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European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

patrick-breyer.de

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Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#341

Post by azernik »

briefcomment wrote: post #296
azernik wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We assign those rights as a society and, more relevantly here, as a political system. The people who draft our constitutions and (like for all political norms) those who create our political discourse have more influence in defining them than the general population, but these norms have to be agreed to by a fairly large swathe of society to be effective.

> fairly large swathe of society I don't think a majority necessarily carries power. The uber rich and intelligence agencies carry far more power than any mass of citizens.

a) I said "fairly large swathe"

b) Elites exert control by persuasion; they control the discourse, they organize larger movements, &c. There are still limits to what popular opinion will go along with.

c) Intelligence agencies are, in most rich democratic countries, not a major lever of political power. Government economic institutions, police, courts, and the like are much more influential in both day-to-day lives and in shaping popular conceptions of the "rules of the game".

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#342

Post by rknintiet »

sneak wrote: post #174
graeme wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the purposes of an eu law requiring facebook to scan messages, facebook can’t scan icloud backups.

Any law that the EU can apply to Facebook to scan messages readable by Facebook that transit Facebook's service, the EU can apply to Apple to scan messages readable by Apple that transit Apple's service.

Would apple/google be able to comb through that data though? WhatsApp backups are not e2e encrypted, but they're still encrypted with a key generated by Facebook the moment you login to your account, and probably refreshed periodically. Technically, Facebook would be the only one capable of turning the encrypted backup into plaintext, so if google wanted to do something with your messages backup it would have to knock at Facebook's door first.

This kind of cooperation is definitely illegal in this moment and I'm nut sure future legislation will require services to set up persistent encryption keys exchange among services so that a backup file that is supposed to be encrypted on a cloud storage can be continually scanned for harmful/unlawful content by another service. If the EU or any government wanted to set up such kind of monitoring, they will require these services to adapt in a way that these kind of gimmicks with backups and encryption keys are not needed

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#343

Post by vixen99 »

WalterBright wrote: post #309
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fundamental rights Genuine question because I never understand what people mean when they use that phrase: how is a right fundamental? Does the cold universe assign them to us or do a set of people agree such-and-such are fundamental. If the latter, were the same rights fundamental 20,000 years ago? (Because if they are fundamental, they should stretch back to early man… earlier than even 20,000 years ago)

> how is a right fundamental? They are inalienable and bestowed by their Creator. I.e. they are part of the innate nature of human beings. Governments can either protect those rights or abrogate them - it cannot invent them. And yes, they stretch back to when humans became human. Though it took a while for people to formally recognize them.

I have no rights unless others recognize and at least tacitly agree that they have obligations with respect to those rights.

As the only person left in the universe (after some cataclysm), you'd be left with obligations but no rights. The obligations would include those that arise from within yourself to prevail and try to survive as best you can. Rights? Well, who would be granting those? The innate bit refers to obligations but not rights.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#344

Post by exporectomy »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #302
briefcomment wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No rights are objectively fundamental. It's subjective. If people in power don't agree to act as though certain rights are fundamental, they cease to be enforced, even if lip service is paid.

Excellent point. So I’ll ignore “fundamental right” next time I read it. I note that the United States uses “inalienable rights”, meaning ones which can’t be given or taken away. The only things that can’t be given or taken from me without a lobotomy are my education and internal thoughts and beliefs (that includes things like self-worth and dignity).

Inalienable is just as worthless a fundamental. Obviously the US govt takes away its citizens' rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness through actions such as death penalty, imprisonment, compulsory military draft, and all kinds of less severe restrictions for criminals and suspects.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#345

Post by estaseuropano »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #336
estaseuropano wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thai comment makes no sense whatsoever and i do wonder what absurd world you imagine. This law gives companies in the EU the legal grounds to do some scanning measures, it is neither an obligation to do so, nor when companies do so is anyone checking whether you, a person outside the EU, happen to have European ancestors. Logically of course that applies to residents, as would the laws in any other place.

I’m just trying to imagine this world, thanks. It’s absurd enough without me absurdifying it further. Ok so what you are saying is any users whatsoever of EU based email providers can be subject to companies doing some scanning if they wish to. Since most multinationals will have European offices, it might apply to every provider and therefore pretty much everyone.

How this will play out is to be seen. But in many places this is already possible - see US and AU. Normally it applies to your local legal context, so if they are a multinational and have an EU branch they likely already have the servers separate to respect GDPR.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#346

Post by estaseuropano »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #288
estaseuropano wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its more complex than this. You cant put complex questions to simple referendum as a yes/no question (see brexit). Law making requires compromise and seeing the whole picture and its very easy to get people to say yes (or no) just depending on how you frame the question. Great example is maternity leave: amazing thing, exists across Europe for a length of 4 to 36 months. In some countries moms can take nearly three y…

People's knowledge in a field doesn't get outdated in just 3 years. Even in Javascript world. Any lawyer, social worker, data scientist, product owner, pharmacist, bank manager, midwive, content writer, day care worker or nurse will be perfectly capable of picking up from where they left off after 3 years.

You might not like that conclusion but the data is clear

https://hbr.org/2018/09/do-longer-maternity-leaves-hurt-wome...

My point was this is complex, policy has side effects and referenda will not necessarily be able to answer such questions. The world is too complex to be answered by occasional yes/no questions

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#347

Post by fsflover »

rrix2 wrote: post #183
fsflover wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care about it, switch to Librem 5 or Pinephone.

Neither of these can access the financial services provided by my bank nor the infrastructure provided by my city

Seems like your government supports the duopoly, which you should fight against.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#348

Post by DocTomoe »

Dah00n wrote: post #66
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Europe will allow end-to-end for much longer?

Yes. Saying otherwise is hyperbolic. The European Commission uses and recommends Signal themselves. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observato...

That only means that the EU is confident it can break Signal's encryption if the need arises.

Which, of course, is actually an argument AGAINST using Signal.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#349

Post by DocTomoe »

cvwright wrote: post #157
BelenusMordred wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metadata hosted on Facebook's servers is worth more than the actual content.

People keep repeating this trope about metadata being worth more than content. Where does this come from? I can understand that metadata is valuable -- of course it is. You can learn a lot from metadata. But more valuable than the actual content ? Give me a break. Something can be bad without being literally the worst thing ever. Pointless exaggeration like this does nothing for the cause of privacy.

The article is a bit older, but metadata analytics can be used to "unveil" the key conspirators that led to what we today know as the "American Revolution"[1] - please note how little data they use to find out who calls the shots, and whom you might want to disappear if you wanted to keep the colonies closely aligned with George III.

Widespread enough, this can be used to find dissidents today, suppressing ethically legitimate uprisings against injustice.

[1] https://blog.wolfram.com/2017/06/29/analyzing-social-network...

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#350

Post by imtringued »

WalterBright wrote: post #310
briefcomment wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No rights are objectively fundamental. It's subjective. If people in power don't agree to act as though certain rights are fundamental, they cease to be enforced, even if lip service is paid.

If governments bestow rights, then the citizens have no business revolting against an oppressive government.

Because the government would never bestow them with the right to overthrow it?
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