For example: Both of these sentences mean the same thing, but are translated differently by Google translate (mobile app, if that makes a difference):
Suden syö karhu.
Karhu syö suden.
Your best bet is to learn Finnish instead of relying on a translator.
in the modern day, if someone can't go on a podcast and openly discuss why they want to do something, they're basically a fraud
"we need more security" isn't a reason. why do you need to be obscure? what are the threats? i want to know them. share them. there's no harm in me knowing. as a matter of fact there's probably a few million people in your own country that can come up with a better solution than you. why not crowdsource?
We're constantly patting ourselves on the back for how intelligent we are. And yet we fail to address such systemic problems, which reduce our quality of life. This feels much more like stroking our own egos while letting ourselves off the hook, than an insightful analysis of the situation.
If you’re smart enough to make good money, you can ignore politics for the most part. These changes will offend your sense of justice but they won’t really harm you. On the other hand, if you try to change the system, it is highly likely to destroy your life. The rational decision is to stay out of politics and live comfortably. I think this is a highly effective feature of the global liberal-capitalist system: most people smart enough to win the game are smart enough not to play.
> On the other hand, if you try to change the system, it is highly likely to destroy your life.
What that implies is that being especially smart isn't sufficient. If being smart was a powerful differentiator, then there would be an opportunity for smart people to enter politics. They would excel because they would have a competitive advantage over the less intelligent people who are currently in politics. They would have the smarts to avoid pitfalls, and profit from their powerful status and accomplishments.
But apparently they don't do this because every single person who is smart enough, has a better opportunity elsewhere. Every single one? I think the more likely reality, is this theory about insufficient compensation being the primary issue, is bunk.
It precisely is that because of what I said. Society constructs don’t generally reward politicians in the same way society rewards capitalism. (Gates, Musk, Buffer, Bezos.)
We reward capitalism irrespective of how much (or little) benefit they provide to society at large.
I disagree. You are assuming you know what "a smart persons" objective is. If my goal is to life as good a life as possible for myself, doing things that benefit the broader society may benefit me but maybe not. Whereas, doubling down on a lucrative career outside of politics in many cases eliminates all problems because money can dissolve most (arguably all?) personal struggles.
Intelligent on which topics and subjects though? Successful politicians are highly intelligent socially (can work with different pulls, bring about compromise solutions, change their minds and ideologies quickly to suit changing situations, etc.) and may desire not just monetary rewards that the private sector could better provide but also seek fame, authority and a legacy. I believe there’s a lot more than we may recognize.
This is why we have grifters and fools running our country. Nobody aspires to political office anymore. It’s a huge problem given that the state has a monopoly on force, because this means a bunch of grifters and fools get a monopoly on force.
Because politicians are, by and large, corrupt and heavily invested in protecting the status quo. Unless you somehow manage to replace a large portion of them with people with integrity at the same time, a few lone “good” apples will quickly get silenced or pushed out.
> Politicians are not some random sampling of the population, no.
of course they are not random, like medics and engineers are not random, but they certainly are more representative of the
sentiments of the population than many other jobs out there.
It's going to vote soon. It isn't just "decided" at the EU level, there is a vote. Voting power is proportional to EU citizenship and to pass it needs a supermajority. It's not just Finland which opposes this either (they have a small population - 5.6M citizens). Larger countries like Germany (83M citizens) also oppose it but I also don't think they've quite so clearly stated they will vote against.
Austria (9.1M) and Estonia (1.4M) are also mentioned and if they all vote "No", that is a bit over 99M people which is only 22% of EU citizens. So not enough to prevent it passing. No idea where the rest of the EU bloc sits on Yes/No, I'm hoping it does *not* pass.
Quoting from the translation where they explain how it works:
"EU countries will vote on the proposal at the end of October. At that time, the proposal will go through, if it is not opposed by a number of countries representing a total of at least 35 percent of EU citizens."
My understanding from a translation of the article is that each country will vote, and this committee decision bind Finland to a "no" vote.
> EU countries will vote on the proposal at the end of October. At that time, the proposal will go through, if it is not opposed by a number of countries representing a total of at least 35 percent of EU citizens.
There are two votes, one of all the MEPs and one of each country's government. You need a majority in parliament and not enough to veto you (~1/3) in the minister council (or whatever their proper English name is)
There are indeed majority requirements to pass a directive at EU Level.
In this case in the Council (of member states) of the European Union needs to pass with 55% of the member states agreeing and they need to have 65% of the EU population.
In addition, the (directly elected) European Parliament will need to pass the proposed directive with a simple majority.
So calling the "vote" unneeded is not true at all.
It's also worth noting that the US Senate was originally not elected either. The transition to an elected Senate was triggered by two states individually deciding to elect their Senator, then the rest followed. The same could happen in the EU, which would make it much more democratic. And it would only take one country to make the first move.
I don't know why you would bother to reply if you are going to assume that level of ignorance.
Yes,the parliament exists. I have voted for members of it. It is the most democratic part of the EU. The rules give it much more influence than hereto. But it has problems.
1) The Council, which is not so democratic, can veto it
2) The parliament is huge, so each member has very limited influence
3) Because of 2) it has not succeeded in creating an EU 'public sphere' or 'demos'. The 'parties' are just agglomerations of national parties. When you think of EU politicians, who are the big names? They are a) national figures and , b) Commissioners. Rarely do parliamentarians become well known,and usually for some other reason (Eg Nigel Farage).
I stand by my statement that the EU would be much more democratic if the council were elected. Firstly, do you really think the US was not more democratic when the Senate became elected? Secondly, it would mean that there were 'big figures' that get elected at an EU level. That would get the pubic much more interested and that is a significant part of what it means to be democratic. It doesn't matter how democratic the rules are of nobody cares.
The council is made up by national governments, directly or indirectly elected in elections which typically have far higher participation and better media coverage than the EU parliament elections. I like the EU and I agree that the parliament is important, but I’m not so sure the council is “not so democratic”. Everyone knows the name of their government ministers, many know the names of their national parliamentarians.
The commission is where we have the major lack of democracy currently. Not sure how to improve without a massive transfer of power to the Union (e.g. an elected president), but it’s a problem worth solving.
(can't reply directly to mrmanner, so adding this here)
Formally, yes, the Council represents democratically elected governments, and obviously people have heard of their national politicians. But that doesn't mean it makes the EU democratic. Some things to think about:
- When was the last time, if ever, you considered voting against someone at your national level because of how they might vote in the EU council?
- How much do you hear about EU council votes in the media, vs national parliamentary votes? (the OP is relatively unusual IMO)
The Commission is definitely undemocratic. But it has less power than many believe. It has the right to make proposals, but no power over whether they get adopted. It's more of a civil service in many ways. In my view, the council is the structure that has the most power in the EU. And the national politicians who operate it are content that it remains avenue for back-room deals whose results they can blame on the Commission, rather than being accountable to an electorate.
It's tricky. I think it makes sense that the national policy (set by member states government) is represented in their decisions in the council.
Otherwise you could have the weird situation where the elected government and the elected council members work against each others because of mismatched voting cycles (or personalities).
That sounds like a recipe for legslative lockup.
In the end most fundamental EU "laws" need to be implemented into national law by the same government that is now sending its members to the council.
A similar system is in use her in Germany, where the state government send a representative to the upper house.
Interesting about the US senate! I'm not sure that an EU member state can unilaterally make a similar decision though. The treaty is pretty clear that the council is made up by government ministers:
> Citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament.
> Member States are represented in the European Council by their Heads of State or Government and in the Council by their governments, themselves democratically accountable either to their national Parliaments, or to their citizens.
It's true that the wording runs like that. But here's the angle: the Council is the body intended to represent the member states, so the member states are the ones who get to decide who is going to represent them in council. At the moment, that's usually the minister for the subject under discussion. It's true that on those occasions where it is the head of state, you probably can't get round sending your head of state (and probably wouldn't want to). But if a member state decides they are going to define their own rules such that it's an elected representative that gets sent the rest of the time, the rest of the EU shouldn't be able to overrule it, because that would defeat the purpose of the role being one that is under control of a member state.
Have the electorate vote for who gets sent to represent them at the EU council.
The council isn't exactly a 'Cabinet' right now - in fact, the Commission is more like a Cabinet than the council. Electing a commissioner would be another option, but the head of the commission can reject them, so it's not under the control of the member state.
The Council has veto powers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union). If the proposed law needs unanimous agreement of the Council, it makes sense to talk of Finland's vote in that context. Even if only a simple majority is needed, it would be at least a sign that there is resistance in the Council.
Didn't Whatsapp and few others threaten to do just that in UK? I'm not saying they would necessarily put their money where their mouth is if push comes to shove but implications were made that should encryption laws pass, bye bye Briton.
They sure as hell didn't threaten to leave my country when our supreme court started slapping them with arbitrary fines for campaigning against internet censorship on their own websites. I find it difficult to believe they'd leave a country with a much stronger economy.
The realistic scenario is company does not advertise strong encryption services, just messaging services. Then the onus is on the government to prove the message went strong encrypted. But just government not being able to see their test message in the traffic they captured on servers controlled by government does not constitute a proof.
A proof would require government gets their black boxes in almost every switch/router. Which I suppose is the end game.
One of the intricacies of this kind of policy is that it is implicitly reversing the burden of proof: prove that you're transparent, prove that your random test bytes are not another layer of encryption, prove that you're not withholding access.
When will these politicians stop using children to justify their political atrocities? They couldn't give less of a fuck about children. It's all about maintaining their own power, persecuting dissidents, criminalizing the political opposition, stamping out wrongthink. You expect me to believe they "need" all this shit to defeat terrorists? They couldn't even stop Hamas from attacking Israel with all the illegal surveillance states in the world.
It's gotten to the point where I just dismiss such arguments outright. It's like the Godwin's law of encryption and surveillance. If you make such an argument, it's likely you're trying to manipulate others and are therefore wrong. Using children as political weapons is a form of abuse too and they seriously gotta stop.
'They couldn't even stop Hamas from attacking Israel with all the illegal surveillance states in the world'
I've yet to hear an at least plausible story of how a massive prep operation could not just have been missed by the world's most advanced embedded spy agencies in what is possibly the most surveiled group in the world, but then not just effectively executed but lingered on without direct response at again, maybe with exception of Korea, the most heavily secured high tech guarded border in the world.
Yeah. Fucked up, isn't it? Israel is home to literal corporations providing cyber weapons and digital espionage as a service and they couldn't protect their citizens from this attack. These politicians totally "need" to break our encryption though. For our safety.
Yeah, you see, it's a different kind of threat. Hamas is just the usual terrorists, from time to time they grow and get organized, and then we look surprised and outraged when they attack, and stump them out or use them in some proxy war. Don't worry, we have that under control.
With encryption, it's a whole another story. The danger is much greater. People may read hate speech or Putin's propaganda, and spread it on the Internet. This is a threat to democracy. Or even worse, they may communicate freely and share independent unsanctioned news. We don't yet have a tool for that, so we're working hard on it.
I suspect Hamas aren't stupid and probably used old fashioned methods of getting plans around for this like messengers and paper and pencil. Gaza is a pretty small place and easy to slip into the crowd.
I suspect they allowed it to happen to justify genociding all of them or something of the sort. There's no way they can be that incompetent. I refuse to believe it. They spy on everyone, crack every computer, infiltrate and compromise every organization, plant assets everywhere, we non-government people are forced to live in constant paranoia because of these assholes. And they get surprised by a bunch of terrorists? Might as well just close down those useless agencies, they're good for nothing, total waste of money. We're living in this cyberpunk hellscape because of them and it's all for nothing.
Even master of carpentry cut himself from time to time. Fails happen, Yom Kippur 50 years ago was a shock as well. It does not seem likely that this was intentional failure because there are many independent people with integrity even in a hierarchical government structure. What seems more likely is that somebody high enough fucked up and did not sound alarm loud enough. Some Israeli state representatives already admitted guilt.
I think you're partially right that policies of the right-wing governments in Israel (apartheid, normalizing relations with Arab countries while ignoring Palestinians) likely helped the Palestinian crazies grow and thus in effect those people in power are partially responsible for this attack on Israel people, whether they realize it or not. I'm not condoning the attack in any way. But responsibility for the atrocities can be shared between actors on many sides.
This sort of explicit public stand is important, even coming from a small country, because it gives other countries something to hang their hat on. It signals that the directive is not a done deal.
If encryption is banned, is there currently an open source, encrypted, pseudoanonymous chat app that Europeans could build and run themselves? Does Matrix qualify?
Their next move in the politico-technological arms race is to pass a law that says the judge is allowed to assume you're guilty of whatever they're accusing you of if you're found to be in possession of encrypted data and refuse to decrypt it to prove your innocence. An encrypted drive? Looks like you're a drug trafficking money laundering child raping terrorist and it's off to the gulag with you.
> That's fucked up. I assumed the USA would be the last country on earth to do this.
Which it is. The person you responded to doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, and in fact most of the stuff in the "United States" subsection of the "Legislation by nation" section of their very own link they provided says as much, that the Fifth Amendment provides protection against such self-incrimination and that judges usually find as such.
Whatever protections US citizens have against the federal government usually fall through whenever national security is involved.
What one federal court of appeals decides doesn't necessarily apply in other districts. The Eleventh Circuit made the Fifth Amendment ruling in 2012, but Lavabit temporarily shut down in 2013 due to FBI demands to hand over encryption keys [1]. (Lavabit was founded in Texas, which is in the Fifth Circuit [2].) The FBI can still send national security letters, which prohibit receivers from telling the public about them [3].
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling only applies to Pennsylvania, and the prosecutors were from Luzerne County, not the FBI [4].
This seems clearly incompatible with Fifth Amendment. Any real cases where the person is held in prison for not revealing a password?
In case of authoritarian government likely to interfere with person's life, do not use just remembered passwords at all, but password in combination with strong keys that are frequently automatically changed so no one can remember them, and have a panic button that destroys all access to encrypted data.
> The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the accused from being forced to incriminate themselves in a crime. The Amendment reads:
>
> No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself ...
> in United States v. Doe, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on 24 February 2012 that forcing the decryption of one's laptop violates the Fifth Amendment.
I'm not okay with that. I have every single message I've ever sent or received since I installed WhatsApp for the first time. Including legally important messages with my lawyers and other business contacts.
This is already practiced in Germany to some degree.
While you cannot be sentenced for a crime based on the fact that you
possess encrypted data, if that data is evidence in a criminal case
you can be put in detention on remand for an indefinete amount of time,
until you give up the password.
> It is known that at least Germany, Austria and Estonia oppose the proposal. There are clearly more supporters known, e.g. Spain, Denmark, Hungary and Ireland support the Commission proposal
Orban & Co. "work for the family" so not a big shocker. Plus more power over what people can see or do on the Internet, an attractive tool of state power. Controlling TV stations and major outlets works on pensioneers, the next step is get control of the phones and computers. With more Orwell from the EU itself, stuff like phone hacks of journalists and political opponents will get easier.
Privacy must belong to no one, or everyone, but no where in between; i.e. privacy must not be owned by a certain class or group.
If I can read anyone's messages, I'm absolutely fine with everyone else reading mine.
If governments want access to our data, they should open up their data for us to see as well.
Honestly I'd love to live in a world where everything is out in the open, no secrets, no agendas, nothing to hide, no passwords. Everyone knows everyone's intentions, perhaps even thoughts one day via Neurolink.
I think after the initial chaos in the first couple of decades, humanity will leap forward beyond imagination.
This is a beautiful thought, but also a very ugly one at the same time. When only "approved thoughts" can be given voice, even if those thoughts are weighed by a super-majority, is the organism of humanity truly healthy? Monocultures are dangerous to themselves. The only way to have heterogeneity is by allowing for the existence of secrets.
I don't know if you'd need to only have approved thoughts. I think the world would need to accept that people have different values and people don't completely align with their own values. Someone would do, say, or think something wrong and the response would be "meh" (depending on the consequences of course).
1st half of thought was amazing, but I’m personally still an individualist and no, we should not all live out in the open unless we all unanimously choose to. That of course is impossible.
> live in a world where everything is out in the open
the only outcome would be mass panic.
en plein air decision making has already been tried several times throughout history, it never worked as intended.
social networks are an experiment in that sense and have been weaponized against the people using them in a very short time.
secondly: that would not stop propaganda, which is the real problem, we would only know what people say they think, not what they really think.
also I am not really fine with everyone reading my messages, some things need to stay private to live peacefully and/or not harm other people's feelings.
There is still an imbalance of power here. The average person doesn't have the means to parse through the mountains of data produced by the entire world, but states and corporations do.
And even if they did, the average person have even less power to do anything about it.
What's most concerning to me is that this is the Commission pushing this agenda. The European Council is already a mash-up of national populism of all kind, but the Commission is expected to be the (last) bastion of reason against this. Then, as we deep-dive into this {$favorite_swear_word}, we're going to replace deliberate warrants issued by judges for individual cases by general scanning, because A.I.? Really? — This kind of thinking may be the real threat in A.I., derailing reason itself in some kind of drunken illusion of omnipotence. It's like the military-industrial complex for the civil world.
The EU is an authoritarian state. Nowadays it is only nominally democratic, with a bigger and bigger wedge between the ruling elite and the population.
What makes you think they won't filter out means of private communication?
It's just an electronic box from china.
I can fully see them eventually making it illegal and enforcing a new encrypted protocol to which they have the keys for. Obviously, such a setup would leak, but the people who make these rules think they are flawless and omniscient and think they could keep such keys private into perpetuity. They also assume that future government won't be even more totalitarian than them.
You're assuming direct democracy will be better in this aspect. Why? Direct democracy is likely to result in naive populist decisions, and a big enough threat will scare majority of people into relinquishing liberties.
It is possible, and even in a democratic way. When large enough majority, defined in constitution, votes for destruction of democratic constitution, it is still a democratic process. It's a known bug of the usual democratic systems.
I didn't ask if something is possible, I asked if they think it will happen. As far as I'm concerned, the parent commenter is fearmongering because they've decided they hate the EU, and everything else comes secondary to that.
I am not fearmongering, but I think it can happen. Some of the possible things eventually do happen, and we can't get comfy just because "we think we're western liberal democracy".
The blatant disregard for and violation of the basic rights of hundreds of millions of humans by the few putting forward this proposal is or at least borders on the criminal in my opinion
> Hosting services affected include web hosting, social media, video streaming services, file hosting and cloud services
> Even personal storage that is not being shared, such as Apple’s iCloud, will be subject to chat control
This is new to me. In that case it looks like all services with encryption 'baked in' lose their effectiveness. And that encryption/decryption of text & data needs to be done independently of said service layer to regain privacy.
What if generic encryption apps would integrate with chat apps and the like? According to these rules the chat apps are still required to do scanning, but that will be done on encrypted data which seems pointless.
Unless the rules will be adapted at some point that general encryption needs to be scanned as well, but that would be impractical and undesirable for the EU as well.
130 comments
[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadGoogle translate: https://dawn-fi.translate.goog/uutiset/2023/10/14/eu-csam-su...
For example: Both of these sentences mean the same thing, but are translated differently by Google translate (mobile app, if that makes a difference): Suden syö karhu. Karhu syö suden.
Your best bet is to learn Finnish instead of relying on a translator.
politicians really are the most disgusting people
in the modern day, if someone can't go on a podcast and openly discuss why they want to do something, they're basically a fraud
"we need more security" isn't a reason. why do you need to be obscure? what are the threats? i want to know them. share them. there's no harm in me knowing. as a matter of fact there's probably a few million people in your own country that can come up with a better solution than you. why not crowdsource?
it's irresponsible behavior to keep these secrets
We're constantly patting ourselves on the back for how intelligent we are. And yet we fail to address such systemic problems, which reduce our quality of life. This feels much more like stroking our own egos while letting ourselves off the hook, than an insightful analysis of the situation.
What that implies is that being especially smart isn't sufficient. If being smart was a powerful differentiator, then there would be an opportunity for smart people to enter politics. They would excel because they would have a competitive advantage over the less intelligent people who are currently in politics. They would have the smarts to avoid pitfalls, and profit from their powerful status and accomplishments.
But apparently they don't do this because every single person who is smart enough, has a better opportunity elsewhere. Every single one? I think the more likely reality, is this theory about insufficient compensation being the primary issue, is bunk.
We reward capitalism irrespective of how much (or little) benefit they provide to society at large.
All you're doing is dressing up selfishness as "intelligence", which is not the same thing.
Look at the net worth of someone like Dianne Feinstein (RIP) or Nancy Pelosi.
Unless you have drank from the kool aid and believe politics to be a force for good and change; in that case it'll be hard to convince you otherwise.
See: corrupt police departments.
which one? not those who vote the things we like or against the things we don't like I suppose.
am I right?
politicians are people, made the same way as anyone else, they are different he same way people in the society are different.
you're basically saying that people are the most disgusting people.
But with sortition they could be.
of course they are not random, like medics and engineers are not random, but they certainly are more representative of the sentiments of the population than many other jobs out there.
Tens-of-millionaires certainly are not.[1]
What kind of jobs are supposed to be less representative of the population? Big corporation CEOs?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37893547
Millionaires are - weirdly enough - loved and respected by a large chunk of the people and all too often even worshiped. See Musk or Jobs or Trump
The EU doesn't need Finland's "vote". It's decided at the EU level.
Austria (9.1M) and Estonia (1.4M) are also mentioned and if they all vote "No", that is a bit over 99M people which is only 22% of EU citizens. So not enough to prevent it passing. No idea where the rest of the EU bloc sits on Yes/No, I'm hoping it does *not* pass.
Quoting from the translation where they explain how it works:
"EU countries will vote on the proposal at the end of October. At that time, the proposal will go through, if it is not opposed by a number of countries representing a total of at least 35 percent of EU citizens."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_member_...
- Spain (caught using Pegasus spyware to spy their own politicians)
- Hungary (Orban has good dictator vibes)
- Cyprus
https://www.wired.com/story/europe-break-encryption-leaked-d...
> EU countries will vote on the proposal at the end of October. At that time, the proposal will go through, if it is not opposed by a number of countries representing a total of at least 35 percent of EU citizens.
In this case in the Council (of member states) of the European Union needs to pass with 55% of the member states agreeing and they need to have 65% of the EU population.
In addition, the (directly elected) European Parliament will need to pass the proposed directive with a simple majority.
So calling the "vote" unneeded is not true at all.
It's basically like the senate in the US, except the states are represented by ministers instead of elected senators.
It's also worth noting that the US Senate was originally not elected either. The transition to an elected Senate was triggered by two states individually deciding to elect their Senator, then the rest followed. The same could happen in the EU, which would make it much more democratic. And it would only take one country to make the first move.
> Since 1979, the Parliament has been directly elected every five years by the citizens of the European Union through universal suffrage.
Yes,the parliament exists. I have voted for members of it. It is the most democratic part of the EU. The rules give it much more influence than hereto. But it has problems.
1) The Council, which is not so democratic, can veto it
2) The parliament is huge, so each member has very limited influence
3) Because of 2) it has not succeeded in creating an EU 'public sphere' or 'demos'. The 'parties' are just agglomerations of national parties. When you think of EU politicians, who are the big names? They are a) national figures and , b) Commissioners. Rarely do parliamentarians become well known,and usually for some other reason (Eg Nigel Farage).
I stand by my statement that the EU would be much more democratic if the council were elected. Firstly, do you really think the US was not more democratic when the Senate became elected? Secondly, it would mean that there were 'big figures' that get elected at an EU level. That would get the pubic much more interested and that is a significant part of what it means to be democratic. It doesn't matter how democratic the rules are of nobody cares.
The commission is where we have the major lack of democracy currently. Not sure how to improve without a massive transfer of power to the Union (e.g. an elected president), but it’s a problem worth solving.
Formally, yes, the Council represents democratically elected governments, and obviously people have heard of their national politicians. But that doesn't mean it makes the EU democratic. Some things to think about:
- When was the last time, if ever, you considered voting against someone at your national level because of how they might vote in the EU council?
- How much do you hear about EU council votes in the media, vs national parliamentary votes? (the OP is relatively unusual IMO)
The Commission is definitely undemocratic. But it has less power than many believe. It has the right to make proposals, but no power over whether they get adopted. It's more of a civil service in many ways. In my view, the council is the structure that has the most power in the EU. And the national politicians who operate it are content that it remains avenue for back-room deals whose results they can blame on the Commission, rather than being accountable to an electorate.
Otherwise you could have the weird situation where the elected government and the elected council members work against each others because of mismatched voting cycles (or personalities).
That sounds like a recipe for legslative lockup.
In the end most fundamental EU "laws" need to be implemented into national law by the same government that is now sending its members to the council.
A similar system is in use her in Germany, where the state government send a representative to the upper house.
> Citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament.
> Member States are represented in the European Council by their Heads of State or Government and in the Council by their governments, themselves democratically accountable either to their national Parliaments, or to their citizens.
The council isn't exactly a 'Cabinet' right now - in fact, the Commission is more like a Cabinet than the council. Electing a commissioner would be another option, but the head of the commission can reject them, so it's not under the control of the member state.
EU: Company, this looks like you're facilitating breaking the EU law. Encryption we can't break is forbidden, except when we use it.
Company: Prove it. Maybe we're just sending random bytes to test the network.
A proof would require government gets their black boxes in almost every switch/router. Which I suppose is the end game.
It's gotten to the point where I just dismiss such arguments outright. It's like the Godwin's law of encryption and surveillance. If you make such an argument, it's likely you're trying to manipulate others and are therefore wrong. Using children as political weapons is a form of abuse too and they seriously gotta stop.
I've yet to hear an at least plausible story of how a massive prep operation could not just have been missed by the world's most advanced embedded spy agencies in what is possibly the most surveiled group in the world, but then not just effectively executed but lingered on without direct response at again, maybe with exception of Korea, the most heavily secured high tech guarded border in the world.
With encryption, it's a whole another story. The danger is much greater. People may read hate speech or Putin's propaganda, and spread it on the Internet. This is a threat to democracy. Or even worse, they may communicate freely and share independent unsanctioned news. We don't yet have a tool for that, so we're working hard on it.
I think you're partially right that policies of the right-wing governments in Israel (apartheid, normalizing relations with Arab countries while ignoring Palestinians) likely helped the Palestinian crazies grow and thus in effect those people in power are partially responsible for this attack on Israel people, whether they realize it or not. I'm not condoning the attack in any way. But responsibility for the atrocities can be shared between actors on many sides.
Here is a list of countries compelled to reveal passwords to encrypted data by laws in force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law
Which it is. The person you responded to doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, and in fact most of the stuff in the "United States" subsection of the "Legislation by nation" section of their very own link they provided says as much, that the Fifth Amendment provides protection against such self-incrimination and that judges usually find as such.
What one federal court of appeals decides doesn't necessarily apply in other districts. The Eleventh Circuit made the Fifth Amendment ruling in 2012, but Lavabit temporarily shut down in 2013 due to FBI demands to hand over encryption keys [1]. (Lavabit was founded in Texas, which is in the Fifth Circuit [2].) The FBI can still send national security letters, which prohibit receivers from telling the public about them [3].
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling only applies to Pennsylvania, and the prosecutors were from Luzerne County, not the FBI [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter#Conte...
[4] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/police-cant-forc...
In case of authoritarian government likely to interfere with person's life, do not use just remembered passwords at all, but password in combination with strong keys that are frequently automatically changed so no one can remember them, and have a panic button that destroys all access to encrypted data.
> The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the accused from being forced to incriminate themselves in a crime. The Amendment reads: > > No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-incrimination
> in United States v. Doe, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on 24 February 2012 that forcing the decryption of one's laptop violates the Fifth Amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law
While you cannot be sentenced for a crime based on the fact that you possess encrypted data, if that data is evidence in a criminal case you can be put in detention on remand for an indefinete amount of time, until you give up the password.
I was expecting some kind of Firefox addon to implement this kind of encryption to regular messaging websites
Hungary surprises me as a supporter for this
If I can read anyone's messages, I'm absolutely fine with everyone else reading mine.
If governments want access to our data, they should open up their data for us to see as well.
Honestly I'd love to live in a world where everything is out in the open, no secrets, no agendas, nothing to hide, no passwords. Everyone knows everyone's intentions, perhaps even thoughts one day via Neurolink. I think after the initial chaos in the first couple of decades, humanity will leap forward beyond imagination.
A community might come close during good times, but once the fortunes turn there are always hunts for scapegoatsband witches. My 2c.
I think it would quickly go to a "he who is without sin cast the first stone" situation. Any accusation against pretty much anyone could be countered.
Greek tragedy shows the way: systematic problems can make even a group of people making all the "right" decisions (individually) result in disaster.
For examples, I highly recommend the podcast "Cautionary Tales." Start from Episode 1.
the only outcome would be mass panic.
en plein air decision making has already been tried several times throughout history, it never worked as intended.
social networks are an experiment in that sense and have been weaponized against the people using them in a very short time.
secondly: that would not stop propaganda, which is the real problem, we would only know what people say they think, not what they really think.
also I am not really fine with everyone reading my messages, some things need to stay private to live peacefully and/or not harm other people's feelings.
And even if they did, the average person have even less power to do anything about it.
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2023/06/eu-member-states-...
IMHO, they will only be able to spy on regular citizens. Obviously, this is not a reason not to lobby against the law.
2) they will fine FOSS developers until they comply
3) they will fine YOU until you comply
It is hard to prevent me or any regular user from downloading and running software. Are they going to block Git forges and repositories?
They won't be able to see what my communications are, nor confirm what I am using if I tunnel all traffic through Tor or a VPN.
Will they block VPNs like authoritarian states?
What makes you think they won't filter out means of private communication? It's just an electronic box from china.
To stop laws like this, the power needs to return to the people. That means, dismantling the EU and implementing direct democracy.
Yes. Not yet, next.
And they're also pushing emotionally manipulative propaganda in the form of advertisements through microtargeting on social media platforms[0].
[0] original: https://netzpolitik.org/2023/politisches-mikrotargeting-eu-k...
[0] translated: https://netzpolitik-org.translate.goog/2023/politisches-mikr...
The blatant disregard for and violation of the basic rights of hundreds of millions of humans by the few putting forward this proposal is or at least borders on the criminal in my opinion
> Even personal storage that is not being shared, such as Apple’s iCloud, will be subject to chat control
This is new to me. In that case it looks like all services with encryption 'baked in' lose their effectiveness. And that encryption/decryption of text & data needs to be done independently of said service layer to regain privacy.
What if generic encryption apps would integrate with chat apps and the like? According to these rules the chat apps are still required to do scanning, but that will be done on encrypted data which seems pointless.
Unless the rules will be adapted at some point that general encryption needs to be scanned as well, but that would be impractical and undesirable for the EU as well.