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German government comes out against Chat Control

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather online banking be impossible, or only available to those that take training and sign waivers, than have all my communications surveiled.

OK, you be you, But please note that I did not list "online banking becoming impossible" as a likely outcome. Merely malware continuing to be state-sponsored, or certain communications to be surveilled. Not all of yours, unless you draw an especially vinidicative judge (and yes, I'm assuming a functioning rule of law here -- if that's gone, what's left?)

> OK, you be you

I don't know what you mean by this.

> But please note that I did not list "online banking becoming impossible" as a likely outcome.

No, but it should be a likely and maybe even desired outcome, especially if a justification for surveillance is the prevention of online banking fraud among other crimes.

> Merely malware continuing to be state-sponsored, or certain communications to be surveilled.

Norms and mores change over time, so the only conclusion is that "certain communications" will become "all communications" at some point in the future. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#52

OK, really hot take here: -ChatControl, as it is currently defined, is not going to happen, because it's absolutely stupid and would make impossible, amongst other things, online banking -Yet, there is a growing and legitimate demand for lawful interception of 'chat' services. I mean, "sure, your bank account got emptied, but we can't look into that because it happened via Signal" just isn't a good look -So, somethin…

Why would the malware industry benefit from digital message privacy? If you're the victim, just hand over the relevant chats yourself. Otherwise, just follow the money. And if the attackers are sitting in a country whose banks you can't get to cooperate, intercepting chat messages from within that country won't do you any good either. Also, if someone has malicious intent and is part of a criminal network, the people…

”Follow the money”. Yes, let’s decide that no bank is to have anything to do with crypto from next year. And not do business with other banks that accepts crypto. That would help stop fraud much more effective than Chat Control.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#53

"anlasslose Chatkontrolle" => Chat Control without cause . Ok, maybe these are not weasel words in this case. The CDU probably wants to present itself as a friend of the people using a popular issue that they don't really care about. My suspicion is that this is exactly why the ChatControl issue is brought up yearly. It distracts people from wars, the economy etc., there is a big discussion and finally the government…

> It distracts people from wars, the economy etc

Were this true, some politicians would do it for that reason. It would need to get a lot of attention to be an effective distraction, and it does not. The mainstream press barely covers the issue. Many people who would be directly harmed by it don't even know what's being considered.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#54
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t expect the general topic to become “finally settled” within our lifetime.

Unless there's a law ensuring our freedoms.

It's difficult to entrench things. In the UK they have often said "one Parliament can't bind another Parliament", and in the U.S. it's also sometimes said "one Congress can't bind another Congress".

The most obvious mechanism is a constitutional amendment, but in the U.S. the only amendment to be drafted and adopted in modern times is the 26th amendment (1971), 54 years ago. (The 27th amendment had a weird status where it was belatedly adopted with a 200-year delay.) It's hard to imagine many constitutional amendments actually being passed now because it's been challenging to find consensus on many things within U.S. politics lately.

I don't know that the EU at a supranational level has any mechanism at all to ban future EU directives. Maybe they could decide to remove something from the list of areas of competence of the EU? But Chat Control is under the "Area of Freedom, Security and Justice" and I can't imagine the EU deciding that that should be abandoned as an area of Union competence.

Edit: The international human rights treaties, at least in regulating law enforcement, have tended not to follow the idea that some kind of regulation or law enforcement power is completely off-limits, but just that they need procedural safeguards -- especially for surveillance and investigatory powers. In this case, Chat Control opponents (including me) would like it to be completely off-limits, but the human rights instruments arguments might more naturally go into "did they create enough surrounding rules and mechanisms about how it's used and how it's regulated?" rather than "can we just say governments just can't make this rule?".

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#55
post #26

A simple way to end the discussion: No matter what the state says, or what legislatures pass what laws, we're going to continue to live out our right to general purpose computing, including sending only what we choose to send over the wire, and encrypting content as we see fit. Now let's talk about something else.

I like the sentiment but it sounds very similar to Soverign Citizen nonsense. You can't just plug your ears and say that a law doesn't apply to you because you didn't consent to it.

Yes you can, it's called civil disobedience. Sovcits are stupid because they break the law but don't know it.

Civil disobedience involves breaking the law with full knowledge that it's illegal, to protest injustice.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#57
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t expect the general topic to become “finally settled” within our lifetime.

Unless there's a law ensuring our freedoms.

I mean, the right to privacy is already enshrined in the EU's human rights. The courts would likely strike Chat Control down if it were to pass. But I wish there was a way to prevent our politicians from even trying this shit.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#58
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t expect the general topic to become “finally settled” within our lifetime.

Freedom will not ever be finally settled in this life. Laws can be changed, constitutions amended, and of course the law is only as good as willingness to enforce it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, as nice as it would be if that wasn't so.

At issue here is... what exactly "freedom" is

Speech is restricted the world over for things (fraud, threats, libel/slander, secrets, and more), and we're almost universally in favour of that.

It's a balancing act, and the point where we set the balance is difficult, and constantly changing (should we allow speech that encourages the persecution of other people, sometimes called "hate speech" or should people be allowed to advocate for the murder/rape/extermination of other human beings because of the way they look)

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#59
the internet is already dying and social media largely sucks. the whole ass thing is going to be 100% ai driven ads, scams, astroturfing, propaganda, trolls and other fuckery sooner rather than later. just let chat control kill it, fuck it. accelerate to a cyberpunk future of local mesh networks.
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