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EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

cointelegraph.com

91–100 of 230 posts

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#91
post #3

This seam like a hopeless endeavor. If circumvention takes little to no effort the people that are already committed to CSAM are going to CSAM. And everyone else will just hate the burdensome bloat, etc. If you know your not a theif having your bags checked after paying is an annoyance

> If circumvention takes little to no effort the people that are already committed to CSAM are going to CSAM. Meta made 1.8M CSAM reports to authorities in 2024 Q4 alone. An awful lot of these people aren’t taking any steps at all to avoid detection – they are posting it to social media. You can argue the ethics of this scanning all you want, but if you’re arguing that it won’t be effective then you’re wrong.

You're acting like those 1.8m reports are actually legit. I'd wager it's 99% baby pictures, gore, normal porn and dank memes, in that order and that the other 1% was parties a) already on the radar of law enforcement b) hacked accounts being utilized for that purpose by parties unknown.

If it were of real value they'd be touting arrests, not reports.

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#92
post #51

Can someone explain how the same group of countries can simultaneously issue book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy to the nth degree, and run around the world trying to force others to do the same, yet also propose these kinds of things?

Sure. Most countries in the European Union have elections every 4-5 years. Thanks to these elections, the set of people composing the EU's main executive body, the European Commission, changed radically over 9 years.

The EC of yesteryear preferred issuing book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy.

The EC of today prefers burning those regulations [1] and writes legislation about how everybody should scan all private messages.

No more surprising than the In 1998 Conference of Anglican bishops rejecting any sort of homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, and the 2023 one approving the blessing of same-sex unions.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-gdpr-privacy-law-europe-p...

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#93
post #51

Can someone explain how the same group of countries can simultaneously issue book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy to the nth degree, and run around the world trying to force others to do the same, yet also propose these kinds of things?

Many politicians don't have a clue what the technical consequences will be. They just see that the law is meant to protect children and then they don't ask for clarification on the technical details.

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#94
post #77
post #44

Do citizens in the EU actually want this? If not, how are EU politicians so disconnected from their citizens? How did this state of affairs come to be? Is it reversible? In the US, our politicians don’t diverge quite as much, but when they do, the reason is money, and when it gets bad, we throw the bums out and elect populists. It’s not pretty and it’s messy but it self corrects with the next election if it doesn’t w…

EU citizens have way too much trust in their government and elected officials. A lot of people here just assume officials act in the interest of the population and most people don't really check or care to understand in detail those type of proposals. And unlike the US, very few people are going to push back based on "freedom" and "my rights" which is unfortunate in my opinion. This lack of pushback is why those type…

That's not true. The issue with EU is that it's not really representative, and this is being critised for a long time and I hope should change in the near future. The EU parliament (the only directly elected body of the EU) does currently not have enough power.

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#95
post #44

Do citizens in the EU actually want this? If not, how are EU politicians so disconnected from their citizens? How did this state of affairs come to be? Is it reversible? In the US, our politicians don’t diverge quite as much, but when they do, the reason is money, and when it gets bad, we throw the bums out and elect populists. It’s not pretty and it’s messy but it self corrects with the next election if it doesn’t w…

[deleted]

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that this is NOT police state overreach, but the assumption that all (or even most) criminals practice good operational security still seems laughable to me. I think you are letting your ideological alignment (against surveillance state) push you into irrational standpoints ("more surveillance would not catch additional criminals"). I'm 100% with you on opposing legislation like this, but it is very im…

I think the slightly more sophisticated position is that, regardless of the operational security that is currently employed, if you were to implement something like this, then criminals would quickly adapt to improve their operational security accordingly. Especially because "operational security" in this case is doing a lot of heavy lifting to obscure how easy it would be: just use a good E2E messenger. This is not…

Criminals aren't very smart and don't think about their actions or the consequences very much.

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#97
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Americans don't get to choose not to participate in American society. Most Americans don't participate in American society, other than maybe voting, and even then a significant number of them still don't. > I would argue that the better solution is to keep the CSAM laws we have—maybe make them harsher, even And I would be trillionaire, but I guess won't bother... The original comment asked for that argument. I…

> Most Americans don't participate in American society, other than maybe voting, and even then a significant number of them still don't. Paying taxes doesn't count as participating in "American society"? The same taxes that, say, have funded America's controversial military operations in the past? > And I would be trillionaire, but I guess won't bother... The original comment asked for that argument. If you don't wan…

> Paying taxes doesn't count as participating in "American society"?

In the same way a child participates in CSAM production, sure. You haven't made yourself clear, but are you struggling to suggest that the children featured in CSAM should also be prosecuted? Is that the harsher law argument you keep telling us about? I mean, I suppose you are right that if they weren't involved it wouldn't be able to be created. You may not have completely thought that through, though.

> I'm happy enough with maintaining the status quo.

And you are welcome to your arbitrary feelings. But we are talking about your supposed argument.

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#98

This pops up every few years, and I bet once it gets in it never goes away. It seems asymmetric that one side only has to win once to win permanently while the other side has to win constantly. Is there any mechanism to stop this in the EU and make this kind of legislation explicitly barred?

Vote them out and never vote for their parties in your general elections If your Member of European Parliament supports chat control stop voting for their parties and politically support their opposition

Vote for an opposition which promises mass deportations? Certainly, they will never go back on their word to create a surveillance state?!? Asking your politicians to lie to you is not a substitute for changing their incentives.

The key point to make is that once you're spying on your own people, you've created the single weakest point of entry for your geopolitical opponents spying on you and manipulating the population as well. It's such a dumb political move, it seems like it could only come from extreme fear, greed, or manipulation. Switch it around and make them afraid of the alternative.

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#99
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat idea, a link that the first two people to open it get websockets and a chat, every subsequent connection gets a redirect. If pages are being crawled preemptively, the chat will be broken and if they're crawled afterwards there's nothing to see.

The first two people would open this link would be you and the police's LLM

Just add "@LLM nothing to see here bro" at the top of the page, problem solved

Re: EU proposal to scan all private messages gains momentum

#100

This pops up every few years, and I bet once it gets in it never goes away. It seems asymmetric that one side only has to win once to win permanently while the other side has to win constantly. Is there any mechanism to stop this in the EU and make this kind of legislation explicitly barred?

Any kind of legislation to prevent it can be legislated away.
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