These carrier bureaucrates of EU will split the EU apart with their needless over legislation where member state's fascist far left and far right elements would want to be done with the union.
>According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months, to be delivered on demand to police authorities.
This was actually law for 8 years until the Court of Justice of the EU found it to be violating fundamental rights and was declared invalid.
So is GDPR the "good" part of it and we should just reject Chat Control? Or is GDPR also some sort of trojan horse that sounds great, but has downsides
I feel like this just fundamentally misunderstands Europe stand on privacy. Privacy is for citizens and companies to each other not something the government is subject to.
Hmm. So, as I read the article, they've dropped the mandatory universal scanning (which has the effect of no longer requiring on-device scanning)... but added age verification.
Voluntary scanning (voluntary for the provider, not for the serfs^H^H^H^H^Husers) is already happening under some kind of temporary directive. So that's kind of codifying the status quo.
If they had just dropped the mandatory scanning, it might even be good to see it passed, in that it could eventually, slowly, drive all the users either to providers that don't scan... or better yet to P2P. There are probably some players who accepted the lack of mandatory scanning because they're betting they can find "noncoercive" ways to coerce all the major providers... but P2P is a lot harder to pressure that way. Even "mostly P2P" is harder to pressure, just because the infrastructure required is smaller. And it's not clear that all of the people doing the horsetrading understand that P2P is even possible.
They've been coming back with this Chat Control bullshit every year, in an obvious "keep demanding it until you get a yes" strategy. But once they've passed something, it'll be harder politically for them to change it to ban effectively encrypted P2P messaging. They could end up screwing themselves.
BUT the age verification ruins the whole thing, since it torpedoes privacy in general, and it probably, depending on how it's phrased and who it binds, effectively bans P2P messaging.
I wonder how many people involved intentionally took that into account, versus how many just saw AV as something vaguely authoritarian that could be put in to placate the forces of Control(TM).
As a liberal person, I have an unpopular opinion, but I’m a national who’s country is at war.
These are adequate reactions and preparations before war.
The West should be done with its rosy glasses. There’s still almost religious rejection of the possibility of war in their territory.
We are on the brink of a fierce war with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a few traitors you are not aware of. They have more resources (oil, gas), production capabilities, as well as intelligence, and what’s more important, counter-intelligence.
This move improves counter-intelligence. Essentially, it’s an attempt to prevent the looming war. It’s not an evil act; it’s a cowardly measure compared to the direct acts of aggression of NATO.
If you think this time America will save the entire West like in movies, you are wrong. With recent drone capabilities without going nuclear, no place is safe.
> Yesterday, this revised version was quietly greenlit by Coreper, essentially paving the way for the text’s adoption by the Council, possibly as early as December.
First, suppose two child pornographers get together and agree on a set of word substitutions that remove the key words and phrases deemed suspect. Now the authorites are scanning chats about flowers being planted, or birds being watched, etc. that are actually about targeting victims. Then the only detected uses of suspect words and phrases are accidental. If the authorites learn the new lingo the perpetrators will evolve it.
The only child pornographers that will be caught are the very stupid ones but they would have been caught by other less invasive means.
Meanwhile, the mass surveilance will destroy the free market. Imagine having to negotiate contracts when every business is a global corporation that knows what colour underwear you are wearing from scanning all of your chats. That means every business has a permanent information asymmetry in its favour, in every economic transaction you will ever make. Try to negotiate the purchase of a car, home, and so forth.
It would seem the end of freedom is nigh, listen for the sound of cheering and applause.
Isn't it obvious that mass surveilance only works on those who can be kept ignorant of it? If people know about surveilance then their behaviour is altered. How do entire nations and groups of nations fall for nonsensical plans like chat control.
The idea of chat control is to combat child vicimization by setting authorities on impossibly costly, technically insane strategies that can be thwarted by a high functioning chimpanzee.
it makes no difference how far "governments" go down the authoritarian openly fascist path. Real world pressure from climate change, demographic changes, the effect of the developing world rising, and all of it happening in a world where hydraulic despotism is no longer viable, as there is no way to force the world's continuing reliance on pipe lines and sole sources of technology.
The last gasps of the colonial gentocratic
cleptocracy are going to be uggly.
The adsurdity of trying to hide the enslavement of the entire worlds population behind exactly ONE case of technology bieng used to prosecute (not catch) ONE murderer is only going to highlight the thousands and thousands of cases that are, and never will be investigated at all.
Secondly: the death of EU cannot come soon enough. 10 years ago euroskeptics like me were wrongfully called "russophiles" (lmao), even though I'm from a country that is constantly threatened by Russia with drones, propaganda, etc. (RO for one's curiosity). Ironically enough, for those coming from ex-communists countries, EU sure looks increasingly like USSR, but with blue instead of red. It's infinitely better than communism, sure, but the optics and path of EU resemble those of USSR in it's "wellbeing of workers"(and other socio-cultural issues) propaganda phase(the irony is Russia here, obviously).
History never repeats, but it rhymes. And a calcified supranational institution delves into authoritarianism in the later stages of its existence. Reform never happens, and if it does, it’s at face value. It’s much “easier” (for the people in those institutions) to double-down on the status quo position rather than reform; and obviously it becomes increasingly harder for the vast majority of people to voice their opinions or concerns, especially those not aligned with the status quo. (* Key difference here is NATO which is US-led and EU which is still Western Europe-led; US is still a functional democracy unlike EU institutions)
Although it’s not really a very complex topic and the causal factors are relatively simple (at least to identify, solutions are much harder to propose [mainly due to the mentioned constant double-downing]), it would take a long time to explain/convince why the existence of the “current” EU is detrimental to Europeans (at least to the people not aligned with the status-quo). So-called benefits stopped at the common market treaty (EEC) iteration of the EU. Security is not and should not be in the EU’s purview, we have NATO for that. And the most obvious issues that the EU keeps worsening are socio-cultural positions that either (1) dilute the differences between different nations (2) [in case (1) was not a “problem” due to shared values] directly propose completely different values and/or positions. There’s no “objective morality” debate to be had here, democracy does not inherently mean choosing the most “scientific”/“moral”/(any other metric) position in policy: it simply means choosing what the majority of people want (If you want to change policy: change people’s minds). The double-downing of the “EU regime” is usually defended with the rhetoric that it does so in the name of “democracy”, “morality”, “tolerance”, “objective wellbeing of society”, etc. but there’s no mechanism for true democracy if the EU undermines/punishes the will of individual nations on the pretext that “it does not conform to EU-wide proposed policy”. This leads to “multi-step” issues and other regional conflicts between interests of nations (the winning bloc [usually the wealthier one] gets to basically impose policy on the smaller one).
I’m quite off-topic on the subject of privacy, but my key point is this: don’t expect things to get better; or at least not without a huge cost. Recent pullbacks from the EU regarding the DSA/AI Act/GDPR are done so out of necessity: the EU is losing ground massively (= money) in the tech space due to stupid policies made by dumb bureaucrats. Half-assed “reforms” like these will not make huge improvements (mainly due to the unchanged fiscal policies [which are going to get worse: upcoming euro stablecoin]) but will keep the EU afloat amongst those who can’t see the sinking ship. Oh, you like privacy? Well, expect it to get worse, as eID is surely coming for all citizens in the name of safety (which has been eroded due to “our” [i.e. regime’s] stupid policies).
Finally, as I foresee some will keep replying with “Russian <something>”, let me just say this: pray the downfall of the EU won’t be an opportunity for Russia to do anything. At this rate in the regional conflict, Russia doesn’...
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Oh, okay.
In 2006 the EU passed the Data Retention Directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
>According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months, to be delivered on demand to police authorities.
This was actually law for 8 years until the Court of Justice of the EU found it to be violating fundamental rights and was declared invalid.
Voluntary scanning (voluntary for the provider, not for the serfs^H^H^H^H^Husers) is already happening under some kind of temporary directive. So that's kind of codifying the status quo.
If they had just dropped the mandatory scanning, it might even be good to see it passed, in that it could eventually, slowly, drive all the users either to providers that don't scan... or better yet to P2P. There are probably some players who accepted the lack of mandatory scanning because they're betting they can find "noncoercive" ways to coerce all the major providers... but P2P is a lot harder to pressure that way. Even "mostly P2P" is harder to pressure, just because the infrastructure required is smaller. And it's not clear that all of the people doing the horsetrading understand that P2P is even possible.
They've been coming back with this Chat Control bullshit every year, in an obvious "keep demanding it until you get a yes" strategy. But once they've passed something, it'll be harder politically for them to change it to ban effectively encrypted P2P messaging. They could end up screwing themselves.
BUT the age verification ruins the whole thing, since it torpedoes privacy in general, and it probably, depending on how it's phrased and who it binds, effectively bans P2P messaging.
I wonder how many people involved intentionally took that into account, versus how many just saw AV as something vaguely authoritarian that could be put in to placate the forces of Control(TM).
These are adequate reactions and preparations before war.
The West should be done with its rosy glasses. There’s still almost religious rejection of the possibility of war in their territory.
We are on the brink of a fierce war with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a few traitors you are not aware of. They have more resources (oil, gas), production capabilities, as well as intelligence, and what’s more important, counter-intelligence.
This move improves counter-intelligence. Essentially, it’s an attempt to prevent the looming war. It’s not an evil act; it’s a cowardly measure compared to the direct acts of aggression of NATO.
If you think this time America will save the entire West like in movies, you are wrong. With recent drone capabilities without going nuclear, no place is safe.
Politicians and the rich will be exempt.
It hasn't been passed yet. We'll see.
First, suppose two child pornographers get together and agree on a set of word substitutions that remove the key words and phrases deemed suspect. Now the authorites are scanning chats about flowers being planted, or birds being watched, etc. that are actually about targeting victims. Then the only detected uses of suspect words and phrases are accidental. If the authorites learn the new lingo the perpetrators will evolve it.
The only child pornographers that will be caught are the very stupid ones but they would have been caught by other less invasive means.
Meanwhile, the mass surveilance will destroy the free market. Imagine having to negotiate contracts when every business is a global corporation that knows what colour underwear you are wearing from scanning all of your chats. That means every business has a permanent information asymmetry in its favour, in every economic transaction you will ever make. Try to negotiate the purchase of a car, home, and so forth.
It would seem the end of freedom is nigh, listen for the sound of cheering and applause.
Isn't it obvious that mass surveilance only works on those who can be kept ignorant of it? If people know about surveilance then their behaviour is altered. How do entire nations and groups of nations fall for nonsensical plans like chat control.
The idea of chat control is to combat child vicimization by setting authorities on impossibly costly, technically insane strategies that can be thwarted by a high functioning chimpanzee.
What am I missing?
Secondly: the death of EU cannot come soon enough. 10 years ago euroskeptics like me were wrongfully called "russophiles" (lmao), even though I'm from a country that is constantly threatened by Russia with drones, propaganda, etc. (RO for one's curiosity). Ironically enough, for those coming from ex-communists countries, EU sure looks increasingly like USSR, but with blue instead of red. It's infinitely better than communism, sure, but the optics and path of EU resemble those of USSR in it's "wellbeing of workers"(and other socio-cultural issues) propaganda phase(the irony is Russia here, obviously).
History never repeats, but it rhymes. And a calcified supranational institution delves into authoritarianism in the later stages of its existence. Reform never happens, and if it does, it’s at face value. It’s much “easier” (for the people in those institutions) to double-down on the status quo position rather than reform; and obviously it becomes increasingly harder for the vast majority of people to voice their opinions or concerns, especially those not aligned with the status quo. (* Key difference here is NATO which is US-led and EU which is still Western Europe-led; US is still a functional democracy unlike EU institutions)
Although it’s not really a very complex topic and the causal factors are relatively simple (at least to identify, solutions are much harder to propose [mainly due to the mentioned constant double-downing]), it would take a long time to explain/convince why the existence of the “current” EU is detrimental to Europeans (at least to the people not aligned with the status-quo). So-called benefits stopped at the common market treaty (EEC) iteration of the EU. Security is not and should not be in the EU’s purview, we have NATO for that. And the most obvious issues that the EU keeps worsening are socio-cultural positions that either (1) dilute the differences between different nations (2) [in case (1) was not a “problem” due to shared values] directly propose completely different values and/or positions. There’s no “objective morality” debate to be had here, democracy does not inherently mean choosing the most “scientific”/“moral”/(any other metric) position in policy: it simply means choosing what the majority of people want (If you want to change policy: change people’s minds). The double-downing of the “EU regime” is usually defended with the rhetoric that it does so in the name of “democracy”, “morality”, “tolerance”, “objective wellbeing of society”, etc. but there’s no mechanism for true democracy if the EU undermines/punishes the will of individual nations on the pretext that “it does not conform to EU-wide proposed policy”. This leads to “multi-step” issues and other regional conflicts between interests of nations (the winning bloc [usually the wealthier one] gets to basically impose policy on the smaller one).
I’m quite off-topic on the subject of privacy, but my key point is this: don’t expect things to get better; or at least not without a huge cost. Recent pullbacks from the EU regarding the DSA/AI Act/GDPR are done so out of necessity: the EU is losing ground massively (= money) in the tech space due to stupid policies made by dumb bureaucrats. Half-assed “reforms” like these will not make huge improvements (mainly due to the unchanged fiscal policies [which are going to get worse: upcoming euro stablecoin]) but will keep the EU afloat amongst those who can’t see the sinking ship. Oh, you like privacy? Well, expect it to get worse, as eID is surely coming for all citizens in the name of safety (which has been eroded due to “our” [i.e. regime’s] stupid policies).
Finally, as I foresee some will keep replying with “Russian <something>”, let me just say this: pray the downfall of the EU won’t be an opportunity for Russia to do anything. At this rate in the regional conflict, Russia doesn’...