[HN Gopher] EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of...
___________________________________________________________________
EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of private
communications
Author : starsep
Score : 604 points
Date : 2022-05-12 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tutanota.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tutanota.com)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Surveillance is for children. Search without warrants is to keep
| us safe from drugs. War is for peace and democracy.
|
| How much can politicians, activists and beaurocrats pervert the
| truth?
| Tozen wrote:
| What's the logic with this? So, everyone is a suspect, who must
| be under constant and continual surveillance. You are guilty,
| until you can prove that you are innocent.
| stef25 wrote:
| If anyone's read the full proposal, does it specify what types of
| communication they want to monitor? It seems unlikely that
| providers like Google and Meta are just going to turn off their
| E2E encryption and let the EU plug in their cable.
|
| Anything else (like just monitoring national providers) will
| surely just be pointless.
| mmar wrote:
| > If anyone's read the full proposal, does it specify what
| types of communication they want to monitor? It seems unlikely
| that providers like Google and Meta are just going to turn off
| their E2E encryption and let the EU plug in their cable.
|
| > Anything else (like just monitoring national providers) will
| surely just be pointless.
|
| The proposal talk about keeping E2E encryption, but providees
| should still have a way to detect content.
|
| From page 27:
|
| > [...] this Regulation leaves to the provider concerned the
| choice of the technologies to be operated to comply effectively
| with detection orders and should not be understood as
| incentivising or disincentivising the use of any given
| technology, provided that the technologies and accompanying
| measures meet the requirements of this Regulation. That
| includes the use of end-to-end encryption technology, which is
| an important tool to guarantee the security and confidentiality
| of the communications of users, including those of children.
| When executing the detection order, providers should take all
| available safeguard measures to ensure that the technologies
| employed by them cannot be used by them or their employees for
| purposes other than compliance with this Regulation, nor by
| third parties, and thus to avoid undermining the security and
| confidentiality of the communications of users.
| lazarus101 wrote:
| Why do you think they wouldn't? They did it for the US with the
| "Patriot Act"
| severak_cz wrote:
| I don't understand how does "grooming detection algorithm" looks.
| vaylian wrote:
| I doesn't. But politicians like to pretend that smart
| technology can solve all problems.
| VLM wrote:
| It'll be defined in practice as wrongthink WRT political,
| economic, or religious belief.
|
| It'll be sold to "save the children" but it'll likely never be
| used for that.
| op00to wrote:
| IF MESSAGE_SENT INCLUDES "A/S/L" AND
| MESSAGE_REPLY.A < 18 THEN DIAL 0118 999 881 999 119
| 725 3
| zrosandic wrote:
| So it seems that no one should use anymore any "digital", e.g.
| mobile, mail or whatever "over the wire" way of communication. I
| was always worried about communicating that has any surveillance.
| My own stuff should be my own things. We should use older way of
| communication between us on daily basis and just occasionally use
| the "over the digital media" communication for quick agreement on
| person to person or person to group meetings. Anyway, all this
| gone so far that we really do not need digital way of
| communication, sharing things. The things like Facebook are crap.
| The peoples are not digital, they are physical beings and the way
| we should interact is out of the "digital world".
| kornhole wrote:
| How can they scan messages on my xmpp server using OMEMO e2ee?
| MattJ100 wrote:
| They can't. They just want to make it illegal for you not to
| scan them if they decide you are a communication provider and
| they serve you with what they call a "detection order". If you
| receive such an order, you have to follow the scanning rules
| they have laid out.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Are they cooperating with the UK; seems there were a lot of
| requests for proposals from them during covid with millions
| attached to scan e2e connections and other csam measures.
| krono wrote:
| Yeah not like this. I will turn myself into a black hole as much
| as possible.
|
| If they somehow ever come to suspect me of these things I will
| gladly do anything I can to support their investigations. They
| can come by with a warrant, look through my message history
| specifically and only for evidence related to their
| investigation, it will happen in my presence, and no copies of my
| data will be made and/or fed into the basilisk. You know, how it
| would normally go.
|
| What in the world are they thinking over there.
| op00to wrote:
| Unfortunately, here's what will really happen:
|
| 5:30am, loud knock at the door. You open the door a crack to
| see who it is. Cops bust in. You're immediately handcuffed and
| sat outside. Cops take anything with a screen, usb plug, etc.
| All your media. All your computers. All your external hard
| drives.
|
| Every one of these devices will be imaged, and archived prior
| to being searched. The data will be kept for years, to protect
| against inevitable appeals, etc.
|
| But you know, good luck with your plan.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| As if full disk encryption doesn't exist.
| newsclues wrote:
| Encrypted data will be illegal for plebs. Failure to hand
| over passwords will be punished as if you are guilty of the
| worst thing imaginable.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I doubt it because at that point they cant pretend
| anymore to have rule of law, or being a democracy.
|
| Sure, it could be a gradual decent into such a reality,
| but it will take a long time.
| zx85wes wrote:
| France : "Loi no 2001-1062 du 15 novembre 2001 relative a
| la securite quotidienne, article 30 (Law #2001-1062 of 15
| November 2001 on Community Safety) allows a judge or
| prosecutor to compel any qualified person to decrypt or
| surrender keys to make available any information
| encountered in the course of an investigation. Failure to
| comply incurs three years of jail time and a fine of
| EUR45,000; if the compliance would have prevented or
| mitigated a crime, the penalty increases to five years of
| jail time and EUR75,000.[21]"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law
| seanw444 wrote:
| If they can justify to legislators being able to spy on
| all network traffic, they can probably also convince
| those same legislators that encryption is a tool only bad
| guys use to prevent justice being served.
|
| There's a constant push, at least in the US, for
| regulation on encryption. It's gotten consistently shot
| down thus far, thankfully. But it's a never-ending
| battle. And one day people will most likely become
| complacent enough to let go and feel the liberty melt
| away.
|
| Just like the last couple generations have gotten
| increasingly soft on our right to bear arms. They've been
| conditioned to believe that it's dangerous, and boomer-
| like, and no longer important.
| maybeOneDay wrote:
| It's already illegal to not disclose passwords when
| ordered to do so in the UK.
|
| Sure, the US freedom of speech amendment protects more
| powerfully than in most countries. But I wouldn't be so
| confident once the rest of the world has given up
| chinathrow wrote:
| At this point, everything encrypted at rest will be a must.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And even then, weaknesses are built into encryption, long-
| term it may be broken with advances in computing (I mean
| who knows what the NSA and co are working on at the
| moment), etc.
|
| It's better to not do or have anything illegal. Make it so
| you can say "I have nothing to hide", but don't give them
| access voluntarily because of that.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If NSA has a backdoor or has broken the encryption you
| are using, they will want to keep that secret for as long
| as possible to get the greatest possible use out of it.
| They will use it covertly (using parallel construction to
| keep it out of court cases) on important cases like
| (actual) national security, mafia or people running dark
| net marketplaces, spying on friendly and hostile
| governments etc.
|
| But they won't risk it for someone with a CSAM match or
| anything similarly uninteresting, and local authorities
| won't even be aware that it's something their government
| can do.
|
| Still, don't do anything illegal, but I think for most
| people it's legitimate to have a threat profile that
| assumes that encryption is effective.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Then encryption becomes evidence of guilt, unless you give
| up the key so they can search it to make sure you're not
| guilty.
| kevincox wrote:
| This is not how it works at least in Canada and the US.
| Until they can read the password out of our minds (or at
| least prove that we have it) we don't need to give up the
| key.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| I can't speak for Canada, but in the US if a court issues
| a search warrant for data stored on one of your devices
| you are obligated to take whatever steps are necessary to
| turn over the data, including decrypting the data if
| applicable. This power is provided to the government by
| the 4th Amendment. What you are likely referring to is
| the 5th Amendment right that protects a person from being
| compelled to testify against themselves, which protects a
| person from being compelled to turn over a password if
| doing so would incriminate them, but this is only
| applicable in circumstances where _turning over the
| password_ would incriminate you, not where the decryption
| of the data would incriminate you. This is applicable
| only in circumstances where it is uncertain whether you
| have access to the device in question, since compelling
| you to produce the password amounts to compelling you to
| admit that it is your device. Once a court is satisfied
| that it is beyond doubt that the device is yours and you
| know the password, a judge is free to compel you to
| provide the password.
|
| There's a further consideration of whether you can refuse
| if the literal string of the password itself would
| incriminate you, but I don't believe that has been
| conclusively litigated.
| op00to wrote:
| Are you so sure?
|
| Also, why don't they just beat the shit out of you to get
| the key?
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Technically correct however courts can hold you in
| contempt. There was one case where a suspect was arrested
| and refused to give up passwords to hard drives. The
| prosecution had reasonable evidence (allegedly) that
| those hard drives contained child pornography, however
| since the defendant failed to provide access the
| prosecution could never prove it.
|
| Other good points were brought up - why not dismiss the
| hard drive as evidence and use other "proof" such as
| network logs, computer thumbnails caches from the
| defendants personal computer, etc?
|
| Personally I'm not sure if those ideas were ever
| explored.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-
| refused-...
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Yeah also not, they will need to have proof of at least
| connections with some criminal networks to compel you to
| do that.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Parallel construction though.
| 8345570934 wrote:
| I don't think that works in countries with a jury system.
| I don't have anything illegal on my computers, but I
| would never give up my passwords to anyone working for
| the government. I think the odds that at least one person
| who is like me (or can at least understand that mindset)
| will be on any given jury is pretty good.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| That won't happen here but sure, US type of police overreach
| makes a better soundbite with horribly vague proposals like
| this. And people should be scared so I guess it's good; maybe
| they will protest (probably not though because the children
| the children).
| seanw444 wrote:
| > That won't happen here
|
| Ah, those famous words.
| adrianN wrote:
| Stuff quite similar to that happens in Germany[1]. Where is
| "here"?
|
| [1] https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2018/hausdurchsuchungen-
| bei-ve...
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Netherlands. I wonder if it is similar: I saw a few here
| and they were friendly, no cuffs, they had a list of IPs,
| made an appointment to collect the drives etc (and that
| was with enough proof to know for sure they would find
| what they were looking for). But sure I can see how it
| escalates but why would they if there are no guns
| (usually only with drugs at which points they will come
| with more force)? Shame about Germany but why don't we
| hear these things more; they should be on the front page
| of HN I guess (and not in German or in any language
| outside english if it awareness needs to be built)? At
| least the outline. So which dutch articles did I miss I
| wonder then; I cannot find any of these kind of
| overreaches.
|
| Also German lawyers seem to be far more trigger happy in
| a lot of cases than dutch like with copyright and not
| having your company info on your site etc; seems there is
| more litigation there like an industry looking for people
| to 'sue'. Why aren't people protesting or are they?
| insta_anon wrote:
| I accidentally (e.g. I didn't know) bought a stolen laptop
| some time ago. The police came at 05:00am, raided my home
| with guns drawn and took the laptop. So yes, it does happen
| in Europe as well.
| op00to wrote:
| yikes! Hope you and your family are ok!
| blub wrote:
| Here where? This is standard procedure in e.g. Germany
| based on press reports and articles written by lawyers.
|
| I don't think it's better in other European countries.
| [deleted]
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| Don't forget the part where returning the original devices
| takes months or years, and _of course_ you can 't download a
| copy of the data if you lack a backup or the backup was also
| seized.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| No, that's not how you should be thinking. You say nothing, you
| give no access, and you demand a lawyer and a search warrant.
| You do not need to cooperate. You cannot trust any police or
| investigators. This isn't about whether you are guilty of
| anything or not, this is about basic human rights, the right to
| privacy, and due process of law.
| krono wrote:
| > due process of law
|
| That is exactly what I want. Not having committed any such
| crimes, and having been incredibly lucky to be born into the
| sort of life where I feel like I can trust the process being
| fair and just, I am not particularly worried about an
| investigation.
|
| This is the precise inverse of how I feel about the general
| permanent monitor and analysis that is now being proposed.
| These systems are inaccurate, opaque, and uncontrollable. It
| makes me feel like cattle being driven towards the man with
| the rod.
| sharken wrote:
| puszczyk wrote:
| Most (all?) restrictions where imposed by the governments.
| Can you give us more details or some example on that "total
| control" the European Commission actually exercised.
| vetinari wrote:
| And the national government excuse usually is, that they do
| it according to EU rules, directive or whatever.
|
| Denying responsibility at all levels at its finest.
|
| There are rare examples of resistance, like the attempt of
| Czech government to resist the EU firearms directive by
| putting the right to self-defense with a gun into the
| constitution. But mostly they just fold over.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There was no such thing from the EU; travel restrictions
| were imposed by individual countries first and foremost.
|
| You call it "fold over", but if you think of a positive
| thing, it's cooperation. Because we have open borders -
| which, if you look at Brexit, is a huge advantage for
| trade and the like - it doesn't make sense to allow
| firearms in one country but ban them in another. It's a
| give and take situation. The UK decided they didn't want
| any part in it and... it decimated their economy, their
| imports and exports, their properties owned abroad, and
| any companies operating under an .eu domain name; it's
| caused an economic shift in Ireland which may very well
| be on the way to unification now, and it may trigger
| Scotland to leave the Commonwealth and join the EU.
| vetinari wrote:
| UK was never in Schengen; as an EU citizen, I had to go
| through ID check all the time. The only difference now is
| that I have to show passport, national ID is not enough
| anymore.
|
| Guns were never allowed to circulate freely; even in
| Schengen countries, you need both export and import
| permit from both countries to bring it into another
| country. Fun when you attend competitive events ;). You
| could argue that you could do it lawlessly, without
| permit, but then, you could own gun lawlessly, without
| permit too; the criminals won't bother, only the lawful
| citizens, who is targeted by the regulation, will.
|
| It would be "cooperation", if there was a consent of the
| governed. Now it is just diktat. This:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lHVcvJdWIs is not so
| funny when you realize, how true it is.
| zx85wes wrote:
| Please inform the IMF of this decimation. They seem to be
| unaware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_
| by_past_and_...
| sharken wrote:
| The COVID pass is one such example, it has recently been
| extended until summer 2023.
|
| https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-
| releases/2022...
| conradfr wrote:
| Imposed by governments that miraculously took all the same
| measures at the same time (except Sweden, somehow).
| stef25 wrote:
| > full control in the name of COVID
|
| Apart from closing bars and restaurants etc what sort of full
| control did the EU impose?
| cvak wrote:
| nothing, it was in countries jurisdiction, actually people
| were calling for more central response from EU, but they
| didn't have any means/rights.
|
| Only thing EU did afaik, was EU covid certificates, which
| I'm eternally grateful for.
| baisq wrote:
| Grateful why? They served to restrict our rights.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because EU recogniced certifcates made travel within the
| EU possible and, besides some funny rules for border
| crossings, almost pain free.
|
| Just imagine going from Geany to France would require to
| get your German vaccination certificate recognised by the
| French first, as one example.
| ls15 wrote:
| > Just imagine going from Geany to France would require
| to get your German vaccination certificate recognised by
| the French first, as one example.
|
| Just imagine going from A to B without having to show a
| useless certificate.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I am old enough to remember passport controls when going
| skiing in Austria, which was 30 km away from my home.
| Hell, imagine to show documentation at nation borders!
| The audacity!
| VancouverMan wrote:
| When one set of government-imposed policies artificially
| inhibits travel, another set of government-imposed
| policies that artificially adds exceptions to that first
| set of policies shouldn't be seen as providing salvation.
|
| "Travel within the EU" would have been "possible" and
| "pain free" if the various governments had just not
| imposed any travel restrictions in the first place.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Even then it was national governments, not the EU, imposing
| those controls.
|
| I'm not aware of any COVID measures that was bought in
| solely via powers the EU has. I assume that would take far
| too long, as every new directive from the EU needs to
| implemented by each member state separately.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Even closing of bars and restaurands was not imposed by the
| EU because it does not have the legal powers required to do
| that.
|
| Please read up on competences of institutions before
| directing blame, everyone.
|
| The EU has exclusive power in customs, openness of the
| internal market, monetary policy, internal commercial
| policy and some selected international treaties.
|
| Member states are furthermore prevented from interfering
| from EU regulation - if it exists - in some areas of
| agriculture, environment and consumer protection, transport
| and energy and meta directives in legal fairness and
| security.
|
| There is no competency for regulating health, that is
| solely member state responsibility.
|
| Regulation of digital markets needs to attach to these
| powers, and so is derived mostly from a need to protect
| competition and internal markets.
| oxff wrote:
| nbzso wrote:
| My goto solution since Apple CSAM fiasco: 1. Manjaro on office
| computers. 2. MacOS Catalina with Little Snitch for designers. 3.
| Air-gapped MacOS Mojave for testing and designers. 4.Limited
| smartphone usage to banking apps and phone calls. 5. Using
| dedicated camera for photography, if uploaded - metadata
| cleaning. 6. Serious offline book, movies, articles archive. 7.
| No cloud services. NAS only. 8. Limited social media activity, 20
| minutes of Twitter, similar usage for Hackernews. 9. No
| connections to internet without active VPN. 10. Using internet
| primary for work.
| cebert wrote:
| CSAM is terrible but how common is it to justify invading all of
| our privacy. Cars can kill people. Should we ban those? We know
| alcohol is damaging, maybe we should ruin that fun for everyone
| too.
| blibble wrote:
| > Cars can kill people. Should we ban those?
|
| the EU commission's starting on this one too:
| https://www.sae.org/news/2019/04/eu-to-mandate-intelligent-s...
| varispeed wrote:
| Once they know what you talk about with your acquaintances,
| they can just trigger your (on subscription) car to drive
| into a tree and rewrite the car's black box so that it will
| look like an accident. Of course that would happen only if
| your social credit score is very very low.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| People are already selling shirts with "20"(kmh) speed limit
| signs on the back because of this.
| pjerem wrote:
| Man that's smart !
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Cars can kill people. Should we ban those?
|
| In dense cities: yes.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I would rather ban (too) dense cities.
|
| Nobody needs to live at a density of 10k+ people per square
| kilometre .
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Why? It's the most efficient use of resources and allows
| for some great cultural and public infrastructure to exist
| that just doesn't make sense without density.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Is efficiency for the sake of efficiency worth it though?
|
| There's a second order effect I observed which I feel
| isn't discussed enough: when it's assumed that you can
| only walk/cycle or perhaps take the bus in an area,
| suddenly there's an additional premium imposed on space.
|
| The net result is accelerated gentrification.
|
| Anecdata: just about anyone I know from my generation was
| priced out of those walkable districts with access to
| public transportation they grew up in - simply because
| investors are aware of what is in demand, so they put all
| their money there and not into places you can only
| reliably access via car.
|
| What follows is people buying not homes, but _apartments_
| built in the middle of buttfuck nowhere and driving to
| /from there, because that's what they can afford.
|
| A net negative, but here we are.
|
| I'm all for livable cities, but what good is it if the
| only ones who can afford it are the 1%?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| That argument is ridiculous. So dense neighborhoods are
| popular, therefore prices are rising because more people
| want to live in a dense neighborhood.
|
| The solution to that is not "let's build more undesirable
| neighborhoods so prices are not increasing" but to change
| zoning regulations so more dense neighborhoods can be
| build to satisfy demand!
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Or are they living there for jobs? That's what I always
| hear as excuse for people to live there, not that they
| like dense neighbourhoods. I am old though so my network
| and (news/social) reading habits might be different.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I like living in a dense city. I can walk almost
| everywhere, I don't need a car, there's nice parks,
| things are open later (although not late enough for my
| preferences sometimes), there's good variety of
| restaurants, entertainment, art, food, bars, dancing,
| sports, clubs for nerds, and so on. The outer walls of my
| condo are made of concrete, I hear less from my neighbors
| than when I lived in a house. The jobs situation is/was
| also convenient, but I now work remotely and still enjoy
| living in the city.
|
| Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of people who live
| in a city and don't like it, and also plenty of people
| who would prefer to live in the city but cannot afford it
| or their circumstances keep them somewhere more remote.
|
| If my circumstances change so that I do not enjoy it
| anymore, or if my material needs change, then I'll adapt
| appropriately, whether it's moving to a different
| neighborhood, to a beach town, to the mountains, or to
| the moon.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Yeah, think that's a healthy attitude. I never really
| liked living in cities, but I do like visiting them,
| especially mega ones that are open most of 24/7 (cities
| that close before 5 am I find utterly boring I noticed
| and I lived in a few; but people with kids like that or
| so I heard). Clubs for nerds sounds good; is that some
| kind of meatspace IRC?
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >Clubs for nerds sounds good; is that some kind of
| meatspace IRC?
|
| Pretty much, you get everything from board games to Linux
| meetups, and then like IRC channels, they usually
| collapse through drama or mismanagement and then a few
| more pop up lol
| Tade0 wrote:
| The point I'm making is different - cars give you _range_
| and thus leverage in situations where you would otherwise
| be forced to buy /rent real estate close to the place you
| work/shop at and have to compete over it with those who
| buy it purely for investment purposes.
|
| Sure, this is suboptimal and those who opt to live
| further away and drive everywhere lose time and money but
| often they're not even eligible for a mortgage within
| city limits, so they don't have much of a choice anyway.
| woah wrote:
| What a ridiculous take. Walkable districts are a good
| thing, and instead of building more, you want to ban
| them?
| Tade0 wrote:
| I said I want to ban density over a certain number. Or
| specifically: leave space for modes of personal
| transportation other than walking or cycling.
|
| Such cities can still be walkable - I grew up in one so I
| should know.
|
| But I also lived on the outskirts of a very dense (due to
| historic architecture) city and would never want to move
| any further inward, because that place was hell.
|
| Bottom line is density is a bad target. Livability is a
| good one and density doesn't equal livability.
|
| Actually, my whole point is that there exists a level of
| population density which is actually worse than detached
| housing.
| pueblito wrote:
| It's disgusting, that's why. People stacked on each other
| living in shared filth breathing each other's farts and
| hearing noise all the time... not to mention the obvious
| problem of how diseases spread in tight quarters.
| goodpoint wrote:
| If your idea of modern architecture is based on a slum
| maybe you should travel more.
| vetinari wrote:
| Just because it is most efficient, does not mean it is
| enjoyable or that the life in such a hive isn't missing
| some qualities.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| If you don't find it enjoyable you're welcome to not move
| there. Why try to ban it for everyone else?
| vetinari wrote:
| I might be already there. Why do you want to move in and
| spoil it for us, who are already there? Find some other
| place, where building human hives is more welcome.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I find it quite enjoyable, everything is just a walk away
| and good public transport makes sense.
|
| You have enough people that even niche cultural offers
| will find an audience.
| legalcorrection wrote:
| Live in the pod. Eat the bugs.
| op00to wrote:
| Nobody needs to travel at more than 3-4 miles per hour.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Uhm maybe we want to?
|
| Not everyone likes rural life. And people in cities use
| public transport a lot. I don't even own a car myself
| anymore and haven't driven one in years.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I'm starting to think I've used the wrong units in my
| comment.
|
| 10k people per square kilometre is over twice as dense as
| an average European city, or around the density of New
| York.
|
| There's _a lot_ of middle ground between that and rural
| life.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Nope, my city is 15k people per square kilometre. In fact
| if you don't count the periphery and uninhabited
| (industrial) areas we're at 28k.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona
|
| And I love living here :) I just don't get why it's a bad
| thing to live in a high-density city. Most dense cities
| are now reducing car traffic a lot, and they have amazing
| public transport to make up for it.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Makes a lot more sense than all the land we waste on roads
| and large lots for suburbia.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Cars can kill people. Should we ban those?
|
| I'm not sure if you meant it this way (I like to think you did)
| or not but the answers you will get to this question when asked
| on this website are going to providing a great example of how
| things like "scan everyone's phone" come to pass.
|
| People with some extremist take on some issue that mostly
| nobody cares too much about, they get sympathetic politicians
| who become convinced it's worth the blowback. Repeat for
| hundreds of issues and you get 1984.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Not the finest example. Given the chance, I'd gladly press the
| "rid society of alcohol entirely" button, and cars in cities
| pretty much also...
|
| That said, the CSAM proposals they've inflicted on us recently
| are absolutely evil, insane and immoral.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| CSAM = hash checking
|
| There is no way to verify that a hash is actually checking for
| CSAM.
|
| It can be used for anything by any future government good or bad.
|
| E.g. an Austrian musician was recently imprisoned for 10 years
| for composing/producing pro-Nazi songs. A hash check could find
| anyone who listened to the music (even reporters curious to
| listen to what they are reporting on.)
|
| CSAM is a useful vehicle to get this technology deployed since no
| one is pro CSAM.
| 1023bytes wrote:
| Seems like it would be sufficient to implement it only on
| children's accounts
| ogurechny wrote:
| Ah, yes, children, the second rate people. What you wouldn't
| tolerate for a second they can always be forced to comply with.
| For Security, or just because some local school bureaucrats
| decided on something.
|
| A giant security theater already exists in the form of rating
| systems, age verification prompts, legal agreements of popular
| services stating they prohibit underage users completely, etc.
| For decades every single kid has ignored it or learned to find
| another way if common one was blocked. It's the "responsible
| adults" who need such large scale stimulation to keep believing
| in some "naturally unspoiled children" who only need to be
| "protected", and therefore can happily live without education
| and guidance (on topics that are not quite clear to most grown
| ups either, to be honest).
| outside1234 wrote:
| So we need to always use a VPN - got it.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| The idea is that the scanning happens on the device.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Yes, till they are legal.
| hsdropout wrote:
| A VPN would not be relevant. The ask is for scanning to take
| place at the source or destination, not across the wire.
| contravariant wrote:
| VPNs are pointless if this breaks end to end encryption.
|
| VPNs are pointless if end to end encryption isn't broken.
| can16358p wrote:
| I don't think the actual purpose here is to protect children.
|
| The actual purpose here to invade people's privacy, (ab)using a
| sensitive topic like children sexual abuse as a scapegoat as many
| people don't want to oppose to some protection on a sensitive
| topic and be marked as a potential criminal (or criminal ideology
| supporter).
| bambax wrote:
| "Potential victims" are not victims. That's where the slippery
| slope begins.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| There was a movie called Minority Report that had a similar
| premise. Basically they would detect murders before they
| happened and arrest people moments before the murder took
| place. At the time of the arrest the potential killer had
| motive and intent, so that's how they justified it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)?wprov=s...
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Based on the story by Philip K. Dick
| Tozen wrote:
| Good to have brought up that movie, worth a watch (or to see
| again). Quite odd (or maybe not) that the EU wants to head in
| that direction, of setting up the near equivalent of their
| own "Precrime" program. The infallible "algorithm" will stand
| in for the "Precogs".
| belter wrote:
| The movie was a warning:
|
| "UK police are using AI to predict who could become violent
| criminals"
|
| https://thenextweb.com/news/uk-police-are-using-ai-to-
| predic...
| _fat_santa wrote:
| The problem with cops using AI is they seem to put far too
| much weight on what it discovers. I remember reading a
| story about how Clearview AI nabbed some random person and
| claimed that they were some other person. The story wen't
| on that the cops picked this guy up and bent over backwards
| to try to make sense of what their AI was telling them,
| because they thought the AI was infallible. Guy was telling
| the cops that he had nothing to do with what they were
| accusing him of and IIRC the cops kept coming back with
| "but why would the AI single you out"
|
| And that's the root of the problem. We in tech know AI can
| do all these great things but that it also has a high error
| rate and to take results with a grain of salt. Folks
| outside of tech think that it's infallible and perfect 100%
| of the time.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Ah yes, another skin color detector.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| The HN attitude on anything touching privacy with a ten foot pole
| is awkward at best. It's clearly a hard problem and increasingly
| so. Being dogmatic about privacy regulations without a solution
| for the abuse caused by those who are open to abusing others
| seems a little too internet-hippie to be taken seriously in 2022,
| and that's a little concerning when it's the echo chambers of
| those best qualified and responsible for coming up with workable
| solutions.
|
| Edit: What a cacophony of indignation and polemic black/white
| responses. Absolutely shocking.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > Being dogmatic about privacy regulations without a solution
| for the abuse
|
| Should all homes come equipped with always-on cameras,
| streaming to a government office, to catch abuse? Remember, you
| don't want to be "dogmatic" about privacy, not unless you can
| offer a *"solution".
|
| *One of course ignores all the measures currently in place to
| catch crime and abuse, such as the police, social services,
| mandatory public schools with teachers and staff children can
| turn to for help, and all the _many_ methods of surveillance,
| such as phone tracking, communication metadata, license-plate
| readers, surveillance cameras, etc.. All of this ceases to
| exist, and law enforcement is in a world of darkness because
| encryption creates one tiny corner where they cannot peek -
| unless they plant a targeted bug.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Governments are making it very difficult to respond in a more
| nuanced way, because they keep sliding down slippery slopes
| with predictable regularity when it comes to surveillance.
|
| Measures are introduced to fight "serious and organised crime".
| The next thing your read is how they are being used against
| fly-tipping, dog pooping, benefits fraud, and random drug
| offences.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/08/revealed-anti-...
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Except that the people who actually know what they are talking
| about when it comes to child protection disagree with you and
| the politicians trying to force this through.
|
| According to the DKSB (Deutscher Kinderschutzbund) [2],
| encryption barely plays a role when it comes to the
| distribution of CSAM [1]. DKSB is not in favour of this.
|
| You can pretend as much as you want that this is about
| children, that doesn't make it true. This was never, at any
| moment, about protecting children. Authorities already lack the
| resources to even go after the cases they know about, adding a
| huge pile of crap data to work through is probably going to
| make this situation even worse.
|
| [1]: https://www.eu-info.de/dpa-europaticker/316232.html
|
| [2]: https://www.dksb.de/en/home/
| pfortuny wrote:
| History has taught us a lesson. The USSR was hell on Earth, as
| was Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia.
|
| Privacy of communication is such an essential part of modern
| culture that any kind of power trying to prevent it is suspect.
|
| Communications can only be suspect under a judicial order:
| otherwise the government is omnipotent because it can prevent
| anything.
| dandellion wrote:
| And the inquisitions, and nazi Germany, and... Even when we
| don't forget history we get cocky and think we know better,
| that it will be different this time.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Because the situation is far more complex than this, and it's
| typical of governmental institutes to throw a blanket solution
| at it to increase resistance when it isn't at all obvious
| whether they will abuse their knowledge and power later in
| time.
|
| You can teach these kids to take precautions, but you can't
| prevent them making mistakes if they still want to. Now you're
| weighting privacy and autonomy against lifelines to keep the
| ones who don't heed warnings from going off the deep end.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > The HN attitude on anything touching privacy with a ten foot
| pole is awkward.
|
| Because the power it gives is basically limitless. Once these
| things are implemented there will be no going back. It only
| kind of works when the government acts in good faith, and even
| then not really.
|
| France passed laws against violent demonstrations, they ended
| up arresting people 200-300km away from Paris because they were
| suspected to go to a demo and potentially cause problems
| (because they had swimming googles and yellow vests, which are
| mandatory, in their cars), even though they didn't commit any
| crimes at the time. They also passed laws against terrorism,
| which ended up using them against the yellow vest protesters.
| Once the pandora's box is open you're fucked, forever, laws
| will be misused and abused
|
| What's the next step ? 24/7 video monitoring ? Microphones in
| every room of your house ? That would also prevent crimes, do
| we want to prevent crime at all cost though ? We could just
| preemptively all live in jails, that would solve all these
| problems
| jstummbillig wrote:
| When we say that privacy rights can absolutely not be
| touched, we are, among other things, also saying, whatever
| criminals get best at abusing those increasingly powerful
| rights (given the relatively growing space covered by
| encryption and stuff that happens through or over the
| internet) get to be more criminal and that's just the price
| we will have to pay for our collective freedom.
|
| This insanely childish and irresponsible way of looking at
| and reasoning about our world gives of strong NRA vibes. As
| soon as you say NO MATTER WHAT you are in deep shit. When we
| become so dogmatic, that we can't even _think_ , let alone
| talk about a problem anymore (and a problem it _is_ , but, of
| course, there's then also the subset of people that will even
| call that into question) it's an issue.
|
| I am not against privacy. I get glimpses of the good the bad
| and the ugly that are attached to it. None of these things
| are boundless. Reasoning about the space is hard. Pretending
| a concept as fragile and young as privacy is beyond reproach
| is just weird.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Increasingly powerful privacy rights? Do you live in
| opposite world? Surveillance is growing rapidly, police and
| other entities have orders of magnitude more data on us
| than they could have dreamed of a few decades ago, but
| because there remains an extremely narrow category of data
| they can't collect in bulk (the _content_ of encrypted
| communication, but not the metadata), you call this
| _growing_ privacy?
|
| And all of this while rates of child abuse are _falling_ :
| https://u.osu.edu/zagorsky.1/2014/09/18/adrainpeterson/
| jstummbillig wrote:
| The power that the same old rights afford is increasing,
| because you don't have to leave your house to do some
| very nefarious stuff and encrypted communication is now a
| commodity. Any right to privacy meant relatively less in
| a world where entering a stone building and bringing guns
| was considered the premiere way to obtain money
| illegally, because (and I guess it speaks volumes about
| this whole thread that I feel the need to spell it out)
| you had to give up a good amount of your privacy by
| executing anything in that plan. That's often no longer
| the case.
| croes wrote:
| How does surveillance solve the abuse problem? The abuse
| happens in reality and only some of the results are shared over
| the internet. This is Zensursula once again, actionism with
| serious consequences without a real solution.
|
| Countries like China and Russia will gratefully adopt the EU's
| rationale for its surveillance measures
| slim wrote:
| I think the problem stems from the fact we don't see abusers
| being publicly judged routinely, which gives a feeling that
| those abusers are very rare, and can't justify massive
| surveillance mainly because it's inefficient against any
| behavior not widely spread into the population.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| That may be. It also makes it hard to reason about what could
| possibly be appropriate.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| Fortunately, this is one of the cases where HN is right, and
| there is no "middle ground". Child Abuse is bad but mass
| surveillance to catch it is terrible and will only be (haha)
| abused.
| b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote:
| >It's clearly a hard problem and increasingly so
|
| right, surely this is just a coincidence that it has become "an
| increasingly hard problem" now, at the time of civil unrest
| against increasingly authoritarian attitude of the ruling class
| 35803288 wrote:
| I'll be brief.
|
| All chats, calls and emails by EU MPs should be public. Then and
| only then, they could pass this monstrosity.
| b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote:
| I feel that in the near future, we'll have a campaign against
| E2EE with the intensity of the current campaign against guns in
| the US
| varispeed wrote:
| If you look into it, these things are lobbied by globalists
| like WEF. They also happen to run multiple governments around
| the world, so these things are being developed in parallel for
| 2030 Great Reset agenda. It has different pace in different
| places due to cultural differences i.e. some countries wouldn't
| care about ban of E2EE while other would take it to the
| streets. But they have a strategy for the latter scenario as
| well. They'll pretend to give up and then piggy back bits and
| pieces through other unrelated legislation until it is fully in
| place.
| userbinator wrote:
| They can keep calling it a conspiracy, but at least from what
| I've seen, more people are becoming aware of the truth every
| day. It gives me a bit of hope; only a little bit.
| [deleted]
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It's scary, because CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is very,
| very broad, and quite vague in its definition1. My three year old
| son stayed with my parents for a week, and he was being taught to
| swim in their swimming pool. Of course, I get sent pictures and
| clips of his progress by a proud grandma, and of course, him
| being a toddler, he felt swimming trunks to be completely
| optional (and of course, they are at his age in a private pool).
|
| That's not CSAM right? But who knows how the AI will mark those
| happy pics? Some quirk in its programming and training leading to
| them being pushed way up whatever ranking is used? It's a nude
| child after all, and that is most likely one of the few things
| such an algorithm can detect quite reliably.
|
| The automated filter won't care about the context though, and if
| any of the recent failures of algorithms ruining peoples lives
| are anything to go by (the Dutch Toeslagenaffaire comes to mind),
| being flagged by the CSAM filter is a high risk event -- even if
| you can clear your name later by human intervention -- because
| now you are on a list.
|
| 1: People tend to conjure up horrific images of underage children
| getting raped by adults when they hear 'CSAM' or 'child
| pornography', but when you read up on the legal definitions used
| it becomes very vague, quite fast. A seventeen year old boy
| sending a dick pic to his 18 year old lover is producing child
| pornography and can in many jurisdictions be sentenced as such,
| and nudism of any minor can be seen as CSAM if the pose they
| strike can be construed as 'erotic' -- yet there is no clear
| definition of what this means, falling squarely into "I'll know
| it when I see it" territory.
| kevincox wrote:
| The biggest problem is that these images _are_ CSAM. Or at
| least a bit-for-bit identical image is in a different context.
| If it is family members are sharing an image of their child
| having fun or even sending an image to your doctor then there
| is no problem here. But those exact images in a different
| context could be a problem.
|
| Of course this is why they have human moderation before
| conviction. But I absolutely don't want my private images being
| reviewed because they may be CSAM. This is basically assuming
| that I have likely done something wrong and intruding my
| privacy because of that.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I personally know someone who spent 13 years in prison because
| at 18 his 16 year old girlfriend sent him a nude selfie. Her
| Mom was in her phone and saw that she had sent the photos, so
| she called the police on her daughter's boyfriend. They
| arrested him, seized his phone and found the photo.
| babyshake wrote:
| It would actually be great if iPhone/Android detected and
| offered to blur genitals with a click. As creepy as that may
| seem those of us with young children may only incidentally
| capture material that could be mistaken for CSAM and would be
| fine blurring out those details.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > I get sent pictures and clips of his progress
|
| Those pictures will be seen by you and grandma, but also maybe
| by employees of whoever you use to backup the pictures,
| whatever security services have a need to view the images,
| whichever police forensics department may need to look through
| your or grandmas phone if it were to be confiscated, etc.
|
| Those employees need a good work environment, and can't be
| expected to look at your naked three year old.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Having an actual person see those pics is totally fine. No
| one in their right mind would see anything but normal child
| raising there, and the judicial process has checks to prevent
| abuse by any one actor. It's algorithms I'm concerned about.
| dvdkon wrote:
| We seem to have very different priorities. You are concerned
| about the welfare of employees of privacy-violating
| organisations. I'm concerned about citizens' privacy and say
| those organisations shouldn't exist.
| kevincox wrote:
| I'm sorry. The chance of someone needing to look at these
| pictures should be near 0. The backup company doesn't need to
| look at them. They should actually be end-to-end encrypted so
| that only me and grandma can see.
|
| In exceptional cases the police may need to see them. But
| even in that case there is nothing wrong with these pictures.
| Pictures of gore and literal shits are legal and while I
| agree that it can make this job very taxing. But a child
| swimming naked is not the problem here.
| zosima wrote:
| Don't worry, as this is not about child sex abuse anyway.
|
| The legislators know, from experience, that it's hard to argue
| against measures to protect children from predators, and so
| they are free to launch controversial and unacceptable
| measures. Once in place, it will be extended to other purposes.
|
| The same as always.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The thing is, with current 'privacy-protecting scanner'
| designs, the scanner is running on every end users device,
| and it would be fairly simple for an expert to dump out the
| list of things being looked for.
|
| That in turn makes such a system far less useful to
| intelligence services and authoritarian regimes. You don't
| want to tell your target that you're looking for them and
| which keywords not to use!
|
| I wonder if this is part one, and then a later revision will
| require centralised scanning rather than on-device scanning.
| Sakos wrote:
| The EU is constantly pushing to backdoor encryption and
| allow them unfettered access to communication in flight.
| Local CSAM is just a stepping stone.
| prirun wrote:
| I find it ironic that people often look at the EU as
| "privacy-focused", with things like the GDPR, while at
| the same time the EU wants encryption backdoors and photo
| scanning.
|
| IMO, the politicians just want more authority and power.
| The GDPR gives them power to sue and fine large
| companies, ie, free money. I don't think it's about
| privacy any more than encryption backdoors are about
| fighting crime or photo scanning is about protecting
| children.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>and it would be fairly simple for an expert to dump out
| the list of things being looked for.
|
| If you embed a neural net trained to detect "some" kind of
| images, I would love to know how one could "dump" the list
| of things the net is looking for. Basically it's not how it
| works - the neural net is more or less a black box, you
| can't tell what kind of things it's looking for by just
| looking at its contents. You give it an image, it says it
| is a match or not, based on some internal algorithm - but
| looking at that algorithm tells you nothing about what kind
| of images would produce positive matches.
| stephen_g wrote:
| The hashes are something like a 64x64 pixel
| representation that can apparently be recovered to a
| small, very blurry but still recognisable image (when the
| Apple thing blew up there was a researcher who'd done it
| with a reimplementation of PhotoDNA from the paper).
| gambiting wrote:
| Sure, but if you read the article the proposed law by EU
| specifically mentions detecting brand new and not yet
| classified CSAM by using machine learning. So it's not
| just hashes we're talking about here.
| pc86 wrote:
| More like this is part 50,000 of an [?]-part plan to give
| the government more and more power and oversight.
| josefx wrote:
| > and it would be fairly simple for an expert to dump out
| the list of things being looked for.
|
| I think the Apple design used some fancy tricks to run the
| comparisons without ever decrypting the reference data and
| even if that wasn't possible almost every new device comes
| with some kind of "trusted" platform module that only
| "trusted" actors can access.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > Don't worry...
|
| Unless you are going through a nasty divorce and you future
| ex starts throwing accusations of you keeping and constantly
| watching those videos.
| pc86 wrote:
| Easy, then we'll just add additional tracking to everyone's
| personal devices that tells the government what is on your
| screen and for how long. For the children, of course! /s
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| We already have TVs that are content aware, and Macs that
| report CSAM, it won't be long until the two are merged
| together.
|
| Anyone who wants a dumb TV or an offline computer must be
| a pedophile. /s
| minton wrote:
| I don't think Macs have any built in ability to report
| CSAM.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Not yet no, because Apple postponed their plans. But it
| was planned along with the plans for iOS. The Mac was not
| going to be excluded.
| supramouse wrote:
| they are just waiting a little bit, the software's been
| written and it's not like you have a choice lol
|
| as far as I know the delays are more about giving apple's
| friends in hollywood some time to cleanup than caving to
| libertarian outrage
| SxC97 wrote:
| > as far as I know the delays are more about giving
| apple's friends in hollywood some time to cleanup than
| caving to libertarian outrage
|
| Do you have a source on this?
| chinathrow wrote:
| > The same as always.
|
| Do you have a guess about who is behind that lasting global
| push against private communications?
| hulitu wrote:
| Your government who wants to control you. Or do you still
| think that data is collected just so that Google can give
| you more ads ?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Your government who wants to control you
|
| How exactly?
|
| In Italy we had 67 different governments since 1946.
|
| What can they do with CSAM data?
|
| Government can't blackmail citizen, they can't use CSAM
| scans for other purposes, they can't even authorize a
| scan, because that's the justice system prerogative.
|
| Do you really believe that in Europe governments are in
| control of everything like it happens in Russia or in
| North Korea?
|
| They are as weak as they can be.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think they would like to be in control of everything
| and know/document everything they can about every
| person's life. I understand that makes their job easier,
| and maybe even they have the best of intentions. But just
| a couple of weeks a go a racist was running in France (Le
| Penn) and not too long ago the leader of the free world a
| known POS, likely criminal, and racist DJT was in office.
| I don't want any of those people to have free access to
| any and whatever information that they want. I am
| _thinking of the children_ and of future generations of
| them. If we don 't stand up for our freedom and privacy
| we are also not standing for theirs.
| hans_castorp wrote:
| > Do you really believe that in Europe governments are in
| control of everything like it happens in Russia or in
| North Korea?
|
| It certainly feels, as if they are trying to do that.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > It certainly feels, as if they are trying to do that.
|
| Putin's been there for 22 years, Kim is there by rights
| of birth, in my country the PM has been there for 18
| months and it looks like he's not going to last till the
| natural end of the legislature, in 2023.
|
| His career as dictator 4 life looks pretty bleak from my
| POV.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Well I guess that's where the idea of the "deep state" or
| "shadow Government" comes from. Obviously I don't think
| it's true to anywhere near the extent that many
| conspiratorially minded people do, but I think there
| could be some truth to it, in that there are bureaucrats
| (especially in intelligence) in many countries who
| probably do have too much power and too little scrutiny
| and accountability over what they do, who manage to keep
| their positions for long periods of time and abuse their
| positions for various ends and reasons.
| lapcat wrote:
| > What can they do with CSAM data?
|
| > Government can't blackmail citizen, they can't use CSAM
| scans for other purposes, they can't even authorize a
| scan, because that's the justice system prerogative.
|
| In the United States, legal blackmail is called a "plea
| bargain". You agree to admit you're guilty of a crime,
| even if you aren't, in return for the government not
| pursuing harsher charges against you. This occurs without
| trial, because of course the whole point of the plea
| bargain is to avoid going to trial.
|
| Why would an innocent defendant want to avoid trial?
| Well, good lawyers are extremely expensive, and public
| defenders are extremely overworked. Also, police will
| often say whatever they need to say on the stand to get a
| conviction and justify their arrest. How many cops are
| ever jailed themselves for perjury?
| wsc981 wrote:
| One way to prevent getting yourself into too much trouble
| might be to never talk to cops (without a lawyer):
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
| eru wrote:
| Compare 'Torture and Plea Bargaining' https://chicagounbo
| und.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
|
| > In this essay I shall address the modem American system
| of plea bargaining from a perspective that must appear
| bizarre, al though I hope to persuade you that it is
| illuminating. I am going to contrast plea bargaining with
| the medieval European law of torture.
|
| > My thesis is that there are remarkable parallels in
| origin, in function, and even in specific points of
| doctrine, between the law of torture and the law of plea
| bargaining. I shall suggest that these parallels expose
| some important truths about how criminal justice systems
| respond when their trial procedures fall into deep
| disorder.
| newsclues wrote:
| "Do you really believe that in Europe governments are in
| control of everything like it happens in Russia or in
| North Korea?"
|
| No, but I really believe European leaders are jealous of
| the authoritarian powers they lack, and are working to
| resolve that.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > No, but I really believe European leaders are jealous
| of the authoritarian powers they lack, and are working to
| resolve that.
|
| You can believe anything you want.
|
| That wouldn't make you right.
|
| national parliaments have to pass these legislation, EU
| is formed by 26 countries, all with very different ideas,
| traditions, political stances and objectives.
|
| So, Orban?
|
| Yeah he would love to be the sole leader of his country.
|
| In my country?
|
| those that tried have been destroyed by their same
| allies, out of fear of having to live in someone else's
| shadow.
|
| If everyone wants to be the one and only leader, nobody
| will ever be.
|
| Opposing forces always balance themselves.
|
| Funny that all USA businesses lament that there is too
| much democracy in EU (like too much democracy is bad!),
| but now HN says that there is an imminent risk of
| totalitarianism...
| newsclues wrote:
| I'm Canadian, they seized bank accounts and used
| emergency laws to crush protesters.
|
| Democracy is already crumbling.
|
| And American has the NSA!
| Amezarak wrote:
| In English and particularly American English, "the
| government" is understood to encompass the justice system
| as well as Congress/parliament. People are taking about
| justice system abuses, not just some MP abusing his
| power. Law enforcement and courts control the country
| just as much as the parliament.
|
| This isn't some feature of American government either: in
| the US local law enforcement is often completely divorced
| from the state and federal political process and is run
| independently at a local level, with sheriffs and
| district attorneys even being elected positions in many
| jurisdictions. There is no national police - the closest
| thing is the FBI (though there are a few other national
| law enforcement agencies), but it can go after only
| crimes involving multi-states or interstate commerce, and
| at a high level it is run essentially like state law
| enforcement organizations in other countries, largely
| independent of the political process, although at the
| very top it is politically appointed, usually with a
| career official placed in charge.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > In English and particularly American English, "the
| government" is understood to encompass the justice system
| as well as Congress/parliament
|
| That's only because in USA the justice system depend on
| the elected president and elected representatives of the
| State.
|
| But that's not true in Europe.
|
| Law enforcement forces and justice system employees only
| have to obey to the laws, not to the politicians in
| power.
|
| They can't be fired at will.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Law enforcement forces and justice system employees only
| have to obey to the laws, not to the politicians in
| power.
|
| Frontex want's to have a word with you.....
|
| And the Italian coastguard let people drown because it's
| law?....or maybe because it's a political thing? You cant
| separate the government and justice system completely.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Frontex want's to have a word with you.....
|
| Let's hear your thesis here...
|
| > And your Italian coastguard let people drown because
| it's law?....
|
| They actually don't.
|
| Some politician (a Trump and Putin supporter, BTW!) tried
| to make them drawn for political gains and was beaten by
| a German young Captain Woman. [1]
|
| many people in Europe protested against what Salvini was
| doing. [2] [3] [4]
|
| France officially condemned what was happening.
|
| Because you know, it's not a dictatorship here or a place
| where the police kills you if you're of the wrong color,
| the people still oppose to what Politicians and
| governments try to do.
|
| Please, don't try to teach me how my country works...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carola_Rackete
|
| [2] Paris: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/12
| 7BA/production...
|
| [3] Vienna https://taz.de/picture/3536744/624/23312167_Ca
| rola_Rackete_S...
|
| [4] Germany https://media.tio.ch/files/domains/tio.ch/ima
| ges/4bsj/huh5.j...
| nix23 wrote:
| >They actually don't.
|
| Since your talking about Rackete....
|
| >>The EU is no longer rescuing drowning migrants and the
| number of refugees continues to fall.
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/carola-
| rackete-a...
|
| You know that's why she got into troubles?...bringing
| drowning refugees to europa's coast.
|
| >many people in Europe protested against what Salvini was
| doing.
|
| So here you gave already proof that politicians can tell
| the coast guard what todo right?...because the sea-law is
| pretty clear..you have to help, no matter what.
|
| Thank you for the proof.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > The EU is no longer rescuing drowning migrants and the
| number of refugees continues to fall.
|
| In May 2022 already most than 10 thousand people reached
| the coasts of Italy via Mediterranean sea. [1]
|
| Between 2013 and 2016, over 600 thousand people have
| landed here.
|
| I think Italy is doing its share on that side.
|
| How many of those immigrants went to Hungary, for
| example?
|
| That's where EU is failing IMO, it should not be
| permitted to Orban to refuse redistribution of migrants.
|
| Not on CSAM regulations. If governments wnat to know what
| people are up to, they have to simply open social
| networks and wait for the people to write it publicly.
|
| No need to spy their conversations.
|
| The reactions here are completely paranoia fueled.
|
| [1] https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean
|
| On another note: if USA can please stop bombing African
| countries, maybe people shouldn't escape from the puppet
| regimes they install there...
|
| > So here you gave already proof that politicians can
| tell the coast guard what todo right
|
| They can try forcing the law.
|
| What Salvini did was and still is unlawful.
|
| His popularity dropped in a couple of years to a quarter
| of what it was.
|
| you can also convince people to march armed against
| Capital Hill, doesn't mean that that's a President's
| prerogative, it only means that crazy people are
| everywhere.
|
| At least we haven't built cages for immigrants' children.
|
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/11/written-testimony-
| kids-c...
|
| > You know that's we she got into troubles...bringing
| drowning refugees to europa's coast.
|
| No, it was because Salvini was (temporarily thank God)
| Interior Minister of Italy.
|
| > Thank you for the proof.
|
| I proved it to you that if the system is resilient, no
| assault on democracy will last forever.
|
| You're welcome.
|
| Next time we'll talk about what constitute a rightful
| political action and what doesn't.
|
| In a dozen lessons you might learn how democracy works.
| nix23 wrote:
| You completely miss the point which is:
|
| Politicians can tell the Coastguard what todo, and they
| don't "only" do what law says....that was the whole
| point.
|
| >What Salvini did was and still is unlawful.
|
| Yes and? ...i mean who cares, who gives him a slap on the
| wrist? And why is the coastguard following a unlawful
| order?...if they just follow law?
| Amezarak wrote:
| > That's only because in USA the justice system depend on
| the elected president and elected representatives of the
| State.
|
| That's absolutely not true in the US. Almost all law
| enforcement has no connection to the President
| whatsoever. The FBI does have a connection, the director
| is appointed with legislative assent, but FBI employees
| cannot be fired at will by politician or even the
| director.
|
| Further, the FBI didn't even exist for most of American
| history, so that's not why the term evolved the way it
| did.
|
| Also, your country almost certainly operates similarly to
| US federal law enforcement. Or are you claiming there's
| no democratic oversight of or input into the justice
| system at all?
|
| Further, if you don't consider the justice system part of
| the government, what is it?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Does anyone know whether one can get more naive than
| that?
| nix23 wrote:
| >Government can't blackmail citizen
|
| Why not?
|
| >Do you really believe that in Europe governments are in
| control of everything like it happens in Russia or in
| North Korea?
|
| Wait you think Russia is in control of it's citizen? Oh
| man, western propaganda seams to work even better then
| the russian counterpart.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Why not?
|
| Because they can't, the moment they do, they'll be
| roasted for doing it.
|
| Those who tried, failed miserably.
|
| Justice system here is not run by governments, it's a
| completely separated power.
|
| > Wait you think Russia is in control of it's citizen? Oh
| man, western propaganda seams to work even better then
| the russian counterpart.
|
| They control everything in the control rooms, which is
| not even the case oin EU democracies.
|
| Do you really believe EU governments will control every
| communication over the wire if this law is approved in
| the 26 EU countries?
| nix23 wrote:
| >Those who tried, failed miserably.
|
| Ah you think the government sends an official person and
| start to blackmailing you?
|
| >Justice system here is not run by governments, it's a
| completely separated power.
|
| Oh c'mon, it's pretty naive to think like that.
|
| >They control everything in the control rooms, which is
| not even the case oin EU democracies.
|
| Ah yes the russian control room's who had not heard of
| that.
|
| >which is not even the case oin EU democracies.
|
| https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-the-sequel-
| nobod...
|
| https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/why-a-backdoor-is-a-
| security...
|
| I really cant believe that you think the EU is so much
| better. But i see, the propaganda to implement that we
| are the good one's worked pretty well for you.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Ah you think the government sends an official person
| and start to blackmailing you?
|
| You mean governments are run by criminals that break the
| law?
|
| If being blackmailed over alleged pedo pornography in
| that case is what concerns you the most, I think you have
| a pretty simplistic view of what's happening in the real
| World right now...
|
| > I really cant believe that you think the EU is so much
| better.
|
| I really can't believe you don't see it!
|
| > But i see, the propaganda to implement that we are the
| good one's worked pretty well for you.
|
| I don't really think you are making any sense.
|
| You just posted propaganda links of a commercial email
| service and of European pirate party which is the most
| biased source of information about digital rights in
| Europe, they are so small (only 4 seats in the
| parliament, 3 from Czech Republic, one from Germany, zero
| from any other EU country) and and in need of funds that
| are constantly screaming "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" and have
| been for more than a decade now, for no reason.
|
| I consider myself much more on the left side of things
| than the pirate party and have been participating on
| discussions about digital freedoms as a tech consultant
| for the EU commission, the pirate brought virtually
| nothing to the table.
|
| But it's working for them, their MP salaries are still
| flowing in their pockets anyway.
|
| Ask them why their HQ is in Luxembourg City (one of the
| richest cities in the World) and not in some more
| piratesque place...
| nix23 wrote:
| >You just posted propaganda links of a commercial
|
| Ah yeah...the old propaganda because you have to
| implement backdoors in your encrypted email-service...i
| don't know what you try to proof here, but it's kind of
| disgusting.
|
| >You mean governments are run by criminals that break the
| law?
|
| Ever heard of Berlusconi? Or maybe Nixon....or your King
| Juan Carlos ;)
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think the EU wants to go through easy to rummage
| through stuff like email, texts, instant messenger (all
| easy to go through if unencrypted). I think that's what
| their warning shot is. Eventually they would like to put
| spyware in every app/phone and keep tabs on what you're
| doing. It's the same in America as well. Politician and
| the police state have no shame when it comes to wanting
| to take away your privacy "to think of the children" and
| "what about terrorists?". There is a reason we have
| search warrants. It's a compromise that has worked for
| centuries, and I don't see why that has to go out the
| door with new technologies.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Seriously, if you start with "I think EU is turning into
| Sauron",you then can imply everything, you'll be mostly
| wrong though.
|
| > I think that's what their warning shot is
|
| These arguments have been in discussion for at least a
| decade.
|
| Why do you think they want to read your email?
|
| What purpose could it serve?
|
| Do you really think France will accept to put the email
| of their citizens out in the clear if Germany refuses?
| (nations can still delay the implementation of
| regulations, technically forever)
|
| > There is a reason we have search warrants
|
| They are still required.
|
| CSAM is only what Apple already does (and that's another
| reason why I don't buy Apple products).
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think kowtowing to ANY group wanting to rifle through
| texts/email/anything is a bad idea without some legal
| principle like a very specific warrant has been issued to
| do it. What these guys want means that all encryption has
| to have a backdoor so they can look through you private
| "papers" at will. Yeah, I don't like that, and no I'm not
| exaggerating. Otherwise, we wouldn't have agreements
| between countries like Five Eyes. I just don't understand
| why everyday people just roll over for government abuse
| of their privacy.
| [deleted]
| tremon wrote:
| _they can 't, the moment they do, they'll be roasted for
| doing it._
|
| Really?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/14/dutch-
| governme...
|
| The Dutch IRS ran a shadow profile system for over ten
| years, resulting in countless families in financial
| trouble, numerous divorces, suicides, and kids being
| removed from their parents and placed in foster care.
| Compensation/restitution for the affected families is
| finally coming, but its tragically slow progress is
| adding insult to injury.
|
| And the government that stepped down over it, is still
| (again) in power. The very same prime minister that has
| presided over the country during the entire time this
| program ran was re-elected after his previous cabinet
| dissolved.
|
| None of the people working at the IRS have even seen the
| inside of a courtroom, at least not as defendant. Such a
| roasting they got.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > In Italy we had 67 different governments since 1946.
|
| Colloquially when Americans say "government" they are
| referring to the entire state, including not just elected
| officials but professional civil servants, police,
| courts, intelligence agencies, etc.
|
| You have definitely not had 67 different governments
| since 1946 in the sense that I think was meant.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Colloquially when Americans say "government" they are
| referring to the entire state
|
| Very consistently, when anyone (including Americans)
| talks about parliamentary systems, the number of
| governments or changes of government refer to the same
| thing as the number of administrations or change of
| administration when referring to the US system of
| government.
|
| There are other contexts where there might be ambiguity,
| but this is one of them.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > You have definitely not had 67 different governments
|
| I've studied English, not American.
|
| So government to me means means "the group of people who
| officially control a country", like in this BBC headline
| _" Netanyahu out as new Israeli government approved"_.
|
| We definitely had 67 governments.
|
| Or 67 cabinets, if you prefer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_
| Ita...
| vel0city wrote:
| Its definitely a complicated and messy idea. Many
| Americans would essentially only consider a complete
| change of constitution as a "new government", meanwhile
| in certain language in parliamentary structures there is
| a common phrase of "creating a new government" when an
| election takes place. Neither idea is really wrong,
| they're just coming from different perspectives.
|
| If you're using the same kind of terminology, the federal
| US has had probably 117 governments, as this is the 117th
| Congress. However, we as Americans don't necessarily
| consider this a "new government", in that many of the
| institutions aren't radically different. We still have
| the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, we still
| have the FBI, we still have the CIA, we still have the
| Social Security Administration, we still have the NTSB,
| we still have the FAA, etc. For Americans, _the
| institutions_ are a massive part of the identity of "the
| Federal government", and unless all the institutions
| change its pretty much seen as a continuous government.
|
| Its definitely a messy turn of phrase which means
| different things in different contexts. Either way, while
| Italy has had 67 cabinets/governments, I imagine a lot of
| institutions have stayed the same. The _ability_ for
| abuse is based in the institutions, the _will_ to abuse
| is often with the politicians. So its not like a "new
| government" woudl somehow wipe clean all the record
| collections and ability for the State to act on it, you
| just have different people telling people to pull the
| levers a little different every few years.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I know it can sound complicated, but I usually refer to
| what's written in our Constitution _The Constitution
| establishes the Government of Italy as composed of the
| President of the Council (Prime Minister) and Ministers.
| The President of Italy appoints the Prime Minister and,
| on his proposal, the Ministers that form its cabinet._
|
| So it's the combination of PM (Mario Draghi right now)
| and Ministers, appointed by the head of State (that is
| now Sergio Mattarella)
|
| We had 67 of them in 75 years.
| [deleted]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The term '<<government>>' was used by the parent poster,
| not by you, Sandy: you are the one with the onus of
| reading his language as was intended.
|
| Remember the Servers: "Strict in formulating the output,
| loose in interpreting the input".
| umanwizard wrote:
| > I've studied English, not American.
|
| Regardless, if debating in good faith you should respond
| to what people clearly mean, not to what you feel the
| words they're using _should_ mean in "correct" English.
|
| > Or 67 cabinets, if you prefer.
|
| Absolutely nobody is disputing this. The Wikipedia link
| is unnecessary.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Regardless, if debating in good faith you should
| respond to what people clearly mean, not to what you feel
| the words they're using should mean in "correct" English.
|
| you're wrong: I never said I was using the correct
| English, I said that in the English that I have studied
| it is called a government.
|
| It's called government here too
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Italy#Executi
| ve_...
|
| I'm not making up words. If in America it means something
| different it's irrelevant, we're not talking about
| America.
|
| > Absolutely nobody is disputing this. The Wikipedia link
| is unnecessary.
|
| Reptetita iuvant.
|
| Anyway, somebody _was_ disputing this
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31353588
|
| _You have definitely not had 67 different governments
| since 1946_
| umanwizard wrote:
| You (probably intentionally) cut off the exact part of
| the quote that entirely changes its meaning.
|
| You are engaging in bad-faith pedantry, and this
| discussion is now a waste of time.
| samatman wrote:
| Here's the full quote:
|
| > _You have definitely not had 67 different governments
| since 1946 in the sense that I think was meant._
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Every country I'm aware of people also use _government_
| as a loose reference to the whole monster of state,
| branches (judiciary, executive, etc), constitution, laws,
| etc etc.
|
| Didn't know it wasn't used like that in Italy.
| umanwizard wrote:
| That's untrue in many European countries.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Certainly many European countries I'm not aware of how
| people refer to governments.
|
| Please read the comment more carefully. I'm saying about
| what I am personally aware, not a universal truth.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I never said your comment was incorrect. I'm just
| providing further context.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| (Interestingly, you may often hear Americans speak of the
| Executive (what many call, a "Government") as
| 'Administration' - there where others call an
| Administration the collection of the actors and systems
| you just called a Government... And this confusion is in
| fact odd, if one notes that some call Ministers the heads
| of the Executive, and 'minister' and 'administration' are
| clearly twins.
|
| This becomes beyond confusing, impressive, when you
| realize that 'Minister' is an expression for "servant"
| (cpr. "civil servant" etc.) as a derivation from 'minus'
| - 'Minister' is the opposite of 'Master' ('Ma[gi]ster')!)
| c0balt wrote:
| Not gp, but I would recommend reading about the crypto
| wars[0] and related conflicts. While the arguments are
| slightly different the overall idea of needing every
| message to be scannable stayed the same.
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
| mgdlbp wrote:
| the Cypherpunks FAQ (1994): 8.3.4. "How
| will privacy and anonymity be attacked?" ...
| - like so many other "computer hacker" items, as a tool
| for the "Four Horsemen": drug-dealers,
| money-launderers, terrorists, and
| pedophiles. ...
|
| [1] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articl
| es/cryp...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_In
| focalyp...
| nix23 wrote:
| >Do you have a guess about who is behind that lasting
| global push against private communications?
|
| Every single government ever?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is the correct answer. People are lazy; politicians,
| police, your mail person, YOU. It's much easier to put on
| some coffee and start going through CSAM alerts from the
| emails and texts you AI sent you overnight and see what
| looks promising. Sure glad we got past those silly 4th
| amendment weirdos (or whatever the equivalent in your
| country is) who think privacy is less important than
| making my job easier. A decade down the line, a popular
| right/left wing nationalist with authoritarian tendencies
| wins. Now he sends down a request to comb through his
| opponent's messages to see what he can send him (or his
| relatives) to prison for daring to run against Him. A cop
| caught you flirting with his gf, let's just see what we
| can dig up on him on the CriminalSearch app...
| K0balt wrote:
| I'd love to know, specifically
| [deleted]
| emteycz wrote:
| Why does it have to be a somebody?
|
| It's almost every politician since the invention of
| privacy. It's not a cabal, they just have common goals.
|
| Edit: can't reply. The endgame is control over the
| population - taxing them, imprisoning them, etc. Why? I
| don't know, some people just like to be in (absolute)
| power.
| chinathrow wrote:
| And what are these common goals then? I really don't see
| the endgame here.
| eru wrote:
| It's the government version of instrumental convergence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence
| crmd wrote:
| Quoting Adam Curtis from The Power of Nighmares:
|
| > In the past, politicians promised to create a better world.
| They had different ways of achieving this, but their power
| and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered
| their people. Those dreams failed and today people have lost
| faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen
| simply as managers of public life, but now they have
| discovered a new role that restores their power and
| authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now
| promise to protect us: from nightmares. They say that they
| will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and
| do not understand.
|
| They had a great 20 year run on the terrorism narrative, but
| they need a new nightmare, and they've apparently settled on
| child predators.
| kmlx wrote:
| > They had a great 20 year run on the terrorism narrative,
| but they need a new nightmare, and they've apparently
| settled on child predators.
|
| just a second, we've got the new Russia - Ukraine
| nightmare.
| an9n wrote:
| 'next pandemic'...
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Wars come and go, if a politician wants an enemy that
| will always be there, the threat of child abuse is it.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >just a second, we've got the new Russia - Ukraine
| nightmare.
|
| Find a Ukrainian living through the war and ask them if
| it's a manufactured nightmare or a real one...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Find_
|
| (Just to be sure, here is a reminder that some HN members
| are in that. No need to find - it's part of this public.
|
| The author of Leaflet is the first that comes to (my)
| mind, and many others then.)
| therein wrote:
| I didn't put much emphasis on the first line of your
| comment and skipped to the paragraph right away, yet still
| read that paragraph with Adam Curtis' voice in my head.
|
| Granted I watched all his documentaries...
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Absolutely brilliant series, and highly recommended.
| Available on the Internet Archive.
|
| https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-AdamCurtis
| eru wrote:
| I have watched 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving
| Grace' by the same guy. If that stuff is anything to go
| by, Adam Curtis long on insinuation and clever cuts, and
| short on actual insight.
|
| Beware of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
|
| Btw, I suspect politicians always used the protection-
| from-nightmares just as much as promising utopia.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I agree. Curtis complains about narrative building and
| hypernormalisation, when he is arguably doing both of
| those things every time he speaks.
|
| The tune of the poem is more important than the words to
| him.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I review "Century of the Self" every few years .. also by
| Adam Curtis iir
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean that's cute and all, but why are your parents taking
| pictures of naked children and publishing them online? That's
| making assumptions about the channel used to send them and the
| phone itself being secure. Better to not risk it - not because
| of this legislation, but because of anyone else that might be
| listening in.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Sending pictures to me via WhatsApp is not 'publishing things
| online'. It is meant as a private communication channel. The
| current proposal wants to listen in on those channels.
|
| And obviously, I personally, can instruct anyone handling my
| child to not do that when such laws come into effect, but
| that doesn't change the fact that for many people such
| actions are completely normal (as it should be).
| nahnahno wrote:
| This is how free speech ends. If the parent doesn't think the
| image is inappropriate or would damage the child, they should
| be free to share what they want. Full stop.
| tokai wrote:
| yeah OP why ain't you letting fear and unjust laws control
| your whole life? \s
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| The message here is a private message. The title of this post
| contains the words "private communication" same for the title
| in the actual post.
|
| Have you not actually read anything about the post ?
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| It's funny because in this regard, The Netherlands is actually
| trying to do better and change the laws to allow mutually
| consenting teens to do this stuff (still tentative) and punish
| blackmail, prostitution (edit: of minors), minor-adult sexual
| interaction etc.
|
| Our general mentality also seems to be a lot more lax and
| supportive of kids being victims of their own mistakes rather
| than going "yeah, that's illegal, let's throw a fine on top".
| Almost as if we acknowledge teens are going to experiment.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| It probably helps that we were complaining about and even
| making fun of[0] our government for using child pornography
| as an excuse for pushing through draconian populist laws a
| decade ago already. We may just happen to have a little head-
| start here basically.
|
| Edit: for the non-Dutch, the link goes to an article by the
| Dutch equivalent of The Onion and the headline says _"
| Opstelten [our minister of Security and Justice at the time]
| says new regulations are needed or else child pornography"_.
|
| [0] https://speld.nl/2012/10/24/opstelten-%E2%80%98nieuwe-
| maatre...
| tluyben2 wrote:
| You need awareness that things most people don't understand
| fully are absurd. Humour can be a tool for that.
| pc86 wrote:
| The Netherlands seems great as an outsider. I've been to
| Amsterdam, which was too touristy for me, but still
| beautiful. And we took a train to Utrecht and the
| surrounding areas which was great. Even struck up a
| conversation with a group of (local) software developers on
| the train.
|
| Even with the lockdown protest issues it seems like it
| should be on the shortlist if you want to move to the EU as
| an American.
| wsc981 wrote:
| The Netherlands government has quite deep ties with the
| WEF, so expect The Netherlands to be at the forefront of
| pushing the WEF agenda. You can decide for yourself if
| that's a good thing, but I've made my choice and am happy
| not living there anymore.
|
| But I should add I left a couple of years before I even
| heard of the WEF. Me leaving The Netherlands was for
| other reasons.
| eru wrote:
| Keep in mind that comp for Dutch software developers is
| probably an order of magnitude lower than what you can
| get in the US.
| rrdharan wrote:
| That and it's a fairly racist place in my experience so
| don't bother if you think that would affect you.
| oauea wrote:
| Not nearly as racist as the US where people of color are
| regularly murdered.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I think your racism meter is mis-calibrated. Sure, the
| Dutch are a bit funny about all the Turks in the country,
| but I find their racism against the Turks to be way lower
| than say a lot of Americans' racism against Hispanics.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| > it's fairly racist place in my experience
|
| Out of curiosity, did you live in other countries as
| well? I have the impression that in NL there certainly is
| a certain level of racism, but it's less
| systemic/endemic/widespread than in other countries
| (including parts of the US).
|
| It's an opinion based on very limited data and personal
| observation, so take it with a grain of salt.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This seems to imply normalizing scanning of private
| information between kids. All I see is getting them used to
| governmental privacy infringement early, so they won't
| complain about it later as adults. Very sneaky of them. Again
| it's "to save the children"
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| To clarify, the sexting part of the proposal[0] is only
| there to modernize. Loosely translated:
|
| > _For example, sexting is no longer punishable if this
| happens with consent. This is seen as sexual
| experimentation behavior among youth._
|
| It has nothing to do with scanning private information. It
| only legalizes what would realistically never appear in
| court except for twisted revenge cases most of the Dutch
| shake their heads at (girl sends boyfriend nudes under
| mutual consent, they break up, now ex-boyfriend tries to
| accuse her of breaking the law which is technically true,
| but absurd).
|
| [0]: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/seksuele-
| misdrijven... (Dutch)
| riedel wrote:
| To be clear upfront: mandatory scanning of private
| communication is a no go. And even child protection
| advocates, mostly do not demand this. So here really other
| interests might be leading the EC, which is bad
|
| However, particular servers in the Netherlands have been
| hosting a lot of CSAM and revenge porn type of material. The
| EU is increasingly becoming a major host for illegal and
| dangerous material. This is a reality and a problem.
|
| The problem IMHO is that it is really hard to have a
| reasonable discussion on how to tackle this. Reasonable
| voices are often the quietest.
|
| In Germany we woke up to really bad experience with
| pedophiles actually loudly undermining political parties in
| the past (particularly the Greens). Just as a reminder: This
| is not all black and white.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| I agree it is a problem, even more so in light of fake
| material looking more and more realistic, and the negative
| effects of social media on teens.
|
| One of those other solutions is simply teaching teens the
| potential consequences of these actions. One sibling linked
| to an article 10 years ago. This was about the time schools
| in The Netherlands were filled with lectures regarding
| lover boys, sexual and emotional blackmail, and more.
| Despite that, many would still put themselves in a position
| a malicious person could take advantage of them, but at
| least you're arming teens with information on which to act
| autonomously.
|
| I simply doubt the EU's proposed solution would really help
| prevent that many cases. It might even drive the more
| rebellious teens into sections of the internet where the
| consequences are far higher. Which makes giving up all that
| privacy a pretty hefty price, for both minors and adults.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > The automated filter won't care about the context though
|
| That's why we have a justice system.
|
| Specifically not a common law based one, which is kinds scary
| per se.
|
| People are innocent until proven guilty and the burden of
| proof's on the prosecution.
|
| We are talking about EU here, not Sudan.
| pc86 wrote:
| 1. What makes you think Sudan (or NK, or Russia, or China)
| won't get their hands on this technology?
|
| 2. What makes you think every government in the entire EU
| will always have the people's best interests at heart?
|
| 3. What makes you think #2 is true even today?
|
| It seems like this technology could be very easy to abuse, to
| great public detriment. Is the juice worth the squeeze?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > 1. What makes you think Sudan (or NK, or Russia, or
| China) won't get their hands on this technology?
|
| their problem!
|
| they have more pressing issues already!
|
| and some of them have already implemented worse ways of
| surveilling their citizens.
|
| In this regards, even USA is far worse than EU!
|
| > 2. What makes you think every government in the entire EU
| will always have the people's best interests at heart?
|
| I don't, that's why we constantly check on them and change
| them if we don't like them
|
| > 3. What makes you think #2 is true even today?
|
| Because I live in EU and everywhere else I look the
| situation is far worse.
|
| > It seems like this technology could be very easy to
| abuse, to great public detriment. Is the juice worth the
| squeeze?
|
| Like any technology!
|
| Funny that guns are abused daily in US but the biggest
| preoccupation of HN is _potential_ abuse of CSAM filters in
| EU...
|
| Which would also be illegal!
|
| If the filter has to be used for CSAM content, it can't be
| used for anything else.
| pc86 wrote:
| > > 3. What makes you think #2 is true even today?
|
| > Because I live in EU and everywhere else I look the
| situation is far worse.
|
| "It's worse other places" doesn't answer the question.
| The EU's government isn't perfect and I don't see any
| safeguards in this proposal. It's ripe for abuse.
|
| > Funny that guns are abused daily in US
|
| Whataboutism nonsense, nobody is talking about guns
| except you.
|
| > If the filter has to be used for CSAM content, it can't
| be used for anything else.
|
| Utterly fanciful. Once this exists and is in place, it
| can and will be expanded to other things. Eventually a
| government you don't like will be elected in your
| country, and they'll be able to expand this.
|
| This tool in the hands of an authoritarian government is
| as dangerous as any firearm because it would allow them
| to track dissent.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > The EU's government isn't perfect
|
| Do you know someone or something that is?
|
| I don't.
|
| > I don't see any safeguards in this proposal.
|
| then write one and propose it!
|
| or look better.
|
| >It's ripe for abuse.
|
| BY WHOM EXACTLY?
|
| AND WHY?
|
| > Utterly fanciful. Once this exists and is in place, it
| can and will be expanded to other things.
|
| Are you from the future or simply doubling down on your
| opinions, trying to pose them as unequivocal facts?
|
| > This tool in the hands of an authoritarian government
|
| There's no such thing in Europe, the closets thing to it
| it's Viktor Orban in Hungary.
|
| Who is still more democratic than Trump.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| You mean like German police using the data from COVID
| tracing apps, although legally they should not be used
| for anything except virus tracing?
|
| Or it doesn't count since Germany is not a democracy?
| kmlx wrote:
| > Specifically not a common law based one, which is kinds
| scary per se.
|
| "scary"?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| being able to interpret law freely but at the same time
| being bound by precedent, is scary.
|
| Law should be as unequivocal as possible.
|
| Common law is the equivalent of the imperial units or
| driving on the left of the road.
|
| They have been replaced by better units or superseded by
| more uniformly accepted standards.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Being arrested and dragged into court to defend yourself will
| seriously negatively impact your life all on its own.
| vidarh wrote:
| I almost think these efforts will need to succeed in become
| applied in a way too authoritarian way before there's a
| sufficient backlash. Unfortunately that means there's likely to
| be a lot of collateral damage.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Seems that's the only way people end up caring to fix things
| these days.
| oauea wrote:
| > and nudism of any minor can be seen as CSAM if the pose they
| strike can be construed as 'erotic'
|
| So we're now expected to teach our kids what erotic poses are
| so they know not to accidentally do that during family pics,
| lest daddy or mommy wind up in jail? The future is fucked up.
| kingcharles wrote:
| If you look at the history of litigation of nudism magazines
| in the 80s and 90s it is exactly that. Some magazines were
| allowed in, some were banned and the owners imprisoned
| because a judge said that some of the photos weren't candid
| or casual enough.
| marsRoverDev wrote:
| My understanding of this technology was it was usually a hash
| or fingerprint of some form of the material, to be compared
| against a database of hashes of known-bad material. I doubt EU
| countries have the infrastructure or budget to run models
| across everything, no?
| GordonS wrote:
| An article about this was posted yesterday, and the EU wants
| to take it further that detecting _known_ CSAM content, using
| AI to detect _new_ content too.
|
| Of course, it's all a pretence for getting access to read
| _all_ of your data. It might be a language thing, but the
| wording of the report was such that they were almost stating
| this explicitly.
|
| Honestly, what.the.hell are these clowns thinking?!
| matt123456789 wrote:
| That's the implementation used by Apple for client-side
| scanning of iCloud uploads. NeuralHash or something. The EU
| may (and likely will) build an unrelated system, although it
| may share ideas with prior work.
| tomp wrote:
| I mean, at some point the amount of data & CPU needed to run
| a CV neural network is less than downloading all existing
| hashes and comparing them...
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Even with a database of hashes the risk remains. If someone
| gets off on nude children, then there is nothing stopping
| them from collecting innocent photographs from social media1,
| reposting these on seedy or oniony websites, and have the
| hash ending up in the huge black box of CSAM hashes by an
| automated scraper. I am not under the impression that such a
| database is curated too closely.
|
| 1: This is not something I'm personally at risk of, because
| my parents are tech savvy enough not to post nude pics of a
| toddler anywhere but in a private chat with his parents
| (i.e., me and my wife).
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think you are underestimating the power of modern servers
| and GPUs for scanning this stuff. It's mind boggling.
| adrianN wrote:
| Unless the exact algorithm and data used is described in the
| law you don't know what the implementation will look like (or
| what it will look like in ten years).
| tomxor wrote:
| They are effectively low resolution hashes - obviously they
| would be completely useless if they fail to detect a re-
| encoded or slightly transformed or cropped image. In this
| sense it's a hash with a very high collision rate... probably
| even higher if you limit it to innocent but otherwise
| visually similar image of parents and grandparents sending
| pictures of their own toddlers as GP describes.
|
| This is when it gets scary, demonising people based on a hash
| collision with no evidence or context.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| The problem with hashes is, that you cannot prove what the
| original image was without actually getting caught with csam.
|
| So basically, a whistleblower takes photos of some very
| incriminating documents, someone gets accused of eg. money
| laundering, hashes of those images get added to the "csam"
| database, and you find the first person (via metadata) who
| had that image on their phone.
|
| Also, in some more repressive countries, an image of a famous
| cartoon bear photoshopped to look like some president can be
| added, and all the people who look/have/download images
| (memes) like that, can get put on a "list".
| tluyben2 wrote:
| But would the system not insist images are hashed by it? I
| mean; I would think it's not a weird demand that if this is
| to protect children (which it is not, at least not only)
| that the image hashes are solely for that purpose or
| otherwise not valid and thrown out by at least an AI. I
| know it's naive but it seems you want the image with the
| hash and if someone gets flagged and it's some money
| laundering doc, then it should be dismissed before you get
| out on a list.
| kingcharles wrote:
| The hashes are likely provided by some outside agency who
| is fine with transferring the hashes, but would have
| qualms about transferring multi-petabytes of the matching
| CSAM images.
| paganel wrote:
| At this point I would never send nor have nude photos with my
| kids (whom I don't have, but hypothetically speaking) on my
| phone or on any other electronic device, doing otherwise is
| just asking for trouble. Maybe it's not the perfect situation
| for parents who want to share said photos with the kid's
| grandparents thousands of kilometres away but it is what it is.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Oh but OP is talking about his parents (the granparents)
| sending the photos.
|
| And you already have received them!
| stef25 wrote:
| You're probably not the first person to ask the question of
| "but what about parents taking pictures of their naked kids in
| a pool", I'm sure they plan on having some way of dealing with
| it if anything to lighten their workload. That doesn't mean it
| will be perfect but no matter how jaded we all are, nobody
| wants to start falsely accusing innocent people.
| OliverGilan wrote:
| It always amazes me how anyone can be technologically
| literate and still think world governments should be given
| the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like this. I
| agree OP, most people in government are probably not
| inherently evil or malicious but why should anyone trust that
| these initiatives won't be poorly implemented and cause
| massive collateral damage to innocent lives?
| dangets wrote:
| It is not just the people in government today that you need
| to worry about. It is anyone in the potential future also
| that may abuse these initiatives.
| Sakos wrote:
| This is the biggest danger. These technologies are a boon
| to the potential future populist dictators of Europe. It
| starts with Orban. Who knows where it might end?
| stef25 wrote:
| > It always amazes me how anyone can be technologically
| literate and still think world governments should be given
| the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like this
|
| Yes I do think that. I'm very familiar with how the EU
| institutions work and I don't like it, so I'm no fan boy
| and certainly not trying to defend these kind of proposals.
|
| I realize I'm preaching to a very cynical crowd here but I
| just don't see EU countries locking up innocent people
| accused of being pedophiles en masse by some garbage AI
| (different story entirely in the US or China).
|
| Justice here massively leans toward giving people the
| benefit of the doubt, imposing light sentences etc. much to
| everyone's frustration.
| shakna wrote:
| > I realize I'm preaching to a very cynical crowd here
| but I just don't see EU countries locking up innocent
| people accused of being pedophiles en masse by some
| garbage AI
|
| 555 wrongful fraud convictions because of Second Sight,
| between 1996 and 2014, with a 2015 claim of no wrong
| doing and no system problems [0], in the UK.
|
| Rubina Nami, jailed for a year. Seema Misra jailed for
| longer, whilst innocent and pregnant.
|
| Noel Thomas jailed for twelve weeks at the age of 60 -
| the judge refusing to consider a flaw in the computer
| system to be possible, because of a report that
| concluded:
|
| > If the Horizon system was flawed, I would expect to see
| issues raised by all 14,000 branches in the UK and not
| only a handful.
|
| They locked up people over a garbage AI system over
| something much less sensitive than protecting children.
| Recently.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
| stef25 wrote:
| Fair enough, thanks for pointing this out.
| nix23 wrote:
| Have you seen how well assange was treated? And yes GB
| whas then still in the EU.
|
| Hell even nice sweden accused him of rape, even if they
| knew that it's bogus.
|
| Spain jails you just because you want to be independent,
| just image that Washington jails a Texan governor for
| trying to be independent.
|
| Europe is in parts not far away from the Turkish legal
| system.
| op00to wrote:
| >nobody wants to start falsely accusing innocent people.
|
| Do you have a source for that? First, by triggering the
| filter, there's an assumption of guilt. The filter wouldn't
| trigger if there wasn't something bad there, right? Second,
| someone, somewhere is being incentivized in their job to
| increase the number of "detections" so they can increase
| their arrest numbers. Why would they want to "lighten their
| workload"? They're the cops. They just ask for more resources
| and get them.
| stef25 wrote:
| > Do you have a source for that?
|
| It's a waste of time for everyone. Prisons are overcrowded,
| court cases take years to get going, criminals being caught
| red handed are released before cops even get the paperwork
| done, there's plenty of rock star defense lawyers.
|
| > They're the cops. They just ask for more resources and
| get them.
|
| Not in my part of Europe, on the contrary.
| outside1234 wrote:
| You mean like we've figured out how to avoid social media
| destroying elections and public discourse? Or ad-tech from
| tracking everyone?
| dorfsmay wrote:
| And yet you regularly hear of child porn cases in the US
| because a 17 year old girl sent pictures of her nude body to
| her 18 year old boyfriend.
| stef25 wrote:
| Yes, in the US.
|
| Meanwhile France last year just dropped the age of consent
| to 15 and if you check Wikipedia you'll most EU countries
| have it set around the same age.
|
| It's doubtful you could even find a single case someone
| being prosecuted because their _actual_ underage boy /
| girlfriend sent them an explicit picture.
| shakna wrote:
| > Meanwhile France last year just dropped the age of
| consent to 15 and if you check Wikipedia you'll most EU
| countries have it set around the same age.
|
| France's age of consent has been 15, since 1945 (1982, if
| you weren't straight). What they did last year was add a
| Romeo & Juliet clause that allows for below that age if
| you're within five years of your partner and not
| committing something that would otherwise be considered
| assault. So a 15 yro and a 12yro won't end up in a rape
| case for being partners.
|
| They tightened overly loose definitions, basically. Not
| dropped - raised. (A lot to do with this [0] particular
| case that demonstrated just how damn loose the laws
| were.)
|
| [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/201
| 8/03/fr...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| 15 vs 12 is huge gap in relative age, development, and
| maturity. But it sounds worse from your description, like
| a 15yo can have sex with a 10yo and it's considered
| consensual??
| Freak_NL wrote:
| I don't see how it will be different this time. The past
| decade has seen a bunch of failed projects that used
| algorithms to do the heavy lifting, and justice and redress
| for those involved has not even been served in all cases.
|
| The Dutch Toeslagenaffaire1 was a massive failure of using
| discriminating algorithms to judge if tax payers were
| defrauding the state (most of those marked as fraudsters were
| innocent and many lost jobs, housing, and hundreds even had
| their children placed into foster care (!) due to the
| cascading effects caused by being on this list).
|
| The British Post Office scandal2 is another famous case that
| will be familiar to those from the UK.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31013994
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
| belter wrote:
| To call Dutch Toeslagenaffaire a failure of discriminating
| algorithms, when the main criteria was: Manually identify
| innocents based if they were born outside the Netherlands
| or married to somebody born outside the Netherlands, or if
| they were born in the Netherlands, had Dutch nationality
| but grand parents born outside the Netherlands....Is a very
| strange characterization.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| I think you may have misread my comment. The algorithms
| didn't fail; they did exactly what they were programmed
| to do. The failure lay in the _use_ of these algorithms;
| i.e., such algorithms should never have been developed
| and subsequently used to put people on a blacklist.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Anything automated that has the potential to ruin
| people's lives should first be checked by humans when
| flagged. That's why this csam thing, if used, will cause
| crazy amounts of human work, and/or, after first
| 'convicting' a bunch of people and a lot of bad press,
| will then be toned down to only go after already
| suspected individuals but now their data can be scanned
| without a warrant.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _nobody wants to start falsely accusing innocent people_
|
| I mean this is just blatantly false. History has shown us
| this is false. Even if you think the current government is
| fully comprised of kind-hearted, magnanimous, good people,
| what makes you think that will be the case for the next 10,
| 50, 100 years?
|
| A story - I have a google alert set up for my name. Someone
| in a different state with the same name was recently
| arrested. I've gotten 5-6 alerts every day for the last week
| from various local (to him) newspaper and television station
| websites announcing his arrest. Name, address, age, alleged
| offenses, etc. How many will I get if he's found innocent two
| years from now? My guess is, at most, 1 or 2. Why would we
| want AI, even with human verification (which is just them
| checking the hashes match, anyway, so not real
| "verification"), to trigger the cascade of events that would
| occur from someone getting arrested for CSAM based on this
| technology? It would ruin someone's life. Now if I'm being
| honest, if someone actually has CSAM, I couldn't care less if
| they end up homeless and their life is actually ruined. But
| taking a step back, and acknowledging that someone innocent
| _will_ get caught by this, as it 's just a matter of time at
| that point, it's not worth it. If we had a society where you
| could just say in a job interview "oh yeah that was a false
| positive, I can prove it" and that's that, then there's a bit
| more of an argument to be made. But that's not our society.
| Once your name pops up with this kind of thing, that's who
| you are for the rest of your life, guilty or not.
| stef25 wrote:
| For starters, you seem to giving anecdotes from the US.
| Privacy laws in the EU differ from country to country but
| in some places at least, names & faces of people arrested
| suspects aren't published. And afaik these gross
| miscarriages of justice that seem to be ubiquitous in the
| US are nowhere near as common the EU.
|
| > But taking a step back, and acknowledging that someone
| innocent will get caught by this, as it's just a matter of
| time at that point, it's not worth it
|
| Couldn't you extrapolate that to law enforcement in
| general?
|
| It's not clear to me if you're saying that AI specifically
| will falsely flag people and / or if you're worried about
| being identified as someone else with the same name getting
| arrested for something. Either way both scenarios exist
| without any AI being involved.
|
| Personally I was falsely flagged because someone driving a
| car with a number plate that belonged to me was caught over
| a dozen times driving ridiculous speeds and it took me the
| better part of a year to convince the justice system it
| wasn't me. All because they didn't know how to update some
| database records with the other guy's name and despite the
| fact that no human ever claimed I was driving that car (the
| other guy said it was him not me, the car leasing company
| said it wasn't me, plenty of paperwork was provided).
| Massive pain in the ass (and nowhere near as serious as
| CSAM) and it required lawyers and court appearances but I'm
| not advocating to abolish speed checks.
| eru wrote:
| > And afaik these gross miscarriages of justice that seem
| to be ubiquitous in the US are nowhere near as common the
| EU.
|
| Not sure. There's a lot of selection bias here: all of
| the US speaks English, which you can presumably
| understand.
|
| Local scandals in some obscure EU country might only be
| reported in languages you don't understand.
| [deleted]
| gambiting wrote:
| >>omeone in a different state with the same name was
| recently arrested. I've gotten 5-6 alerts every day for the
| last week from various local (to him) newspaper and
| television station websites announcing his arrest. Name,
| address, age, alleged offenses, etc. How many will I get if
| he's found innocent two years from now?
|
| That sounds like a problem that's very unique to the weird
| justice system in US(and UK to an extent, unfortunately),
| where the law allows publishing the name and other details
| of an arrested person. In most(if not all?) EU countries
| that is strictly forbidden - until the trial is done, any
| arestee can only be reported on by their first name and
| with the face hidden. Avoids runining innocent lives like
| American media do.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| > I'm sure they plan on having some way of dealing with it
|
| Hilariously naive approach to government overreach.
| belter wrote:
| Indeed hilariously naive.
|
| "Naked Baby Photos Lead to Parents' Arrest"
|
| https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/naked-
| baby-p...
| stef25 wrote:
| > The case of a Utah couple charged with a crime for
| photos they took of a father kissing his naked baby
|
| These cases are absurd but we're talking about the EU
| here, not the US.
| emteycz wrote:
| And if this passes, we will have plenty of examples from
| the EU too. Here it was not as easy to crack down on
| people because we take privacy very seriously, but it
| will happen as soon as the state gets the power to do it.
|
| See for example how we treat people who have few grams of
| weed on them. We protect innocent people, you say?
| Bullshit, we crack down on gardening shops if they're
| even just slightly connected to the weed culture!
| belter wrote:
| "Family goes through seven months of hell falsely accused
| of child porn charges after Spanish police misread US-
| style date in tip-off from American group"
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8731961/Family-
| goes...
| Sakos wrote:
| I don't understand why you're not willing to entertain
| the potential dangers unless it's already happening. By
| then it's too late.
| emteycz wrote:
| Actually, states are more than happy to falsely accuse
| innocent people, especially if it makes companies hand over
| their chat logs etc.
| happythebob wrote:
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >nobody wants to start falsely accusing innocent people.
|
| If anything, the 21st century has proven quite a few people
| are more than willing to do so when they deem the lack of
| true positives to be the greater evil. Or even just doing it
| for their own benefit.
| stef25 wrote:
| Can you give some EU specific examples that can be
| considered representative and not huge outliers?
|
| Shit happens everywhere but where am I in Europe if
| anything there's a lack of law enforcement in the sense
| that prison terms always seem to be considered too low,
| people with sentences under X months don't actually go to
| jail because of overcrowding, police is constantly
| frustrated that people they pick off the street are
| immediately released again by judges etc.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| The starting comment gave you an example to start off
| with. The Netherlands, Toeslagenaffaire.
|
| You can't go telling "yeah we really care about innocent
| people" when you let an algorithm wreak havoc producing
| false positives and then take ages to fix it while the
| families are still dealing with the aftermath. That's the
| opposite, caring for true positives _despite_ the
| potential false positives produced.
|
| I'd also ask you to take a few trips down some
| ideologies. If you believe "EU is so nice it can do no
| wrong", you'll probably be cured of it soon when you
| realize extremists are spread all around the world, and
| have no qualms exercising their sense of justice even if
| it hurts innocent people.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Toeslagenaffaire
|
| it was about fraud.
|
| And it happened in the Netherlands, which aren't exactly
| the cleanest of the countries (just check their ties with
| drug cartels money [1]), so it's Netherlanders that
| should be worried, not EU citizens.
|
| It happens all the time, I don't know anymore how many
| wrongful tax bills I have received over the past 30
| years, you just show the documents that prove you're in
| the right (if you are) and that's about it.
|
| We pay accountants for a reason.
|
| Lawyers are still free in my country if you can't afford
| one, event though it's very hard go to prison for tax
| evasion, at least not in all the European countries I
| know, even less likely for undue child benefits.
|
| [1] _Money laundering is a growing problem in the
| Netherlands, with estimates suggesting that around EUR16
| billion in illegal funds is laundered there every year --
| money derived from a range of criminal activities,
| including drug trafficking, sexual exploitation and
| extortion_
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| You're being pedantic and apologist for very little
| reason. There are still dozens of families who have yet
| to be reimbursed for this mistake, let alone the damage
| which was caused in the aftermath. Instead, we have a
| bunch of people still arguing what to do about the
| situation, all which are paid in tax money that could've
| been used to solve the issue already.
|
| It's not about them being evil. It's about them feeling
| justified to use the algorithm in the way it was used,
| which then lead to pretty dire consequences for many
| families, followed by a lack of action and a general lazy
| attitude towards the entire situation. Along with a
| general lack of foresight when they implemented it.
|
| This is a very clear example of what happens when you
| optimize for true positives at the cost of false
| positives. You can argue the costs and benefits, but you
| can't argue "people don't want to harm innocents" when
| they select to do so in a scenario where it very clear
| does harm innocents.
|
| "Caring about not harming innocents" gets dropped the
| moment it feels inconvenient. That's something people
| need to be aware of instead of living in their idealist
| dream world.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > There are still dozens of families who have yet to be
| reimbursed for this mistake
|
| that has nothing to do with the matter at hand, it's
| completely OT and, frankly, who cares?
|
| It is not EU fault, it's Netherlands's fault.
|
| EU doesn't control Netherlands.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Again, you're being pedantic in an attempt to dismiss
| people.
|
| People could interpret the comment in question as "name
| examples in Europe", as if commenter was trying to imply
| "European countries aren't as crazy and totalitarian as
| the US / the remainder of the world". Several commenters
| gave examples close to home.
|
| But somehow the EU, as in European Union, will be the
| exception, and we can't be skeptical of that. Get real.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Again, you're being pedantic in an attempt to dismiss
| people.
|
| No, I'm being correct.
|
| Netherland problems that are not caused by EU
| regulations, are not EU problems.
|
| Deal with that.
|
| > But somehow the EU, as in European Union, will be the
| exception, and we can't be skeptical of that.
|
| Fale premise.
|
| I never said that EU is gonna be an exception, just that
| this particular problem happens everywhere, tax fraud are
| probably the most common case of fraud World wide.
|
| So implying that's proof of some potential problem inside
| a new EU regulation that has nothing to do with tax fraud
| is naive at best, but let's get real, you're being not
| naive, you're simply being biased.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Both examples are (were) recent and in the EU.
|
| Edit: sorry, I thought this was in reply to my sibling
| comment. See the two examples mentioned there.
| haunter wrote:
| British Post Office scandal
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
| tomp wrote:
| Julian Assange?
|
| Cooperated corruption of multiple European countries,
| governments, prosecutors & supernational bodies (e.g.
| Interpol).
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Seeing as how things are going in China/Russia/N. Korea we
| should all learn to fight for our rights to freedom and
| privacy and not turn them over to the government. Western
| democracy is currently losing the cultural war and people
| aren't taking notice. US democracy was almost subverted by
| a phony bologna real estate scheister. I'm not sure why
| people think governments and rights can't change overnight
| unless we're diligent to push back against surveillance and
| other gross governmental overreach.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Basically some excuses to increase bureaucratic power.
|
| Step 1: Find some excuses (climate, gender equality, CSAM, all
| legitimate)
|
| Step 2: Create layers and layers of committees and legislations
| (happy lawyers and maybe accountants), increase social cost in
| general
|
| Step 3: Extend to other purposes if possible
| linesinthesand wrote:
| Traditional detective work will always be the best way to uncover
| real crimes of this nature. Any mention of this in support of
| mass surveillance is just a ruse.
| a-dub wrote:
| seems like maybe a better approach might be to require software
| developers to give parents/guardians features that allow a
| comprehensive view into the online activities of their children.
|
| although unclear, that creates more visibility than has ever
| existed and could cause problems for kids who have different
| views from their parents.
|
| we're in uncharted territory, really.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| This is not about parent control, it's about people doing
| horrible porn with toddlers and then distributing it to other
| adults.
| a-dub wrote:
| yeah. maybe parental controls so parents know who their kids
| are talking to paired with good old fashioned undercover
| detective work might be a preferable approach to eastern bloc
| style listening posts.
|
| if you want to get fancy, maybe build undercover chat bots or
| sophisticated honey pots.
| [deleted]
| one-red-cent wrote:
| How do we stop this?
| Loic wrote:
| What is interesting is that running such software on my systems
| would breach all the NDA I have with my customers. As a company,
| it would not be possible to work anymore from the EU.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Going to guess some things are exempt. But yes, you are right.
| Our nda's do not allow this either.
| worstenbrood wrote:
| This will push "criminals" further away from the common
| applications and they'll start using their own (forks?) and setup
| their own servers. Then there is no control at all anymore.
| varispeed wrote:
| So when I talked about these proposals few years ago, I was told
| I am a conspiracy theorist and the EU wouldn't have done such a
| thing. People blindly believe that the EU is this source of
| universal greatness and there is nothing sinister going on behind
| the scenes. Unfortunately this effort goes beyond the EU - other
| countries, mainly those ran by WEF people, develop similar
| changes. How are they going to determine your social credit
| score, without knowing your thoughts and who you talk to?
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| The EU is clearly becoming a dystopian surveillance state, not
| that much different from China. And we still think we live are
| somehow better than that, and we live in democracy and freedom?
|
| That being said, what are the realistic alternatives? Self
| compiled Signal? Matrix running on own server? Something else,
| like these Sky app supposedly used by criminals and drug dealers?
| belter wrote:
| Recent discussions
|
| "European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting
| kids": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31341249
|
| "Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on
| May 11": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368
| hexo wrote:
| I can't help myself. Everytime I see "CSAM" I read it as SCAM.
| Because thats what the legislation is.
| StuckPointer wrote:
| Ironic that this is coming out of the tutanota people whose
| product disabled my newly opened account, based on unspecified
| suspicions, for 48 hours, during which mails sent to it bounced
| as undeliverable, and only notified me about this fact upon
| subsequent login.
| xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote:
| I don't think this proposal is quite enough, we can do better to
| protect the children.
|
| The homes of the people who champion this proposal should be
| thoroughly searched for child abuse materials _every week_.
| Naturally, their personal electronic devices should be taken for
| analysis. I understand this may cause them some inconvenience,
| but think of the children!
| nullc wrote:
| Given the cost of child birth in the developed world it would
| be quite economical to send each child home from the hospital
| with a government video monitor which must be kept in the room
| with them, to enable random (and ML) surveillance, just to make
| sure they're not getting molested, you know.
| kingcharles wrote:
| This is a good idea. To be safe against AI misfires, a
| government agent could be assigned to watch each child 24x7
| wherever they are, whatever they are doing: sleeping, eating,
| bathing, using the restroom, etc. That way there is no chance
| of missing any possibility they are abused.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It was interesting to see how many high ranking politicians
| seemed close friends to a mr. Epstein.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Sorry, privacy from government surveillance applies only to our
| elected officials, not to you and me. /s
| Akronymus wrote:
| Good thing that most of the EU government is unelected.
| dandellion wrote:
| When we get spied it's for our own good and when they get
| spied it's an issue of national security. Because they make
| the nation and we're just resources they monitor.
| deergomoo wrote:
| No need for the /s tag, that's exactly how it works in a lot
| of places.
|
| Here in the UK, the so-called "Snooper's Charter" that was
| passed in 2016 allows bulk data collection and warrantless
| access to that data...unless you're a member of parliament.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Hi res cams in any room that record on super safe gov cloud day
| and night I would say.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Let's not forget banning curtains. Only clean, transparent
| windows should be allowed.
| dkersten wrote:
| Are you sure that's enough? Maybe homes should be built out
| of fully transparent materials. Don't want any internal rooms
| to hide in.
| crvdgc wrote:
| ... which is exactly the setting of _We_ by Yevgeny
| Zamyatin, the novel that inspired _1984_.
| robin_reala wrote:
| If you want to read it (ePub or online) I did a
| production for SE:
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/yevgeny-
| zamyatin/we/gregor...
| qwertox wrote:
| Not sure about that. You can't keep toddlers and children
| clothed all the time.
|
| The basement seems like an adequate place for a
| wardrobe/diaper change, even though that makes the whole
| situation even weirder.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| Had me going at the first half.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Could push for increasing surveillance be related to the recent
| adoption of digital social credit, CBDC (digital currency), and
| predictive policy systems in EU countries such as itlay,
| Netherlands, denmark, and the US?
|
| You would need a continous stream of data for building those.
|
| It makes a lot of sense if you look at it as countries trying to
| replicate success of Chinese growth and systems which are highly
| centralized and depend on the above factors.
| foverzar wrote:
| > trying to replicate success of Chinese growth and systems
| which are highly centralized and depend on the above factors
|
| There are actually no such _functioning_ "social credit"
| systems in China. It is mostly a boogeyman narrative.
| bobmichael wrote:
| Source?
| Ambolia wrote:
| A lot of this got accelerated through Covid policies, "never
| let a good crisis go to waste" as they saying goes. Many
| systems that were put in place, can be repurposed for other
| goals.
| archagon wrote:
| Proof that there's any connection here? Or is this just a
| case of "it feels right to me"?
| chewz wrote:
| "Power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it" -
| William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham
| anovikov wrote:
| But certainly everyone who really wants will block it, so it will
| ONLY be used for surveillance of the innocent, probably to
| influence their political views, or punish the baddies?
| baud147258 wrote:
| didn't we already discuss this yesterday and the day before?
| brainzap wrote:
| And all the energy and effort and money doesn't even help against
| child abuse.
| str3wer wrote:
| this keeps getting proposed every few months and it keeps getting
| rejected
| jdrek1 wrote:
| The problem is they only need to win once. What we really need
| is an immutable section in the EU constitution that anyone who
| tries to take away basic privacy rights like this is
| immediately tried for crimes against humanity and sent to
| prison for the rest of their lives.
| raverbashing wrote:
| No, they don't need to "win once", rules can be changed.
|
| And the ECJ/ECHR are a thing (and yes they have ruled against
| overreaching rules in the past)
|
| (though I like your suggestion)
| blibble wrote:
| > The problem is they only need to win once.
|
| and due to the structure of the EU: once it is has passed it
| is almost impossible to rescind
|
| no matter who you vote for in the future
| varispeed wrote:
| You can't even vote out people who keep bringing it in in
| the first place.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| zaroth wrote:
| Conversely, perhaps protection against this kind of dragnet
| can be enshrined in Constitutions / Bills of Rights / UN
| Charters to defend against these attacks more fundamentally.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| > The problem is they only need to win once.
|
| This is a classic EU tactic
| gpderetta wrote:
| Privacy rights are in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of
| the European Union, which is indirectly part of the Treaty of
| Lisbon, the closest thing to an EU constitution.
|
| The CJEU has stuck down laws affecting privacy multiple
| times.
|
| There is always wiggle room of course, and vigilance has to
| be eternal.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| They just change it slightly every time until it passes.
| But it won't be very potent in the end; I cannot imagine
| blanket encryption backdoors etc will be voted in. But if
| it does I am gone, out of principle. As tech person I
| cannot stand the stupidity of this all. I hope I am dead
| before I run out of countries to go to.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| This has been going on for 15 years
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| >> _this keeps getting proposed every few months and it keeps
| getting rejected_
|
| > _This has been going on for 15 years_
|
| I paste here the comment I wrote a few hours ago in the
| thread "European Commission prefers breaking privacy to
| protecting kids":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31344817
|
| Indeed, in the words of the previous President of the
| European Commission:
|
| " _We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and
| see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most
| people don 't understand what has been decided, we continue
| step by step until there is no turning back._"
| https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker#1999
|
| The current President of the European Commission has been a
| long time advocate for Internet control:
|
| " _However, in the digital community, her posturing for the
| EU's top job has caused concern. In 2000 [sic, actually
| 2009], when Von Der Leyen was Families minister, she
| advocated for the mandatory blocking of child pornography
| online via a list of offending websites managed by police
| authorities. Germany's Pirate Party claimed that the law
| would lead to censorship of the internet._ "
|
| " _The outcry that resulted was dubbed the 'Zensursula'
| scandal, blending the German word for censorship ("Zensur")
| and her name ("Ursula"). The move was eventually repealed
| after it being challenged broadly, including a petition that
| had garnered tens of thousands of signatures._ "
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/digital-
| brief-...
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Keep voting, per country, for the right people and capable
| digital people on the gov; the pendulum can swing the other way
| giving people the right to strong encryption. I like dreaming.
| Any country where that is a right by the way? So where an org
| like the nsa cannot exist with backdoors by law?
| taylorius wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, the EU never met a piece of snooping
| legislation they didn't like, but the fact that the top part of
| the page is trying to sell me some encrypted email address makes
| me wonder about the article's editorial integrity...
| psiops wrote:
| Does seem a bit incongruous with EU efforts to protect privacy
| like GDPR.
| gpderetta wrote:
| GDPR unfortunately has ample exceptions for governments.
| sprash wrote:
| GDPR is aimed at local small and medium businesses. They will
| get destroyed by fines if they save the email address of their
| customers wrong according to some very complicated elaborated
| made up rules by the unelected EU commission. Big companies can
| afford the bureaucratic overhead and all state actors get huge
| exemptions and can basically collect as much data as they want.
| GDPR is a ruse.
| imchillyb wrote:
| If you /truly/ believe that this is about CSAM, you've got your
| head firmly entrenched up your own ass.
|
| This is -yet another- power grab by The State; that's all this
| is.
|
| Every human on earth should be firing the SoBs that suggest these
| things. Every single legislator that champions these types of
| privacy invasion should be fired; period.
|
| Their names are on a big list now. Fire these assholes.
| macinjosh wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg&t=182s
| insta_anon wrote:
| Anyone who thinks that this is really about protecting children
| should look into how the catholic church, who has a long long [0]
| history of abusing children in Europe, is treated. If governments
| wanted to fight child abuse they could easily start there.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...
| [deleted]
| schroeding wrote:
| The worst thing is that, while the EU proposes dubious stuff like
| this, the police _doesn 't_ actually try to remove such content
| from the internet or are at least really ineffective at doing so.
| There was a documentary[1] from the german public tv station NDR
| in which reporters / journalists managed to delete the majority
| of content from one such CSAM forum, by sending deletion requests
| to the hosters. The police just... did nothing about it? :/
|
| It's mind boggling. It would be nice if only 50% of the energy
| put into laws with questionable results like this, would be used
| to give victims of sexual child abuse more help and support (or,
| in many cases, some at all) to continue living as much as
| possible despite the monsters in their own heads that such sexual
| abuse creates, wouldn't it? :/
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItLpwkQMUQ Sadly without
| official english subtitles, but you can run this article about it
| through deepl.com:
| https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/panorama/kinderpornog...
| thwoeroi234 wrote:
| They're probably busy with their local pedophile-rings in
| Brussels.
| momenti wrote:
| This proves that none of these institutions and politicians
| pushing for more surveillance actually care about the problem
| (while the urgency of the problem is dubious to begin with).
|
| It's all about power and funding. If the problem was
| eradicated, then they would lose their purpose and funding.
| Avamander wrote:
| A lot of cybercrime is like that, the police are very
| incompetent at handling it. I've seen a criminal literally
| logged in with their personal account (with 2FA, home address
| etc.) and the case was dropped because they wouldn't/couldn't
| identify the person. I don't think they even attempted.
|
| Botnets are annoying to dismantle even within the EU, it's not
| even illegal in some countries to not remove reported malware.
|
| I view such legislation as an excuse to their general
| incompetence.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| This is the new democracy. This is the new freedom. What is the
| difference from China or Russia?
| mirceal wrote:
| good point.
|
| there are two types of dystopia: the 1984 flavor or the Brave
| New World flavor
|
| China and Russia are doing 1984, the "West" was doing Brave New
| World but they want to try something new. So why not a blend?
| Mizza wrote:
| Isn't this an insanely stupid idea? Doesn't it open the door to a
| new type of ransomware - pay up, or we'll flood your devices with
| CSAM and submit a tip about it?
| gigel82 wrote:
| Hey, that's an idea... we know who the sponsors for this are in
| the European Commission; maybe Anon or someone could take a
| stab at uploading something special to their devices.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I keep posting this objection on every single one of these
| articles.
|
| It is weird how supposedly techno-savvy people can't spot how
| easy this would be. But I'd think it would look more like an
| alternative to murder-for-hire when ruining someone else's life
| and throwing them in jail would be sufficient. Get someone else
| to pay reasonably big money to actually do it and not just
| threaten it.
|
| This may have happened already and some middle aged dude caught
| with CSAM is crying about how he's been framed--only he really
| has been framed. But nobody believes him, because nobody
| believes a sex pervert.
|
| It seems like a great way to me to put out a 'hit' on someone
| because it can be done from across the world without leaving
| any physical traces, with the actions taken across national
| borders, and much less likelihood of the cops being able to do
| anything about it, even if they do detect it and the person
| winds up going free.
|
| Agencies like the CIA may also be able to exploit this against
| foreign politicians and public figures they don't like.
| ajb wrote:
| Well yes, that's what I though 20 years ago. But I've never
| seen a report of actual framing of someone via CSAM. gung-ho
| police mistaking innocent nude kid pics, yes. Criminalisation
| of sexting by teenagers, yes. But framing? Haven't seen it
| reported.
|
| There are two reasons I guess. One is that pedophilia is the
| epitome of evil in our society and even career criminals
| would find handling CSAM off putting and risky.
|
| The second is that if you can hack someone, there's easier
| ways of taking their money. Stealing their credit cards being
| the obvious one. Money motivated criminals always go by the
| easiest route.
|
| That doesn't rule it out. If we get an uptick in
| cyberwarfare, I wouldn't be surprised to see this tried,
| because 'authority says its okay to do this' is an effective
| kingcharles wrote:
| Not framing, but similar:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356661
| insta_anon wrote:
| > But I've never seen a report of actual framing of someone
| via CSAM
|
| Here you go:
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/hamburg-
| bank-s...
| lamontcg wrote:
| Well some other people already posted that it has actually
| happened.
|
| > There are two reasons I guess. One is that pedophilia is
| the epitome of evil in our society and even career
| criminals would find handling CSAM off putting and risky.
|
| Every time I see this argument I find it hopelessly naive.
|
| If I was sitting on a few million in cocaine or heroin I'd
| be sweating bullets, but other people deal in more than
| that all the time.
|
| There are people out there willing to do murder for hire,
| which seems like total insanity to me (huge legal risks and
| you have to get up close and messy and be actually willing
| to kill someone). Yet sociopaths out there look at their
| skill set and decide the fact that they're completely okay
| with killing people is a profitable skill they can market.
| Sitting on a pile of CSAM and hacking into phones to frame
| other people seems relatively tame by comparison, and
| certainly prone to attracting people who are overly-smart
| technically and have the weakness that they think they're
| so smart they'll never get caught. Far from seeming
| implausible, it seems highly plausible.
| frickinLasers wrote:
| Here we go, two days ago:
|
| https://kfor.com/news/local/wife-accomplice-
| screenshot-857-c...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The blackmailers would have to own the channel they transmit
| on, though, to hide their communication to you, and own the
| metadata on the network. It's not like file-encryption ransoms,
| they not only have to remain anonymous but also to hide all
| traces of network communications (which are already completely
| monitored on a message-metadata level). And the perps aren't
| just screwing around for money but are trading in practices
| that apparently get you murdered in prison.
| kingcharles wrote:
| This isn't a theoretical case. I had this happen with
| regularity, and I'm sure many others have too.
|
| I ran an online business and one of my competitors hired
| someone to constantly email PayPal and tell them I was selling
| CSAM. PayPal has literally no option other than to instantly
| lock your account against all transactions. Luckily I was
| putting so much money through PayPal I had my own account
| manager, but they still have a script they have to work through
| where they have to go through every part of your web site to
| make sure the report is false before they can open your account
| back up, which takes 3-7 days on average.
| wiz21c wrote:
| are there groups in europe that plan to make a public protest ?
| I'd like to join.
| api wrote:
| It'll get worse when it becomes obvious that on device scanning
| is unenforceable without control of the device. Next up will be a
| ban on unsigned apps and independent app stores and/or an
| outright ban on encryption.
|
| The EU is about to become as bad as China or perhaps even worse
| if this stuff goes forward.
| quazar wrote:
| The title page states:
|
| > Text with EEA relevance
|
| So it's not only EU, but basically whole Europe.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > In its draft law to combat child sexual abuse
|
| It seems like the idea is to oppress people so much it takes
| their minds off of the sexual abuse they suffered in childhood.
| Victerius wrote:
| I think those of us who value our privacy are going to have to
| draw a line sooner or later.
|
| Do we want to combat child sexual abuse? Yes, but not at any
| cost. Are there things more important than combating child
| sexual abuse? Yes, such as our digital privacy. Are we willing
| to make the job of the authorities more difficult in combating
| child abuse in the name of privacy? The answer is yes.
|
| Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
| temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| These people couldn't care less. The line should have already
| been drawn but people keep falling for this emotional
| trickery that all politicians use. Packaging up something
| that nobody agrees with, with a noble cause that nobody would
| disagree with on the surface.
|
| If you oppose this then I guess you oppose child sexual
| abuse! You wouldn't want to look like a bad person would you?
| </s>
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Drawing such a line is unfortunately fundamentally
| incompatible with current western attitudes.
|
| You need to be able to have adult discussions about death and
| harm that WILL happen at the scales we're talking about.
| These harms are often easy to calculate. The harms that come
| from surveillance dragnets are less immediate and harder to
| calculate. So in addition to be able to have a discussion
| that we're incapable of having, we also need to have the
| balls to say "this long term non-specific harm of the
| surveillance state is worse than a few kids getting abused".
| We're nowhere near being able to do either of those right
| now.
|
| Freedom isn't free but the only people who will talk about
| the cost are extremists of various flavors.
| smolder wrote:
| > we also need to have the balls to say "this long term
| non-specific harm of the surveillance state is worse than a
| few kids getting abused".
|
| There is a false assumption here that such a surveillance
| program would even be effective and not just a stepping
| stone to arguing for more invasive measures when it doesn't
| fix anything.
|
| The better argument is "this long term non-specific harm of
| government surveillance is worse than the harm it would
| successfully prevent to children." And then you can go on
| to describe the specific harms that state surveillance and
| overreach has brought about or enabled...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >There is a false assumption here that such a
| surveillance program would even be effective and not just
| a stepping stone to arguing for more invasive measures
| when it doesn't fix anything.
|
| It's a false assumption you're gonna have to argue
| against so get used to it. In the minds of people who
| want this crap the harm of a surveillance state is not a
| guaranteed thing. They think there will be "reasonable
| access controls" and other fantasy stuff like that.
| Macha wrote:
| As with the UK internet filters, the next step will be "Oh, so we
| have all this infrastructure already, we should extend it to
| other forms of illegal content, like piracy, DRM circumvention,
| etc"
| ulzeraj wrote:
| This. I'm pretty sure I've read COVID contract tracing data
| being used for other purposes somewhere out there.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Was there so much crying about the UK ones or was everyone
| obsessed with covid? During covid the uk spent a lot on similar
| (and I think worse) tech? Maybe the uk will license it?
| Macha wrote:
| The biggest outcry over the UK one was people's need to
| contact their ISP to be added to a list to access legal porn,
| which may have overshadowed the rest of the points.
|
| This was a while before covid and has largely moved to just
| being accepted to my understanding.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| During covid there were these 'contests' [0]. And there was
| more (will try to find).
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/18/uk-names-five-
| projects-its...
| weddpros wrote:
| Incest is the massive child abuse elephant in the room, and
| listening to our communications won't help those millions of
| children who suffer. Almost 7 million in France (1).
|
| I'm disgusted. I'm pretty sure when they say "one child in 5,6 or
| 7", it's really incest in 90-99% of cases, not some internet
| pedophile they claim to catch.
|
| They won't protect children with that law, because it's not the
| right law to fight child abuse.
|
| [1] https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1231341/nombre-
| victimes...
| cryptonym wrote:
| Basically 1 person out of ten? That's frightening. Statista
| says it's an estimation but all information about source and
| methodology is behind a paywall.
| yedpodtrzitko wrote:
| When all you have is We Need More Surveillance, everything looks
| like Because Terrorism / CSAM.
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