Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

threema.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 341 posts

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#271

Post by sakisv »

deadghost wrote: post #69
wickedsickeune wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Greece, we recently elected as representatives for the EU Parliament: * a 71 year old lady, with no social media and no public speeches ever. * a guy who used a nickname for his last name, that matched with a military general (who is well known), and many people thought he was the general * a "journalist" that was caught twice talking on live TV, conversing with a pre-recorded video * a convicted criminal It's imp…

I don't know much about Greece and don't follow Greece at all. Every time I hear something about Greece, it sounds like a hot mess.

I think this sums it up pretty nicely. It's a failed state with corrupt people at the top of the government.

The parliament, i.e. the majority, i.e. these people, are also the ones who appoint the judges of the top courts of the country, which all but ensures their immunity.

Their immunity is also enshrined in the consistution[4, article 86] - only the parliament can take an MP to the courts, but guess who controls the majority

Also, they are in the pockets of the local oligarchic mafia [1]: A few families that control the vast majority of the media AND the big construction companies AND the energy companies. They are also the ones that own big part of the shipping industry in Greece. For their sake, back in 2022 when the EU was considering to ban oil shipments from Russia, Greece vetoed that [2]

Oh, and just to be safe, the oligarch's tax exemptions are written in the constitution[4, article 107]

So, the people in the government have an almost complete immunity from everything, which makes them extremely arrogant.

If you add to that mix the total disregard of public services, even hospitals during the pandemic, you get a very beautiful-to-look-but-terrible-to-live-in failed state.

A state that even the EU can no longer turn a blind eye on[5]

[1]: https://newrepublic.com/article/159252/noor-one-vampire-ship...

[2]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/23/how-greek-companies-and...

[3]: https://rsf.org/en/country/greece

[4]: https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/f3c70a23-7696-49...

[5]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240202IP...

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#272

Post by mardifoufs »

loftsy wrote: post #68

It should be possible to have a private chat without spying. However I have an unpopular opinion, interested to hear what others might think: We should eliminate anonymity online. If you go on the internet everything you do should be tied back to your name. This can be done using device attestation. Everyone gets a private key tied to their name/address. This is compatible with free speech. In fact it promotes free s…

The difference is that they aren't using this to make online conversations more polite or something (not that I agree with your point that removing anonymity somehow is better for free speech, at all). This isn't some sort of initiative to promote self policing. It's to get information that will allow authorities to arrest people and put them in jail. That automatically makes the entire argument that it could be beneficial for free speech and promote more "real life" like interactions online irrelevant, because that's not the point of this law.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#273

Post by harha »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #103
harha wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite difficult to be engaged with the selection of candidates. It’s really quite the struggle to find someone halfway decent these days

> struggle to find someone halfway decent these days Would you want to deal with those voters as, effectively, your boss?

I don’t think the voters are the problem. I think the established parties keep growing in all the worst ways, and I don’t think any decent candidate would be able to be successful in this setting.

Would happily work with voters to figure out a path forward.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#274

Post by cauch »

NoGravitas wrote: post #269
cauch wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The correct solution should be something in the middle. Old-fashioned wiretapping, with a warrant and the need to dedicate staff to install…

It's not up to governments to agree.

Right now, there are encrypted communication solutions that exist. None of them have been built by a government. We can build Chaum's network and start to use it. If we do that, government will have to either accept this network as a legal usage, or admit that they don't care about kids and crimes but just want to spy.

And sure, some government will admit that, but it's not by chance that right now the bad legislation are justified by "for the children" instead of "because we want to spy on you": admitting that will make these legislation obviously harmful, and they will be stopped even more easily.

There are some reasons why a network like the one proposed by Chaum is not used. One is that it's not easy to put in place, similarly to how difficult it was to build ethical journalism network for example. A second one is that some people don't want such network, either because they want to do illegal things or they want to spy on citizen. But another reason is the childish mentality of being instantaneously against any ideas that does not fit into the "100% anonymity" of the Silicon Valley techno-libertarian (not saying that anyone who is against is like that, but some who are against are indeed like that).

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#275

Post by [deleted] »

henry_pulver wrote: post #131
blowski wrote: post #28

I too instinctively bristle at this kind of legislation. It's likely to be abused, with many false positive that make it more effective at sweeping up innocent people, while the guilty just find workarounds. But all coming on here and saying "ooohh, this is bad, innit!" is not very interesting, and unlikely to prevent it. Why is the EU doing this? Which political groups are supporting and opposing it? Why now? How ar…

> But all coming on here and saying "ooohh, this is bad, innit!" is not very interesting, and unlikely to prevent it. I disagree - this is how the internet can strengthen democracy. Upvoting and commenting makes this post hit the top of HN and stay there. This makes it visible to many EU citizens who can reach out to their MEP's to ask them to vote against it. Seems a pretty effective strategy to me as someone living…

[deleted]

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#277

Post by bun_terminator »

SSLy wrote: post #116
bun_terminator wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this has more weight: threema is the biggest "alternative" (after whatsapp and telegram) chat app among my peers. There's a sizable non-tech but pro-privacy part of the population that exclusively uses threema. This will be the first time they ever hear of this.

May I ask what country, age, and – as bad word it is – class is your threema-using social circle? Because here it is mostly facebook/messenger, discord, instagram, and a distant whatsapp, in order.

part is in their 50s, tech illiterate by privacy-focused. Other part are colleagues (30s-40s) who are privacy focused. This is Europe (Germany) though - the landscape here is absolutely dominated by whatsapp by a huge margin.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#278

Post by mariusor »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #240
mariusor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this specific case I believe that it's the EU Council that pushes for the current iteration of the law, which is formed of the head of states for each EU member. So, even if they might not be explicitly elected to be in the EU governance, most of them have reached that spot through more or less democratic means. "More or less" because Prime Ministers are usually nominated not elected, but that's still as part of e…

The level of indirection is very important and you can only elect a very small part of the council. There are a lot democratic deficiencies. It lately became en vogue to deny the problem completely and EU politics only got dumber from that.

Can you tell me what democratic deficiencies you see in this? Why is the process of having a prime minister/chancellor/etc as head of state fine in a national democratic process, but not on a european level?

If I see any issue with the way EU passes laws is with the terrible overhead of having three to four bodies that govern the whole process, from proposal to legislature, not necessarily with the way some participants get there.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#279

Post by dTal »

harha wrote: post #273
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> struggle to find someone halfway decent these days Would you want to deal with those voters as, effectively, your boss?

I don’t think the voters are the problem. I think the established parties keep growing in all the worst ways, and I don’t think any decent candidate would be able to be successful in this setting. Would happily work with voters to figure out a path forward.

And why are the established parties doing this? Why is it in their interest to keep advancing terrible candidates?

I dunno. I kinda do think voters are the problem. Or at least a link in a chain of problems, the next link up being corporate controlled media.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#280

Post by ricardobeat »

simianparrot wrote: post #57
ricardobeat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All things considered I think that’s a strong yes. Open borders, free trade, technological collaboration, and shared health, industry and consumer regulations help accelerate economic development. Can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

First two have been utter disasters however, and are directly affecting people on a daily basis now. Here in Scandinavia it’s coming to a head but it’s a similar story further south, in Germany in particular.

Immigration, which I assume is what you’re hinting at, has nothing to do with open borders between EU states.
Post reply on HN