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Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

threema.ch

61–70 of 341 posts

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#61
On one hand we should all agree that chat control is bad, OTOH the populist approach to issues it's IMO much worse than the issue itself.

There is no chat control in EU yet and there will not probably be one as envisioned by the gloomiest commentators, regardless on how the voting will go.

1 - online child abuse it's real, yes, it can be used as a pretext to sponsor unpopular laws, but it exists and can't be dismissed only as a false claim or something politicians bring up for their evil plan of global dominance and massive surveillance (last sentence is the rhetorical equivalent of What about the children?)

2 - political groups laser focusing on how the World will end if the EU discuss about some issue that has privacy implications aren't in any way better than those laser focusing on childrens' safety.

3 - the elected representatives are elected by the people of EU through a pure proportional electoral system, they represent the Europeans in almost perfect proportion to the population. The issues they are focused on are the issues that people of EU care about, we might not like the opinions and/or the acts of the majority, but it's how democracy work.

4 - the parliament is not new, the new elected representatives are still forming the new political groups (starting from today) so, no, there's no evil puppet master behind the regular schedule of the parliament

5 - issues like this one have been discussed in Europe for 15 years at least, it's nothing new, but every time there is someone predicting the end of the World as we know it. Why? it's simple: it's their job, they've been elected by a tiny minority, have little or no space compared to the larger political groups, so they need to be very local about it and use the sharpest tool of them all: fear. It's political marketing 101, nothing to see here, please disperse naked gun's style. In this case threema makes, not surprisingly, a chat app.

6 - Moreover, in November 2023 the parliament sided with encryption, by not approving the proposal to break E2E encryption while in March this year (2024) The European Court of Human Rights ruled that weakening encryption can violate fundamentals human rights (link to the sentence: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng/#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-230854...}). Democracy also means trusting the system, even when it seems that everything is lost.

7 - the law hasn't passed yet and the voting will probably be delayed again, due to the aforementioned parliament still not actually in place at full steam.

8 - if being European taught me something is that approving a law is one thing, enforcing it is a complete different story. In many countries, like mine, Italy, law enforcement is a farce, especially when it's about regulatory infringements.

Last but not least, laws protecting children have already been abused here in Italy (and I'm sure everywhere else) long before internet was a thing or without using any form of chat control just for political gain.

A couple of examples (sorry, Italian only)

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diavoli_della_Bassa_modenese

https://www.ilpost.it/2023/06/08/caso-bibbiano/

the second one has been so controversial (and the accusations in such bad faith) that the equivalent Wikipedia page has been removed and locked by the admins https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeli_e_demoni_(inchiesta).

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#62
post #23

I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.

Well, people wanted even more alt-right representation in parliament, MEP support for the entire package of policy "Chat Control" is part of is now higher than ever. There is a lot more "for the children" policy coming up.

This isn't necessarily true: the Identity and Democracy faction is explicitly pro-privacy, digital rights and against Chat Control.

- https://id-party.eu/program/ (ID Party Official Site)

- https://idgroup.eu/news/online-censorship-is-a-threat-to-eur... (ID Group News)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_Democracy (Wikipedia Overview)

- https://id-party.eu/declaration-of-antwerp/ (ID Party Official Site)

The ID group is opposed to EU-wide surveillance measures, and promises to protecting individual privacy and national sovereignty.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#63

I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.

The populace is clueless and/or ignorant, and Brussels has a well earned reputation for being a popular toxic waste dump for unpopular politicians. To give some examples from Germany, we dumped Günther Oettinger and Ursula von der Leyen there in the last two elections, and this year our far-right party managed to place a suspected traitor on the top of their list.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#64
post #60
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your other examples are damning, I see nothing wrong with an elderly politician without social media profiles.

You'd be 100% correct if that was the case. However, the problem is that she is not a politician and she has no public presense whatsoever. She was chosen by her party, and eventually elected because her last name starts with A which put her near the top of the ballot paper.

Ouch, that's bad!

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Here it had some niche users, but got completely supplanted by signal, which is the clear #2 with the people I know.

Signal had a narrow window when there was some whatsapp scandal going on and signal was weirdly popular for a month or so. Then they announced their crypto bs. And in my bubble it was nuked entirely off the earth as a result. With Threema I have lots of uncles etc who use it exclusively.

Everyone I know uses WA, but a significant amount (~50%) uses Signal as well, most of those are not tech people. Back when they announced the crypto stuff, I knew next to no one with it, so that doesn’t really matter. I think only 1 or 2 people still use Threema in addition to the other apps.

Telegram I only know 2 users, one who’s American, and one who’s into conspiracies …

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#67
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and the voters don’t care." Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? There just has been EU election in germany and the nationalist gained a lot. And none of the big parties otherwise said a clear no to that, so what could I do, except vote a small party against that, but too small to really do something? Voters care. But they see often no point in voting anymore.

How many people did actually bother to vote in Germany? Here in France, the "extremists" got a bit over 30% of votes. But turnout was only 51%. According to [0] average turnout is 51%. Some countries have very high numbers (IIRC voting is mandatory in Belgium?), others ridiculously low. This, to me, means pretty much that "voters don't care". [0] https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/

> How many people did actually bother to vote in Germany?

64.78%, or over 40 million in absolute terms.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#68
It should be possible to have a private chat without spying.

However I have an unpopular opinion, interested to hear what others might think:

We should eliminate anonymity online. If you go on the internet everything you do should be tied back to your name. This can be done using device attestation. Everyone gets a private key tied to their name/address.

This is compatible with free speech. In fact it promotes free speech because being a "troll" becomes a lot more personal.

I think this way of living would be closer to our nature as tribal primates. It would improve behaviour and overall quality of life. Our brains are designed to have checks and balances from wider society which you don't get anonymously online.

This would also reduce the need for govt monitoring because any chat online could be "turned in" by an informer and then any criminals identified.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#69

I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.

In Greece, we recently elected as representatives for the EU Parliament: * a 71 year old lady, with no social media and no public speeches ever. * a guy who used a nickname for his last name, that matched with a military general (who is well known), and many people thought he was the general * a "journalist" that was caught twice talking on live TV, conversing with a pre-recorded video * a convicted criminal It's imp…

I don't know much about Greece and don't follow Greece at all. Every time I hear something about Greece, it sounds like a hot mess.

Re: Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely the thing. Whenever EU does something people don't like, they hate EU, not the council members who voted for it.

Because it is exactly the EU governance that lacks democratic representation, enabling unfavoured politicians to remain in significant power. You can only elect MEPs (via party lists) locally. The majority of legalislation is drafted by the technocratic European Commission and legislation is mostly passed through parlaiment unchanged from there. There are many nationally disgraced politicians seating in the EP, EC or…

By voting for the members of parliament, and the parliament then deciding everything else... Ideally things should work out as the people want it. Otherwise it would mean that democracy just doesn't work...
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