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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

#321
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how aware they are of the damage to the EU's reputation that they're continually creating by repeatedly bringing this back I think this theme of the EU, this lack of taboo against continually bringing unwanted laws until they pass by fatigue, it may well be the death of the institution as a whole. every time they try, every time people hear about it, more and more think worse of the EU, and unlike most weste…

You describe the EU as an undemocratic institution that brings about unwanted laws by fatigue, I understand that perspective. You also say that the collapse of the EU would be insanely sad. I also understand that perspective. What I don't understand is how somebody could have both of these points of view at once, in the same comment no less.

first of all, not everything is good or bad. the EU does masses of good and is probably [read: definitely] the most mature and healthy legislative body governing >100m population ever to have existed

chat control has not passed, and undoubtedly will not pass in any deeply unpalatable state. this is the point of the unanimity requirement of the EU. most likely in the end we will get some kind of law giving additional search powers to police, perhaps allowing them to remotely "switch on" chat scanning for a suspect via specific court order, comparably to how they compromised on facial recognition

secondly, to agree with the sibling comment, I look at the results, not the process. the EU has incredible results by anyone's measure, and perhaps their processes need a tweak or two, but this "it must be ultra-democracy or I don't want it" attitude just feels overly simplistic, and likely driven by ideological commitments to other things the EU opposes

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

#322
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being downvoted is not remotely "censorship"

It makes the opinion hidden from the vast majority of visitors, except those who go out of their way to both have an account and showdead.

It is in every appreciable way censorship via unaccountable mob. It's censorship in a way that Reddit's downvote isn't, because Reddit allows anonymous users to read downvoted posts - or at least did the last time I checked.

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

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely think the public sector being a bit hopeless is a major check on tyranny in the UK. Ofcom (the communications regulator charged with imposing the censorship laws) literally maintains a public list of non-compliant websites that anyone who doesn't want to give their ID to a shady offshore firm can browse for example.

> can browse for example can't browse?

No, "can" is correct. It is neither illegal nor, currently, technically restricted to browse non-compliant websites. So

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

#324
post #316
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the Greens have chosen to embrace their own form of populist lunacy. Well, populist lunacy is how Reform got so popular, so I can see why it would be tempting for the Green party. Main thing that's weird right now with the UK is that because it's first-past-the-post and the current polling is Reform:~29%, Lib/Lab/Con/Green:~16%, I would not be surprised by any of these parties forming a minority government nor…

Out of curiosity, which of Reform's policies are "lunacy"? Removing the 2 child benefit cap? Increasing NHS spending? Returning to New Labour levels of net immigration, being a country with borders? > That said I will find it very very funny if the Conservative party ends up last from that list. At least we agree on that. The Tories deserve to be confined to the dustbin of history.

Removing ILR for example?

Also the small possibility of being a Russian asset of course.

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

#325
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a bit more polished: https://tryquiet.org/ But some friction is to be expected.

More? You sure not mean less? SimpleX, and especially Tox, are much more mature. They're not newcomers. They are only lacking in users, as they don't have the marketing resources companies like Slack or Discord do.

I have never heard of the ones you mentioned so it's indeed a marketing problem. I've looked at the sites and made a quick judgement.

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

#326

How they're packaging it now? Terrorism? Child porn? Russian agents? Either way politicians prefer to push unpopular stuff like this via the EU because the responsibility gets muddied - "we didn't want it, the EU regulation requires us to spy on you!".

> Child porn? This, the article says so in the first paragraph. The bullshit justification hasn't change in the last couple of years afaik.

Why change what works?

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The irony is that this is all because the EU was specifically designed to not supercede its member states. In other words, they repeated the same mistake[0] the US did. Fixing it - i.e. ditching all the appointed positions that are responsive to nation states only - would amount to federalizing the EU.

"But why can't we just leave the EU to stop this" - too late. Most EU countries have enough intra-EU migration and trade to make leaving unthinkable. The UK was a special case - and, ironically enough, actually responsible for some of the EU's worst decisions.

Furthermore, this isn't exactly an EU exclusive problem. Every supranational organization that is responsive to member states and not individual voters is a policy laundering mechanism. Ask yourself: where's your representation in the WTO, and when did you vote for them? The sum of democracy and democracy is dictatorship. Any governing body that does not respect all of its voters equally is ripe for subsumption by people who do not respect them at all.

[0] Originally, US senators were appointed by state governors. This eventually resulted in everyone voting for whatever governor promised to appoint the senator the voter wanted. Which is sort of like throwing away your gubernatorial vote for a senatorial one. This is why we amended the constitution to allow direct election of senators, and I hold that any sovereign nation that makes the mistake of appointed politicians will inevitably have to either abandon it or fail.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The culprit is correct. If the EU exists for political laundering, then it is the organisation which is harmful to the people's interests. Nobody voted for any of these heads of states on a platform of enacting Chat Control. That was not on the ballot or the platform of any party in any individual EU country. If it was, they would not have voted for it. If an individual party tried to initiate a chat control bill in…

You provide your own counterexample. The UK left the EU and all it got for it was a quicker passing of it's "online safety" nonsense with none of the checks and balances (EU parliament, ECHR) that would stop it in the EU.

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

#329
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Mean tweets' is such an empty meaning. Come with examples. It is on paper very easy to break the law via speech. If I post something here about how I want to reward a murder on a certain politician (or want to do it myself), I can guarantee you the police would be involved. And rightfully so. Freedom of speech is about pre-moderation. It doesn't mean your actions do not have consequences. If you yell fire in a theat…

>doesn't mean your actions do not have consequences YES IT DOES THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT You obviously do not believe in freedom of speech as defined by US law. You are conflating extremely narrow exceptions with broad politically motivated violations of freedom of political speech

The US Constitution. What a beautiful piece of paper, such a nice theory. Yet your current president is circumventing Congress. Your president is bullying states. You don't even have a functional popular vote. Your SCOTUS is dysfunctional. And, this 1st amendment, is that why peaceful protestors got shot by rubber bullets when they were protesting against the war in Iraq? Which, as it turned out, was started for dishonest reasons. You folks also were first with DMCA. Yet we don't have BS like filibuster and gerrymandering.

There's a good reason why on every half-serious index about freedom of speech or freedom of press, the best countries are Scandinavian and Switzerland, followed by West-Europe. And that data is from before the current orangutan is in office.

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

#330
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is "Red Queen" concept, constant battle between society and state (Leviathan). State always drives towards despotism and total control, society always drives to anarchy, and when there's balance, then you have Switzerland, otherwise slide towards Somali or Russia. https://news.mit.edu/2019/narrow-corridor-acemoglu-liberty-0...

Hard to maintain a balance when the State, by definition, has monopoly over violence, and State interests have the propaganda machine of mass-media on their side; the media with their pathetic justification that "we're only reporting the news!" just repeat and perpetuate bullshit rhetoric. The real problem is that the State tends to grow like a cancer. When it gets to a point that it lords over tens or hundreds of mi…

Until someone implements Jim Bell's ideas using encryption algorithms, distributed networks, and the cryptocurrencies, then there will be no government. Perhaps there won't be one anywhere. Perhaps we'll really miss the good old days.
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