Live data from Hacker News

EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

reclaimthenet.org

431–440 of 449 posts

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#431
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the sentiment, you need to think like a state to stop this kind of thing. Even without any argument about personal rights and what's totalitarian, I can't even square the circle of the unstoppable force of "the economy is dependent on encryption that can't be hacked" with the immovable object of "hostile governments and organised criminals undermine ${insert any nation here} and communicate with lo…

I keep seeing this fallacy argument about some bad actors and criminals etc. etc. Every government have structures and laws to prevent such activities, in absolutely no shape or form it does not need to read every single message of it citizens. I don't understand how someone can be apologetic for totalitarian state.

> Every government have structures and laws to prevent such activities, in absolutely no shape or form it does not need to read every single message of it citizens.

Indeed, the state doesn't need all of them.

That it's all-or-nothing is due to how the tech works, in that you can't break it *only* for the targets — a point I make when I'm trying to explain the dichotomy to the politicians who want to spy, that this absolutely will be abused to reveal *their own* secrets, too.

The way politicians talk about this stuff, suggests they think computer code is like law, that words may have precise meanings but there's still an element of human judgement and common sense, and at human speed, not cold logic operating on bits faster than us by the degree we are faster than geology, where the potential harm from errors can be irreversable total loss of an entire business due to one single error made one time by one person, nor where mistakes from 20 years ago might be discovered and exploited at any time.

That's why I said "I can't even square the circle". If I thought the government position here was just absolutely fine, it wouldn't be difficult to square the metaphorical circle.

The difficulty is that despite their wrongheadedness about the consequences of what they're trying to do, what they're trying to do is actually necessary.

And that's just the crypto parts of this.

I left the UK for two reasons: The Investigatory Powers Act, and Brexit. Kinda related cause I thought Brexit would make it harder to fight the IP Act. Went to Westminster to talk to my MP to try and convince them to vote against the IP Act. I remain convinced that the British government was straight up lying about its reasons for having that Act.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#432
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've gotten this far because we've been playing life on easy mode with a ridiculously nurturing planet and practically unlimited energy available under the ground, but we aren't smart enough or forward thinking enough to take on the minor pain necessary to avoid the catastrophe we are lumbering towards. We are short-sighted, selfish, self-important, and we haven't earned the regard in which we hold ourselves. Wher…

Now one could counter equally, that people you interact with directly are: (a) limited in number due to the nature of your interaction with them (b) will express themselves differently, due to the nature of interaction. (Just like people expressing themselves online act differently.) (c) are probably also a very specific group or bubble, which is simply the people you get to interact with. Which _might_ be more varie…

Maybe so. But between "people are stupid and that's why all these bad things are happening" and "people have complex motivations and rationals for doing what they do", I'm going to lean toward the latter, anecdote or not.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#433
post #113

I'm very curious what people in this thread think is happening now Do you think Meta, Google and them are not scanning every bit of data hosted on their servers to ensure they're not hosting things they don't want to? Do you think they don't cooperate with governments to share those findings? I don't disagree that this push is silly, ineffective, and bad for democracy. We should fight it and fight for the right to pr…

taking away our right to privacy sounds like a good way to get a lot more of what you say you dont want!

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#434
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass surveillance of private messaging is something anyone with a brain should be angry about. Your position is insane.

Mass surveillance of private messaging has been happening since day 1 at Facebook and them.

That's a bad faith argument, in effect an outright lie, because you're conflating individual instances of bad actors with what would now be a universal policy meant to neuter encryption and 100% of net privacy.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link to the Commission and Council is homeopathic democracy, right? In the UK with a Parliamentary democracy, unpopular policy ideas can be abandoned. Manifestos are not always adhered to, but they typically include ideas that their canvassers can sell on the doorstep and there is robust media criticism when they abandon their promises. We have a strong history of U turns because our politicians are wary of unpo…

Interesting you say that, after the UK already passed the equivalent of Chat Control with cross party support, without the law being part of the mandate of either party.

Which is terrible legislation, I agree on that.

But my point elsewhere in this thread is that we have the ability for future governments to overturn unpopular legislation, something that is not unusual at all in the UK.

Consider it read/write versus write-only in the EU, which doesn’t give a damn about unpopularity.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link to the Commission and Council is homeopathic democracy, right? In the UK with a Parliamentary democracy, unpopular policy ideas can be abandoned. Manifestos are not always adhered to, but they typically include ideas that their canvassers can sell on the doorstep and there is robust media criticism when they abandon their promises. We have a strong history of U turns because our politicians are wary of unpo…

You speak as if the Commission and Council are somehow divorced from ne national governments of the member states. Those are not Lovecraftian entities that came from undersea. Their members are appointed from the national governments. If you dislike how your country position itself on those organs, this should change your view on how the ruling parties in your country took decisions at the EU level.

Your theory is that democracy would trickle up. I am saying in practice it is homeopathic democracy.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#437
post #359
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, which of Reform's policies are "lunacy"? Removing the 2 child benefit cap? Increasing NHS spending? Returning to New Labour levels of net immigration, being a country with borders? > That said I will find it very very funny if the Conservative party ends up last from that list. At least we agree on that. The Tories deserve to be confined to the dustbin of history.

The numbers don't add up. I think "Removing the 2 child benefit cap" and "Increasing NHS spending" are good things, but they're not free , and the supposed cost-saving measures they're talking about mostly serve to demonstrate they don't know what the government is paying for anyway. Immigration is always a funny one for the UK especially, given how people tend to look at gross numbers instead of which sectors the im…

The below are conservative estimates of the money raised by Reform policies:

* £10bn+ per year - Adjusting how the Bank of England (BoE) treats reserves — e.g. stopping interest payments to commercial banks that receive money under quantitative easing (QE)

* £11bn+ per year - Rolling back expensive "net zero" policies

* £9bn+ per year - Alter eligibility for welfare

* £25bn - Scrap HS2

* multiple billions - Reducing foreign aid budget and cost of housing illegal migrants.

It's likely that pro-growth Reform policies such as lowering corporation tax to make the UK more competitive will significantly increase the corporation tax take - as was shown when the Tories entered power in 2010, lowered the corp tax rate and corp tax revenue increased significantly. In general, Reform's tax cuts are aimed at increasing the tax base.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#438
post #437
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers don't add up. I think "Removing the 2 child benefit cap" and "Increasing NHS spending" are good things, but they're not free , and the supposed cost-saving measures they're talking about mostly serve to demonstrate they don't know what the government is paying for anyway. Immigration is always a funny one for the UK especially, given how people tend to look at gross numbers instead of which sectors the im…

The below are conservative estimates of the money raised by Reform policies: * £10bn+ per year - Adjusting how the Bank of England (BoE) treats reserves — e.g. stopping interest payments to commercial banks that receive money under quantitative easing (QE) * £11bn+ per year - Rolling back expensive "net zero" policies * £9bn+ per year - Alter eligibility for welfare * £25bn - Scrap HS2 * multiple billions - Reducing…

> * £11bn+ per year - Rolling back expensive "net zero" policies

These in particular are fictional. That's an obsolete (due to tech improvements) estimate of the private sector costs.

At this point, with the tech now available, almost everyone gets rich by doing net zero, almost nobody saves money by abandoning it.

> * £9bn+ per year - Alter eligibility for welfare

"Welfare" includes e.g. the child benefit cap. You can save a lot by spending less. Do you want to spend less? OK, fine. But that's the cost: a majority have to agree who gets to be the next scapegoat, and the child benefit cap was itself introduced back when parents with too many kids were the scapegoat.

> * £25bn - Scrap HS2

Scrapping a one off payment to save money in the short term, at the cost of worsening long-term economic benefits by failing to improve national logistics.

> housing illegal migrants.

Do you mean asylum seekers? Reason I ask is that people who are actually in the UK illegally (which is different), don't cost "billions". Asylum seekers are housed because they're banned from working, theory is that if they work they might stay, IMO this is BS and everyone would benefit if they were allowed to get jobs and look after themselves.

Even without that there absolutely are savings to be made on the cost of asylum seekers (who are not "illegal migrants"). They're looked after at a total cost of about £100/person/day, and obviously (even without changing the "banned by law from working" thing) they could be looked after at about half that (or less) given what UK incomes are. But that's a whole one billion per year you might save from not letting UK hotels rip you off, or two if you let these people work and support themselves.

> It's likely that pro-growth Reform policies such as lowering corporation tax to make the UK more competitive will significantly increase the corporation tax take - as was shown when the Tories entered power in 2010, lowered the corp tax rate and corp tax revenue increased significantly. In general, Reform's tax cuts are aimed at increasing the tax base.

Even with the best will in the world, this kind of thing is unlikely to make a dent in comparison to the core Reform policy of hating their nearest and biggest market. Brexit (and consider who owns Reform) has cost the economy an estimated 6-8% GDP by this point, per year, in lost growth opportunities — around £200bn/year.

The biggest thing any government could do to increase the tax base is to get a bigger workforce to tax. Which means more immigrants, which is why Lab and Con don't ever do anything about immigrant workers despite saying so. This was also one of the benefits of the UK being in the EU, in that all of labour, capital, and goods could move around more freely to meet business opportunities, help with growth.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that in concert with all of the above a device has been developed that emulates human speech more convincingly than most humans, I guess it's pretty obvious

What is obvious? Why they need my messages for the voice speech emulation?

It is obvious that what need them for is not the voice speech emulation.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#440
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because 4chan's services are available to people residing in the UK the OSA is ridiculous and I hope it goes the same way as the last time they tried it, but this idea that US companies should be immune to domestic regulation in countries their services are available to is silly. even if that domestic regulation is silly. because otherwise the utterly encaptured regulatory environment of the US (plus Visa and MC) sol…

What alternative do you think is a good balance? Before you answer, substitute the UK with Iran and whatever distasteful content 4chan is hosting this week with "the dictatorship of Iran is harmful to its people, and they should rise up to remove it from power".

my comment was already talking about content I would prefer not to be restricted by law
Post reply on HN