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The disguised return of EU Chat Control

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Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#331

Post by tock »

criley2 wrote: post #328
tock wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European businesses are uncompetitive because of excess regulation. Not the ultra wealthy having to pay more tax. I'm pointing out they have wealth tax and haven't turned into a communist hellhole. None of the things you complain about whether its Europe refusing to build up their military or its business competitiveness is because of wealth tax. The USA has an annual property tax based on the properties value and is…

>Your entire argument is that 900 people out of 350,000,000 people in the US having to pay more tax is going to drive the US into the ground. Talk about a low-faith strawman! Let me eviscerate this garbage argument. The 900 billionaires in America control around $7.8 trillion USD in assets (US yearly GDP is over $30 trillion, for reference) Let's tax 1% of that yearly, meaning we just gained $78 billion dollars per y…

> Let's tax 1% of that yearly, meaning we just gained $78 billion dollars per year! Congrats, with a $7 trillion yearly federal budget, your +$78 billion covers about 1% of federal spending.

Excellent point. I'm glad you see how much of a pittance 1% annually is. Though I've made the same point before(remember I said 1% of 1B is just 10M, thats a joke for billionaires). Increase the % as you wish. 1% does nothing for inequality given stock gains are far higher yearly.

My whole point is that its a problem that needs to be solved. How we can solve it is a great thing to discuss. Your entire argument so far is that it can't be solved. Which I don't agree with.

And for some reason you just ignore some points. eg. property taxes: "in 2023, approximately $363 billion in property taxes was collected on single-family homes across the United States. Property taxes generally account for about 10-11% of total U.S. tax revenue.". You said "Most middle class folks would never end up owning their home.". Turns out thats not true.

Tax the billionaires. You seem to think the current trend is bad as well. You just happen to think my suggestions to fix it is bad. That's fine. But I think its a better constructive use of your time trying to think of better ideas than give up.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#332

Post by rightbyte »

latchup wrote: post #217
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

Switzerland is not in the EU.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#333

Post by binary132 »

pokot0 wrote: post #209
binary132 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’m taking issue with is that you said you never really cared about privacy. I care about my family’s privacy. I’m not asking you to care about yours. I’m sorry you’ve given up on something that wasn’t important to you anyway, or whatever.

I think you misunderstood him for me. Regardless, giving up is not something I mentioned. You guys just inferred it. I just feel we need to approach the battle very differently. What we have been doing it's not working.

it’s hard to take that at face value when you also said privacy in and of itself is not that important to you. If you want to build a glass bathroom, be my guest, but I’ll keep putting up better walls for me and mine

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#334

Post by qnleigh »

b112 wrote: post #306
Humorist2290 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably a reference to the report mentioned in this article from September https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-chat-control-false-reports... According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), 99,375 of the 205,728 reports forwarded by the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) were not criminally relevant, an error rate of 48.3%. This is a rise from 2023, when the number of false…

I feel this is a good place to add something... I recall a half decade back, there was discussion of the quit rate of employees, maybe Facebook?, due to literal mental trauma from having to look at and validate pedophile flagged images. Understand there is pedophilia, then there's horribly violent, next level abusive pedophilia. I used to work in a department where, adjacently, the RCMP were doing the same. They coul…

I read about that here: https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup

This remains one of the best things I've found on HN.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#335

Post by pona-a »

intended wrote: post #310
rendaw wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the GP math is wrong. But still, is this good? So 14 cases are referred to law enforcement. They catch 7 people doing really terrible things, and they also catch 7 who are innocent. The police are notorious for treating weak signals as strong and forging causes for suspicion, terrorizing suspects, getting them fired from their job, killing their pets, upending their lives, etc. If you ruin as many lives as yo…

Yes, this is good. I urge anyone who thinks otherwise to wade into this arena themselves and see what they find. It is incredibly easy to be on the sidelines and hold an opinion. It is your right to do so. However if even a tiny bit of you is the kind of person who is driven to understand, and to hold opinions based on defensible positions, do your legwork. Personally, I keep an arms length from the child safety side…

Why does the emotional intensity of the crime justify accepting massive collateral damage to innocent people? It's an appeal to trauma. Why can't we turn the tables on this?

Have you been woken up at 3 AM by police battering down your door? Had your home torn apart, computers seized, children screaming? Waited months for an apology that never comes while your name sits in search results next to 'investigation'?

I urge anyone who thinks aggressive enforcement is worth the cost to wade into this arena themselves and see what they find.

Personally, I keep an arm's length from these stories, simply because I know my tolerances. But if even a tiny bit of you is driven to understand and hold opinions based on defensible positions, do your legwork.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#336

Post by criley2 »

tock wrote: post #331
criley2 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your entire argument is that 900 people out of 350,000,000 people in the US having to pay more tax is going to drive the US into the ground. Talk about a low-faith strawman! Let me eviscerate this garbage argument. The 900 billionaires in America control around $7.8 trillion USD in assets (US yearly GDP is over $30 trillion, for reference) Let's tax 1% of that yearly, meaning we just gained $78 billion dollars per y…

> Let's tax 1% of that yearly, meaning we just gained $78 billion dollars per year! Congrats, with a $7 trillion yearly federal budget, your +$78 billion covers about 1% of federal spending. Excellent point. I'm glad you see how much of a pittance 1% annually is. Though I've made the same point before(remember I said 1% of 1B is just 10M, thats a joke for billionaires). Increase the % as you wish. 1% does nothing for…

>Increase the % as you wish.

1% is your number. Feel free to tell me the magical wealth tax % that fixes all income inequality and maintains strong ability to own private businesses. This is your argument and it's lazy to tell me to do your work for you.

>My whole point is that its a problem that needs to be solved. How we can solve it is a great thing to discuss. Your entire argument so far is that it can't be solved. Which I don't agree with.

Yes, I think that your wealth tax cannot solve the problem unless it tips away from capitalism towards socialism, e.g. destroy billionaires ability to have control over private industry and broaden the base of ownership or make it public. Maybe you have a magical % wealth tax that fixes everything, I'll wait for your thesis.

>And for some reason you just ignore some points. eg. property taxes: "in 2023, approximately $363 billion in property taxes was collected on single-family homes across the United States. Property taxes generally account for about 10-11% of total U.S. tax revenue.". You said "Most middle class folks would never end up owning their home.". Turns out thats not true.

This is not a place to have expansive multi-point debates. I'm not ignoring anything, I'm having targeted discussions on major points. Again, property taxes are NOT universal in the US and are largely balanced by income taxes. States with high property taxes generally have low/no income taxes and vice versa. And yes, property taxes have had a strong effect in lowering home ownership. In China, over 70% of millenials own a home (no property taxes). In America, less than half of millenials own homes (high property taxes).

Another point I neglected to reply to because these replies get way too long: European regulation is bad on businesses because corrupt billionaires aren't in place to stop it. Can't you see that regulation and private power go hand in hand? A government strong enough to force billionaires to not get richer and instead spread the wealth is a government strong enough to regulate the heck out of businesses. Given power, it will be used.

>Tax the billionaires. You seem to think the current trend is bad as well. You just happen to think my suggestions to fix it is bad. That's fine. But I think its a better constructive use of your time trying to think of better ideas than give up.

We do tax billionaires and the wealthy! The top 1% of Americans pay 25% of all revenue. The bottom 50% pay roughly 3% of all revenue.

Please forward your taxation thesis that 1) solves wealth inequality 2) preserves the ability to own large businesses. And no, forcing a business owner to sell their shares to retail investors and hedge funds does not preserve business ownership, it guarantees that citizens will eventually be forced out of their own businesses that they start.

My thesis is simple: Skin the cat. Blow up their ownership. Prevent them from owning large businesses. Use the power of government to jail them and disappear them until they bow before a government of the people. Or accept the system for what it is. But half measures? Fiddling with minor taxation numbers? Get real, that's controlled opposition that prolongs their reign.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#338

Post by andix »

AlgebraFox wrote: post #298
psychoslave wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But MEP will be exempted, so they can continue to use Signal. Rules for thy.

No. Signal will pull out their services from EU. Nobody will be able to download or access Signal.

I don't think they will actively "pull" their services. They are based in the US, and don't specifically target EU customers. I guess they just won't comply and might be blocked.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#339

Post by nicce »

Snild wrote: post #320
xcf_seetan wrote: post #314

How about applying this kind of surveillance to the government? After all we are paying for them to rules us, so why not publish all government, politicians, law enforcement, military messages for everyone to read? Why everybody must be treated as a criminal, because they cant do their job of keeping us safe?

We have that in Sweden and Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_public_access_to_... The principle says that information is non-confidential by default, rather than the other way around. We can request almost any information held by government agencies, including copies of communication like email and documents. One thing that has surprised European acquaintances is the fact that this includes governme…

Current Finnish governent is trying hard to hide what they can, unfortunately.

Re: The disguised return of EU Chat Control

#340

Post by Muromec »

pcrh wrote: post #329
bergfest wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm wondering too. I still hold out hope that the EU and the ECJ cannot override the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitutions of the individual member states. It is generally assumed that the ECJ has ultimate precedence over national constitutional courts, but I have my doubts. As a thought experiment, imagine it wasn't the EU, but the Chinese CCP with whom the treaties were concluded. It then q…

In this regard, note that the EU can only propose legislation that falls under one of its "competences". For example, national militaries, income tax, education, most of foreign policy, etc, do not fall under EU control. The ECHR itself is independent of the EU, it is national governments that have signed up to this treaty. So perhaps the EU institutions do not need to directly refer to the ECHR, only national govern…

>So perhaps the EU institutions do not need to directly refer to the ECHR, only national governments should???

Correct. EU is not a party of the convention, member states are, so EU law can be ruled on by ECJ and national law and actions of national governments by ECHR.

Then at the end of the day it's the national government that would look at your chats and "I'm just following EU law" would not be an especially great excuse for the ECHR court.

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