it seems it is the general Zeitgeist in Europe.
Also in Switzerland and generally erosions of Privacy laws all across the continent. The governments are scared of insurgencies from the right, from the left, from immigrants, from foreign nations.
Paranoia and fear are quite prominent.
The irony is that they cannot deal with an insurgency if it was organised offline or via secure messaging platforms. They simply don't have the man power to deal with it. At the moment only a few people realise this, if that changes and any insurgent activity actually do halfway decent OPSEC they are finished.
Honestly, the fact that “scan everyone’s encrypted messages” keeps coming back like a bad sequel says a lot about how governments see privacy, as a speed bump, not a right. Every time this proposal pops up, it’s wrapped in “think of the children” language, but the end result is always the same: less security for everyone, more power for people who already have too much. At some point, you have to wonder if the real goal is to make everyone so paranoid they just stop communicating altogether. Here’s hoping enough people still care to push back—otherwise, we’ll all be talking in code again, and not the fun kind.
Maybe constitutional amendments in the member states/ ECHR amendment might help? Article 8 [1] goes some of the way , but has some clear weaknesses.
We do have a right to secrecy of correspondence in most member nations, it's kind of silly that we don't have a strict equivalent for phones or computers yet, despite the fact that most people hardly send letters anymore.
> Fast-forward to February 2025, Poland tried to find a better compromise by making the scanning of encrypted chats voluntary instead of mandatory and classified as "prevention."
Okay hear me out, for public or semi public chats, having a tool to force content scans to prevent people randomly posting csam into the channel might be an idea worth considering. Ask any Matrix Admin about that issue...
Because total surveillance increases the power of the state which can then use it to suppress threats to its power, including effective political dissent. It's not new. It happens everytime if you follow history but people have been conditioned to think skepticism, unless is against "trump bad", is absolutely a conspiracy theory.
The important thing also is that this total massive invasion of privacy won't be for all. You don't get gov transparency but the opposite. The asymmetry of information only increases that power to oppress.
"the EU wants to scan your messages" implies its every member state and not one freak from Denmark putting this forward where it will die.
The EU has always been 90 days from passing mass surveliance for the last decade. Until member states start actually backing this these articles are nothing but click bait.
It's not clickbait. Many member states do support this. Much of the disagreement is on just how rights-violating the scanning should be.
The situation here in Denmark is dire: nobody in the Danish media reports on it, so everybody just shrugs. I've gone out of my way to educate my coworkers and most are unaware many members of our parliament want this. The number of parties that support it outnumber those who don't. Writing to our representatives is met with silence.
Everyone looking to Denmark as a model state should beware what happens when you have a population with such high trust in its government: the roots of autocracy are allowed to grow unfettered.
same logic as "fixing the clocks wasn't that big of a problem, the world didn't set on fire", well yeah because we warned you and fixed it. This is also the logic behind the no-win scenario of IT/security budgets:
things are working: why do we pay so much for IT/security or XYZ tool, we don't need it.
things are on fire: we pay so much money for IT/security or XYZ tool and it didn't help us
People said the same thing about the UKs Online Safety Act when it was proposed. If these articles do not warn us to take action and spread more awareness on what's going on, we would just be stepping closer to the dystopian future faster.
they never really needed it because their allies already got all the data but with UK out of the EU and US proving less reliable / more volatile ally its more important for them to have their own source of intel.
though, because lawful intercept is also a thing in EU, its stupid to assume they do not already have access if they want it.
despite not having 'dragnet' surveillance , they have effective and deep targeted surveillance and laws that allow them to do that fairly freely.... (most countries are more strict with their own citizens, but then its handy to have allies to do it for u -_-... wonderful world!)
>Until member states start actually backing this these articles are nothing but click bait.
As the article states "According to the former MEP for the German Pirate Party, Patrick Breyer, Denmark crucially needs to manage to convince Germany of its proposed text. The new government has not yet taken a position at the time of writing."
And since the current German government is bound to take the most idiotic and destructive path it is basically assured.
On one hand it is a terrible proposal that deserves exposure to generate pushback.
On the other hand it is still just a proposal, of which there are many (stupid ones) which never see the light of day. This still needs to pass the European Parliament (which is generally opposed to this, not in the least because it is very unpopular under EU citizens). Even then the chances of it surviving a challenge in the courts (of which there will be many) are tiny.
Why does this stupid idea have to be killed so many times? Being watched constantly means living in fear, but seeing it almost become legally mandated practice over and over again is itself a form of living in fear. I'm so tired.
With this topic constantly emerging from the authorities, it feels like in the end they will succeed. Money and power always win, to some extent. At least on the official level. But this will lead to those who don't agree to form their own places to communicate securely. The people in power obviously don't want THEIR chats to be scanned, so there will be a safe haven. Just like with tax evaders. But I guess those who care about privacy and security will be considered as potential criminals.
I don't know how it will go in practice, but next to the obvious mass surveillance by the EU itself, the EU also has a couple of Russian vasal states in its ranks. Great idea you guys!
the fact these eurocrats come back over and over, even though its clear the majority is against it, just proves that it doesn't matter what the bulk of the population wants. funny how this works.
The problem is that citizens cannot start referendums, and MPs cannot propose laws to prohibit these privacy violations. So the commission will bring this up again and again and again, until it eventually passes.
This kind of legislation has been proposed so many times at EU and national level, and will fail like always, at the lates at the European Court of Justice for violating human rights.
I was reflecting on the whole chat apps and protocols the other day and felt we might just have trapped ourselves artificially.
If I want to casually keep in touch with a friend, I am supposed to have the following options:
- SMS/RCS: no need for an app but is controlled
- WhatsApp: no good to many reasons
- Signal: how can you believe it is not controlled once it becomes the mandatory app in the US Gov.
- Matrix: great but you need to self host a server, create accounts, etc.
- SimpleX: very interesting, but centralised and I feel it might just be the next Signal. Might be a solution since you can exit at some point by self hosting a server and I guess have alternative implementations.
- Delta chat: great but I guess email fall into the mass surveillance target.
Now most people do not have crazy security requirements and just want to be able to send a simple text message to a friend and be notified instantly without participating in mass surveillance. So why even using a formal Chat app that will be target by a regulation like Chat Control or kicked out of the App store?
Something like Gotify [0] or ntfy [1] are almost enough for most users. It has the whole free from Google and Apple push notification system figured out. You would just need to modify a bit the app to exchange keys with a QR code for individual topics (that you would use as contact or groups).
In a way we just need MQTT servers, a client with reliable push notifications and a manual key exchange mechanism. That would be really hard for govs to target.
A few corrections:
- Matrix does not require you to host a server, even if I'd prefer it - there are multiple public ones in various jurisdictions.
- There is XMPP - like Matrix, but older, jankier, much lighter and kind of freer.
- Weird to call Simplex "centralized" if you did acknowledge that it's selfhostable... But it's indeed weird that last I've seen, there's not some directory with the public servers like there is for Matrix/XMPP. They seem to be going with adding other servers to defaults instead, like they did with Flux recently.
My country for sure will veto it. Last time when they tried it there were massive demonstrations. While the current gov is led by someone that for sure has no backbone to stand up to his good friends in the EU People's party(the name says it all). It is also a minority one that is held up by a coalition that will break instantly if they tried to push this through.
I've believed for a long time that if they want to do this shit, they should do it first on the civil servants, politicians included. They, their spouses and their kids. For a timespan of 5 years.
And allow any citizen to try to hack their 100% secure backdoors without any fear of consequences.
It after 5 years everything is OK, that is, no data has been leaked, no information access abuse has occurred, the test group has not been affected psychologically in a negative way by this potential surveillance, they should present the results, including how many criminals and deranged people have been caught and imprisoned through the direct help of this technology.
It's quite interesting, that while this topic comes up from time to time (it has been going on a long time after all already), people on here seem to seldom talk about the organizations that lobby for this proposal for years, with big ties to the US and intelligence agencies. So this is by no means just an European phenomenon but there seems to be a much bigger agenda behind it all.
Now, at the moment, I don't have a good english language source, but I am sure someone else could provide one?
Here is a german language one[0], from netzpolitik.org, who follow chat control for years now an have many articles going in depth about this. I am sure you could use translation software to read it until someone provides a better source. (And if you have not heard of this, you should!)
And while someone already linked to patrick breyers website[1] which has a good overview, I do so again so maybe more people will see it.
This thing is not new, but it is also not easily ignored and everyone should be informed whats going on here. They will try to pass this again and again since they have done for years now and it's mostly been close calls until now.
37 comments
[ 571 ms ] story [ 2035 ms ] threadWe do have a right to secrecy of correspondence in most member nations, it's kind of silly that we don't have a strict equivalent for phones or computers yet, despite the fact that most people hardly send letters anymore.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv...
Okay hear me out, for public or semi public chats, having a tool to force content scans to prevent people randomly posting csam into the channel might be an idea worth considering. Ask any Matrix Admin about that issue...
The important thing also is that this total massive invasion of privacy won't be for all. You don't get gov transparency but the opposite. The asymmetry of information only increases that power to oppress.
The EU has always been 90 days from passing mass surveliance for the last decade. Until member states start actually backing this these articles are nothing but click bait.
The situation here in Denmark is dire: nobody in the Danish media reports on it, so everybody just shrugs. I've gone out of my way to educate my coworkers and most are unaware many members of our parliament want this. The number of parties that support it outnumber those who don't. Writing to our representatives is met with silence.
Everyone looking to Denmark as a model state should beware what happens when you have a population with such high trust in its government: the roots of autocracy are allowed to grow unfettered.
things are working: why do we pay so much for IT/security or XYZ tool, we don't need it.
things are on fire: we pay so much money for IT/security or XYZ tool and it didn't help us
though, because lawful intercept is also a thing in EU, its stupid to assume they do not already have access if they want it.
despite not having 'dragnet' surveillance , they have effective and deep targeted surveillance and laws that allow them to do that fairly freely.... (most countries are more strict with their own citizens, but then its handy to have allies to do it for u -_-... wonderful world!)
As the article states "According to the former MEP for the German Pirate Party, Patrick Breyer, Denmark crucially needs to manage to convince Germany of its proposed text. The new government has not yet taken a position at the time of writing."
And since the current German government is bound to take the most idiotic and destructive path it is basically assured.
On one hand it is a terrible proposal that deserves exposure to generate pushback.
On the other hand it is still just a proposal, of which there are many (stupid ones) which never see the light of day. This still needs to pass the European Parliament (which is generally opposed to this, not in the least because it is very unpopular under EU citizens). Even then the chances of it surviving a challenge in the courts (of which there will be many) are tiny.
Anything that eventually passes will be extremely toothless.
This combination of mass surveillance and secrecy is downright toxic
If I want to casually keep in touch with a friend, I am supposed to have the following options:
- SMS/RCS: no need for an app but is controlled
- WhatsApp: no good to many reasons
- Signal: how can you believe it is not controlled once it becomes the mandatory app in the US Gov.
- Matrix: great but you need to self host a server, create accounts, etc.
- SimpleX: very interesting, but centralised and I feel it might just be the next Signal. Might be a solution since you can exit at some point by self hosting a server and I guess have alternative implementations.
- Delta chat: great but I guess email fall into the mass surveillance target.
Now most people do not have crazy security requirements and just want to be able to send a simple text message to a friend and be notified instantly without participating in mass surveillance. So why even using a formal Chat app that will be target by a regulation like Chat Control or kicked out of the App store?
Something like Gotify [0] or ntfy [1] are almost enough for most users. It has the whole free from Google and Apple push notification system figured out. You would just need to modify a bit the app to exchange keys with a QR code for individual topics (that you would use as contact or groups).
In a way we just need MQTT servers, a client with reliable push notifications and a manual key exchange mechanism. That would be really hard for govs to target.
- [0] https://gotify.net/
- [1] https://ntfy.sh/
And allow any citizen to try to hack their 100% secure backdoors without any fear of consequences.
It after 5 years everything is OK, that is, no data has been leaked, no information access abuse has occurred, the test group has not been affected psychologically in a negative way by this potential surveillance, they should present the results, including how many criminals and deranged people have been caught and imprisoned through the direct help of this technology.
Then set it up for a direct vote by the people.
Else they should just fuck off with their ideas.
Now, at the moment, I don't have a good english language source, but I am sure someone else could provide one?
Here is a german language one[0], from netzpolitik.org, who follow chat control for years now an have many articles going in depth about this. I am sure you could use translation software to read it until someone provides a better source. (And if you have not heard of this, you should!)
And while someone already linked to patrick breyers website[1] which has a good overview, I do so again so maybe more people will see it. This thing is not new, but it is also not easily ignored and everyone should be informed whats going on here. They will try to pass this again and again since they have done for years now and it's mostly been close calls until now.
[0] https://netzpolitik.org/2023/anlasslose-massenueberwachung-r...
[1] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/