It's not the end of the fight, but it's great to see that the efforts are working! I sent a handwritten letter to my MPs a few weeks ago about this issue but no answer so far...
During the first iterations of Chat Control, I was pretty much the first source (a poor blogger with about ten thousand irregular readers!!) that wrote about it in Czech. It was surreal to break news on something THAT important (and blatantly unconstitutional in Czechia), while all the bigger media just slept ... and slept ... and slept ... Almost bizarre, I felt as if I was watching news from a parallel universe where that thing just does not exist.
The latest round was already much better covered by the media, including the publicly paid TV and radio. It took them three years, but they noticed. It was also more discussed on the Internet. Slovakia flipped its position precisely due to grassroots pressure.
Glad that my country (Finland) is also on the correct side of this. Disappointed that our Nordic and Baltic neighbours are not though. Would've expected more, especially from Estonia.
Even if they did, I am sure this would have been toppled by our constitutional court. You have to know that our police is not allowed to scan number plates of cars entering or leaving the country due to privacy concerns. How on earth would anyone think that lifting our dearly held fundamental right of "mail privacy" is ok?
Glad we could delay it for now. It will come back again and again with that high of support though. Also the German Bundestag is already discussing a compromise: https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-1108356. They are only unhappy with certain points like breaking encryption. They still want to destroy privacy and cut back our rights in the name of "safety", just a little less.
Apparently Italy will support it. This is absolutely infuriating and it will fail miserably. Encryption can't he stopped no matter what law gets out there and any politician voting in favor shows how ignorants they are.
Instead of discussing WHY "owned" mobile phones have a short lifespan and we can't truly do whatever we want with them (be at the hardware/software level) and forced to choose between the apple and google duopoly, we get into these lousy law debates about privacy.
Why doesn't the EU put effort in paving the way for a more open and free tech world when we rely 100% on propietary technology that comes from the other side of the Atlantic?
> Instead of discussing WHY "owned" mobile phones have a short lifespan and we can't truly do whatever we want with them (be at the hardware/software level) and forced to choose between the apple and google duopoly, we get into these lousy law debates about privacy.
Encryption cannot be stopped. But Android and iOS can be backdoored. These evil companies lock down our devices, does not allow apps to run without their approval, and selectively push updates from their servers to our devices.
The first promoter of this is actually a Swedish social democrat who was a socialist a very long time ago. I guess she kept the knack for a nanny state.
As long as I remember there has been these initiatives in EU. They have been all blocked so far, or turned into something reasonable, but there will always be a new try.
With a warrant from a judge people should be compelled to provide access to their encrypted files or be in contempt of court with all that entails. Anything else is overreach.
Between this and Google locking down Android, one day the only way to get secure communications will be to buy Huawei etc. Thank God for China, bastion of free speech.
Why would you really need something like that in a non-totalitarian state? Basically, it follows the russian playbook (essentially the same 'language' - safety concerns), but instead of the FSB, who is the beneficiary actor in this case?
someone has to prove illicit connections to private companies and potentially black markets. the data is guaranteed to end up in the wrong hands which will have a worse impact on the lives of citizens, workers as much as educated ones, and definitely officials; how to better gain dirt on someone if the law supports breaking encryption and they falsely believe their state of the art messaging app is worth more than the skeletons in their closets?
at the least the basic human rights and privacy laws should be on everyones' side ... except rapists, the many kinds of violent abusers, murderers, especially the genocidal kind, drug punchers, and these fuckers roofying kids in clubs and bars just to have sex ... I probably forgot some ... sorry I didn't stay on topic.
As Freud wanted to let us know, the ageing rich are perverts with enough means to hide any crime ... then they made him bend over and invent the Oedipus complex, ffs
the only way for them to create an argument for ChatControl is more terrorism or some fucked up crimes against children so this damn thing is a sure-fire shitstorm with recursive, bad yields.
Happy to see the NL here in opposition to ChatControl! The political climate here is slowly pushing to the right, which I'm not happy about. But there seems to be voices getting louder from the left. So that leaves me with hope!
I think many genuinely just want to increase security for their people. Not mass surveillance and orwellian control.
They just don't understand why it's technically not possible to achieve what they want without unacceptable risks.
Similar to the climate change issue: no politician is aiming at having their children die before retirement age from the consequences of climate change. They just don't understand that they are pushing us there (like most of the people, to be fair).
Maybe, just maybe, (probably not) they learned something from the NSA/FBI (I don't remember) tricking the BSI into helping them with industry espionage against a large Germany company[^1]. and pretty much any technology widely used in chat control would be under tight US control, or Israel which in recent times also isn't exactly know to be a peace seeking reasonable acting country.
[^1]: Which I think was about car companies and pre-trump, pre-disel-gate. Also not the only time where it's known that the US engaged on industry espionage against close allies or Germany specifically.
Just think for a moment how broken the EU model is. You don't want something to pass. Other citizens of your country don't want the thing to pass. Your politicians don't want that thing to pass. Your euro politicians don't want that thing to pass. Yet in the current model that doesn't matter one bit because your SOVEREIGN country may still be overruled by foreign countries and politicians.
It's unbelievable that we have allowed EU to spread into this all encompassing monster that deals with anything but economic cooperation among member countries.
-------------------
> European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself
> Yet in the current model that doesn't matter one bit
It matters because if it's that important to you then you have a sovereign right to leave the EU and do away with all the rules you don't want
Staying inside of it and accepting primacy of EU law when decisions are lawfully taken following the process you've agreed to of your own country's free will is a choice
I'd support this if and only if we ran a trial where all public officials had all their messages and emails publicly readable by citizens. Surely the good people adamant on spying on their constituents en-masse has nothing to hide, right?
47 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 69.5 ms ] threadIt seems that public pressure pays off.
During the first iterations of Chat Control, I was pretty much the first source (a poor blogger with about ten thousand irregular readers!!) that wrote about it in Czech. It was surreal to break news on something THAT important (and blatantly unconstitutional in Czechia), while all the bigger media just slept ... and slept ... and slept ... Almost bizarre, I felt as if I was watching news from a parallel universe where that thing just does not exist.
The latest round was already much better covered by the media, including the publicly paid TV and radio. It took them three years, but they noticed. It was also more discussed on the Internet. Slovakia flipped its position precisely due to grassroots pressure.
Looks like latin cultures don't really care about being spied on by they governments.
See you next time.
Instead of discussing WHY "owned" mobile phones have a short lifespan and we can't truly do whatever we want with them (be at the hardware/software level) and forced to choose between the apple and google duopoly, we get into these lousy law debates about privacy.
Why doesn't the EU put effort in paving the way for a more open and free tech world when we rely 100% on propietary technology that comes from the other side of the Atlantic?
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IP...
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
This is a wet dream for governments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylva_Johansson?wprov=sfti1#
"Think of the children" will never die.
at the least the basic human rights and privacy laws should be on everyones' side ... except rapists, the many kinds of violent abusers, murderers, especially the genocidal kind, drug punchers, and these fuckers roofying kids in clubs and bars just to have sex ... I probably forgot some ... sorry I didn't stay on topic.
As Freud wanted to let us know, the ageing rich are perverts with enough means to hide any crime ... then they made him bend over and invent the Oedipus complex, ffs
the only way for them to create an argument for ChatControl is more terrorism or some fucked up crimes against children so this damn thing is a sure-fire shitstorm with recursive, bad yields.
They just don't understand why it's technically not possible to achieve what they want without unacceptable risks.
Similar to the climate change issue: no politician is aiming at having their children die before retirement age from the consequences of climate change. They just don't understand that they are pushing us there (like most of the people, to be fair).
[^1]: Which I think was about car companies and pre-trump, pre-disel-gate. Also not the only time where it's known that the US engaged on industry espionage against close allies or Germany specifically.
Secrecy of Correspondence[1] is something that desperately needs to be extended fully to mobile devices.
Compare how many letters you get vs how many chat messages you send.
Secrecy of (mobile) communications should be recognized as a (natural?) right.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
(edit: unbreak formatting)
It's unbelievable that we have allowed EU to spread into this all encompassing monster that deals with anything but economic cooperation among member countries.
-------------------
> European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law
It matters because if it's that important to you then you have a sovereign right to leave the EU and do away with all the rules you don't want
Staying inside of it and accepting primacy of EU law when decisions are lawfully taken following the process you've agreed to of your own country's free will is a choice