[HN Gopher] Biometric and behavioural mass surveillance in EU Me...
___________________________________________________________________
Biometric and behavioural mass surveillance in EU Member States
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 58 points
Date : 2021-10-30 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.greens-efa.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.greens-efa.eu)
| snugghash wrote:
| Seems like the CCP was "right" all along.
|
| All of our governments are simply playing catch-up at this point.
| Unless the western-influenced can prove their superiority with
| growth and progress, I think everyone here has to acknowledge
| they have a better overall governance model (elections are a
| small but significant part of this)
| freetinker wrote:
| Better governance model based on what? How are you drawing that
| conclusion? (Genuine question)
| snugghash wrote:
| My metric here is "grabby success" or growth. I alluded to
| this in my comment but essentially, if you have a society,
| civilization, entity, species, w.e., it's almost guaranteed
| to be different in some way to other such entities.
|
| And because effective resources are generally limited, these
| differences will lead to relative difference in market share,
| like maybe how many people one entity can sustain.
|
| From there, it might lead to differences in how productive
| each person and the entity itself is, which leads to a spread
| of that productivity to other entities. The US has generally
| enjoyed the crown here for at least a hundred years - even
| now, cutting edge research is still in the US. The US
| "culture" is essentially internet culture and it will rub off
| on everyone who uses most US services (even innocuous ones
| like Google).
|
| In sum, I'm equating long-term relative growth rate to
| societal/governance success. China isn't a great comparison
| to the US, but it's a very good comparison to, say, India
| (with caveats).
|
| Over the next 50 years, I think it's a decent comparison to
| the US/EU as well, as the populations are now more similar
| (with immigration).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Why does it mean they're right? These EU states are using this
| tech because it's easy. Doing the right thing is usually not
| the easy way.
|
| Also, economic growth is not the measure of a state that's good
| for its citizens. I think we're doing a lot better than China
| there.
|
| This just means we have to keep fighting it.
| snugghash wrote:
| Yes, but prioritization is everywhere - maybe the EU finds
| that their ideals and principles were an instance of the XY
| problem, and privacy doesn't matter at all.
|
| I'm not saying they're right, I'm saying they're "right". I'm
| redefining "right" as "long term success".
|
| It's like everyone uses mobile phones now and the luddites
| who don't are simply irrelevant. Maybe the anti-tech folks
| are actually right in terms of harm it causes, but because of
| the other party's success, there's they're not relevant. The
| right-ness is not relevant for this case.
|
| Similar to how you might do pagans-vs-christians. Maybe we as
| a society will evolve to support and encourage pagans and
| diversity and stop encouraging supremacist religions like
| Christianity, BUT - they've "won" against all the pagan
| religions in the middle east and europe. With Islam, against
| everything all the way up to central asia and SEA, down into
| Africa. Maybe the holdouts like the Hindus in India will
| ultimately build better and more resilient societies (they
| haven't been converted yet, unlike many others) but so far,
| nothing.
|
| The question requires time and more data to resolve - but the
| tentative resolution is that people don't care about privacy.
| So societies don't care either.
|
| That said, I'm a huge privacy/crypto nerd - I even think
| privacy-vs-security is a false dichotomy. THEY don't. Apple
| doesn't. Most VCs and Google thing privacy and valuable
| insights from data are dichotomies and mutually exclusive
| too, but they're mathematically provably wrong.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_encryption
| dane-pgp wrote:
| If their governance model was so good, they wouldn't have to
| oppress their population so much. The fact that Western
| governments are adopting some of the same techniques is a sign
| that either technology makes it too easy/cheap to implement
| these systems without thinking, or that Western governments are
| becoming less representative and thus need to rely on systems
| of oppression more to maintain their grip on power.
|
| To give some possible examples of what I mean by "less
| representative", let me suggest that growing wealth inequality
| makes the poor realise they are not being heard by the rich;
| that communication technology allow niche ideas to spread
| causing the balkanisation of reality (which causes cracks that
| governments can't easily paper over); and that in some
| countries the voting system doesn't allow the healthy evolution
| of parties to respond to the new realities (exacerbating
| "future shock").
| snugghash wrote:
| Thank you for the thoughtful expansion. I completely agree
| with you on the level you're thinking about this, and I also
| agree that our tech level in collaboration is basically
| amplified mob rule, same as 100 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29051178
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29051412
|
| But zooming out, I think a society/government's job is
| preventing destruction and growing. That may not be in a way
| that's dangerous to other governments, but high relative
| growth can make other governments irrelevant. I'm claiming
| that the value from unabashed large scale data surveillance
| that CCP gathers is very large, and that might be a
| significant enough factor moving forward that privacy-first
| countries might simply not be able to keep up with it, and
| become irrelevant.
|
| From this viewpoint, if the EU is doing this, we have no
| large diverse conglomerate that can serve as an experimental
| control any more. We can't even tell if privacy "is a good
| thing", for the final metric of growth. Not US, not EU, not
| India. Africa is still not in the same league.
|
| Every single one of them have basically succumbed to privacy
| vs. security false dichotomy
| (https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/). Every
| single one thinks the way forward (at least for now) is mass
| surveillance.
|
| Maybe they think the gain from not having public crime is big
| enough to justify the cost. In which case CCP was "right" -
| convergent evolution means something (for now).
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| The government's job is to defend individual liberties.
| Full stop.
|
| The rest is fluff that should be put down with violence if
| necessary.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is a very complete and compreshensive undertaking -
| journalism done right. I think it is important to keep current
| zeitgeist in check and perhaps even challenge it, i.e. the
| EU/privacy. I've witnessed a fair bit of EU exceptionalism in
| 2021 here on HN as well as elsewhere in the media sphere. While,
| we could all benefit from pre-tested policies that work, being
| blind to it just gives an enormous leverage to those in power to
| expand surveillance. In the US, we allowed it willingly or
| unwillingly post-9/11; the governments of the world couldn't have
| imagined a better excuse to violate privacy and personal freedom
| with COVID-19. Keep your eyes open, Australia is a warning flare.
|
| Edit: Smarter Everyday did a great job examining the history of
| privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMtrY6lbjcY
| roenxi wrote:
| > Keep your eyes open, Australia is a warning flare.
|
| Speaking from Australia, the measures we've implemented have
| been very successful in the short term. But it is notable how
| useless the measures are in the big picture. Nothing that has
| been done appears to change the inevitability of catching the
| coronavirus sooner or later. We can't afford more lockdowns and
| the Israel experience seems to be that vaccines only do so much
| to slow community spread.
|
| The options seem to be catching coronavirus vs. spending a huge
| amount of effort and sacrificing a bunch of basic rights
| avoiding the coronavirus ... then catching it eventually
| anyway.
|
| It is unclear what we're buying for the expensive price tag.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > We can't afford more lockdowns and the Israel experience
| seems to be that vaccines only do so much to slow community
| spread.
|
| - During the spike of infections in Israel (which is mostly
| due to the delta variant) only 58% of the population was
| fully vaccinated [0] and is still at just 62% currently.
| Portugal has vaccinated 86% of its population and #cases has
| only decreased/remained stable since September, despite most
| measures being relaxed.
|
| - The rate of serious disease among unvaccinated over 60 year
| olds was _nine_ times more than the rate among fully
| vaccinated.
|
| - The number of deaths was significantly higher in earlier
| infection peaks (Sep 2020/Jan 2021) than in the Summer even
| though the number of cases was much larger
|
| - For those who were vaccinated (Israel managed to do it very
| early), there is evidence that immunity waned after 6 months,
| which aided the latest spike. The 3rd shot has been extremely
| effective as shown by the rapidly declining number of cases
| [1]
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029
| 628...
|
| [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-covid-
| booster-sh...
| glogla wrote:
| Very good post. Without accusing the grandparent of
| anything, "Israel shows that vaccines don't work" is a
| common misinformation, that is getting people killed day by
| day. Let's not let it spread.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... the governments of the world couldn't have imagined a
| better excuse to violate privacy and personal freedom with
| COVID-19
|
| On a daily basis in the EU you do really feel how politicians
| have used Covid-19 to impose a crazy amount of surveillance. If
| moreover you travel just a bit, the amount of bullshit you have
| to fill / comply-with and whatnots is just insane.
|
| You drive from, say, France to Belgium: you are supposed to
| fill online "locator" forms saying where you go from, where you
| go to, what's the license plate(s) of the car(s) you're using,
| you have to give the names/address of any intermediate address
| you're saying at. You can decide to not fill these, but you're
| taking the risk of serious fines, especially if you happen to
| contaminate someone.
|
| Non-tecchie people are noticing the increased surveillance too:
| my wife and kid are flying tomorrow and my wife was telling me
| earlier today: _" The amount of new information you have to
| give to confirm you plane ticket is becoming crazy"_.
|
| People do feel they're being watched. Not mentioning the
| "vaccination pass" you now need to show at many places to be
| able to enter (as, for example, the restaurants).
|
| I don't personally think the pandemic warranted such a
| totalitarian crackdown on citizens.
|
| We did obey and suffer the lockdowns. We did get the vaccine.
| But it certainly doesn't look like we're getting our liberties
| back.
|
| It is beyond insanity.
| kfprt wrote:
| Unfortunately liberties are almost never given back without
| violence. It is a shame on the west for accepting this abject
| surrender of individual liberty with docility.
| Jensson wrote:
| At least EU lets people vote away all these oppressive
| elements locally, unlike a certain other union. It is a lot
| easier to vote back your freedom in smaller countries.
| glogla wrote:
| > We did obey and suffer the lockdowns. We did get the
| vaccine. But it certainly doesn't look like we're getting our
| liberties back.
|
| I mean, is the COVID gone? Is 99 % vaccinated so we have herd
| imunity? Do we have updated vaccine for the delta? Have we
| beaten the pandemic in any other way?
|
| Why would you expect the measures to end, when the situation
| is still underway? Would you complain "it's been two days why
| can't I return to my home" while the water from the flood is
| still there, new water is approaching and new dams to stop it
| are being build as we speak?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Mate, its not going away. _Ever_.: https://www.theatlantic.
| com/health/archive/2020/08/coronavir...
| pasabagi wrote:
| When you have to give information, it doesn't really mean
| you're subject to a great deal of surveillance. You can tell
| you're subject to surveillance by the fact everything's
| really convenient and they already have all your info.
|
| I guess my feeling is the amount of information collected
| about me by governments since the pandemic started is
| probably measured in bytes, whereas the amount of information
| that's been stored and shared by one or another private
| company is in gigabytes. I'm got a scam text the other day
| about a DHL package that was arriving, because some asshole
| has been selling my purchase history somewhere along the
| line. Every time you have any kind of commercial interaction
| with anybody you enter into this really promiscuous wash of
| bad security, over-eager logging, data-hoarding, and outright
| transfer that is how companies treat data today. That's the
| problem, not a couple of extra forms when you cross a
| boarder.
| Jensson wrote:
| The only case it listed in Sweden was this:
|
| > Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine
|
| > The Swedish Data Protection Authority (DPA) fined the
| Skelleftea municipality 200,000 Swedish Krona (PS16,800, $20,700)
| for flouting a privacy law.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49489154
|
| Is there something more? It had a lost of points listing
| different institutions, but no cases. If this is all then it
| doesn't look a lot like government overreach.
| fothrowaway wrote:
| My daily bicycle commute as a civilian resident of The Hague
| takes me past the OPCW (and the Marriott hotel next door where,
| rather infamously, a pair of Russian spies were picked up in the
| process of hacking the OPCW's wifi network in 2018 - see
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/04/how-russian-sp...),
| which itself is across the street from the official state
| residence of the Minister-President of the Netherlands (though
| the current, demissionary-though-apparently-impossible-to-remove
| PM, Mark Rutte, prefers to live elsewhere.) Further down the
| block on my way to my kids' school are the World Forum, Europol,
| Eurojust, the not-at-all-sinister-sounding International Residual
| Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals aka the "Mechanism" which used
| to be the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
| Yugoslavia, and the embassies of China, Israel, Venezuela, the
| Philippines, and Sweden. Sometimes I take a different route back
| home which takes me past the Russian diplomatic compound among
| others.
|
| Look, I'm pretty sure I'm well known to a whole bunch of security
| services (hi y'all!) just by virtue of my daily commute. But
| here's the deal - what matters is how this can be used against
| me, or not. There's no realistic scenario in which I'm going to
| come to grief from the various security apparatus I happen to
| pass each day.
|
| No, what matters much, much more than whether my face and habits
| of movement are known to various state organs (admittedly: given
| that I live in the Netherlands where the rule of law is still a
| thing) is the degree to which I can come to grief in my personal
| life from shitty, sloppy _private_ mass surveillance.
|
| Which, fortunately, is relatively constrained here. My health
| insurance premium isn't going to inexplicably go up (or, for that
| matter, my coverage denied) because someone who looks like me
| (who may not be me, but I have no access to the data or ability
| to appeal) is living an unhealthy life in public. No, the rates
| are fixed for everyone, and insurers don't get to cherry-pick.
| While I wouldn't mind an health insurance discount for cycling
| instead of driving a car those 10km/day, in general I'm satisfied
| with the regulatory regime here in a way that I very very much
| wasn't when I lived in the US. Nor would I be denied a mortgage
| here (or charged a higher rate) based on my alleged movements in
| meatspace or cyberspace. Insurers and banks just aren't allowed -
| with meaningful regulatory oversight - to incorporate these
| factors into underwriting products that most people consume.
| (Life insurance is a different story, but also not something most
| people in NL purchase.)
|
| tl;dr: it's not surveillance per se that matters, it's the
| consequences attached. Even if you have the right to know how
| surveillance data affect your ability to live your life (and to
| appeal), those rights are useless to anyone who lacks the time
| and knowledge to go chasing them. Far better as a society to, up
| front, say "nope, sorry, everyone needs health insurance/access
| to basic financial products like mortgages on primary
| residences/etc" and limit the scope of discrimination. Because
| tech gonna tech, and that's impossible to stop over the long
| term.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-30 23:01 UTC)