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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

#541

Post by tpm »

afiori wrote: post #539
tpm wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are nominated, not elected. This may vary state by state but in our country there is not election process for them.

In many EU countries neither head of state/government are elected then.

In some (most?) EU countries the head of the state or government is not elected directly, but even then is elected in the parliament and without continuous parliament majority support is unable to effectively govern.

This is not the case for the EU institutions, where the EP is the least powerful body by far. While the EP 'elects' the head of the Commission and confirms the members, it does not choose them. It is not possible to be elected head of the Commission without being nominated by the European Council. This is so far removed from a democratic process we can't really call it an election.

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

#542

Post by sph »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #325
demosito666 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did those people taste that it got them upset so much and who exactly those "people" are? Last time I checked these laws are pushed through as covertly and sneaky as possible and no "people" asked for them. I can't recall any demonstrations with protesters asking to violate their privacy to keep them safe for those evil internet trolls that want to have a sexual intercourse with their relatives. You're t…

> You're trying to frame the classic authoritarian power grab Half of US states now have age verification for pornography; three will be requiring age verification to even download apps soon. There is indeed a push from society to get the internet under control, even if the EU is not necessarily connected the same way. This is a huge, unprecedented reversal of opinion over the last decade that has almost completely g…

Public opinion means nothing in an age of mass manipulation and media control. People believe what the news, the government and the powerful tell them to believe. The first step to passing unpopular legislation is making a media campaign so it becomes popular, or simply just do it and distract us with nonsense for a couple of weeks until we forget.

The worst thing one can do nowadays is blame the masses for their ignorance, thus turning us against each other, while the powerful do whatever they want. Divide and conquer.

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

#543

Post by theodric »

dotancohen wrote: post #515
theodric wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a Dutch cop discharge his gun into a crowd in 2017 or 2018 and face no consequences, so don't give me that nonsense. The State will kill you if it wants to.

I cannot find such an incident.

I was there, and indeed I will never forget it.

https://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/212970/om-waarschuwingsschot-...

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

#544

Post by daynthelife »

palata wrote: post #343
blindriver wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Distribute” not “contact”. Unless you want to scan all chat messages for potential signs of adults engaging in grooming of children too? Talk about a slippery slope, you’re basically making my point.

> Unless you want to scan all chat messages for potential signs of adults engaging in grooming of children too? Well, the point is to scan all messages, period. And then to detect those that come from predators, not adults. How often do parents convince their children to send... revealing pictures? Or to meet them somewhere? How often do parents introduce themselves to their children in messages? You can't seriously…

Sure, but who's reading the conversation to determine whether it "looks suspicious"? A regex? A neural network? Who decides the algorithm, and do you really can believe they won't ever change it to serve other more nefarious purposes like suppressing dissent?

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

#545

Post by Thiez »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #58
quotemstr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws don't stop men with guns. Men with guns stop men with guns. Laws not enforced and rights not protected don't matter. As the old saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

> Laws don't stop men with guns. Men with guns stop men with guns. Prove it. Every statistic I've ever seen shows the exact opposite of this to be true.

Perhaps they meant the police as the men with guns doing the stopping, and the states monopoly on violence. I for one wholeheartedly support the police enforcing gun control laws and dealing with armed criminals.

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

#546

Post by brikym »

xp84 wrote: post #179

From the article, the current flavor of "threat" this is being positioned to fight is CSAM. Does anyone believe that predators commit those heinous offenses because of the availability of encrypted channels to distribute those products of their crimes? I sure don't. The materials exist because of predators' access to children, which these surveillance measures won't solve. Best case scenario (and this is wildly optim…

The same EU that let loads of rapists into Europe is telling us that they care about the people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_swimming_pool_rape https://portal.research.lu.se/en/activities/nearly-two-third...

More likely it's ironically so that the people cannot oppose such policies as they won't be able to organize when all comms are tapped.

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

#547

Post by ben_w »

kmeisthax wrote: post #209
ben_w wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tempting though that is, I think that's the wrong way to resolve it: The people proposing it (law people) are a different culture than us (computer people), and likely have a funamental misunderstanding about the necessary consequences of what they're asking for. Two cultures: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/05/25-12.04.31.html

Let's stop infantilizing our adversary. Law enforcement knows exactly what they're doing. If they didn't know that this law would compromise security, they wouldn't have gotten carve-outs for their own communications.

You think it's "infantilising" to call them a different culture?

If any of us software developers tried writing a law, all of the lawmakers and enforcers would laugh at how naive our efforts were — that's not us being infants, that's just a cultural difference (making us naïve about what does and doesn't matter), and the same applies in reverse.

> If they didn't know that this law would compromise security, they wouldn't have gotten carve-outs for their own communications.

It compromises their security even with carveouts for their own communications, because computers aren't smart enough to figure out which communications are theirs, nor whether the "I'm a police officer serving a warrant, pinky swear" notice came from a real officer or just from a hacker serving a million fake demands a second.

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

#548

Post by afiori »

torified wrote: post #423
jansper39 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you will gradually lose control of your government much like how the people of the UK already lost control of theirs. As a UK citizen, can you explain your reasoning here? We haven't implemented anything like the chat control proposal and while a few politicians have brought up similar ideas, there is a lot of pushback against it.

How many surveillance cameras does your government operate again? How much do you trust your current government with the extensive surveillance apparatus they have created? How much do you trust the next government? What about the government after that?

This is a very naive view of surveillance and government trust.

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

#549

Post by throwaway77385 »

danielscrubs wrote: post #512
ohman876 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this gets pushed through, you will gradually lose control of your government A little bit off-topic but so called president of the EU is not elected, nor are the figures in so called EU commission :)

Brexit was an awful thing, BUT it will increase democracy for both parties. EU needs to be made more democratic or we need to severely limit its power, as its original intent, because the current show is just a farce.

The only good thing to come out of Brexit is setting an undeniable example for what a monumental failure it was. For those who are paying attention, anyway. And that group is not the majority of voters.

We'll still end up with a Reform government lead by Farage in the next election.

There is little hope if the AFD takes Germany. There might not be much of an EU left soon.

Instead of fighting this unmitigated march towards fascism, all the EU is concerned with is chat controls and further limiting the freedoms of its own population.

Ultimately, those with all the money and power will still have all the money and power, fascism or not. It's just that under fascism, they think their power is easier to maintain, so they will short-sightedly choose fascism.

That will lead to war, will lead to a big reset and then we'll repeat the exercise in 2120 when we've all forgotten, again, that concentrating power in the hands of the few has one inevitable outcome, taught by history again and again and again.

What the world will look like by then, who knows. Hotter, more hostile, digitalised to the point of humans and machines becoming nearly indistinguishable? Who knows.

I suppose there's a chance of this also being the precipice of the great filter and then there won't be anyone to quibble over these sorts of things.

Maybe a new civilisation of intelligent beings will pop up from the savagery of nature. But they will also apply 'survival of the fittest' to all strata of their society and here we go again.

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

#550

Post by zelphirkalt »

tomkarho wrote: post #84
haolez wrote: post #3

I think the challenge for society here is not to simply reject attempts like this, but how to prevent them from being pushed over and over until a specific context allows it to be approved.

The only way I see to prevent the constant pushing is that every single time some council or committee presents something like this every single of one of their private communication gets leaked for everyone to peruse at their leisure from whatsapp to bank statements. They want to erode people's privacy? Let them walk their talk first and see how that goes.

Already so much embarrassing information about the people in power is leaked or uncovered by investigative journalists and organizations, who exist to uncover these things, that the despicable character of those people is something people can look up rather easily. I am not convinced, that we even collectively still possess one brain cell to let consequences follow, such as voting radically differently, starting a democratic process to vote or indirectly vote their arses out of office. Instead it seems like we have tons of non-democratic mindset people in our society, who don't inform themselves, don't care about other generations, are too uninformed to understand the consequences of their vote, and simply every time vote the same shit into office.

Take Germany for example. For decades now we have let SPD, CDU, Greens, FDP ruin our country. AFD won't be better by the way. Again and again we vote against our own interest out of stupidity, complacency, or whatever it is. Oh, they want to raise pensions? What a coincidence just before the elections! Aaaand all the pensioners votes are secured for a party that will further ruin the country and line their own pockets. We do the same frickin shit every single time. And now it is so bad, that if we don't do it, then we will get right extreme AFD, that has even less a clue of what should be done, is paid by Pootin, and would fuck up things even faster.

The basic premises, that you are voted out of office, if you do badly does no longer hold here. It's all money and population brainwashing, to vote against our own interest. What our ancestors have built up from the ruins of WW2, we throw out of the window in ever election that we elect the same shitty parties again: CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP, AFD, Linke, BSW... None of these deserve our trust and vote. It apparently is asking too much of the citizens of a wannabe democratic country to check alternative parties in a Wahlomat before an election, to decide what fits best ones ideas.

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