar »

throw-qqqqq wrote: post #136
mrtksn wrote: post #85

Denmark has a month and a half as EU presidency to go. I still don't get why they want this to be their legacy so badly.

Denmark mostly has authoritative politicians in government. Pragmatic and without ideology. The misguided tools believe they are doing us all a big favor. They handwavingly dismiss all privacy-related criticism with “well our experts say something else!” and insist there are no privacy issues - but at the same time require exemption for their own caste.

Denmark is a strange nation with regards to liberty and personal belongings:

https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/4963/Denmark:-Exemptin...

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#215

Post by Muromec »

pcrh wrote: post #212
Muromec wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not under ECHR, which has twice as much signatories as EU has members and the other half is twice less chill compared to the EU. I don't remember whether the EU top court can repeal EU laws, but general answer is no. It's politics -- if the government is full shitheads that somebody voted for and then haven't protested hard enough to boot out -- then they can ignore constitution, jail judges, behead journalists in a…

Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be relevant to privacy? It seems axiomatic that legal systems contain provisions that prevent their violation. However, democracy requires that laws are voted on by elected representatives or plebiscites, which can of course mean repealing prior laws. However the EU institutions are not sovereign, which might be the loophole here? Edit: I'm aware that the EU is on…

There is no loophole really, EU can repeal it's own laws the same way it passes them -- it needs to get the commission, the parliament and enough national governments on board.

>Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be relevant to privacy?

Doesn't matter really. No right in any treaty is absolute. Not even the right to life itself -- the police can and does shoot people and it's legal for them to do under specific conditions. And of course the chat control law says that whatever it is supposed to be doing should be done in the most privacy respecting way possible.

In theory the court (any court really) can weight whether the measures are proportionate and whether negative obligations (not invade privacy) are in a balance with positive obligations (you know -- protective children is also important) and whether the balance is appropriate of a democratic society.

The problem everybody is trying to not see - there is no right to E2E encryption under any law right now. There is no right to have a communication channel that government can't possibly listen to. It's not a thing. The same way there is no right to have your house unsearchable by police and your freedom unbound by a court that can jail you. There are strict limits when any of those things happen, but they do fact happen all the time for good reasons and for bad ones too.

Add: if I would attack it from a legal standpoint, I would not focus on privacy so much, but rather say that creating mass-scaning capability is a threat to the democracy itself.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#216

Post by tomsmeding »

> According to Breyer, the existing voluntary system has already proven flawed, with German police reporting that roughly half of all flagged cases turn out to be irrelevant.

A failure rate of only 50% is absurdly good for a system like this. If we have to:

> Imagine your phone scanning every conversation with your partner, your daughter, your therapist, and leaking it just because the word ‘love’ or ‘meet’ appears somewhere.

then apparently either there are so many perpetrators that regular conversations with partners etc. are about as common as crime, or such regular conversations don't have such a high risk of being reported after all.

I don't think chat surveillance is a good idea. But please use transparent and open communication. Don't manipulate us just like the enemy does.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#217

Post by latchup »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #131
iso1631 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plebiscite -> populism -> bad outcomes People are not able to be experts in everything they are asked to vote on, thats why we delegate it, just like people delegate their healthcare, plumbing, flying to a holiday destination, growing food, etc. People en-mass are just as easy to manipulate as elected members, if not easier.

Can you point to examples of bad outcomes in Switzerland’s referendums? I mean unequivocal examples, of the sort that would convince everyone here that that model is undesirable as a whole.

How about that time in 2020 the Swiss voted in favor of an immigration restriction proposal that was so fundamentally incompatible with existing EU treaties, the government was forced to bullshit their way out of implementing entirely because doing so would have basically ended Switzerland as a nation? This is the kinda thing that really cannot happen in a working system. The only reason the government is not sued into following through is because the courts have conspired with other branches to shut down any attempt at doing so. Real democratic.

Generally speaking, people are stupid. Really REALLY f-cking stupid. Giving the average Joe this kind of unmoderated power in a modern world that almost entirely eludes his understanding is no different from handing him a loaded gun; eventually, someone will get hurt real bad. As someone living in Switzerland, the main reason things are as stable as they are is because:

* Changing anything significant requires a referendum, which is a huge pain in the ass. So politicians just kinda avoid important changes that require referenda, finding other ways to enrich themselves and leaving society stagnating. This means that actually important changes come about very slowly or not at all. Read up on how long it took for women's suffrage to become universal – and the outright threats of internal military action the federal government resorted to...

* Whether the Swiss like it or not, Switzerland is mostly a loud, spoilt economic annex of the EU. It will remain stable for as long as the EU is, and well off for as long as the EU wants to be seen as a peaceful and magnanimous partner in international relations. After all, "bullying" tiny and surrounded Switzerland into agreeing to anything – which the Swiss will cry about at any opportunity you give them – is a bad look.

So yeah, Swiss direct democracy is not all it's made out to be, and really not all that great up close. Admirers remind me a lot of Weaboos, strangely shortsighted in their admiration of a system they know little about.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#218

Post by varispeed »

probably_wrong wrote: post #170
varispeed wrote: post #112

This is an ongoing terrorist attack and authorities fail to stop it. Please report these people to the police as attempted terrorist attack. People behind Chat Control should be arrested. A snippet I posted before: 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. Psycholo…

While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think hyperbole is the solution. This legislation, while reprehensible, is not terrorism. Defining terrorism is particularly difficult (the UN has been trying since the 60s and is trying again this year), but if all intimidation for political gains is terrorism then so is every other political ad from the last 30 years. Banksy would probably argue that regular advertising als…

The irony is that we only get stuck in semantic arguments because the authorities refuse to treat this as the kind of act it actually is. If prosecutors applied their own standards consistently, we wouldn’t be debating vocabulary on a message board.

Germany’s criminal code already recognises coercion of a population for political ends as a serious offence. If a private organisation tried to impose a system that eliminated private communication, criminalised encryption defaults, and created a permanent climate of fear around ordinary speech, they wouldn’t get a policy debate. They’d get an arrest warrant.

The only thing making this “controversial” is institutional hesitation. Everyone knows issuing warrants against EU-level actors would cause political embarrassment, so we pretend the behaviour is something milder, something safer to acknowledge. That gap between what the law says and what the state is willing to enforce is exactly where tragedies start.

This isn’t about inflating the meaning of terrorism. It’s about refusing to downgrade coercion just because it comes from people in respectable offices. Words shouldn’t shrink to protect those in power. They should describe what is happening.

edit: and whilst we are at the semantics - the word “terrorism” comes from the French Reign of Terror, where the state used fear as an instrument of governance. The original meaning was quite literally state-driven intimidation of an entire population to enforce ideological conformity.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#220

Post by srcreigh »

Isn’t there precedent for many other governments secretly or openly doing exactly this? Snowden etc?

There’s an arms race element to this that I don’t see people discussing.

Do EU citizens have any privacy from US tech? Is there anything to protect?

Do we want the USA to have exclusive right to spy on the world?

Is it better to have 1 Big Brother or 10?

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