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Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

netzpolitik.org

61–70 of 200 posts

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#63
The online Stasi analogies are simplistic. This is (mostly) about Tech companies' money, namely:

- Palantir Technologies

- 'not-for-profit' Thorn

> The Commission’s failure to identify the list of experts as falling within the scope of the complainant’s public access request constitutes maladministration. [0]

> ... the complainant contended that the precision rate of technologies like those developed by the organisation are often overestimated. It is therefore essential that any technical claims made by the organisation concerned are made public as this would facilitate the critical assessment of the proposal. [1]

> The Commission presented a proposal on preventing and combating child sexual abuse, looking in particular at detecting child pornography. In this context, it has mentioned that support could be provided by the software of the controversial American company Palantir... [2]

> Is Palantir’s failure to register on the Transparency Register compatible with the Commission’s transparency commitments? [2]

(Palantir only entered the Transparency Registry in March 2025 despite being a multi million vendor for Europol and European Agencies for more than a decade)

> No detailed records exist concerning a January meeting between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of controversial US data analytics firm Palantir [3]

> Kutcher and CEO Julie Cordua held several meetings with EU officials from 2020 to 2023 - before the former stepped down from his role - including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.[4]

> The Ombudsman further concluded that Thorn had indeed influenced the legislative process of the CSAM regulation. “It is clear, for example, from the Commission’s impact assessment that the input provided by Thorn significantly informed the Commission’s decision-making. The public interest in disclosure is thus self-evident. [4]

> EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has announced that she has opened an investigation into the transfer of two former Europol officials to the chat control surveillance tech provider Thorn. [5]

[0] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/176658

[1] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/recommendation/en/179395

[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2024-00016...

[3] https://www.euractiv.com/news/commission-kept-no-records-on-...

[4] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-...

[5] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-l...

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#64

What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance? It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing. W…

It's not about bad guys. It's about wrongthink. It's about surveilling the political opposition.

They could not care less about children. Kids are just a political weapon they use to create a pretext for global warrantless mass surveillance.

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#65
post #59

Can somebody explain to me how backdooring every app does not lead to the real risk of an entire population's bank accounts being emptied, or similar more hidden but widespread attacks that absolutely cripple any country doing this? Almost immediately, enemy State actors will have almost as complete access as the government passing the law; blackmail will become trivial; they could just subtly weaken adversaries nons…

> Can somebody explain to me how backdooring every app does not lead to the real risk of an entire population's bank accounts being emptied, or similar more hidden but widespread attacks that absolutely cripple any country doing this?

We already had this debate once before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

The answer is that it is a bad idea.

This also recently came up when huntress exposed what it could do with its tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183589 and then failed to understand why this might be a bad thing.

Or you know crowdstrike getting rolled in a supply chain attack: https://www.ox.security/blog/npm-2-0-hack-40-npm-packages-hi...

The government wants a back door to spy on its citizens, not realizing that any back door you build is rife to be exploited by anyone.

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#66
post #59

Can somebody explain to me how backdooring every app does not lead to the real risk of an entire population's bank accounts being emptied, or similar more hidden but widespread attacks that absolutely cripple any country doing this? Almost immediately, enemy State actors will have almost as complete access as the government passing the law; blackmail will become trivial; they could just subtly weaken adversaries nons…

Why haven't those things already happened? Many messaging apps including SMS and Telegram are centralized without E2E.

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#67

What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance? It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing. W…

[deleted]

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#68

What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance? It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing. W…

They don’t understand the technology and think it will magically apply everywhere.

Most politicians have no idea how anything works. Electric lights are simply magic, let alone the Internet. Obviously you can pass a law to make the wizards make the magic do whatever you want, right?

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#69
post #26
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the legislative sense, it might eventually pass. As has happened in every case so far (with increasing intensity and ease), the internet will route around it.

the internet will route around it How will the internet route around client side scanning? Some here will not be affected but I suspect the masses would have a harder time assuming they are even aware that cell phones, Windows recall and Mac mediaanalysisd are performing scans. Most people do not install custom phone OS images.

> Most people do not install custom phone OS images.

They might start to do, if governments become so obnoxious with their surveillance, that it somehow makes life inconvenient for regular people. However, then governments will start to block the network access for "uncertified" devices and software, or even to restrict the access to general-purpose computers altogether. That's why it is better to defeat this politically, than to play eternal cat-mouse games.

Re: Denmark wants to push through Chat Control

#70
post #3

You would think the Danish are smarter than this.

Denmark is the embassy of American NSA in Europe.

Europeans don't get to blame the US for this. Chat Control is being widely pushed. The Europeans get to take responsibility for their own authoritarianism.
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