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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

#611

Post by jnxx »

alkonaut wrote: post #305
blindriver wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with csam and arguing that point is on purpose, to distract people and the politicians can say “xp84 supports child pornography!” It has everything to do with censorship and complete control over people’s ability to communicate. Politicians hate free speech and they want to control their citizens completely including their thoughts. This is true evil.

But politicians are - in general - neither evil, nor do they have any real incentive to ”control citizens’ thoughts”. It doesn’t make sense. They can be gullible. Non-Technical. Owned by lobbyists. Under pressure to deliver on the apparent problem of the day (csam, terror, whatever). But I don’t think there is a general crusade against privacy. That’s why I think it’s so infuriating: I’m sure it’s not even deliberate…

> I’m sure it’s not even deliberately dismantling privacy. They’re doing it blindly.

That is often a variant of Hanlor's razor brought up on questions like this. How do certain actors turn reliably to a course of action that is so damaging - but to any expert or even rational mind seems stupid! That can't be what they want?!

I do not think that this reasoning holds.

Hannah Arendt, when writing about totalitarism, came to the conclusion that there is a kind of complicity between evil and thoughtlessness. (I am still trying to find her exact words on this.)

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

#612

Post by palata »

array_key_first wrote: post #604
palata wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you contact children on mainstream messengers if you can't use mainstream messengers?

The scanning just doesn't include contacting children - it includes CSAM. Talking to kids isn't CSAM. You're talking about something else altogether, and something which is purely hypothetical.

> The scanning just doesn't include contacting children - it includes CSAM.

My understanding is that they are not only talking about having a list of hashes (of illegal images), but also having some kind of machine learning. And they are not only talking about scanning images, but text, too.

I don't know what you expect them to report when scanning conversations with machine learning?

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

#613

Post by palata »

rpdillon wrote: post #596
palata wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Dude, you're basically arguing that we should bring the equivalent of App Store review process to people's chat history. You know that automated and human reviews are an absolute nightmare for people to navigate and errors are made constantly and people complain about it loudly. And the plan here is to escalate that not to just whether or not your app gets published, but whether or not you can remain out of jail. See…

Dude, I am not arguing that at all, you should read before you answer.

I am saying this:

> You can't deny that if you can read all communications, then it's easier to detect CSAM than if you can't even see it.

I am against ChatControl, but people who say "it shouldn't exist because it is useless because it cannot ever help detect anything illegal" are wrong.

It doesn't help the cause to flood people with invalid arguments.

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

#614

Post by palata »

prmoustache wrote: post #592
palata wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most, not all of them. Or are you saying that we should not care about the others?

Are you saying that scanning every single communication the only way?

What I am saying is that scanning every single communication most definitely helps preventing some CSAM.

Is it worth it? Well that's the question, and I am against ChatControl so I think it is not worth it. But if you try to convince a politician that scanning every single communication cannot ever help law enforcement, then good luck. Because you are wrong.

Why not taking valid arguments against ChatControl instead?

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

#615

Post by palata »

danaris wrote: post #607
palata wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care about the tiny fraction of the total number being stored by the government, frankly you should care a lot more about all the data being stored by TooBigTech. Feels a bit hypocritical to accept one and not the other. Really, I think that the problem with ChatControl is that it is a weapon for surveillance. Not because of the false positive, but because whoever controls it can decide what gets reported. Dep…

> If you care about the tiny fraction of the total number being stored by the government, frankly you should care a lot more about all the data being stored by TooBigTech. And what makes you think we don't ? It's much, much easier to stop new incursions into our privacy than to claw back privacy we've already lost. And it's much, much easier to stop the government from violating our privacy than to stop megacorporati…

I guess what I am trying to say is that the population doesn't care. If you want to convince politicians, you have to convince the population.

IMHO there are valid arguments against ChatControl that are not "you see what you allow TooBigTech to do to you? Well with ChatControl you would allow much less to the government. Isn't that terrible?"

A strong argument against ChatControl, IMO, is that it builds a powerful tool of surveillance. Not because "someone fairly random will see false positives", but because someone in power (e.g. a president) could abuse it to maintain their power (e.g. by targetting political opponents).

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

#616

Post by aduwah »

baalimago wrote: post #201
aduwah wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I understand if your solution would become popular, the law can come after you to provide a log of messages in plain text. Also they will have the legal power to force the popular operating systems to enforce generic keylogging/packet capturing and whatnot.

I don't see how they can come after anyone who's using a specific protocol [0] by law. Expanding on this thought: if Chat Control passes, it will just be the death of social media as a chat platform. People will swap to something more rudimentary where it can't be enforced. Primary reason why being that it simply will be so much faster/more convenient than the apps which are forced to use chat control. The same reaso…

You think too much about the Regular Joes/Janes. No-one will care for more than 2 weeks apart from tech people

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

#617

Post by GoblinSlayer »

palata wrote: post #245
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…

Disclaimer: I am against ChatControl. > Does anyone believe that predators commit those heinous offenses because of the availability of encrypted channels to distribute those products of their crimes? Who says that? I don't think they say that. > The authorities really think every predator will just give up and stop abusing just because of that? Nope, they think they will be able to arrest more predators. > More like…

>just use whatever is the default

gmail? google drive?

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

#618

Post by GoblinSlayer »

tormeh wrote: post #434
palata wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. Anyone who has the smallest clue would use Signal for anything sensitive. Of course people would use Signal to talk about illegal stuff. I am against ChatControl. But I am amazed by all the bullshit arguments that people find to criticise ChatControl. If you have more control, obviously it's easier to track criminals. That's not the question at all. The question is: what is the cost to society? A fe…

Most illegal things go on Telegram for some reason. I guess Signal doesn't have the required features.

Founder in jail.

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

#619

Post by GoblinSlayer »

palata wrote: post #559
AlexandrB wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to stop all crime without an all-encompassing surveillance state. At some point you have to set boundaries for what the state is allowed to do in the name of safety.

Agreed. But then you have to explain how you set your boundary. You can't just say that the right boundary is yours. ChatControl will protect some kids. If your argument is "yeah, shit happens", you won't convince anyone. If your argument is "yes, but at a great cost for society", then you need to explain what the cost is. Saying "your freedom" is worth exactly as much as "but CSAM" when said from the other side. It'…

>You can't just say that the right boundary is yours.

Constitution says I can. The country is governed by people.

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

#620

Post by GoblinSlayer »

palata wrote: post #598
Levitz wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Privacy from who? Law enforcement has been leveraging that forever. Not without legal proceedings. The population would have been absolutely outraged if the government just decided to read all of their mail one random day in the 90s. There's a reason the whole idea was supposed to be a conspiracy theory, the population literally didn't believe something like that could happen.

I think that there is a big difference, for the population, between "somebody is reading and keeping a copy of all your mail" and "Some algorithm looks for illegal material locally on your phone. If you don't have illegal material, it won't do anything". Nobody would want to carry a microphone recording them 24/7 and storing everything on a server, but everybody is fine with TooBigTech simply promising that they don'…

>TooBigTech simply promising that they don't store the data.

Instead they notify you that you gave them perpetual license to reuse your data.

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