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

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

#371

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

JohnLocke4 wrote: post #331
txrx0000 wrote: post #287

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…

>You can't even organize a resistance because all channels of communication are monitored. One of the awful things about this proposed legislation is that what I quoted you saying is not true. Software like PGP is easy to use, and criminals already do. The government has absolutely no possibility of breaking RSA the way things are now, and as such scanning all messages will do nothing other than prove more definitive…

Both apple and android are teeing their infra up to support deleting apps they don’t like. Windows is moving towards e2e attestation, and Mac is basically already there. Once that’s all done, you just need to enforce hardware manufacturers boot only into ‘trusted’ operating systems. No more Linux. No more unsigned execution. No more encryption.

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

#372

Post by AAAAaccountAAAA »

Aloisius wrote: post #106
okanat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has the Charter of Fundamental rights which is a part of the Treaty of Lisbon which is the constitutional basis of EU: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Right... In the charter, the protection of personal data and privacy is a recognized right. So chat control is also probably against the EU law.

Both the right to privacy and the right to protection of personal data appear to have pretty big exemptions for government. The right to private communications was modified by the ECHR to give an exemption for prevention of crime/protection of morals/etc.[1] and the right to protection of personal data exempts any legitimate basis laid down by law[2]. I imagine they'd be able to figure out some form of Chat Control t…

> I imagine they'd be able to figure out some form of Chat Control that passed legal muster. Perhaps a reduced version of Chat Control, say, demanding secret key escrow, but only demanding data access/scans of those suspected of a crime rather than everyone.

Isn't that pretty much excatly how it is done in Russia, which was ruled by ECHR to be illegal[0]?

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-230854%...

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

#373

Post by jMyles »

palata wrote: post #352
jMyles wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're seriously suggesting that any policy that doesn't 100% eliminate a problem is a joke? I think a more charitable reading is that any policy that doesn't 100% _target_ a problem is a joke. This policy doesn't have a plausible way that it will protect children from being victimized, so I think it's reasonable to remove the "think of the children" cloak it's wearing and assess it on the merits of whether encrypt…

> This policy doesn't have a plausible way that it will protect children from being victimized Of course it does. "It will detect and report messages from predators to children, therefore preventing the child to get to the point where they send revealing pictures or meet the predator in person". Done.

Well, maybe the word "plausible" is doing too much work in my statement.

Most abuse happens from people known to the child, and of that portion, most are family members. It seems like there is sufficient opportunity in-person comms to route around this limitation.

Moreover, even the communications that do happen online can still easily happen through encrypted media; presumably the perpetrators will simply move to other ways of communicating. And kids, at least kids over 10 or so, don't seem like a demographic particularly likely to follow this law anyhow.

There's another nuance worth considering: by and large, parents _want_ their kids to have access to encrypted communications. I'll happily assist my kiddo in maintaining good opsec - that's much more important to me than some silly and uninformed policy decision being made far away by people I've never met.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucy...

So, the kids are still going to be where the encrypted comms are. I still think it's reasonable to say that the protections offered to kids by criminalizing encryption are implausible.

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

#374

Post by mapontosevenths »

hollerith wrote: post #362
mapontosevenths wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The guns of US citizens have so far prevented this kind of government-led mass citizen genocide from happening. No they haven't. Our system of checks and balances has. At no point has there been a civil war in which the US's citizens attempted to fight back against the US military. If there were, the citizens would lose without even presenting a challenge.

>the citizens would lose without even presenting a challenge. That's not true. The US Army spent 20 years and trillions of dollars trying to impose regime change on Afghanistan, but were defeated by a group (the Taliban) that had very little military capability beyond men with rifles and some explosives to make improvised bombs. (Yes, they also had decades-old weapons with which to shoot down helicopters.) Algeria's…

The Afghanistan bit is over simplified isn't it? My understanding is that the US military successfully imposed regime change between 2001-2003. I doubt those rifles slowed the tanks and bombers much at all.

The fact that we packed up and left eventually doesn't really change the fact that the US rolled over the men with guns like they weren't there in the early 2000's.

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

#375

Post by amarant »

palata wrote: post #256
amarant wrote: post #234

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?

Are least where I'm from, there are pretty strong laws against reading snailmail post of others. To this day, any law enforcement that tries to open people's snail mail will laughed out of the courtroom, and quite possibly out of their jobs too!

Today nobody uses snail mail. This proposal is the equivalent of proposing to read everyone's private letters back in the day.

Technical details are technical details

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

#376

Post by varispeed »

varispeed wrote: post #125

To me this is simply an act of terrorism. People who are behind those proposals should be charged and face trial. There is no excuse for this and it is a stain on EU history for even letting this go so far. Anyone proposing this should not only be sacked but also referred to de-radicalisation / anti-terrorism programme in their country and forever banned from holding any kind of public sector office. There is no excu…

Why downvote? Because the terrorists wear suits, speak in committees, are mostly white, and there’s no blood on the floor (yet)? The method is different, but the aim is the same: intimidation and control of a population for political ends.

If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance.

Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.

The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.

It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.

The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.

You can argue legality if you like, but the substance matches the textbook definition.

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

#377

Post by gambiting »

nickslaughter02 wrote: post #370
gambiting wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of course never happened, as each member country retains full sovereignty in every possible way you can think of, which is actually fully enshrined in the way EU works.

> Which of course never happened, as each member country retains full sovereignty in every possible way you can think of, which is actually fully enshrined in the way EU works. Which of course is false. > The principle was derived from an interpretation of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself.…

And if you read literally one paragraph from the bit that you quoted:

"The majority of national courts have generally recognized and accepted this principle, except for the part where European law outranks a member state's constitution. As a result, national constitutional courts have also reserved the right to review the conformity of EU law with national constitutional law"

And guess why and how they are able to do that - that's right, by retaining full sovereignty of their own justice systems. Even obeying rulings of the ECHR is purely a matter of courtesy more than anything, as neither EU nor ECHR have any enforcement mechanism beyond withholding funding, as many EU member states have proven time and time and time again.

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

#378

Post by nickslaughter02 »

gambiting wrote: post #377
nickslaughter02 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which of course never happened, as each member country retains full sovereignty in every possible way you can think of, which is actually fully enshrined in the way EU works. Which of course is false. > The principle was derived from an interpretation of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself.…

And if you read literally one paragraph from the bit that you quoted: "The majority of national courts have generally recognized and accepted this principle, except for the part where European law outranks a member state's constitution. As a result, national constitutional courts have also reserved the right to review the conformity of EU law with national constitutional law" And guess why and how they are able to do…

I'm looking forward to seeing this in practice when Chat Control passes.

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

#379

Post by Saline9515 »

palata wrote: post #327
EasyMark wrote: post #83

My answer to "think of the children" is "I am thinking of the children" * of their rights to privacy * their right to live in a democracy * the value of warrant based search vs nazi SS style * I want them to enjoy at -least- as much privacy as I currently enjoy * I don't want rando creeps reading their personal messages and keeping them forever, there's a reason memory fades, it lets us grow as people

Take it like this: your phone already "reads" absolutely everything you put on that phone. Apple or Google could do anything they want with that, but you trust them. You trust that they don't send everything that goes into your phone to their servers. ChatControl would run locally on your phone. It would compare the images that you receive/send to a list of illegal images, and if you happen to deal with one of them,…

Because it's closed source so you have no idea of what is happening. You can then scan for other things, such as "hate speech", or "tax evasion" and then the slope becomes more slippery than a lube party on a vinyl sheet, and Kim Jong Un awaits you at the Ski Bar at the bottom.

Those passive surveillance systems have a chilling effect on democracy, just like mandatory ID on social media, and provide politicians a lever so convenient that you know that it will be used, especially in the EU.

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

#380

Post by MaKey »

shuckles wrote: post #144
bapak wrote: post #135

Where is Apple in all of this? They're such proponents of privacy that they've actively started encrypting as much as possible for decades but now that the EU is about to break all that they're silent. They raised such a fuss when the FBI asked to decrypt that single iPhone years ago, but now that millions are on the line... nothing?

When Apple attempted to anticipate these laws and propose a system which tried to navigate a compromise, the “pro-privacy” faction was so politically dumb they spread FUD about it and actively made sure no reasonable compromise could ever be reached. Now the public with reap what these advocates have sowed, good and hard. With regards to the FBI incident, Apple said at the beginning of their statement, “This moment c…

What would you call a "reasonable compromise" between encryption and privacy?
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