41–50 of 221 posts
Hopefully, this settles it once and for all in the EU, similar to the Net Neutrality regulation from 2015.
Despite the lobbying from American organisations (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir and others who worked with Thorn on this [1][2]) the EU Parliament did the right thing this time. [1] https://www.thorn.org/partnerships/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130420162917/http://www.wearet...
The thing that I find shocking about lobbying is just how cheap it is. In the FTX trial the amount they spent lobbying politicians for pro-crypto laws was released and we're talking low five figures. SBF even said lobbying was very cheap for the impact you can get. Naively I thought it would cost millions to get a politician to support you but actually it's cheap enough a FAANG engineer could individually pay enough…
I was upset at the parliament for even considering this and extremely relieved that they chose not to pursue this draconic instrument. That said, we as citizens will have to remain vigilant and let our voices be heard because the onslaught on our privacy is constant from both commercial interests, spy agencies and state actors. These parties have no issue keeping pressure up over decades whereas we the citizens can b…
Hopefully, this settles it once and for all in the EU, similar to the Net Neutrality regulation from 2015.
Unlikely. What will happen is that instead of one big push to the EU they will try again on the local level. That's how companies abuse the EU all the time. First try to lobby the EU itself for a one-stop-shop approach, and if that fails they go after the member states.
(Thanks)
Despite the lobbying from American organisations (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir and others who worked with Thorn on this [1][2]) the EU Parliament did the right thing this time. [1] https://www.thorn.org/partnerships/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130420162917/http://www.wearet...
The thing that I find shocking about lobbying is just how cheap it is. In the FTX trial the amount they spent lobbying politicians for pro-crypto laws was released and we're talking low five figures. SBF even said lobbying was very cheap for the impact you can get. Naively I thought it would cost millions to get a politician to support you but actually it's cheap enough a FAANG engineer could individually pay enough…
I'm sure there is additional money for lobbying that is not on the books. Holidays, houses, good bullion, crypto, free memberships to exclusive clubs and the like that is gifted to politician's and their spouses by big industry.
Isn't this is already a solved problem? This feels like a huge loss for player like Signal that actually ensure privacy by design
It's not that simple. If the country introduces a legislation, every company operating in it's border must comply. If EU would introduce such legislation, it could potentially make software doing end2end encryption illegal. In such case, google would be removing it from EU Play Stores, and this would be more/less end of such messaging apps unless they comply. :-) This is why it's important to have a reasonable legisl…
If you have to ask governments for permission then that's a bad design and your system will be taken away from you when the next think-of-the-children populists are elected
If you work on the assumption all governments are eternally nice and well interventioned .. then E2E chat systems aren't all that necessary in the first place
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The short answer is that we're talking about the EU. Thats a US thing. As far as I can tell looking from the outside the US system is set up so that if you aren't ridiculously wealthy yourself you pretty much need lobbyist money to fund your campaign to get elected.
That's probably true, there is lobbying in the UK so I assume countries within Europe have similar issues but I don't truly know.
Also if everyone can give/spend as much as they want legally it at least stays semi transparent so in theory voters can base their decisions on that. Illegal bribes, kickbacks etc. are a bit harder to track.
Despite the lobbying from American organisations (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir and others who worked with Thorn on this [1][2]) the EU Parliament did the right thing this time. [1] https://www.thorn.org/partnerships/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130420162917/http://www.wearet...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Contrary to popular opinion, lobbying isn't as simple as "pay for expensive restaurant, get votes". If legislators feel strongly ideologically about an issue, no amount of lobbying will make them vote the other way.
How do you explain big Pharma lobbying to stop reducing drug prices? For example, Democrats who held up drug pricing reforms were the largest beneficiaries of lobbyist money. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
The prices are available at https://www.medicinpriser.dk/?lng=2
Next step would be OS maintainers to make APIs for providing e2e encryption functionality and then app stores requiring these apis to be used for private messaging.
Because you trust closeed-source from Microsoft, Google and Apple? Seriously? Open standards, open-source code. That's really the only option for code people are supposed to trust.
Do I trust Apple and Microsoft? I think sort of.
I don’t trust them to be perfect, but if your prior is to say that you don’t trust them at all, then it means you basically can’t use them at all bc no amount of security will get around an untrustworthy OS.
They control what gets displayed on screen, they control how memory is laid out and accessed for a program. There are already so many more important things we entrust to them. So, yeah, I prefer OS’s (all vendors) to provide APIs, and for app stores to enforce their use. I especially would trust this more than EU laws, and I certainly would trust that more than everyone doing their own thing, regardless if it’s open source.
If for no other better reason I trust the OS more, since all of these open solutions will still run on those supposedly untrustworthy os vendors.
You basically have to trust your OS, Don’t you think? Otherwise, the answer is you do nothing.