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EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

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Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#221

Post by DangitBobby »

ben_w wrote: post #218
DangitBobby wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organized criminals (especially state actors) will find ways to communicate in the dark regardless, including just continuing to use illegal encryption.

> including just continuing to use illegal encryption. First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail. Second, what gets talked about in public (the only thing any of us knows for sure, but also definitely not the whole picture) includes foreign governments recruiting locals via normal messenger apps. More of a problem is that the back-doors can be exploite…

> First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail.

You're assuming they continue to use monitored channels to carry it out.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#222

Post by anonymous908213 »

oblio wrote: post #210
anonymous908213 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, then, is the supposed anti-US/China/India/Russia power bloc trying to pass laws to mandate absolute surveillance of all private communications? If the EU is going to continue attempting to legislate away people's freedoms for purposes that are completely out of scope for the reason it exists, then the natural result is that people will turn on the EU. There is little purpose in staving off the surrendering of in…

Every government has abhorrent proposals. This is a PROPOSAL. Then proposals maybe turn into laws, through a complex process. We are HERE. A good government doesn't have many with abhorrent LAWS.

I understand that it is not currently law. I also understand that the EU has been dedicated to this road of eroding citizen privacy for decades, constantly trying to pass more and more egregious legislation. For example, the Data Retention Directive of 2006 was abhorrent law. After 8 years in force, it was struck down by the ECJ, which would be somewhat reassuring if not for the fact that the EU appears to consider the ECJ a thorn in its side that it seeks to undermine at every turn. I have very little faith that this will not eventually become abhorrent law given the persistence with which the EU pursues becoming a surveillance state.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#223

Post by Xelbair »

saubeidl wrote: post #177
Xelbair wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not with the lack of understanding of "process". But sheer frustration because there's nothing you can do as just a citizen. An unelected council of !notAyatollah has decided, and this thing is being pushed at glacier slow pace. If EU is a trade union this is a severe overreach, if EU wants to be a federation, there's not enough checks and balances. This is the crux of the problem. The issue is that this…

The Council is a meeting of the heads of state, all of which are elected in their respective countries. Your problem is with the leadership of countries, not with the EU as an institution. I agree that it is a problem btw, but I think you got the wrong culprit. This isn't pushed on the states by the EU, this is the states using the EU to push it and launder the bad publicity.

My problem is that i as a citizen can vote for my heads of state, but if other parts of EU decided something my vote is null and void, EVEN if majority of EU citizens are against such issue.

Imagine is those issues were campaign promises and part of internal(country's) elections - they aren't in reality but we can set that aside for now. as it was extremely well said by sibling post.

My country is 80% against 20% in favor(in practice it is even more skewed towards 'no' for chat control!), other EU countries are 51% for, 49% against.

Yet such 'vote' by heads of state counts whole countries in,if you were to count individual votes majority of EU citizens would be against it.

This allows you to pass undesirable or extremely contentious legislation, that would most likely prevent you from being elected in the future in your local elections but you can easily shift the blame too!

This is as far form democracy as possible, it is pure bureaucracy that serves it's own goals.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#224

Post by jounker »

pfdietz wrote: post #194
hnarn wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t seriously be proposing that the United States respects the privacy of its citizens more.

We have constitutional barriers that would obstruct something like this.

As a US citizen, I have to say that you are completely mistaken. The US is a privacy hellscape.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#226

Post by an0malous »

pessimizer wrote: post #203
xyzal wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternative do you propose?

I've always advocated a proliferation of overlapping "states." Let them keep each other in check. Instead of having a tree with a king at the top and your local police station at the bottom, be a part of the governance for the river that you live near, for the city that surrounds you, for the grocery store in your neighborhood, for your local fire department, and let all of them have codified relationships with each…

Well the VCs and tech elite read a lot of Curtis Yarvin and decided the masses are too stupid to have a say in government so in the US we’re getting a CEO/king instead

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#227

Post by sillyfluke »

petcat wrote: post #219
sillyfluke wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 1814 we're talking about, right? That's only a decade after Louisiana Purchase just for reference and before the Mexican-American war. I guess we might as well give all that back to the Mexicans? You can play this game to the end of time. There's a reason for statute of limitations in law.

1953 is when Denmark asserted complete ownership of the territory and it ceased just being a "colony". That's not exactly ancient history.

So? The US prior to 1776, those specific colonies that became the US, were British colonies, are you claiming before that those colonies weren't considered British?

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#228

Post by LexiMax »

squigz wrote: post #108
a022311 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing substantial has happened to the three texts since last week, it's just that "chat control is back" drives traffic and "Council preparatory body formally approves draft position that got consensus previously but didn't formally get passed because people were fighting over Ukraine stuff for too long" doesn't. While I agree with your point, it's still crucial to raise awareness of Europe's actions. It may be a…

Awareness of the reality, yes, but there's no reason to play people's emotions to get them "aware" of it - or in other words, get them angry about it.

While I disagree with your position for the reasons already given by others, it's quite ironic that in this thread about government censorship that your opinion is in the process of being censored by other HN users.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#229

Post by Xelbair »

ben_w wrote: post #205
Xelbair wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of legislation should never ever be proposed in a democratic system, so had disagree. This is an extremely totalitarian-style move from EU - governing bodies are exempt from the law, meanwhile peasants have to be watched 24/7 for wrongthink, all under guise of protecting the children.

While I agree with the sentiment, you need to think like a state to stop this kind of thing. Even without any argument about personal rights and what's totalitarian, I can't even square the circle of the unstoppable force of "the economy is dependent on encryption that can't be hacked" with the immovable object of "hostile governments and organised criminals undermine ${insert any nation here} and communicate with lo…

>While I agree with the sentiment, you need to think like a state to stop this kind of thing.

I'm thinking like state already, i would never trust ANY state with such powers, even the one that was perfectly aligned with my political views.

It's not issue of state, but dilution of responsibility and the way the votes are counted.

It is also an issue of unelected officials deciding things - the whole system is broken.

Before you say that heads of state were elected - this is highly contentious issue, no one ran on this in internal campaigns, and votes on this issue are counted country-wide(all for or all against), without any regards to distribution of populace's opinion on this subject.

>Even without any argument about personal rights and what's totalitarian, I can't even square the circle of the unstoppable force of "the economy is dependent on encryption that can't be hacked" with the immovable object of "hostile governments and organised criminals undermine ${insert any nation here} and communicate with local agents via encryption that can't be hacked".

You're enacting legislation that will actually empower those entities this way!

Criminals - surprise surprise - can just break the law, and use devices/software that just.. does not do content scanning, and uses true E2E encryption. Even over insecure channel by using steganography and key exchange over it.

Espionage can be handled the same way, probably even easier as they can easily use one-time pads and key phrases established beforehand in their country of origin!

Meanwhile only group affected by it are just normal citizens.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#230

Post by petcat »

sillyfluke wrote: post #227
petcat wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1953 is when Denmark asserted complete ownership of the territory and it ceased just being a "colony". That's not exactly ancient history.

So? The US prior to 1776, those specific colonies that became the US, were British colonies, are you claiming before that those colonies weren't considered British?

Britain lost their claim to those colonies when they lost a war to the Americans. The Inuit had no capacity to fight a war with Denmark. So it's the same situation except now Denmark is on the short-end of the power imbalance, and they're upset about it.
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