European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication • Hacker News Board

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#381

Post by thatguy0900 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 12:59 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #44

thatguy0900 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm assuming that's one of the things that total pervasive surveillance and control of communication is meant to address.

Seems like acting with that intent with this power is an easy way to accelerate the EU’s own dissolution. The Warsaw Pact, the Cold War, the Iron Curtain across Europe and the Berlin Wall, as well as the communist surveillance States that still-living Europeans lived within and remember well enough was not that long ago.

They probably make the argument to themselves that none of those people had anywhere near the amount of data they will have. I guess it remains to be seen how long an intelligence agency can hold a country together when they have access to a large portion of every private conversation between citizens.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#382

Post by cachvico » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

throwaways885 wrote: post #84

cachvico wrote: post #29

Warning - this is a work of fiction, or satire. Mods - perhaps you want to adjust the title.

Legitimately terrifying that a new surveillance state can be announced and nobody knows if it's satire or not.

Quite!

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#383

Post by cachvico » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

cachvico wrote: post #25

shreyshnaccount wrote: post #7

This is a joke, right? right??

Yes; or satire, or propaganda.

Update to correct myself - can't believe that it's not fiction..

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#384

Post by f38zf5vdt » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #136

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will probably take another World War before people collectively remember why privacy even existed in the first place.

What would a world war have to do with reminding people of privacy? World War 2 gave China and Soviet Russia a new sense of privacy? WW2 made the US worse as a place in most regards, not better. That's what caused the US to build its military industrial complex, to install a massive standing global military, to primarily guard against the Europeans going on rampage again for the nth time (which was guaranteed to happ…

> A third world war would make the governments even more paranoid, scared, and intrusive, not less.

Exactly, and the consequences to the average person would be so severe that they would begin valuing privacy again. A lot of people in WW2 quickly learned that not having information about their religious or political affiliation public was a matter of life or death.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#385

Post by ashtonkem » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #367

toast0 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the domain uses google's MX as the public facing MX. If it delivers to an intermediate MX for filtering or archiving or ??? and then redelivers to google, it's not visible. Of course, if you don't set the public MX to google, blackberry phones won't use the right SMTP for outgoing mail, and then mail will fail DMARC, because you can't actually configure the SMTP server anyway. Hope they fixed that in BB10, be…

> If it delivers to an intermediate MX for filtering or archiving or ??? and then redelivers to google, it's not visible. That is a) a very odd and theoretical setup b) probably would cause Google's MX to reject most messages for SPF failures

You don’t even need MX trickery to make this an issue; how many people who moved over to Gmail setup forwarding rules from their old email address to Gmail? You’d never be able to tell from the outside that your messages are going to an unsafe location

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#386

Post by Aerroon » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #316

Aerroon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a reminder of what the EU has done previously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive > According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store citizens' telecommunications data for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months. And they knew that this was illegal. They did it anyway. Same political body that now talks about protecting privacy.

> In September 2005, during the United Kingdom's presidency of the European Council, a plenary session was held concerning the retention of telecommunications data, chaired by the UK's Home Secretary. Maybe the values of British society really are different from those of the rest of Europe... Anyway, there should be less of a push within the EU for introducing these illegal directives now.

You're not wrong about that. The UK has tried this again just for Britain, but the EHCR denied them.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#387

Post by fsflover » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

wiz21c wrote: post #48

vifon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want your email reliably encrypted, encrypt it yourself. GPG works the same regardless of the provider.

and I guess that using GPG will instantly flag you as suspect :-(

Please do it. The more "suspects" there are, the better for everyone.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#388

Post by fsflover » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #105

soziawa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For Chat tg/signal seem like they would but I am less sure what the best option is for email. Something that doesn't store the chats in a decryptable form on their servers is probably preferrable. So Telegram out and Signal, Threema or WhatsApp in.

Telegram supports E2E encrypted secret chats. https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-secret-chats-different

Except on desktop and on GNU/Linux phones.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#389

Post by feanaro » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

trainsplanes wrote: post #208

jude- wrote: post #6

Do they want everyone to switch en masse to end-to-end encrypted communications? Because this is how you encourage that.

The vast majority of people do not care. Politicians will say this is to stop pedophiles, and if you speak up against surveillance, you’re labeled as a pedophile and ignored. Plus, let’s be real, end to end encryption doesn’t exist if you’re using any sort of pre-built app. It’s encrypted-looking to most people, but the people who matter always get back door access.

> Plus, let’s be real, end to end encryption doesn’t exist if you’re using any sort of pre-built app. It’s encrypted-looking to most people, but the people who matter always get back door access.

Why do you think this is the case? I know for a fact (with a reasonably high level of confidence) this is not so.

Re: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication

#390

Post by hungryforcodes » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

estaseuropano wrote: post #346

hungryforcodes wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think the data is clear though. The article specifically says:

1. "Some of our experimental data comes from studies involving university students, who tend to have limited work experience; future research will attempt to study these situations in a wider variety of organizations."

2. "In addition, some of our effects appear small."

Basically they discount themselves.

Also it's about perception of their EMPLOYERS. Nothing in the study suggests women are less capable or less hireable after two years. It literally says many times in different ways that a long maternity leave could possibly lead to some employers having a negative opinion of a female employee's commitment to their job.

But the problem here is with the employer; why should women be penalized because of this, thus being forced to have shorter maternity leaves?

Being based (at least partially) on university students, these people might not have the same range of commitment say a 30 or 40 year old with a house and established professional network might have. They may genuinely seem uncommitted to their jobs by the nature of their inexperience in the work force (trying out different things, different types of jobs) and place in life. So maybe that really biases the study.

Also it's just ONE study. So one study based on university students, with "small effects", doesn't really prove anything, even if it is published in the Harvard Business Review.

But if I may repeat myself:

If a woman is penalized for taking a long maternity leave because her employer has become prejudiced or biased against her, the problem lies with the employer or some systematic issue in the workforce, and the solution should be addressed there. If it's legal, it should be perfectly fine for her to take the full length of her leave.