The problem is that they can repeat this game indefinitely, Chat Control 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 231.24, ... Just slightly modify the initial Chat Control proposal, make it sound less harsh, and then resubmit it until they achieve a sufficient majority in the EU Parliament, while the general public gets too tired of the topic to create sufficient resistance.
The site is in his name but it has a lot of content - I don't think he writes it all. The stuff I've seen from him directly is mainly in German so I think often people on his team write e.g. English summaries and quote what he said as a translation
Apparently it didn't work last time, so why not try again with a more vague language, an expanded scope and even slapping the age verification on top of it? And all of this while still preserving our privacy.
This time, we should feel 100% completely reassured (from the proposal):
Regulation whilst still allowing for end-to-end encryption, nothing in this
Regulation should be interpreted as prohibiting, weakening or circumventing,
requiring to disable, or making end-to-end encryption impossible.
“Digital House Arrest”: Teens under 16 face a blanket ban from WhatsApp, Instagram, online games, and countless other apps with chat functions, allegedly to protect them from grooming.
For which I agree.
“Digital isolation instead of education, protection by exclusion instead of empowerment – this is paternalistic, out of touch with reality, and pedagogical nonsense.”
So many attempts over the years to infringe upon citizens privacy and civil liberties, I don't know about the rest of EU population but I'm done with it.
Might as well let it go pure evil so when the time comes, the people will be less hesitant to get rid of the whole EU bureaucracy and the armies of corporate lobbyists altogether
I'm curious about this mindset. Wouldn't it be easier to reform your system before it has gone "pure evil"? Or do you expect nobody cares enough to do that without the threat of impending doom to motivate them?
I believe people will typically not stand for their rights (even less so for other's rights) unless they are significantly bothered or led to think the situation is dire. This is not great, but it is also natural for the human condition: unless one is well-informed and especially conscious about the issues that come with reduction of rights, they will not even realize what is happening until it is happening.
These things are rather pointless, as one could always use a standalone encryption app, and copy&paste text to and from a non encrypted chat app. i.e. how one originally made use of PGP.
The difficulty which PGP had of key exchange could be handled somewhat like Signal does now, via a personal physical sync of the phones.
At which point, the authorities will still be able to make use of "traffic analysis" as they always have. So they'll be able to tell which parties are communicating, but not what is being said.
I find it sadly amusing that the proposed "compromise text" document is marked as "(Text with EEA relevance)" - i.e. they want to push it on the EEA states.
The eu skeptic partiers, unfortunately, seem to be on quite solid footing on claims of EU bypassing democracy in their decision making. How can the same bill effectively be struck down so many times and then get passed through the back door?!
There is also an alternative, which is the way problems with governments used to get solved in the past. Not that we should aim for that to be necessary, but it often seems that our politicians are hellbend on getting there quickly. I guess it's all "to hell with the consequences!" for them.
That argument is so tiring. Yes, we know, we all understand this, that’s true of every draconian law proposal. What’s the point of repeating that over and over every time? If you want to give up, do, but let others fight without needless discouraging. If everyone thought like you, this would have passed first time.
(6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the rules laid down in this Regulation and a level playing field within the internal market, those rules should apply to all providers, irrespective of their place of establishment or residence, that offer services in the Union, as evidenced by a substantial connection to the Union.
The article links to the text of the revised proposal. It reads like they're openly planning to push it again, and soon, and worldwide. The UK and EU seem to be setting aside their differences at least.
(f) ‘relevant information society services’ means all of the following services:
(i) a hosting service;
(ii) an interpersonal communications service;
(iii) a software applications store;
(iv) an internet access service;
(v) online search engines.
(2) ‘internet access service’ means a publicly available electronic communications service that provides access to the
internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology
and terminal equipment used
===
Calling it Chat Control is itself an understatement, one that evokes "well I'm not putting anything sensitive on WhatsApp" sentiments - and that's incredibly dangerous.
This bill may very well be read to impose mandatory global backdoors on VPNs, public cloud providers, and even your home router or your laptop network card!
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. But it doesn't take a lawyer to see how broadly scoped this is.)
> (6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries.
It's quite wild to see child sexual abuse continue to be cited as a justification for far-reaching, privacy-invading proposals, allegedly to empower government actors to combat child sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, we have copious and ever-increasing evidence of actual child sexual abuse being perpetrated by people with the most power in these very institutions, and they generally face few (if any) consequences.
This is an asymmetric conflict. The factions who want this to pass have more resources, time and background influence and can keep pushing this until they get lucky.
And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.
How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
I’ve seen this strategy many times in the US. For example, in blue states they will repeatedly propose the same gun control laws that restrict the rights of law abiding citizens and violate the constitution, which guarantees a right to own firearms. Each time such a law is proposed, people have to show up to hearings, submit comments, pressure legislators, protest, and all of that. Those laws may then be pulled back, but the same laws will get brought up every single legislative season, and citizens who have other responsibilities in life have to give up time and money repeatedly to fight for their constitutional rights.
I’m sure there are other examples of such legal abuse of different political biases - I’m just using this as an example because there is such a long history of it. Eventually, legislators will pass whatever they want anyways. And then your recourse to regain rights is to go through an expensive years-long legal battle that ultimately requires the Supreme Court to take the case. This type of “attack” is a serious flaw in many modern democracies.
I think the fix is to have personal consequences for legislators, judges, etc that make bad decisions that violate the constitutional rights or fundamental rights of citizens. The idea that people are immune from consequence just because they’re serving in an official capacity is insane. This shouldn’t be the case for anyone serving in political office or other public roles - as in, you shouldn’t get immunity whether you are a lawmaker or policeman or teacher or whatever else.
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
You need a means for citizens to hold the powers that be accountable. Unfortunately, the EU is largely designed without such a mechanism, as its initial scope and ambition was much smaller than the superstate it is growing into it wasn't deemed necessary.
Every branch except for the European Parliament risks consequences only if they fuck up so badly that the majority of EU citizens in their home countries (or in some cases, the majority of member states) deem their actions so reprehensible that they consider punishing the EU more important than electing their own national government, since it's effectively the same vote.
This is technically still a means of accountability, but it's not really a threat in practice.
Honestly I think privacy is lost. Regardless of what side you were (big fan of privacy here) I feel we have nothing to do but move on and think how to live in a world without privacy.
I never wanted privacy anyway: I wanted no discrimination, inclusion, healthy democracy, etc, etc.
Privacy has always been a tool for me.
At this point, selective privacy like we are experiencing today (we cannot know what’s in the epstein files, but google can send a drone and look into my backyard) serves none of the things I am interested in!
”2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right EXCEPT such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
Are we reading the same thing?
This linked statement clearly authorizes invasion of privacy by public authorities, in the name of any of the very vaguely listed reasons – as long as there’s some law to allow it.
it escapes you because all these treaty clauses read like safeguards, but in practice they’re just friction. Once a government decides it needs mass surveillance for ‘security,’ the law bends. The real question isn’t what the ECHR allows... it’s why people still think legal frameworks can meaningfully restrain a state that has already decided not to be restrained.
And it's not just EU politicians who ignore their constitution. US politicians have been ignoring the US Constitution for oh (checks history books) at least 85 years.
You can’t defend any rights by reference to legal authority. As long as it’s a legal domain, any exceptions are permitted, even on the “human” rights level. Rights can only be defended on moral grounds, like rights to freedom or self-defense.
Because they don't get banned from being able to either take a sit in a political position for life after they went to jail for a few years for high treason agaisnt the people.
Society can't win this without fighting the personalities who drive it. In the end, there's a individual that pushes this, so this very person should be targeted personally.
Someone said it's an asymmetric conflict, so we need to pull it to our (human-size) level and fight on our chessboard.
85 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 99.8 ms ] threadThe frequency, aggression and coordination around chat control, both in the Uk and Eu tells me there is a single entity.
It’s not just by chance
This time, we should feel 100% completely reassured (from the proposal):
“Digital House Arrest”: Teens under 16 face a blanket ban from WhatsApp, Instagram, online games, and countless other apps with chat functions, allegedly to protect them from grooming.
For which I agree.
“Digital isolation instead of education, protection by exclusion instead of empowerment – this is paternalistic, out of touch with reality, and pedagogical nonsense.”
Might as well let it go pure evil so when the time comes, the people will be less hesitant to get rid of the whole EU bureaucracy and the armies of corporate lobbyists altogether
The difficulty which PGP had of key exchange could be handled somewhat like Signal does now, via a personal physical sync of the phones.
At which point, the authorities will still be able to make use of "traffic analysis" as they always have. So they'll be able to tell which parties are communicating, but not what is being said.
[1] https://xmpp.org/
(f) ‘relevant information society services’ means all of the following services: (i) a hosting service; (ii) an interpersonal communications service; (iii) a software applications store; (iv) an internet access service; (v) online search engines.
And via https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... pp 8:
(2) ‘internet access service’ means a publicly available electronic communications service that provides access to the internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology and terminal equipment used
===
Calling it Chat Control is itself an understatement, one that evokes "well I'm not putting anything sensitive on WhatsApp" sentiments - and that's incredibly dangerous.
This bill may very well be read to impose mandatory global backdoors on VPNs, public cloud providers, and even your home router or your laptop network card!
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. But it doesn't take a lawyer to see how broadly scoped this is.)
It's quite wild to see child sexual abuse continue to be cited as a justification for far-reaching, privacy-invading proposals, allegedly to empower government actors to combat child sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, we have copious and ever-increasing evidence of actual child sexual abuse being perpetrated by people with the most power in these very institutions, and they generally face few (if any) consequences.
And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.
How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
I’m sure there are other examples of such legal abuse of different political biases - I’m just using this as an example because there is such a long history of it. Eventually, legislators will pass whatever they want anyways. And then your recourse to regain rights is to go through an expensive years-long legal battle that ultimately requires the Supreme Court to take the case. This type of “attack” is a serious flaw in many modern democracies.
I think the fix is to have personal consequences for legislators, judges, etc that make bad decisions that violate the constitutional rights or fundamental rights of citizens. The idea that people are immune from consequence just because they’re serving in an official capacity is insane. This shouldn’t be the case for anyone serving in political office or other public roles - as in, you shouldn’t get immunity whether you are a lawmaker or policeman or teacher or whatever else.
You need a means for citizens to hold the powers that be accountable. Unfortunately, the EU is largely designed without such a mechanism, as its initial scope and ambition was much smaller than the superstate it is growing into it wasn't deemed necessary.
Every branch except for the European Parliament risks consequences only if they fuck up so badly that the majority of EU citizens in their home countries (or in some cases, the majority of member states) deem their actions so reprehensible that they consider punishing the EU more important than electing their own national government, since it's effectively the same vote.
This is technically still a means of accountability, but it's not really a threat in practice.
I never wanted privacy anyway: I wanted no discrimination, inclusion, healthy democracy, etc, etc.
Privacy has always been a tool for me.
At this point, selective privacy like we are experiencing today (we cannot know what’s in the epstein files, but google can send a drone and look into my backyard) serves none of the things I am interested in!
- members of opposition of the wrong kind (as defined by incumbent);
- journalists investigating the government;
(if the incumbent is brazen enough, those above can be and already are selectively targeted with paid exploits)
- political opponents of the wrong kind (aka the extrimists, which kinda overlaps with #1);
- actual enemy combatants (aka the terrorists), spys and traitors;
- organized crime of the day with unwarranted delusions of grandeur (R. Taghi, his antics and aspirations to kill the Dutch PM);
- immigrants and immigrants to be of the wrong kind and people who smuggle them;
It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to violate this.
[0] https://fra.europa.eu/en/law-reference/european-convention-h...
Are we reading the same thing?
This linked statement clearly authorizes invasion of privacy by public authorities, in the name of any of the very vaguely listed reasons – as long as there’s some law to allow it.
it escapes me hwo so many can be so naive.
There is no penalty for doing so.
If something is outlawed but there is no negative consequence for doing it, then it’s not really outlawed in practical terms.
You make use of the silent assumption that politicians are not criminals. :-(
Especially the EU, with limited democratic oversight, does not have to be too concerned about things like this.
Someone said it's an asymmetric conflict, so we need to pull it to our (human-size) level and fight on our chessboard.