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ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

metalhearf.fr

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Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on the opinions of 9 very specific individuals. How the text and its commas might be interpreted by you or I today is irrelevant.

But you chose to tell us about your interpretation. :-) I had less the current legal interpretation and more the meaning at the time of writing down, as it would reveal itself in current text, in mind, which is relevant to this argument.

I see the conversation differently.

KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is not clear.

GLdRH said "Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works splendidly".

I said that modifying the literal text requires going through the amendment process.

You said "Comma rules change over time."

I reiterated that the literal text does not change except through the amendment process, and also noted that fundamentally the literal words don't matter much as it's up to a majority of the Supreme Court how to interpret any of it.

You then brought up modern language usages of commas.

I replied that how you or I today interpret the text is irrelevant because only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.

At no point in this conversation have I expressed a specific interpretation of the text, so your indication that I chose to tell the discussion about my interpretation seems weird and maybe you're misreading usernames somewhere along the way.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#302
post #3

I think the challenge for society here is not to simply reject attempts like this, but how to prevent them from being pushed over and over until a specific context allows it to be approved.

The prevention has to be in the underlying layer of physics / math / the internet such that the state is _unable _ to make (or at least enforce) such laws.

We need to accept and celebrate a world in which the capabilities of states are constrained by our innovations, not merely the extremely occasional votes we cast.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#303
post #282
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> if you can read all communications But you can't. You can legally require messages to implement client side scanning before the encryption happens or add some backdoor keys and hope they don't leak. Since cryptography is known anybody can always just create messengers that just don't implement that requirement. If you sexually abuse children the hurdle to illegally running a non-backdoored messenger seems pretty lo…

> But you can't.

Be careful what you wish for. We could enforce client-side scanning on the OS. Everything that appears on the screen is scanned and reported.

> If you sexually abuse children the hurdle to illegally running a non-backdoored messenger seems pretty low to me.

How do you contact children on mainstream messengers if you can't use mainstream messengers?

Not to mention that most people consuming CSAM are not technically savvy. It is known that such material goes through mainstream messengers.

> Only that surveilling your entire population minus the criminals has dire consequences for a free society.

Again: I am against ChatControl. We fundamentally cannot know what is running in this client side scanner, and that makes it a risk.

But saying that it won't ever catch a single criminal is not a valid argument. You won't convince politicians to vote against ChatControl with such claims.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#304
post #273
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. Anyone who has the smallest clue would use Signal for anything sensitive. Of course people would use Signal to talk about illegal stuff. I am against ChatControl. But I am amazed by all the bullshit arguments that people find to criticise ChatControl. If you have more control, obviously it's easier to track criminals. That's not the question at all. The question is: what is the cost to society? A fe…

> A few decades ago, all communications were unencrypted and people were fine. A few decades ago, a user base using whatever was available was about 99% lower than now. As well as governments were so illiterate that they could not read with the tech they had even those unencrypted messages.

Snowden was more than a decade ago. The NSA was recording everything.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#305
post #179

From the article, the current flavor of "threat" this is being positioned to fight is CSAM. Does anyone believe that predators commit those heinous offenses because of the availability of encrypted channels to distribute those products of their crimes? I sure don't. The materials exist because of predators' access to children, which these surveillance measures won't solve. Best case scenario (and this is wildly optim…

This has nothing to do with csam and arguing that point is on purpose, to distract people and the politicians can say “xp84 supports child pornography!” It has everything to do with censorship and complete control over people’s ability to communicate. Politicians hate free speech and they want to control their citizens completely including their thoughts. This is true evil.

But politicians are - in general - neither evil, nor do they have any real incentive to ”control citizens’ thoughts”. It doesn’t make sense. They can be gullible. Non-Technical. Owned by lobbyists. Under pressure to deliver on the apparent problem of the day (csam, terror, whatever). But I don’t think there is a general crusade against privacy. That’s why I think it’s so infuriating: I’m sure it’s not even deliberately dismantling privacy. They’re doing it blindly.

This is pushed by parties that have a good track record of preserving integrity. That’s why it’s so surprising.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#306
post #299

Dear citizens of the EU: If this gets pushed through, you will gradually lose control of your government much like how the people of the UK already lost control of theirs. What are you going to do when the government's interests inevitably drift out of alignment with yours? Start a political movement? You will have the police knocking on your door for criticizing the establishment. Start a revolution? You have no wea…

> Start a revolution? You have no weapons. LOL. People nowadays don't start revolutions not because of weapons or lack thereof. It's because they're thoroughly entertained and fed; even the entire political circus is a sort of morbid reality show: people tune in to the news to shake their head in disgust at today's latest antics, and will do so tomorrow, because it's all panem et circenses for grown-ups. The Internet…

> and reading anarchist philosophy

That's literally how we got here. People got a taste of unmitigated unprecedented freedom online for the last three decades, and found it so gross that they allowed things to swing the other way.

Even one decade ago, the threat of SOPA/PIPA rallied the internet successfully. Just over a decade later, we're at the point of allowing age verification, for morality's sake, without hardly a peep. The cypherpunks are losing, hard, and honestly, deserve failure for how well their utopia turned out.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#307
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. Anyone who has the smallest clue would use Signal for anything sensitive. Of course people would use Signal to talk about illegal stuff. I am against ChatControl. But I am amazed by all the bullshit arguments that people find to criticise ChatControl. If you have more control, obviously it's easier to track criminals. That's not the question at all. The question is: what is the cost to society? A fe…

So ChatControl means that e.g. Signal would be obligated to automatically scan pictures and messages sent for CSAM. This is beyond encryption. And if they were to actually do that, it would mean it's non sensical for people spreading this material to use it as they would immediately be caught, so they would just use other tools. But people are talking about both - the ridiculousness of the premise that this would hel…

So what? If predators cannot talk to children over SnapChat, that's a win, wouldn't you say?

The only valid argument I see against ChatControl is that fundamentally, you cannot know what it is reporting. It's not like if there would be an open source list of illegal material together with the hashes, right?

If you cannot audit what is being reporting (with whatever means necessary to make sure it is doing what it should be doing), then whoever controls it could abuse it.

That's the problem. That's the reason not to implement it. But it's completely overwhelmed by the flood of invalid arguments.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#308
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cost of the proposal is "let's throw democracy under the bus" as it is in this case, it better be damn close to 100% effective to be worth it! I have a hard time imagining this will be more than 10% effective. This proposal is a joke

A few decades ago, all communications were unencrypted. Would you say that democracies did not exist then?

A few decades ago, few communications were tracked. When everything is tracked (as it is now), the only way to have privacy is with encryption.

Re: ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in encrypted apps

#310
post #274
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. Anyone who has the smallest clue would use Signal for anything sensitive. Of course people would use Signal to talk about illegal stuff. I am against ChatControl. But I am amazed by all the bullshit arguments that people find to criticise ChatControl. If you have more control, obviously it's easier to track criminals. That's not the question at all. The question is: what is the cost to society? A fe…

All communications were unencrypted because encrypting them would have incurred unduly burdensome processing. Nowadays computers can encrypt and decrypt on the fly for virtually free.

Sure. Still people considered themselves free and living in democracies. Why wouldn't it be the case today?
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