This is again a fundamental flaw of the EU. It is much easier for lobbyists with deep pockets to influence policies on the continent. A few years ago EU advantages wwere sold as keeping the peace and making travel easier.
Well, I think the first one isn't true and the second is a tiny advantage in comparison to have vastly less influence. I don't have a solution and theoretically we have subsidiarity here but it empirically doesn't work, especially concerning civil liberties. Those are reduced while economic interests are completely unchallenged, even supported by the political structure.
Ever wondered why retail tries to use as few suppliers as possible? For a number of reasons but one is certainly to make that supplier dependent and to influence decisions in production. Now take this idea and transfer it to the EU. I don't think a lot of friends of the EU are capable to understand these dynamics and therefore are not really good political allies because refusing to talk about the problems doesn't make the problem go away. There is just hot air as a response if you even get one. The weight the EU provides to defend against the influence of other states is also useless if we emulate corrupt autocracies anyway.
So what is the excuse this time? We have a Hollywood actor influencing policies trying to sell his shitty AI solution. Sure, there is domestic support too, especially with personnel like UvdL who certainly nobody elected. Maybe people that cannot understand her might like her because she looks a bit sympathetic. Great union...
We simply cannot have a political institution on the highest level where nations offload their most incompetent politicians. Public policy is too important for that. As a citizen I cannot keep up with the issues in Spain or Sweden if I live in central Europe. How can I know what to vote for here? I could focus on my interest as a citizen, but right now it feels like a headless race forward with possibly very bad decisions that can do a lot of damage.
Most people in the EU not from Germany don't know UvdL and they should know that she has the capability to severely damage the net and to me this is a case of cronyism right in front of our eyes without much recourse.
>Most people in the EU not from Germany don't know UvdL
Oh, we do, and we hate her and unfortunately Germany too, because they push their incompetent and corrupt politicians to the EU, where they're using the country's immense economic leverage to push unpopular policies across EU level.
On that note, other EU countries should pull their heads out of their asses and start creating better environments for business and especially small business/startups.
You know what happens in my country when you get a big sum of money from crowdfunding or the tax authority thinks you owe them money? They block your bank accounts. Yeah, they actually do that, and then tell you to come and resolve the problem. Which can take weeks to months.
You know what happens in a "normal" country like the UK, Germany, Netherlands or any other with a healthy number of small/medium business? They notify you and tell you to come and resolve the issue asap. If you fail to do that, they can block and check your bank accounts.
In the meantime, you can continue doing business. The punishment for tax evasion/etc is about the same all over.
So why the extra totalitarianism? Anyone with half a brain would never want to deal with that bs. And that's just one example, there's lots more.
You know where big companies come from? Small ones grow into them. Good luck growing much of anything with this kind of approach. Sit there and be envious of Germany and everyone else.
What does 'your country ' whichever that is, and their abusive way of way of handling business have to do with Germany's way of doing business and their corrupt politicians?
The US is number one in the world for top companies, does that automatically make them the best example for policies on everything and the best politicians?
I just don't understand where you were going with this off topic rant.
> Most people in the EU not from Germany don't know UvdL and they should know that she has the capability to severely damage the net
I gave a bit of context on UvdL (Ursula von der Leyen) in a comment a few hours ago in the thread “European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting kids”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31344817
> It is much easier for lobbyists with deep pockets to influence policies on the continent.
I don't know what you're comparing it with (i.e. easier than what?), but in my mind one advantage of the "bureaucracy" of the EU is that you have to convince way more people to get them to execute on your wishes. You can influence a Commissioner (the Commission is indirectly elected, i.e. appointed by the member governments, which are often appointed by the majority parties in a government, which are elected), but then it also needs to be approved by Parliament (directly elected) and the Council (the governments, usually appointed by the elected majority parties). And then I assume there's also a whole bunch of roadblocks that civil servants can throw up if a plan is really inconvenient.
Bingo, the EU is optimised to _not_ do things against the will of member states, both at the EU government and national government level.
Many things are proposed, very few make it through, meaning the number of people you have to influence has to be extremely tactical or total.
You can see this with the proposal to stop moving the EU parliament and commission to Strasbourg every year (just to move it back again), France says no, therefore it can't happen.
Same is true with sanctions against .pl for freedom of the press violations, Hungary says no and that's all it takes for nothing to happen.
You're obviously here for a reasonable discussion.
The only people who benefit from the EU dissolving are nationalists and enemies of the block of countries that make up the EU (Russia, China and to some extent the Allied US whom would prefer us not to be united).
You should be very concerned about our House of Lords, our Monarchy and the cronyism and corruption that is currently plaguing our elected officials, and lovely "unelected" advisors to the prime minister such as Dominic Cummings, who's policies used to be followed almost as religious dogma.
You can worry about the "big bad EU" when you understand the EU more.
I'm aware that it is a bold and inflamatory claim to say you don't understand it enough; but I feel confident making such a statement as anybody who has spent more than 20 minutes researching how the EU works would know that it's folly to say that they're "unelected authoritarians".
Lets start with the unelected bit:
EU Commission is elected by Parliment. (IE; indirectly elected)
EU Parliament is directly elected by you, the individual, they are your MEPs, and they're elected in one of the most democratic ways we know of.
EU Council is heads of state (IE; Elected)
Council of the European Union is non-heads of governments of European countries. (IE; Elected).
> neither am I fond of fascists
Might want to look up what that word means, the very idea of a united EU is the opposite of fascism. Fascism is characterised by nationalism.
> governing my community from far away.
The distance between Luxembourg and London is less than the distance between London and Glasgow..
(489km vs 556km as the crow flies)
I'm British, I was a little bit nationalistic before I left the UK and realised that I was foolish.
I'm not accusing you of being a fool but you're certainly misinformed.
I find it's better to not throw stones if you live in a glass house.
the irony is that you're criticising the parent for not understanding the EU, but then you seem to have a limited understanding of how your own country works in reality (vs. someone doing quick read of its description on wikipedia)
the modern house of lords is advisory and completely subordinate to the commons
it is a glorified select committee, there to scrutinise the law and slow it down
the commons can override it, but to do that it has to wait
it's essentially the EU parliament: the inferior chamber that can slightly amend and block law
the sovereign is similar, the commons is superior and last time there was a fundamental disagreement the country became a republic
the UK is full of contradictions like this: formally we're theocracy ruled by an absolute monarch appointed by god
but that's not how it works in practice
vs. say the US, which is the complete opposite on paper (strict republic, limits on power, strict separation of church and state), but then has presidents constantly referring to god and religion being a huge thing in politics
> I find it's better to not throw stones if you live in glass houses.
Well, since you glossed over it and then defended it I kinda assumed.
Please explain why the house of lords is ok but the EU commission is not.
If you're not in favour of the HoL maybe we should start there and not spend ages talking about an institution our country does not need to try to ruin anymore: since it left.
and since I now live within its borders, and it applies to me.
> You should be very concerned about our House of Lords...
I think that's ridiculous, though they don't affect much. Waste of money. Not really with the Monarchy, as they aren't affecting anything at all.
> but I feel confident making such a statement as anybody who has spent more than 20 minutes researching how the EU works would know that it's folly to say that they're "unelected authoritarians".
Why would you assume that? Because I am an immigrant? How progressive.
FYI you're wrong. What a shock.
> the very idea of a united EU is the opposite of fascism
One fundamental characteristic of Fascism is the centralisation of power in the state, and control/partnership with the private sector (which acts both for itself and for the benefit of the state). This is core to the EU. The logical conclusion of the EU project is a larger, more powerful government. It can't move into a different direction.
Are you aware of the thread that you're into? You can't possibly be missing the irony, but it seems you are.
> The distance between Luxembourg and London is less than the distance between London and Glasgow..
"far away" can also mean culturally, and BTW I'm not in favour of London governing anything in Glasgow either.
But that wouldn't fit into your preconceptions, would it?
> but you're certainly misinformed.
Why would you assume I don't already know everything that you said?
I know: because you might be a bit arrogant. That is very apparent.
Just so you know, you contradicted yourself:
The EU commission is made of UNELECTED people. They are the ones who draft the laws. Being appointed by someone does not mean elected, it means precisely being unelected.
How silly does one have to be to try to twist the basic meaning of accountability in government?
Now, even if they had been elected directly, the people making laws, or voting on said laws, or influencing policy that affects my country were elected somewhere else.
Nobody outside a given sovereign body should have a say in anything policy-wise within it.
Some political scientist argue that after the Lisbon treaty the deficit is a myth but I don't think their statements have much merit. They often argue that parliamentary control wouldn't be the only metric that would quantify democracy but fail to give an answer what would compensate this deficiency.
Not only did the treaty get rejected by some states that were allowed to vote on it, the fact that it is too far removed from citizens and their inadequate participation. In fact I would argue the treaty made it even more undemocratic. The influence of Kutcher compared to European individuals is not the only empirical evidence for that.
The parliamentary control is minimal and there is little overarching political discourse beyond the borders of the nation state. Language barriers are strong and that won't change in the foreseeable future. Until then the commission will run the circus.
Not to pick a point, but that's true of all legislation.
Making something illegal is much easier than making something that was previously illegal: legal.
That's just how legislation works in all systems. One need only look at constitutions.
"undemocratic" is a stretch, people are still voting for representatives, representatives of the people are still voting. Nobody is deciding something by themselves. Unless we've changed what democracy means.
that is definitely not how it works in all systems
a future government should be able to roll back legislation as easily as the past government implemented it, otherwise the process fundamentally undemocratic
this is true for the UK
constitutions that require super-majorities to change are fundamentally undemocratic
the US founding fathers considered this to be a feature to prevent mob rule... they were probably right here
but it's really quite hard to argue that elevating the principles of dead slave owners 200 years ago (extreme example) over those of voters alive today is democratic
This would mean less democracy. As much as possible should be decided decentralized at a local level. I know where my mayor lives. He can't act against the interest of his own people for too long without some serious consequences. A pan-EU organization can.
> He can't act against the interest of his own people for too long without some serious consequences.
If there is one thing where incompetent buffoons can act for far too long with impunity, it is local politics.
Local politics usually don't interest anyone except pensioners with too much free time on their hands, and even if people care about local politics that doesn't mean they take care about democracy. The result are people like the disgraced Sheriff Arpaio.
The reason for the lack of interest is that local politicians don't have enough power. If all the local mayor decides about is whether the town hall is going to be blue or green, people don't care. If he can decide if people are allowed to visit local businesses with or without a vaccination verification people did care... a lot.
I used to think that. Who would get elected for EU president? I believe we have such diversity that the risk is that only the right wing hardliners could agree on a common candidate and we’d risk getting something like Orban or Berlusconi as EU president. I think you can see the trend in the US. So no thanks.
I find the complexity of EU actually to be a feature, not a bug. There are drawbacks, but I’ll take them over the alternative you paint.
They are not incompetent. Their goal is to install a totalitarian surveillance state. They become exceedingly efficient at it.
If you assume your politicians are doing this because they are stupid or because you think they can not see the bigger picture you already lost. At centers of concentrated power everything happens for a purpose.
Given that these are positions that have to be filled by someone, it's also possible that they're filled by people who happened to have had the winds blowing in their direction, and that if events had been different, other people (more or less cunning) would have been there.
This relies on the assumption that there are powerful offices that no one wants to have, and that if they aren't filled a lottery would be run and someone picked up randomly from the street to fill those offices.
Why would it need no one wanting to have the positions? I just said that of the ones that do want it, the one that happens to succeed needn't necessarily succeed because of their cunning scheming - they may just have been lucky.
> It is much easier for lobbyists with deep pockets to influence policies on the continent
That's not how things go, in fact that's very opposite of how things go
"I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. 'That’s easy,' he replied. 'When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.'"
So, no, you're wrong about how easy it is. And where the fault lies.
But Hollywood also loves money, so this figures. Won't be hard to extend copyrighted material the CP hashes and make it harder to store, transfer or view unapproved media.
We have already seen Hollywood ready to abridge freedoms anywhere people make unauthorised copies of their films/shows. So this would mesh well with that. They were disgusting long ago.
But to be fair, you're lumping them into the wrong broad category. They obviously aren't all pedophiles, but most of them are greedy.
Does one or two retired actors’ investments and business interests in surveillance technology companies qualify as “Hollywood” campaigning for the destruction of free countries?
I don't see how government reading through personal messages is gonna protect children. From all the possible solutions, this is the most useless and the most unsecure.
> grooming: manipulative behaviors that the abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught.
That's why it's followed by specifics (...that the abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught.)
Of course taking two words out of the statement without context makes it less specific.
No, it's a retcon. Every kind adult in my life would have retroactively become groomers if they had later molested me. It makes being nice to kids a suspicious act, which is fine for me because kids annoy me, but is not good for kids.
Single-issue advocates are important because they focus on an issue more than most, but this is a great example of why you need to take their initiatives with a grain of salt... eventually single-issue champions will always lean towards authoritarianism. You need someone you trust to tell you when to stop.
I lived in San Juan county, New Mexico, which had (has?) one of the worst records in the nation for drunk driving fatalities. Like it or not, that statistic was due to the presence of and proximity to the dry Navajo reservation.
Checkpoints were rampant, but it was both easy to discover their locations as well as avoid them. In practice, I found them to be opportunities to shakedown the population and issue any possible citation that they thought could stick, with drunk driving prevention being the ostensible reasoning to defend what would otherwise be an indefensible violation of the 4th Amendment.
The net result for me personally was a near total loss of respect for law enforcement and our government in general. It demonstrated that the majority conform to our system of laws out of abject terror, or risk being arbitrarily targeted and persecuted under fundamentally unjust laws. No one in their right mind would claim to obey the government out of respect for the system’s righteousness.
That’s not a sustainable way to run a government, so here we are: in the midst of a civil war (being waged in the courts… for now) and on the brink of outright revolution. The current assault on reproductive rights offers yet another glimpse into this now-endemic ongoing conflict, with actual violence occurring almost daily.
>The European Union debates a new law that could force platforms to scan all private messages for signs of child abuse.
This is how censorship started in Turkey. They said that they are not going to censor opposing view but now 99% of censorships are to silence anything that speaks against the current president.
One thing I think is important to highlight here is people often make the argument that this sort of legislation is just a grab for power using child exploitation as a cover. But if you actually take seriously the arguments made by people like Ashton Kutcher there's no doubt that there are people who genuinely are trying to solve the problem of child trafficking and this would actually help them do that.
That's not to say that there aren't significant draw backs of this type of legislation, nor that on balance this type of solution is correct. I'm simply pointing out that there are genuine policy reasons to endorse this and if you oppose this it would be wise to find other ways of solving the concerns people like Kutcher are raising.
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I think it's extremely important not to dilute the public response to this.
CSAM scanning is arbitrary, opaque and ubiquitous. You cannot know what the blocklist contains, such a system is not introspectable and it is not outside the realm of reason that a more totalitarian government could insert a picture of President Xi photoshopped as Winnie the Pooh or the famous Putin in make-up picture: and then they will immediately get a list of all dissidents.
It's absolutely Orwellian, and it's invisible too.
This is not the way.
----
I'll add that in general the hacker community (CCC and ilk) can be a bit more distrustful of authority than perhaps is healthy.
I attended one talk at CCC where a person detailed all the "wrong" ways that the FBI was hacking pedophile sites and collecting personal information on the darkweb.
I openly responded to him in support of the FBI; that wholesale collection of registered accounts on a pedophile website represents probable cause; that if it's illegal to gather information of pedophiles across county or country lines: then we should work on making it legal.
There's a large difference in my mind, between taking conscious action in doing something, such as trying to buy drugs vs submitting yourself for a mandatory drug screening every week.
I can confirm from talking to people who know him, and watching him speak about it at length in a small group, private setting, Ashton cares deeply about fighting child exploitation. His life outside of acting and family seems to basically consist of helping run his VC fund and working at Thorn, his company that works with governments to fight child exploitation online. He got emotional talking about Thorn and the work they've done. It's some of the most serious shit imaginable to fight against and deal with. I also wouldn't be surprised if he's had technical experts explain to him at least some of the problems with government oversight like this, and probably figures it's a valid tradeoff if it helps reduce child exploitation to any meaningful degree. He's honestly not a dumb guy at all.
From your description he seems very irrational and led by emotion. His goal is noble but that's where it ends. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
>probably figures it's a valid tradeoff if it helps reduce child exploitation to any meaningful degree.
Without actual numbers and rational arguments, this is so subjective it is moot.
People arguing against this aren't against fighting child sexual abuse or even sexual abuse in general. But the entire thing is so riddled with "what ifs" and more, that it's a hard sell to justify another step to the road of potential total control.
Every parent wants their children to have as many lifelines as possible in case something bad happens, to let them experiment safely without predators lurking. What we should be asking is how much we're willing to give up for each lifeline, and at what point we have to accept nature (or in this case, society) just isn't going to be fair.
It seems it's just a matter of having different principles and values than others at their very core. To wit, FTA:
"In recent months, Johansson has stressed that privacy and encryption should not stand in the way of law enforcement"
my values, on the other hand, are the exact opposite (law enforcement should not stand in the way of privacy and encryption), and thus dictate a different preference.
I really couldn't care less how emotional and heartfelt he gets about the problem of child exploitation. I get it, it's a major and awful problem in many contexts of the world. Emotions about ugly, disgusting things however should never be a door opener for throwing away other also extremely important fundamentals like the right to privacy, anonymity and fighting back mass state surveillance as much as possible.
Once the emotional tearjerker arguments have been used to support those things, the cynical bureaucrats and autocrats that make policy later use these tools for so many other sinister things. If Kutcher has more brains than emotion, and is serious about a genuinely better world, he should be aware of these other important fundamentals too and base his proposals for fighting exploitation on them.
I get that Ashton is trying to do the right thing here. The problem is the solutions are just so short sighted. I dug through his website and came across a blog post [1] they made blasting Facebook for implementing E2E on Facebook/IG Messenger.
On the one hand yes they are technically correct, but at the same time the argument is so incredibly short sighted. Yes if we ban E2E then it will solve the problem of CSAM, but at the same time it will open the door to a host of other consequences.
Honestly the argument sounds alot like the fictitious argument we make here: "cars kill X number of kids per year, let's ban cars!".
>Honestly the argument sounds alot like the fictitious argument we make here: "cars kill X number of kids per year, let's ban cars!".
A) There's no shortage of people make that argument unironically
B) If you just change "ban" to "tax to the point that the common man finds another solution" (which is the same sort of "some animals are more equal" situation that dragnets with selective enforcement create) the number of those people increases by an order of magnitude.
> I get that Ashton is trying to do the right thing here. The problem is the solutions are just so short sighted. I dug through his website and came across a blog post [1] they made blasting Facebook for implementing E2E on Facebook/IG Messenger.
I would argue that he's just trying to make money. Lobbying politicians so that a requirement for a product becomes enshrined in law, while your organization just happens to be providing that product? For a fee, of course. This is just plain old greed in a wrapper of virtue signaling. Yuck.
Also technology is no substitute for a society that invests in a trusting, caring culture, where child abuse can be picked upon by teachers or other sectors that deal with children.
> Honestly the argument sounds alot like the fictitious argument we make here: "cars kill X number of kids per year, let's ban cars!".
Giving the government or some other entity access to all of your media is not analogous to the physical reality of children being at more risk due to being around more moving cars (especially since those cars have increased in height and have reduced visibility).
It is objectively true that children who grow in up a village without cars are safer while playing outside by themselves than a village where large cars are zipping by at 40mph. Whether or not the benefits of cars are worth the loss of free movement for children is a different discussion.
What? You lose nothing but a perception of privacy in the theoretical case of a backdoor to encryption, we have rule of law ffs. Without cars the human race is limited to moving <20 mph and what you can carry on your back.
If we ban cars tomorrow society grinds to a halt, there will be mass starvation. If we ban e2e encryption in consumer products tomorrow nothing changes.
>What? You lose nothing but a perception of privacy in the theoretical case of a backdoor to encryption, we have rule of law ffs.
We lost that perception years ago when Snowden revealed it was all backdoored anyway. I do not know what rule of law you are referring to.
>If we ban cars tomorrow society grinds to a halt, there will be mass starvation. If we ban e2e encryption in consumer products tomorrow nothing changes.
I do not think anyone serious is referring to banning all cars period. The discussion is more like creating more spaces where large vehicles are de prioritized or not allowed and walking and bicycling are prioritized such that there is greatly reduced risk of being run over. Also included are probably returning cars to smaller sizes and to reduce the severity of injuries and increased visibility.
Banning e2e does change something. Maybe not visibly, and not exactly tomorrow, but it certainly enables and progresses the mission of those wanting to limit civil rights.
Show me where completely innocent US citizens have actually been imprisoned as a result of PRISM et. al. To the best of my knowledge the US security apparatus is benevolent towards peaceful civilians, and all the hand ringing about the invasion of privacy is just that. This isn't to say that I support the Patriot Act, only that our rights have already been taken away.
> I do not think anyone serious is referring to banning all cars period.
And in my view E2E encryption doesn't have to be banned outright, it just needs to be treated as the dangerous tool it is. Making it the default for all communication is like making tanks the standard mode of transportation. How about a encryption registry, like a gun registry?
SiValley is currently giving military grade tools too rapists and slavers and then saying that telling them to stop will result in 1984; I just don't buy it. As you pointed out, those in control in the US already have all the tools they need to destroy your life thanks to the Patriot Act and poor judicial enforcement(Stingrays), meanwhile technology has progressed in a way that makes a very marginalized group, poor young women, much more vulnerable. Instead of providing a tech solution for a tech problem, the call from the encryption community is to solve it with the same way we always have. Easy for some rich tech bro to say, but if encryption was really just a shitty tool, I don't think the US security apparatus would have invested so heavily in it.
> SiValley is currently giving military grade tools too rapists and slavers and then saying that telling them to stop will result in 1984.
Unfortunately we live in a world where most data that isn't E2EE is up for sale. Without making E2EE the default for all communication will result in anyone with money the power to know everything about your life.
If E2EE is not the default 'poor young women' will be much more vulnerable now, because their abusers will have access to more information about them.
Talk about grasping at straws, and if E2E was not only about government but about every kind of snooping.
"Perception of privacy", unless you know about an actual fault with the E2E of various platforms it is actual privacy. Unless of course your phone gets trojaned or something, which is of course an issue, but it is how an actual investigation should be done (judicially authorized)
But if you still believe no one has actual privacy then your protonmail account would be useless right?
I believe that if you are sufficiently high on an international watch list E2E is mostly useless. The way the Russian invasion of Ukraine was so accurately telegraphed by the US was a demonstration to me of how powerful our intelligence apparatus is.
As far as I'm concerned every cellular device is probably backdoored through the baseband, telecoms have long worked hand in hand with the USG, and the pressure that the US has put on allies to boycott Huwei RF hardware only strengthened that claim. If you are, say, a head of ISIS, my guess is that your phone already has keyloggers on it.
This whole conversation is a microcosm of US politics in that both sides are completely unwilling to compromise on their position.
Nothing is saying that you couldn't roll a "right to privacy" into legislation, say that anyone who provides a messaging system isn't allowed to analyze those messages, and any read/write action has to be instigated by or in service to either the user or a warrant. Add massive fines as a percent of revenue or significant prison time for violations. Wouldn't that be a win/win?
You could then treat E2E encryption like other military assets, civilians need to register and pass a background check. If you have a driver's license in the US you sign away your right to not take a drug test, similarly you could sign away your right not to tell law enforcement your password. Corporations could make being licensed for E2E a hiring bar just like military clearance.
All this is dependent on my (some might say naive) view that the US is ultimately a democracy(and has a strong history of it) and as a result is unlikely to go fully off the rails. I really don't worry about the USG snooping on me, (why would I? seriously) but I literally just last week heard about the young daughter of an acquaintance of an acquaintance getting kidnapped.
> if you are sufficiently high on an international watch list E2E is mostly useless.
Yes, pretty much.
> The way the Russian invasion of Ukraine was so accurately telegraphed by the US was a demonstration to me of how powerful our intelligence apparatus is.
Nah, they just had people infiltrate telegram/whatsapp groups and get the info from there. Russian army discipline in that area is very poor. Then Ukraine tapped into their actual calls for later intelligence.
The baseband is actually the most unhelpful place to have any backdoor. But yes, if you're a high level target you're probably getting observed
But that doesn't mean people should actively try to undermine E2E (again, it's not just against the government. I'm happy to keep it secret end to end, including to my ISP, the people on the same VLAN as me, etc)
But I agree in some aspects that the right is not absolute. But I'm actually less worried with something like Pegasus than a blanket general weakening of privacy for everybody
The canadian government was able to suspend the "rule of law" in a matter of days not even 3 months ago. Court orders are nice, but won't help you when your constitutional rights are suspended. So it makes sense that the idea of just relying on the law doesn't exactly convince some people.
Though I agree that even as a huge proponent of e2ee communication that is free of backdoors, in the grand scheme of things it is not that important to the lives of most people. It's mostly a concern for us nerds and has almost no impact in real life. Especially when you consider that communication has been subject to government oversight and surveillance even in democratic, free societies forever.
If anything, whats anormal and new for most "normies" is e2ee for personal communication. My mom actually found it funny/naive that I actually believed that governments just can't read some of my encrypted chats if they wanted to. She also didn't understand why such a thing would be allowed if it was possible.
I mean, it's Ashton Kutcher. He has a certain name recognition to be sure, but he's an actor. What has he ever done to show that he's some kind of deep thinker on the subject of child exploitation? I'll grant that his emotional motivations are genuine, but not that he actually has any workable solutions to offer.
EDIT: Actually established in 2009 per Wikipedia - a good source to see that there's a lot more to him than just being an actor (not that there's anything wrong with that).
These sort of issues are susceptible to framing problems.
For instance, "cars kill X number of kids per year, let's ban cars!"'s mirror framing is "how many children's lives is car driving worth?" It's something to be on the lookout for in these types of discussions if not to avoid then to recognize.
It seems that this guy is looking for a way to make a lot of money with the blessing of governments. There is no evidence that he cares more about kids than money. It could have been anything else IMHO.
>there are people who genuinely are trying to solve the problem of child trafficking and this would actually help them do that.
No, it would not help.
What these well meaning people are missing is the fact, the organised pedophiles are technically versatile and very cautious. Any intrusion on privacy will quickly push them out of these communication channels and the only thing that is left is the risk for democracy.
My concerns are on the macro level, that it will be used by the powerful to control the opposition parties. Both sides are not the same nor are both sides treated the same by lady justice. Long term, I believe this will be a dangerous political tool.
Because this scheme is actually a thoughtful way to address a real problem affecting real children. Giving zero ground on privacy to address problems like child sex exploitation is not workable over the long term - there will be some sacrifices to digital privacy, same as in every other aspect of life. So it would be good if you could provide specific faults with this scheme, so we can evaluate how bad those faults are compared to addressing some amount child exploitation, and compare this scheme to alternatives.
I think what you're hearing is that your preference for these sacrifices in furtherance of the end is not shared by some other people.
As for specific faults, that's not really necessary, plenty of general ones have been shared (like the lack of transparency, potential for abuse) which do not need specifics to be understood.
As for evaluating one vs. the other, I feel that your opinion as to the result of that evaluation might not necessarily be mine, and neither of us will convince each other, as a result of the fundamental difference in the amount of privacy each of us is willing to give up, and in exchange for what.
As others have pointed out, it's not incumbent upon those opposed to a policy to come up with an alternative. Rather, it's literally legislators' job to do that.
However, as others have also pointed out, child sex abuse has both existed and been prosecuted before this law has come into effect.
Thus, the alternative I personally prefer is that. I understand your principles and willingness to sacrifice privacy lead you to another solution, but hey, you asked.
Once a system has been implemented to spy on all messages for one purpose it is relatively trivial to extend it for other purposes. The potential for abuse is limitless, but just one example would be the group in power spying on dissenters in order to find and neutralize them. This isn't a hypothetical outcome, many governments without strong privacy rights are doing exactly this right now.
> if you oppose this it would be wise to find other ways of solving the concerns people like Kutcher are raising.
A technical solution that scans users' devices for known CSAM does not exist in a way which preserves privacy while still being resistant to surveillance overreach. Apple's method was decent at preserving privacy, but it still requires absolute trust in the entity who provides the list of hashes to not put anything but CSAM there.
And what the EU is proposing goes beyond identifying known CSAM, but identifying new CSAM.
The solution is, as always, making investigations into child exploitation and sex trafficking a priority. It doesn't require the ability to rifle through everyone's devices to find the predators. It certainly hasn't up to this point - the bottleneck is and always has been making it a priority (funding, manpower, etc).
Ok what if someone did sneak some non-CSAM? Some random person would get flagged, the photos would be manually reviewed, and then nothing bad would happen. Doesn’t seem like a very big deal.
Imagine Xi puts a hash of Winnie on the list and the preprocessing attack is done to conceal CSAM in pictures of Winnie. Such images could be distributed to launch an attack.
The FBI is responsible in the US for investigating interstate sex trafficking and CSAM (Note, the 'M' stands for "material" - not just photos). The FBI subsequently provides the CSAM hash list, and volunteers manpower for the manual reviews.
Where does this go wrong? When the FBI expands the CSAM hash list to include "The Anarchists' Cookbook".
Only Apple's implementation was limited to images. There's nothing in the current or proposed laws that prevents searching other media. Otherwise, since an ebook is just a zipped HTML page with its resources, it leaves a huge loophole in the identification of CSAM.
Source? If you have ever been a target of the police/legal/judicial system, there is rarely a case where the individual has nothing bad happen. The government actors’ impetus is to make sure they are not found at fault, not to ensure that the individual is actually guilty or innocent. At a minimum, the individual will lose many hours and go through a lot of stress.
See any and all police misconduct cases in the US, as well as border patrol or really any other dealings with a government agent. The only protection is to be able to afford highly connected lawyers or be connected yourself.
People are investigated or are considered within the scope of an investigation all the time. We don’t learn/ care about it if there are no arrests. What specifically do you think could go wrong here?
- AI is generally shit at not being biased, this is more of a meta point, but it is important to remember that all abuses and incosistencies will hit some people harder than other.
- Some random government guy will look through my fotos. I do not want that.
- There is no proper oversight for what is actually scanned, and on which paramaters. The gov could just "accidentally" also scan for other crimes or things it doesn't like. Democracy isn't set in stone, and this would be extremely useful infrastructure for a tyrant.
- Banning encryption or requiring backdoors makes all of us less safe from third parties.
> How specifically could that play out in this instance?
As AI is famously bad at matching against dark skinned individuals [0], all photos of black kids now flag as CSAM, whether or not any part of them is even dubious at all.
Or, for the same reason, law enforcement switches methodologies from proper, normal investigation to just scanning, since "its so easy!", but the software fails to recognize dark skinned children, and as a result all law enforcement efforts end up helping only lighter skinned victims
> it still requires absolute trust in the entity who provides the list of hashes to not put anything but CSAM there
Yes but isn't that already the case? If a government, a three-letter-agency, or even a local detective want to fabricate a case against me for some reason, how difficult will that be to do in practice? Does this CSAM hash list really give them anything fundamentally new?
The capability for a government agency to conduct a warrantless search of the mobile devices of all citizens (citizens being a narrow search target) for arbitrary data.
This capability does not exist today, and I would argue it should not exist.
Of course, the path to destruction is always paved with good intentions.
But time and time again humans have shown that they cannot handle the responsibility of power. And giving governments access to all private communications is absolute power.
> I'm simply pointing out that there are genuine policy reasons to endorse this and if you oppose this it would be wise to find other ways of solving the concerns people like Kutcher are raising.
If I propose putting an unobstructed streaming camera in every room of every house, that would also solve a lot of problems. That does not mean people who oppose my solution need to come up with alternatives. They can simply oppose cameras in every room due to the problems of cameras in every room.
" Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by the telescreen; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.
"
— Part I, Chapter 1, Nineteen Eighty-Four
And that is even less of a dystopia than what we're capable of now: there is no reason for any person to be plugging in to the telescreen to watch someone live, because it can all be recorded and then retroactively browsed at will.
It will never cease to amuse me that Orwell intended to write a book about geopolitics and the downsides of a fractionalized world, but instead accidentally wrote a book that everyone interprets as an anti-government manifesto.
I'm glad we can all take away from literature something personal to us. Your view is no more or less wrong than anyone else's, and I'd like to hear more.
> everyone interprets as an anti-government manifesto
It's been a while so maybe my memory is just flawed, but my feelings about 1984 are more that it's a cautionary tale of living in a dystopian surveillance state.
That's not the same as anti-government. I actually expect my government to assist in preventing such outcomes considering there's obviously lucrative and powerful corporate interests pursuant to these machinations.
1984 is not important because it's broadly anti-government. I think calling it anti-government is a mischaracterization, because it describes a very unhealthy and specific kind of government: one that wields its might to manage the minutia of everyone's lives as it sees fit, putting its own survival above their well-being. I just want to be clear that opposing authoritarian or totalitarian government is not opposition to government generally.
Orwell, had been or was still a convinced socialist, however he did not believe in soviet communism, and wrote the book as a warning, after having seen Stalins troops up close in Spain.
Orwell's earlier book animal farm is much on the same theme.
1984 is obviously anti-totalitarian and definitely a manifesto for not giving government too much unbridled power.
It was inspired, just like Animal Farm, by George Orwell's years spent in the spanish civil war, and the corruption of socialism, as he saw it, by stalinism.
I don't see a basis for claiming it's anything but an anti-totalitarian novel, explaining totalitarianism as it is: a boot stomping on a human face - for ever.
Yeah, this was the part that also occurred to me. With 1984 the threat that someone could watch is chilling. With our tech level everyone could be constantly watched and evaluated in real time by some sort of AI.
There are two directions the updated 1984 can now take. The AI is reporting you to the government. Or the AI just takes care of your punishment itself. Are you actually a dissident or did you just sneeze and the AI interpreted that as some code phrase? Doesn't matter.
The great thing about using "the algorithm", is that when if fails or is wrong, you blame it and not the creators, administrators, and authorizers of it.
What you're missing is, at best, the tech to achieve this without actually needing the camera placed inside the room, will exist at scale in this century. At worst, it is already deployed in "hot" areas (areas significant to national security, experimental areas).
The question becomes how to control the inevitable proliferation of commoditized mass survelliance.
Privacy in the future will require a level of defense not available via common residential/commercial construction methods. Hell, even a SCIF eventually won't help..
What does line of rhetoric mean? The example was to show the poor logic of “you should have an alternative solution if you oppose this solution”. One can simply prefer the downsides of the status quo rather than different downsides of a change.
So you prefer your perceived absolute privacy (how sure are you that the NSA doesnt have a backdoor in the baseband?) over the enslavement of over 10,000’s of people world wide each year?
That's not the comparison you can make. You're going to have to sell us a bit harder on how fully breaking the commoner's privacy is going to ensure those enslavements won't happen. Until then, it's all assumptions.
More reasonable is you're going to make things maybe a little safer for kids to do stupid things you could educate them on, at the cost of trading any potential privacy on the internet. You'd even have to cover private channels, as the mere threat of blackmail would be enough to cause problems.
You make the assumption that the commoner’s privacy will actually be broken, make it so that using the backdoor requires a warrant, and can only be used legally on suspected traffickers.
Rapists and slavers shouldn’t have access to military grade encryption, full stop.
>You make the assumption that the commoner’s privacy will actually be broken
Because it already has been proven to have been broken, repeatedly. We have the Snowden documents, PRISM wiretapping, FISA courts, Guantanamo Bay, multiple CIA programs violating human rights', police misconduct that goes unpunished even with hard proof, prosecutors that withhold evidence and are not punished (even protected), and the list goes on and on and on and on.
That's my point though, you can't break something that's already broken. We don't have privacy from the USG, and we should stop acting like we do. If you accept that the USG can already snoop on you as they like, why wouldn't you want to make it so that they can go after human traffickers?
Yeah the point I'm making is this: It's fine for you to have that opinion, but if you don't find other ways to resolve Kutchers concerns he's going to continue pushing for this policy, and because he's a rich celebrity pushing a policy that the state is already pretty keen on, it's likely he's going to succeed. So on a practical level if you actually want to stop this becoming policy, it would be much more effective to actually to find different solutions.
> So on a practical level if you actually want to stop this becoming policy, it would be much more effective to actually to find different solutions.
There is no solution to the "problem" of some people sharing photos or other content which some other people don't like which would be compatible with either privacy or freedom of speech.
The issue to be solved here isn't CSAM, it's CSA. The CSAM is evidence; they should be using it to find and prosecute actual abusers, not trying to drive it further underground.
Then you have the cynics like myself who remember the UK anti terrorists powers being used to freeze Icelandic banks assets during the financial crisis. There is a 1.00 probability that the authority will be extended and abused. So like for free speech, you can’t give up fundamental rights even if those rights get abused by some terrible people. Those rights cannot be a roadkill for a good cause.
I think people like him (i.e. a person without any background in computer science, AI, information security, etc) shouldn't be pushing for a solution they don't really comprehend. To me this is similar to those who were pushing for hydroxychloroquine/ivermectin/bleach as a cure for COVID-19. This is very dangerous, even if you are well-intentioned.
I believe this is the correct response. Let Kutcher lobby the EU to make a plan for combating child trafficking and child pornography, however, do not push a solution you don't (fully) understand with it.
And then? Generate 100000 false positives per day (which is what will happen); arrest them all until proven innocent? Investigate them all until proven guilty? What? 100000 flagged data streams (videos, documents, sounds, images etc) is serious work to comb through as an AI is just not good enough to ruin someone's life while innocent. This will also happen with the current proposal anyway if executed broad enough.
> if you oppose this it would be wise to find other ways of solving the concerns people like Kutcher are raising
Well if I am supposed to find other ways of solving the concerns people like Kutcher are raising, then what, exactly, are we supposed to be paying the MPs for? Just to raise their hands when the voting comes?
There are countless politicians, technology and policy experts, and government employees at all levels involved in this. When they come up with a solution and it turns out to be wrong, it's still their job -- literally -- to figure out a better one.
I think the concept here is more "Trojan Horse for implementation of Chinese-style mass surveillance" than "well-intentioned effort aimed at protecting children".
The correct criminal approach for defeating child abuse rings is targeted investigation, not mass surveillance of everyone in the population. This for example involves using undercover police to infiltrate such rings and arrest their members. This is not a novel idea, either.
Correct. Attempts and any excuse to setup "Precrime" programs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precrime), where the entire population is under continual surveillance by "algorithms", "AI", or agencies is about control.
Saying it's about the children, makes anybody who argues against the point look bad. But once they have successfully slipped that under the door, the continual surveillance will go on to be for any and everything, as it becomes in any authoritarian state. It's just another and sneaky way to get to what is done in China.
It appears you haven't heard of Snowden and many of his disclosures. Agencies have been using it and warrantless surveillance to violate privacy and rights at will, then use illegally or questionable gotten evidence to do parallel construction in further violation of rights.
The continual erosion of rights sets the stage for authoritarianism. America was arguably not too far way from a coup attempt, Jan 6th. One of the next series of attempts can be successful. It would be smart for people to read up on how Putin came to power. Systems and histories are of course different, but there can be some parallels, in terms of subverting an existing system to one's own ends. Of course some people will think such is not possible, until it happens or nearly happens.
When these control mechanisms are put together, like using "AI" (and who controls and updates it?) to continually scan all e-mails and messaging for added vague concepts such as "grooming" and whatever added on top, you are achieving a police state. The state, now that it has slipped in greater and more powerful mechanisms of mass surveillance and control (Precrime), can arbitrary decide what is a "violation" or not.
Citizens of "free" countries can eventually be put under just as tight control, as the citizens of China, Russia, etc... Anything and everything can be labelled a threat to the state (or for your safety), to the people, to women, to children, etc... Do what the police state dictates, and they will be watching for compliance, or else. If you say anything against the state, you can find yourself charged with a "crime" or whisked away. A lot of people don't want to live like that, but then a lot of people will blindly walk off a cliff too.
There is no genius compromise or middle ground with end to end encrypted private messages. It's basically mathematical proven. Either you do surveillance (of course with best intentions) in any form or you don't do it at all.
Because the people who propose solutions like this want to build a panopticon that does things that they like, while pretending that it's not a panopticon at all because that would make them sad, despite doing "good".
Also I doubt the content is proliferated through facebook and whatsapp. Perhaps by some careless people and that might lead to further investigations, but the proposal is just extremely inefficient and costs are too high.
Like with most crime fighting, investigators often just find the brain dead criminals, or just manufacture their own make believe criminals, to make it look like their use of funds produced results.
Real investigations are hard, and it's just easier to go after the careless or ignorant, while the actually dangerous and capable evade getting caught.
Opponents of a repressive proposal are not required to find alternatives, but here is the obvious one:
Rather than surveillance of every adult, forbid access to the Internet to minors. This would also reduce Facebook induced depression of teenagers, suicides and a lot more.
You'll find very quickly that the noble advertising and surveillance lobbies will back off, even if you tell them to think of the children.
We're about to lose the freedom to have encrypted communications and one of the important things to highlight is that the people pushing for this are genuine? I don't think so.
Somewhere, Kutcher said poverty is a major contributing factor in trafficking but concluded poverty was too hard to solve. I wish he would up his game and actually try to "solve poverty."
I think this is a power trip for the guy that makes him feel he matters and that matters more to him than actually making a difference. I'm not thrilled with it, personally.
More funding for teachers that can put eyes on the target because child abuse happens in the vicinity of the victim. If you really want an efficient solution, you have to start there instead of putting everyone under suspicion.
The exception is human trafficking and it isn't a crime done by common criminals or lone offenders, it is done by organized criminal gangs in a large scale that can be targeted individually.
I have no obligation to make any suggestion for not wanting my chats surveilled for that matter.
Absolute outrage clickbait. The bill is intended to protect children from traffickers. It is sponsored by the European Commission. The nonprofit founded by Ashton Kutcher supports it. He's not personally in Brussels demanding surveillance. The draft of the bill is likely written from a single point of view with a set of rules beyond what they expect to get, then it will be negotiated down and they'll get some of it or none of it. The notion that we should not even try to combat child sex trafficking because it will have some associated cost is really selfish. Obviously, we have to balance concerns, but that's entirely possible to do responsibly.
I think the last 20 years (really 100 years) have shown that abuse of free speech and privacy will happen no matter what when the authorities want it to and not at all when the don't. The US ran warrantless wiretapping for over a year post 9/11 and sucked up all sorts of completely illegally obtained communication and as far we know not a single civilian was remotely inconvenienced for it. Meanwhile Russia is throwing journalists out windows for their very public statements of fact.
Would you mind giving us access to all your email and phone messages? It's for a good cause, we want to check you're not doing anything wrong. Right? If you did nothing wrong you have nothing to fear
So wait, your point is "Governments are going to spy on you no matter what"... and your plan is to make measures that protect against that such as encryption illegal?
That wasn't his point at all. Instead of badly paraphrasing why don't you reply to what he actually wrote. He was clarifying the situation unlike everyone else talking in hyperboles. I'm not for this specific suggestion but Ashton and his foundation are truly trying to help fight child trafficking. Let's talk through a solution instead of ignoring it or slandering those trying to do something.
No. My point is governments will _repress_ people regardless of their surveillance capabilities. The Gestapo didn't need to monitor WhatsApp to detain disloyal citizens without trial. On the flip side, there are billion dollar corporations who exist solely to shit on the leaders of their countries as loudly as possible with no repercussions. I'm not saying surveillance is great and we just blindly accept it, but I am saying the cost of heightened surveillance is a lot lower than the HN crowd seem to think it is. When you're balancing the scale of public safety against increased surveillance it's not a simple equation.
If the Gestapo did have WhatsApp data it would have been severely more powerful. You are correct that I believe the cost is quite high compared to the very low returns of invasions of privacy like this. Which probably amounts to none.
We increased surveillance for decades. And none of this surveillance had any measurable impact on safety. It is just a short sighted proposal and nothing more. We know where and when kids get abused. The abused is almost always in their vicinity. Internet chat surveillance does not help at all.
> Kutcher is known to older millennials for movies such as „Dude, where’s my car“. Outside of his acting career, he has dabbled in technology investing. With Thorn, Kutcher entered the market for surveillance technology: In 2020, the organization launched „Safer,“ which claims to be the „first comprehensive third-party CSAM [child sexual abuse material] detection platform“.
So he's shilling his startup investment by trying to get the EU to mandate it.
I don't want to sound too cynical, but, basically, yes. I mean, I suppose if you look at it objectively, it is not a bad business model. How can you possibly oppose protecting children? Why, you must be one of 'them'.. and as a bonus: sufficiently powerful people will pay just to make sure they have either blackmail material or control over the process to protect themselves.
I said it once, I’ll say it again and I’m willing to het someone else in this same thread already vented the same opinion: Big Content (Copyright holders of all sorts) are probably salivating at the possibility of a content blocklist that you can’t turn off on your devices
He looks like a fucking hot head. I grew up with The Butterfly Effect, but this dude is just trying to juice his celebrity into something he either doesn't have the capability to understand - to its full extent - either his acting days are over and he just wants to make some profit, being the puppet of someone that knows better. Anyway, Ashton isn't dumb - he's just trying to be alive, doing all that it takes. Just fucking human nature man
Apparently "trafficking children" is so wide spread and rampant that europeans must give up more of their privacy and their liberties for "security and the children". Welcome to politics in 2022!
This is super old, you may remember the patriot act, privacy has been in a state of consistent erosion. Hell, before Snowden any type of surveillance movie was considered paranoia.
"To effectively address the misuse of online services for the purposes of child sexual abuse, clear rules are needed, with robust conditions and safeguards. The proposed rules will oblige providers to detect, report and remove child sexual abuse material on their services."
It does seem like a "lobby for more surveillance". Or can you think of a way to "detect, report and remove..." content without examining the contents of every single message sent on the platform?
The best way to "detect" would be to, obviously, read it. So yes, this is surveillance, and just because you have good intentions doesn't mean you're not wrong.
Connotation vs denotation, but I understand where you're coming from. Admittedly, I'm increasingly shocked that I've found myself on this side of the surveillance debate for this issue. I suppose this has something to do with my susceptibility to the "think of the children" tactic.
What separates this from other "appeal to pity" tactics is that this bill is the source of this bill. This isn't a group of EU equivalent democratic/republican lawmakers who are pushing for a surveillance bill because they have their wallets padded with intelligence contractor money. This is a philanthropist who has track record of sustained, devoted, high-effort actions in fighting against this dark industry.
I suppose the counter argument remains the same though, right? Whomever is granted the authority to surveil will ultimately misuse their access. Admittedly, I can't pull myself away from agreeing with that. What a mess.
The outcome is indeed more surveillance. It is also patently easy to frame anyone by sending them the wrong material or triggering terms that the artificial "intelligence" scans for.
In which case innocent persons will end up on watch lists or being harassed by intrusive investigations.
In my opinion, and with acknowledging the downsides, the parts of modern IT that are capable of transmission for the purposes of duplication should have some degree of automated surveillance for safeguarding our populations from harm. Not just for CSAM but for other dangerous information as well. For example, stolen financial information like credit card numbers. For strictly single user stuff, I'm less sure. For example, personal, non-shared backups seem different to me than shared backup drives.
I understand that an enterprising young hacker can encrypt it manually, but that's akin to someone becoming a gunsmith. It takes effort and usually the people that go through the training are the types of people we trust with the knowledge anyway.
Now I've personally worked on software to help stop the spread of CSAM, so I have my biases here, but I also understand the dangers of unmitigated surveillance. But just as we trust our democracies with munitions, I think we should do the same with surveillance, provided that courts and the rule of law are strongly enshrined. From what I know, this is the case in my country of Canada.
I want to live in a world that is safe and free. It takes work and discussions to achieve both at the same time, but I have faith that we can do it if we try.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadThis is again a fundamental flaw of the EU. It is much easier for lobbyists with deep pockets to influence policies on the continent. A few years ago EU advantages wwere sold as keeping the peace and making travel easier.
Well, I think the first one isn't true and the second is a tiny advantage in comparison to have vastly less influence. I don't have a solution and theoretically we have subsidiarity here but it empirically doesn't work, especially concerning civil liberties. Those are reduced while economic interests are completely unchallenged, even supported by the political structure.
Ever wondered why retail tries to use as few suppliers as possible? For a number of reasons but one is certainly to make that supplier dependent and to influence decisions in production. Now take this idea and transfer it to the EU. I don't think a lot of friends of the EU are capable to understand these dynamics and therefore are not really good political allies because refusing to talk about the problems doesn't make the problem go away. There is just hot air as a response if you even get one. The weight the EU provides to defend against the influence of other states is also useless if we emulate corrupt autocracies anyway.
So what is the excuse this time? We have a Hollywood actor influencing policies trying to sell his shitty AI solution. Sure, there is domestic support too, especially with personnel like UvdL who certainly nobody elected. Maybe people that cannot understand her might like her because she looks a bit sympathetic. Great union...
We simply cannot have a political institution on the highest level where nations offload their most incompetent politicians. Public policy is too important for that. As a citizen I cannot keep up with the issues in Spain or Sweden if I live in central Europe. How can I know what to vote for here? I could focus on my interest as a citizen, but right now it feels like a headless race forward with possibly very bad decisions that can do a lot of damage.
Most people in the EU not from Germany don't know UvdL and they should know that she has the capability to severely damage the net and to me this is a case of cronyism right in front of our eyes without much recourse.
Oh, we do, and we hate her and unfortunately Germany too, because they push their incompetent and corrupt politicians to the EU, where they're using the country's immense economic leverage to push unpopular policies across EU level.
You know what happens in my country when you get a big sum of money from crowdfunding or the tax authority thinks you owe them money? They block your bank accounts. Yeah, they actually do that, and then tell you to come and resolve the problem. Which can take weeks to months.
You know what happens in a "normal" country like the UK, Germany, Netherlands or any other with a healthy number of small/medium business? They notify you and tell you to come and resolve the issue asap. If you fail to do that, they can block and check your bank accounts.
In the meantime, you can continue doing business. The punishment for tax evasion/etc is about the same all over.
So why the extra totalitarianism? Anyone with half a brain would never want to deal with that bs. And that's just one example, there's lots more.
You know where big companies come from? Small ones grow into them. Good luck growing much of anything with this kind of approach. Sit there and be envious of Germany and everyone else.
The US is number one in the world for top companies, does that automatically make them the best example for policies on everything and the best politicians?
I just don't understand where you were going with this off topic rant.
I gave a bit of context on UvdL (Ursula von der Leyen) in a comment a few hours ago in the thread “European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting kids”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31344817
I don't know what you're comparing it with (i.e. easier than what?), but in my mind one advantage of the "bureaucracy" of the EU is that you have to convince way more people to get them to execute on your wishes. You can influence a Commissioner (the Commission is indirectly elected, i.e. appointed by the member governments, which are often appointed by the majority parties in a government, which are elected), but then it also needs to be approved by Parliament (directly elected) and the Council (the governments, usually appointed by the elected majority parties). And then I assume there's also a whole bunch of roadblocks that civil servants can throw up if a plan is really inconvenient.
Many things are proposed, very few make it through, meaning the number of people you have to influence has to be extremely tactical or total.
You can see this with the proposal to stop moving the EU parliament and commission to Strasbourg every year (just to move it back again), France says no, therefore it can't happen.
Same is true with sanctions against .pl for freedom of the press violations, Hungary says no and that's all it takes for nothing to happen.
whereas most policy is done via QMV, so the veto isn't a problem, especially if you can wait for a compliant set of governments
once it's implemented: getting another majority to initiate the legislation to remove it is even harder by the very nature of the mechanism
55% of countries by population and 65% of countries of total need to vote yes: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/...
and then your legislation is essentially eternally protected because you'd need the same QM to remove it, which will practically never happen
the system empowers the legislators of the past over the legislators of today, which is fundamentally undemocratic
The only people who benefit from the EU dissolving are nationalists and enemies of the block of countries that make up the EU (Russia, China and to some extent the Allied US whom would prefer us not to be united).
Which are you?
I'm simply not fond of unelected authoritarians, neither am I fond of fascists governing my community from far away.
Which are you?
You should be very concerned about our House of Lords, our Monarchy and the cronyism and corruption that is currently plaguing our elected officials, and lovely "unelected" advisors to the prime minister such as Dominic Cummings, who's policies used to be followed almost as religious dogma.
You can worry about the "big bad EU" when you understand the EU more.
I'm aware that it is a bold and inflamatory claim to say you don't understand it enough; but I feel confident making such a statement as anybody who has spent more than 20 minutes researching how the EU works would know that it's folly to say that they're "unelected authoritarians".
Lets start with the unelected bit:
EU Commission is elected by Parliment. (IE; indirectly elected)
EU Parliament is directly elected by you, the individual, they are your MEPs, and they're elected in one of the most democratic ways we know of.
EU Council is heads of state (IE; Elected)
Council of the European Union is non-heads of governments of European countries. (IE; Elected).
> neither am I fond of fascists
Might want to look up what that word means, the very idea of a united EU is the opposite of fascism. Fascism is characterised by nationalism.
> governing my community from far away.
The distance between Luxembourg and London is less than the distance between London and Glasgow..
(489km vs 556km as the crow flies)
I'm British, I was a little bit nationalistic before I left the UK and realised that I was foolish.
I'm not accusing you of being a fool but you're certainly misinformed.
I find it's better to not throw stones if you live in a glass house.
the modern house of lords is advisory and completely subordinate to the commons
it is a glorified select committee, there to scrutinise the law and slow it down
the commons can override it, but to do that it has to wait
it's essentially the EU parliament: the inferior chamber that can slightly amend and block law
the sovereign is similar, the commons is superior and last time there was a fundamental disagreement the country became a republic
the UK is full of contradictions like this: formally we're theocracy ruled by an absolute monarch appointed by god
but that's not how it works in practice
vs. say the US, which is the complete opposite on paper (strict republic, limits on power, strict separation of church and state), but then has presidents constantly referring to god and religion being a huge thing in politics
> I find it's better to not throw stones if you live in glass houses.
yes, quite
Just not when it's the EU?
And also, not when they're actually elected. Got it.
maybe you could point out where I said that
Please explain why the house of lords is ok but the EU commission is not.
If you're not in favour of the HoL maybe we should start there and not spend ages talking about an institution our country does not need to try to ruin anymore: since it left.
and since I now live within its borders, and it applies to me.
absolutely, once "continuity remain" ceases to be a threat to the UK political system
until that happens, I will continue to refute the misinformation of its supporters
I think that's ridiculous, though they don't affect much. Waste of money. Not really with the Monarchy, as they aren't affecting anything at all.
> but I feel confident making such a statement as anybody who has spent more than 20 minutes researching how the EU works would know that it's folly to say that they're "unelected authoritarians".
Why would you assume that? Because I am an immigrant? How progressive. FYI you're wrong. What a shock.
> the very idea of a united EU is the opposite of fascism
One fundamental characteristic of Fascism is the centralisation of power in the state, and control/partnership with the private sector (which acts both for itself and for the benefit of the state). This is core to the EU. The logical conclusion of the EU project is a larger, more powerful government. It can't move into a different direction.
Are you aware of the thread that you're into? You can't possibly be missing the irony, but it seems you are.
> The distance between Luxembourg and London is less than the distance between London and Glasgow..
"far away" can also mean culturally, and BTW I'm not in favour of London governing anything in Glasgow either.
But that wouldn't fit into your preconceptions, would it?
> but you're certainly misinformed.
Why would you assume I don't already know everything that you said? I know: because you might be a bit arrogant. That is very apparent.
Just so you know, you contradicted yourself: The EU commission is made of UNELECTED people. They are the ones who draft the laws. Being appointed by someone does not mean elected, it means precisely being unelected.
How silly does one have to be to try to twist the basic meaning of accountability in government?
Now, even if they had been elected directly, the people making laws, or voting on said laws, or influencing policy that affects my country were elected somewhere else.
Nobody outside a given sovereign body should have a say in anything policy-wise within it.
Not only did the treaty get rejected by some states that were allowed to vote on it, the fact that it is too far removed from citizens and their inadequate participation. In fact I would argue the treaty made it even more undemocratic. The influence of Kutcher compared to European individuals is not the only empirical evidence for that.
The parliamentary control is minimal and there is little overarching political discourse beyond the borders of the nation state. Language barriers are strong and that won't change in the foreseeable future. Until then the commission will run the circus.
Making something illegal is much easier than making something that was previously illegal: legal.
That's just how legislation works in all systems. One need only look at constitutions.
"undemocratic" is a stretch, people are still voting for representatives, representatives of the people are still voting. Nobody is deciding something by themselves. Unless we've changed what democracy means.
a future government should be able to roll back legislation as easily as the past government implemented it, otherwise the process fundamentally undemocratic
this is true for the UK
constitutions that require super-majorities to change are fundamentally undemocratic
the US founding fathers considered this to be a feature to prevent mob rule... they were probably right here
but it's really quite hard to argue that elevating the principles of dead slave owners 200 years ago (extreme example) over those of voters alive today is democratic
This would mean less democracy. As much as possible should be decided decentralized at a local level. I know where my mayor lives. He can't act against the interest of his own people for too long without some serious consequences. A pan-EU organization can.
If there is one thing where incompetent buffoons can act for far too long with impunity, it is local politics.
Local politics usually don't interest anyone except pensioners with too much free time on their hands, and even if people care about local politics that doesn't mean they take care about democracy. The result are people like the disgraced Sheriff Arpaio.
I find the complexity of EU actually to be a feature, not a bug. There are drawbacks, but I’ll take them over the alternative you paint.
They are not incompetent. Their goal is to install a totalitarian surveillance state. They become exceedingly efficient at it.
If you assume your politicians are doing this because they are stupid or because you think they can not see the bigger picture you already lost. At centers of concentrated power everything happens for a purpose.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-opposition-to-probe-defense-min...
It says something if the usually cautious dw.com uses the term "Nepotism and spending suspicions".
That's not how things go, in fact that's very opposite of how things go
"I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. 'That’s easy,' he replied. 'When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.'"
So, no, you're wrong about how easy it is. And where the fault lies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_%2770s_Show
"Its eight seasons, consisting of 200 episodes, made it Fox's second-longest-running live-action sitcom ever behind Married... with Children,"
Also I remember him from when he hosted (and apparently co-created) Punk'd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk%27d
I had completely forgotten about him, but had a generally positive perception of him. That is no longer true.
We have already seen Hollywood ready to abridge freedoms anywhere people make unauthorised copies of their films/shows. So this would mesh well with that. They were disgusting long ago.
But to be fair, you're lumping them into the wrong broad category. They obviously aren't all pedophiles, but most of them are greedy.
https://www.rainn.org/news/grooming-know-warning-signs
> grooming: manipulative behaviors that the abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught.
Of course taking two words out of the statement without context makes it less specific.
I mean, yes? What would you call it?
then they'll re-legislate, pass it in a slightly modified form, and then we wait 10 years again
same as with the EU-US data privacy laws
Checkpoints were rampant, but it was both easy to discover their locations as well as avoid them. In practice, I found them to be opportunities to shakedown the population and issue any possible citation that they thought could stick, with drunk driving prevention being the ostensible reasoning to defend what would otherwise be an indefensible violation of the 4th Amendment.
The net result for me personally was a near total loss of respect for law enforcement and our government in general. It demonstrated that the majority conform to our system of laws out of abject terror, or risk being arbitrarily targeted and persecuted under fundamentally unjust laws. No one in their right mind would claim to obey the government out of respect for the system’s righteousness.
That’s not a sustainable way to run a government, so here we are: in the midst of a civil war (being waged in the courts… for now) and on the brink of outright revolution. The current assault on reproductive rights offers yet another glimpse into this now-endemic ongoing conflict, with actual violence occurring almost daily.
This is how censorship started in Turkey. They said that they are not going to censor opposing view but now 99% of censorships are to silence anything that speaks against the current president.
That's not to say that there aren't significant draw backs of this type of legislation, nor that on balance this type of solution is correct. I'm simply pointing out that there are genuine policy reasons to endorse this and if you oppose this it would be wise to find other ways of solving the concerns people like Kutcher are raising.
CSAM scanning is arbitrary, opaque and ubiquitous. You cannot know what the blocklist contains, such a system is not introspectable and it is not outside the realm of reason that a more totalitarian government could insert a picture of President Xi photoshopped as Winnie the Pooh or the famous Putin in make-up picture: and then they will immediately get a list of all dissidents.
It's absolutely Orwellian, and it's invisible too.
This is not the way.
----
I'll add that in general the hacker community (CCC and ilk) can be a bit more distrustful of authority than perhaps is healthy.
I attended one talk at CCC where a person detailed all the "wrong" ways that the FBI was hacking pedophile sites and collecting personal information on the darkweb.
I openly responded to him in support of the FBI; that wholesale collection of registered accounts on a pedophile website represents probable cause; that if it's illegal to gather information of pedophiles across county or country lines: then we should work on making it legal.
There's a large difference in my mind, between taking conscious action in doing something, such as trying to buy drugs vs submitting yourself for a mandatory drug screening every week.
Here's the talk: https://api.media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8018-law_enforcement_are_hac...
From your description he seems very irrational and led by emotion. His goal is noble but that's where it ends. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Without actual numbers and rational arguments, this is so subjective it is moot.
People arguing against this aren't against fighting child sexual abuse or even sexual abuse in general. But the entire thing is so riddled with "what ifs" and more, that it's a hard sell to justify another step to the road of potential total control.
Every parent wants their children to have as many lifelines as possible in case something bad happens, to let them experiment safely without predators lurking. What we should be asking is how much we're willing to give up for each lifeline, and at what point we have to accept nature (or in this case, society) just isn't going to be fair.
"In recent months, Johansson has stressed that privacy and encryption should not stand in the way of law enforcement"
my values, on the other hand, are the exact opposite (law enforcement should not stand in the way of privacy and encryption), and thus dictate a different preference.
Not every value is as other value.
Once the emotional tearjerker arguments have been used to support those things, the cynical bureaucrats and autocrats that make policy later use these tools for so many other sinister things. If Kutcher has more brains than emotion, and is serious about a genuinely better world, he should be aware of these other important fundamentals too and base his proposals for fighting exploitation on them.
On the one hand yes they are technically correct, but at the same time the argument is so incredibly short sighted. Yes if we ban E2E then it will solve the problem of CSAM, but at the same time it will open the door to a host of other consequences.
Honestly the argument sounds alot like the fictitious argument we make here: "cars kill X number of kids per year, let's ban cars!".
[1]: https://www.thorn.org/blog/encryption-trend-threatens-child-...
A) There's no shortage of people make that argument unironically
B) If you just change "ban" to "tax to the point that the common man finds another solution" (which is the same sort of "some animals are more equal" situation that dragnets with selective enforcement create) the number of those people increases by an order of magnitude.
I would argue that he's just trying to make money. Lobbying politicians so that a requirement for a product becomes enshrined in law, while your organization just happens to be providing that product? For a fee, of course. This is just plain old greed in a wrapper of virtue signaling. Yuck.
I don't think he's doing it for the money. If he just wanted money, staying in Hollywood would be much more lucrative.
Giving the government or some other entity access to all of your media is not analogous to the physical reality of children being at more risk due to being around more moving cars (especially since those cars have increased in height and have reduced visibility).
It is objectively true that children who grow in up a village without cars are safer while playing outside by themselves than a village where large cars are zipping by at 40mph. Whether or not the benefits of cars are worth the loss of free movement for children is a different discussion.
If we ban cars tomorrow society grinds to a halt, there will be mass starvation. If we ban e2e encryption in consumer products tomorrow nothing changes.
We lost that perception years ago when Snowden revealed it was all backdoored anyway. I do not know what rule of law you are referring to.
>If we ban cars tomorrow society grinds to a halt, there will be mass starvation. If we ban e2e encryption in consumer products tomorrow nothing changes.
I do not think anyone serious is referring to banning all cars period. The discussion is more like creating more spaces where large vehicles are de prioritized or not allowed and walking and bicycling are prioritized such that there is greatly reduced risk of being run over. Also included are probably returning cars to smaller sizes and to reduce the severity of injuries and increased visibility.
Banning e2e does change something. Maybe not visibly, and not exactly tomorrow, but it certainly enables and progresses the mission of those wanting to limit civil rights.
> I do not think anyone serious is referring to banning all cars period.
And in my view E2E encryption doesn't have to be banned outright, it just needs to be treated as the dangerous tool it is. Making it the default for all communication is like making tanks the standard mode of transportation. How about a encryption registry, like a gun registry?
SiValley is currently giving military grade tools too rapists and slavers and then saying that telling them to stop will result in 1984; I just don't buy it. As you pointed out, those in control in the US already have all the tools they need to destroy your life thanks to the Patriot Act and poor judicial enforcement(Stingrays), meanwhile technology has progressed in a way that makes a very marginalized group, poor young women, much more vulnerable. Instead of providing a tech solution for a tech problem, the call from the encryption community is to solve it with the same way we always have. Easy for some rich tech bro to say, but if encryption was really just a shitty tool, I don't think the US security apparatus would have invested so heavily in it.
"Perception of privacy", unless you know about an actual fault with the E2E of various platforms it is actual privacy. Unless of course your phone gets trojaned or something, which is of course an issue, but it is how an actual investigation should be done (judicially authorized)
But if you still believe no one has actual privacy then your protonmail account would be useless right?
As far as I'm concerned every cellular device is probably backdoored through the baseband, telecoms have long worked hand in hand with the USG, and the pressure that the US has put on allies to boycott Huwei RF hardware only strengthened that claim. If you are, say, a head of ISIS, my guess is that your phone already has keyloggers on it.
This whole conversation is a microcosm of US politics in that both sides are completely unwilling to compromise on their position.
Nothing is saying that you couldn't roll a "right to privacy" into legislation, say that anyone who provides a messaging system isn't allowed to analyze those messages, and any read/write action has to be instigated by or in service to either the user or a warrant. Add massive fines as a percent of revenue or significant prison time for violations. Wouldn't that be a win/win?
You could then treat E2E encryption like other military assets, civilians need to register and pass a background check. If you have a driver's license in the US you sign away your right to not take a drug test, similarly you could sign away your right not to tell law enforcement your password. Corporations could make being licensed for E2E a hiring bar just like military clearance.
All this is dependent on my (some might say naive) view that the US is ultimately a democracy(and has a strong history of it) and as a result is unlikely to go fully off the rails. I really don't worry about the USG snooping on me, (why would I? seriously) but I literally just last week heard about the young daughter of an acquaintance of an acquaintance getting kidnapped.
Yes, pretty much.
> The way the Russian invasion of Ukraine was so accurately telegraphed by the US was a demonstration to me of how powerful our intelligence apparatus is.
Nah, they just had people infiltrate telegram/whatsapp groups and get the info from there. Russian army discipline in that area is very poor. Then Ukraine tapped into their actual calls for later intelligence.
The baseband is actually the most unhelpful place to have any backdoor. But yes, if you're a high level target you're probably getting observed
But that doesn't mean people should actively try to undermine E2E (again, it's not just against the government. I'm happy to keep it secret end to end, including to my ISP, the people on the same VLAN as me, etc)
But I agree in some aspects that the right is not absolute. But I'm actually less worried with something like Pegasus than a blanket general weakening of privacy for everybody
Though I agree that even as a huge proponent of e2ee communication that is free of backdoors, in the grand scheme of things it is not that important to the lives of most people. It's mostly a concern for us nerds and has almost no impact in real life. Especially when you consider that communication has been subject to government oversight and surveillance even in democratic, free societies forever.
If anything, whats anormal and new for most "normies" is e2ee for personal communication. My mom actually found it funny/naive that I actually believed that governments just can't read some of my encrypted chats if they wanted to. She also didn't understand why such a thing would be allowed if it was possible.
EDIT: Actually established in 2009 per Wikipedia - a good source to see that there's a lot more to him than just being an actor (not that there's anything wrong with that).
No, because content like CSAM will immediately switch channels and you cannot really ban encryption.
For instance, "cars kill X number of kids per year, let's ban cars!"'s mirror framing is "how many children's lives is car driving worth?" It's something to be on the lookout for in these types of discussions if not to avoid then to recognize.
No, it would not help.
What these well meaning people are missing is the fact, the organised pedophiles are technically versatile and very cautious. Any intrusion on privacy will quickly push them out of these communication channels and the only thing that is left is the risk for democracy.
I think what you're hearing is that your preference for these sacrifices in furtherance of the end is not shared by some other people.
As for specific faults, that's not really necessary, plenty of general ones have been shared (like the lack of transparency, potential for abuse) which do not need specifics to be understood.
As for evaluating one vs. the other, I feel that your opinion as to the result of that evaluation might not necessarily be mine, and neither of us will convince each other, as a result of the fundamental difference in the amount of privacy each of us is willing to give up, and in exchange for what.
However, as others have also pointed out, child sex abuse has both existed and been prosecuted before this law has come into effect.
Thus, the alternative I personally prefer is that. I understand your principles and willingness to sacrifice privacy lead you to another solution, but hey, you asked.
A technical solution that scans users' devices for known CSAM does not exist in a way which preserves privacy while still being resistant to surveillance overreach. Apple's method was decent at preserving privacy, but it still requires absolute trust in the entity who provides the list of hashes to not put anything but CSAM there.
And what the EU is proposing goes beyond identifying known CSAM, but identifying new CSAM.
The solution is, as always, making investigations into child exploitation and sex trafficking a priority. It doesn't require the ability to rifle through everyone's devices to find the predators. It certainly hasn't up to this point - the bottleneck is and always has been making it a priority (funding, manpower, etc).
The FBI is responsible in the US for investigating interstate sex trafficking and CSAM (Note, the 'M' stands for "material" - not just photos). The FBI subsequently provides the CSAM hash list, and volunteers manpower for the manual reviews.
Where does this go wrong? When the FBI expands the CSAM hash list to include "The Anarchists' Cookbook".
Source? If you have ever been a target of the police/legal/judicial system, there is rarely a case where the individual has nothing bad happen. The government actors’ impetus is to make sure they are not found at fault, not to ensure that the individual is actually guilty or innocent. At a minimum, the individual will lose many hours and go through a lot of stress.
See any and all police misconduct cases in the US, as well as border patrol or really any other dealings with a government agent. The only protection is to be able to afford highly connected lawyers or be connected yourself.
- Some random government guy will look through my fotos. I do not want that.
- There is no proper oversight for what is actually scanned, and on which paramaters. The gov could just "accidentally" also scan for other crimes or things it doesn't like. Democracy isn't set in stone, and this would be extremely useful infrastructure for a tyrant.
- Banning encryption or requiring backdoors makes all of us less safe from third parties.
How specifically could that play out in this instance?
> The gov could just "accidentally" also scan for other crimes or things it doesn't like.
Yes, if a government decides the rule of law does not matter bad things happen. That was true in the a analog days as well.
> Banning encryption or requiring backdoors makes all of us less safe from third parties.
This is not really a backdoor. Do you understand how the technology works?
As AI is famously bad at matching against dark skinned individuals [0], all photos of black kids now flag as CSAM, whether or not any part of them is even dubious at all.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21301759/facial-recogniti...
This is an example of how we know it may present, based on our understanding of how previous models present, in exceeding regularity.
Yes but isn't that already the case? If a government, a three-letter-agency, or even a local detective want to fabricate a case against me for some reason, how difficult will that be to do in practice? Does this CSAM hash list really give them anything fundamentally new?
This capability does not exist today, and I would argue it should not exist.
But time and time again humans have shown that they cannot handle the responsibility of power. And giving governments access to all private communications is absolute power.
If I propose putting an unobstructed streaming camera in every room of every house, that would also solve a lot of problems. That does not mean people who oppose my solution need to come up with alternatives. They can simply oppose cameras in every room due to the problems of cameras in every room.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
It's been a while so maybe my memory is just flawed, but my feelings about 1984 are more that it's a cautionary tale of living in a dystopian surveillance state.
That's not the same as anti-government. I actually expect my government to assist in preventing such outcomes considering there's obviously lucrative and powerful corporate interests pursuant to these machinations.
He didn't set out to show totalitarianism was bad, because that was self evident in 1948.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five
Orwell, had been or was still a convinced socialist, however he did not believe in soviet communism, and wrote the book as a warning, after having seen Stalins troops up close in Spain.
Orwell's earlier book animal farm is much on the same theme.
You think the Cambridge 5 supported the totalitarian aspects of the USSR and not the communist ideals?
It was inspired, just like Animal Farm, by George Orwell's years spent in the spanish civil war, and the corruption of socialism, as he saw it, by stalinism.
I don't see a basis for claiming it's anything but an anti-totalitarian novel, explaining totalitarianism as it is: a boot stomping on a human face - for ever.
After all, animal farm was also targeted at communism and how it corrupts itself.
There are two directions the updated 1984 can now take. The AI is reporting you to the government. Or the AI just takes care of your punishment itself. Are you actually a dissident or did you just sneeze and the AI interpreted that as some code phrase? Doesn't matter.
The question becomes how to control the inevitable proliferation of commoditized mass survelliance.
Privacy in the future will require a level of defense not available via common residential/commercial construction methods. Hell, even a SCIF eventually won't help..
This line of rhetoric doesn't help the conversation.
More reasonable is you're going to make things maybe a little safer for kids to do stupid things you could educate them on, at the cost of trading any potential privacy on the internet. You'd even have to cover private channels, as the mere threat of blackmail would be enough to cause problems.
Rapists and slavers shouldn’t have access to military grade encryption, full stop.
Because it already has been proven to have been broken, repeatedly. We have the Snowden documents, PRISM wiretapping, FISA courts, Guantanamo Bay, multiple CIA programs violating human rights', police misconduct that goes unpunished even with hard proof, prosecutors that withhold evidence and are not punished (even protected), and the list goes on and on and on and on.
There is no solution to the "problem" of some people sharing photos or other content which some other people don't like which would be compatible with either privacy or freedom of speech.
The issue to be solved here isn't CSAM, it's CSA. The CSAM is evidence; they should be using it to find and prosecute actual abusers, not trying to drive it further underground.
And then? Generate 100000 false positives per day (which is what will happen); arrest them all until proven innocent? Investigate them all until proven guilty? What? 100000 flagged data streams (videos, documents, sounds, images etc) is serious work to comb through as an AI is just not good enough to ruin someone's life while innocent. This will also happen with the current proposal anyway if executed broad enough.
Well if I am supposed to find other ways of solving the concerns people like Kutcher are raising, then what, exactly, are we supposed to be paying the MPs for? Just to raise their hands when the voting comes?
There are countless politicians, technology and policy experts, and government employees at all levels involved in this. When they come up with a solution and it turns out to be wrong, it's still their job -- literally -- to figure out a better one.
The correct criminal approach for defeating child abuse rings is targeted investigation, not mass surveillance of everyone in the population. This for example involves using undercover police to infiltrate such rings and arrest their members. This is not a novel idea, either.
Saying it's about the children, makes anybody who argues against the point look bad. But once they have successfully slipped that under the door, the continual surveillance will go on to be for any and everything, as it becomes in any authoritarian state. It's just another and sneaky way to get to what is done in China.
The continual erosion of rights sets the stage for authoritarianism. America was arguably not too far way from a coup attempt, Jan 6th. One of the next series of attempts can be successful. It would be smart for people to read up on how Putin came to power. Systems and histories are of course different, but there can be some parallels, in terms of subverting an existing system to one's own ends. Of course some people will think such is not possible, until it happens or nearly happens.
When these control mechanisms are put together, like using "AI" (and who controls and updates it?) to continually scan all e-mails and messaging for added vague concepts such as "grooming" and whatever added on top, you are achieving a police state. The state, now that it has slipped in greater and more powerful mechanisms of mass surveillance and control (Precrime), can arbitrary decide what is a "violation" or not.
Citizens of "free" countries can eventually be put under just as tight control, as the citizens of China, Russia, etc... Anything and everything can be labelled a threat to the state (or for your safety), to the people, to women, to children, etc... Do what the police state dictates, and they will be watching for compliance, or else. If you say anything against the state, you can find yourself charged with a "crime" or whisked away. A lot of people don't want to live like that, but then a lot of people will blindly walk off a cliff too.
How would the proposed legislation help him do that? Human trafficking existed before the invention of encryption.
That ability hasn't presented itself before now.
Real investigations are hard, and it's just easier to go after the careless or ignorant, while the actually dangerous and capable evade getting caught.
So, yes, you're right.
Rather than surveillance of every adult, forbid access to the Internet to minors. This would also reduce Facebook induced depression of teenagers, suicides and a lot more.
You'll find very quickly that the noble advertising and surveillance lobbies will back off, even if you tell them to think of the children.
https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/06/29/real-men-get-their-f...
I think this is a power trip for the guy that makes him feel he matters and that matters more to him than actually making a difference. I'm not thrilled with it, personally.
The exception is human trafficking and it isn't a crime done by common criminals or lone offenders, it is done by organized criminal gangs in a large scale that can be targeted individually.
I have no obligation to make any suggestion for not wanting my chats surveilled for that matter.
I think the last 20 years (really 100 years) have shown that abuse of free speech and privacy will happen no matter what when the authorities want it to and not at all when the don't. The US ran warrantless wiretapping for over a year post 9/11 and sucked up all sorts of completely illegally obtained communication and as far we know not a single civilian was remotely inconvenienced for it. Meanwhile Russia is throwing journalists out windows for their very public statements of fact.
Ironically the most accepted replies here are emotional knee-jerk statements.
We increased surveillance for decades. And none of this surveillance had any measurable impact on safety. It is just a short sighted proposal and nothing more. We know where and when kids get abused. The abused is almost always in their vicinity. Internet chat surveillance does not help at all.
So he's shilling his startup investment by trying to get the EU to mandate it.
Though a proponent of internet privacy myself, even I can see the hamfisted attempt to label this as "a lobby for more surveillance."
Read the bill for yourself https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...
It does seem like a "lobby for more surveillance". Or can you think of a way to "detect, report and remove..." content without examining the contents of every single message sent on the platform?
What separates this from other "appeal to pity" tactics is that this bill is the source of this bill. This isn't a group of EU equivalent democratic/republican lawmakers who are pushing for a surveillance bill because they have their wallets padded with intelligence contractor money. This is a philanthropist who has track record of sustained, devoted, high-effort actions in fighting against this dark industry.
I suppose the counter argument remains the same though, right? Whomever is granted the authority to surveil will ultimately misuse their access. Admittedly, I can't pull myself away from agreeing with that. What a mess.
In which case innocent persons will end up on watch lists or being harassed by intrusive investigations.
I understand that an enterprising young hacker can encrypt it manually, but that's akin to someone becoming a gunsmith. It takes effort and usually the people that go through the training are the types of people we trust with the knowledge anyway.
Now I've personally worked on software to help stop the spread of CSAM, so I have my biases here, but I also understand the dangers of unmitigated surveillance. But just as we trust our democracies with munitions, I think we should do the same with surveillance, provided that courts and the rule of law are strongly enshrined. From what I know, this is the case in my country of Canada.
I want to live in a world that is safe and free. It takes work and discussions to achieve both at the same time, but I have faith that we can do it if we try.
https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/06/29/real-men-get-their-f...