[HN Gopher] EU's concealment of secret 'expert list' on CSAM reg...
___________________________________________________________________
EU's concealment of secret 'expert list' on CSAM regulation is
maladministration
Author : charleyablaze
Score : 319 points
Date : 2023-11-08 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.iccl.ie)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.iccl.ie)
| belter wrote:
| I had it with these people. The next time there are elections for
| the Commission I will...hey...wait a minute!...
| bad_alloc wrote:
| Well, the Commission is elected by the elected governments of
| the member states. In a similar fashion, many heads of state
| are voted in by the elected government and not directly. Both
| procedures can be seen as iffy, but for the EU this was a
| deliberate compromise to get potential members on board.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Which is to say: in your next national elections (Dutch ones
| are in two weeks!), vote for someone who'll use their
| influence to get a Commission you approve of.
| sgift wrote:
| And in the EU parliament elections.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That's hilarious
|
| This is never a talking point because it's so detached from
| normal people life and it's actionable - it's not a good
| empty promise they can taper cities with and then never
| fulfill.
|
| The ideal empty promise is something that will take more
| than 5y to evaluate and people care about.
| Gud wrote:
| Or even better, vote for someone who will dismantle this
| nominally democratic system and implement something better.
| We can do better.
|
| https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-
| ge...
| josefx wrote:
| It is one thing to have that structure and hold to it, it is
| another matter to hold sham elections to select possible
| candidates and then pick people that weren't even on the
| list. Every time I hear of it it seems to go out of its way
| to shit on the very core concepts of democracy, maybe not
| because it is that way by design, but simply because it can.
| belter wrote:
| Your comment ignores the well known fact, that within party
| factions, election for the golden salaries of Brussels and
| the European parliament are a compensation mechanism. For the
| losers within the power plays of internal Party politics in
| Europe. The winners run the Government and run Ministries.
| The losers are sent to Brussels.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Well, the Commission is elected by the elected governments
| of the member states.
|
| Nope.
|
| Commissioners are _appointed_ by the member governments. Each
| government has an allocation of commissioners to appoint.
| They are usually failed politicians of the party of
| government (all political careers end in failure). They have
| to be signed off by the EU parliament (I think), but nobody
| in Europe knows the background of every political has-been in
| other EU countries.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I believe that the EU Council (elected heads of state) gets
| to appoint the EU Commission President, with an approval
| required from the Parliament. The remaining 26
| Commissioners are selected by the Council of Ministers
| (appointed ministers for each EU member state, and hence an
| additional layer of indirection away from the actual
| electorate.) Then Parliament has some substantially more
| limited ability to review these appointments, but I don't
| think they get an outright veto.
| realityking wrote:
| The European Parliament does get an outright veto or
| rather the opposite, without explicit approval from the
| EP commissioners can't be appointed.
|
| The catch, they can only approve (or not approve) them as
| a group. Usually the parliament will indicate which
| nominated members they find unacceptable and those
| respective countries nominate new candidates.
|
| Reference: https://www.europeactive.eu/news/european-
| parliament-gearing...
|
| Arguably this is more democratic than how we appoint
| government ministers in Germany. The chancellor gets
| elected by parliament and then appoints (and fires)
| ministers on their own authority without any check by
| parliament.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > The catch, they can only approve (or not approve) them
| as a group.
|
| OK, that's what I thought, but I had doubts, because I
| read something contrary recently. Thanks for clarifying.
|
| Can German chancellors appoint anyone they like as
| ministers, or do they have to appoint someone who has
| been elected to the Bundestag? Because commissioners are
| not elected.
|
| So, as I recall, there's been exactly one instance in
| which the EU Parliament has rejected all the
| Commissioners; they sacked the lot, because it was
| evident that they were mostly corrupt. Plus ca change,
| plus c'est la meme chose.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > selected by the Council of Ministers
|
| I don't think that's right, is it? Apart from anything
| else, the Council of Ministers isn't a fixed group of
| people; if the meeting is about fisheries, then it's the
| fisheries ministers from the member governments, and so
| on. Each meeting of the Council of Ministers is a
| different group of people. And anyway, they can't select
| anyone they like, because each member country gets an
| allocation of commissioners (one or two, I think).
|
| I believe there are plans afoot to remove that rule, so
| that countries like Liechtenstein no longer get one
| commissioner. About time too.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| This is what the Wikipedia article says. The EU itself
| has a series of websites that describe the various EU
| institutions and their selection processes, but they are
| much less descriptive about the appointment process.
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| The Commission President has a de facto (not de jure) veto
| power over who the member states nominate so in reality the
| Commission is selected by its President.
|
| The President is in theory selected by the Council (leaders
| of the member states), but in practice the whole process is
| secret so nobody knows how it happens. Certainly the
| Commission often ends up with extremely dubious Presidents
| where nobody can explain on what merits they gained that
| position.
|
| And then the selection of both President and Commissioners is
| supposed to be ratified by the Parliament but last time they
| were given a vote with a single option on it. You could
| either support vdL or abstain. And it's not a real Parliament
| anyway so nobody with any political ambition actually runs
| for it, it's a joke chamber made up of yes-men and people who
| think their countries should leave the EU entirely. Even
| Juncker didn't take it seriously.
|
| So nothing about the Commission relies on elections.
| snowpid wrote:
| where do you live? And can you vote directly for your
| government?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Most people don't get to vote directly for their government.
| They vote for a local representative, or MP.
|
| In the EU, most countries don't even have a government party,
| because most governments are coalitions, which may not have
| even existed before the elections.
|
| So you don't even get to vote for the party of government,
| nor its leader. It's all very indirect.
| Closi wrote:
| It's simple! You just vote for someone who then votes for
| the person who decides who will vote for the person that is
| the European president.
|
| It's like democracy except so indirect that it's total
| shit.
|
| Can't trust the people to actually choose who to put in
| charge - have to leave that decision to the leaders
| selected by the other leaders who were voted by the other
| leaders.
| Kenji wrote:
| > I had it with these people.
|
| You've had it with the EU bureaucrats? What a shame, CSAM has
| been detected on your phone. Prepare to be apprehended.
| pembrook wrote:
| Ahhhh yes. A fun case study in how democracy can devolve into
| byzantine bureaucracy.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| EU was designed to be run by technocrats and, as much as
| possible, totally insulated from any kind of democracy.
| There's no "devolution" going on here.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| A technocratic government might produce good outcomes
| sometimes, but the main problem here is that the
| "technocrats" seem to be relatively inexperienced with
| information technology.
| omginternets wrote:
| The 'techno' prefix in 'technocrat' does not refer to
| information technology, or even science. It instead
| refers to a technical specialist in the exercising of
| governmental or managerial authority.
|
| I can't think of a single instance in which a technocracy
| has produced a good outcome.
| bojan wrote:
| The proposed European Constitution went a long way to fix
| this, but was unfortunately rejected in French and Dutch
| referendums.
|
| The people didn't want the EU to reform.
| omginternets wrote:
| >The proposed European Constitution went a long way to
| fix this
|
| Uhh... what?
|
| Firstly, it was rejected by more than just the French and
| the Dutch. Secondly, the reason it was rejected is
| precisely because, for lack of democratic process, it
| structurally favors this kind of authoritarian opacity.
|
| The proposed constitution doesn't even begin to fix this;
| it is instead the very cause.
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| The Constitution was implemented anyway after it was
| rejected by voters, by passing an endless series of
| "amendments" to the existing treaties, a mechanism chosen
| specifically to give national governments an excuse to
| not do the referendums that their constitutions required.
| baz00 wrote:
| I suggest people read the full decision from the ombudsman:
| https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/176658
|
| It shows what an absolute bureaucratic mess it all is.
| seanw444 wrote:
| The bureaucratic evolution and its consequences have been a
| disaster for the human race.
| pphysch wrote:
| We would never reach 8B population and successful space
| programs without huge bureaucracies. Unless of course by
| "human race" you or Uncle Ted mean "my personal fulfillment".
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > would never reach 8B population
|
| You make it sound like that's a positive achievement.
|
| There are "Limits To Growth" [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Which we won't overcome without huge bureaucracies
| either.
|
| Also, while the population growth itself may not be a
| positive achievement directly, it's kind of necessary for
| all the scientific, technological and cultural
| achievements. Unless you don't see those as positive
| either - in which case I don't think there's anything
| left to discuss.
| naasking wrote:
| That's just more of what the OP was pointing out: why are
| you assuming overcoming those limits is good?
|
| This is just natural selection in action: only people who
| are good at slotting into bureaucracy and being well-
| behaved cogs in the wheel will thrive in this
| environment, and other types of humans will die out. This
| exact same argument suggests we should not tolerate
| indigenous people who live separate from civilization.
| Adapt or die right? But this conclusion is typically
| quite abhorrent to the same type of people who advocate
| for your position. Can't have it both ways.
| dvdkon wrote:
| I think both viewpoints (contemporary civilisation is
| good and we should let "uncivilised" people live without
| interference) _are_ reconcilable: I can believe that
| modern bureaucratic liberal democracy is the best system
| we have, partly because it allows for dissenting views,
| partly because of other reasons. At the same time I can
| advocate for letting groups of people control their
| territory and form states that aren 't liberal
| democracies, since that's yet another form of allowing
| for dissenting views.
|
| This runs into problems for global matters (global
| climate change and pollution) and conflicts with an
| overriding belief in a global morality (depending on how
| much you are willing to entertain the idea that your idea
| of morality isn't the "correct" one), but some compromise
| variation of this idea is certainly self-consistent.
| naasking wrote:
| Define "uncivilized". If I choose to occupy a national
| park and live off grid and disconnected from society, do
| I qualify? Or is some kind of ancestry on a land
| required? If so, why? Isn't such a requirement kind of
| arbitrary? Why does my accidental birth into this society
| necessitate that I must slot into this bureaucracy?
|
| > At the same time I can advocate for letting groups of
| people control their territory and form states that
| aren't liberal democracies, since that's yet another form
| of allowing for dissenting views.
|
| What if they want to home school all of their children,
| do they have to abide by some kind education standard?
| The bureaucracy will come for you for any choice it finds
| unpalatable.
|
| I don't see a way to reconcile these without a lot of
| special pleading. In the end, a form of natural selection
| will dominate and only the type of people who can fit
| well into the most optimal bureaucracies will thrive.
| Maintaining indigenous rights and the rights of
| "uncivilized" humans will be simply a curiosity, like how
| we keep animals in a zoo, rather than some coherent
| recognition of an inherent right to exist and live apart.
|
| I'm not taking a particular side on this question here, I
| used to be all pro-civilization, science, research and
| expansion into space, etc. in the Star Trek sense, but
| I've increasingly recognized the natural selection
| aspects of this and the apparently inherent
| incompatibility with liberty.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| "scientific, technological and cultural achievements" are
| not a brute force effort.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They're stochastic in nature and driven mostly by us
| hitting actual limits, both of which improve with growing
| population. Things may be different _now_ , because we've
| crossed a meaningful threshold in how the world operates,
| but - AFAIK - at least until recently, overall
| development level and rate of advancement closely tracked
| population size.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The EU is just too large and infringes on the natural rights of
| too many people.
|
| Your typical country government is already too much but somehow
| they get away with it with a pinch of nationalism and tribe
| mentality, the EU is so over board that I think people will
| actually rebel / or people with a brain will migrate away
| eventually.
| bojan wrote:
| I still trust the EU way more than my national government.
|
| The EU has apparently enough checks and balances that it gets
| caught when there is an attempt like this. My national
| government does have them as well, but they are mostly not
| being acted upon even when they clearly detect misbehavior.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| And yet the UK which left the EU is by leaps and bounds way
| ahead in the race to become even more of a surveillance state
| than any one in the EU.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| That's why they left. They can move faster in that
| directions without outside influences.
| miohtama wrote:
| > 17. The Commission representatives noted that many companies,
| which participate in the EUIF, are concerned about their security
| and public image. In addition, the topics discussed in the EUIF
| are often of a sensitive, operational nature and disclosure could
| be exploited by malicious actors to circumvent detection
| mechanisms and moderation efforts by companies. Revealing some of
| the strategies and tactics of companies, or specific technical
| approaches also carries a risk of informing offenders on ways to
| avoid detection. The Commission representatives provided
| additional confidential information during the meeting with the
| Ombudsman inquiry team on why the list of experts could not be
| disclosed.
|
| If the goal of your company is to promote and get a wiretap on
| every single device and messenger app, IN SECRET, you should be
| concerned about your public image. I also suggest you should be
| also concerned human rights and your personal moral compass.
|
| Time to drag out these bastards to the light.
| baz00 wrote:
| I suspect the bastards are already well known and accepted
| bastards.
|
| What is going on here is the EU doesn't want to look like it
| consulted bastards and is coming up with arbitrary reasons to
| hide that.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, they are now. But honestly, it was surprising for me to
| discover that the people pushing for the wiretrap were
| actually only the ones selling wiretraps. I really expected
| some larger conspiracy.
| amluto wrote:
| Maybe you should try Occam's Razor for conspiracies: the
| most straightforward conspiracy is likely to be the right
| one :)
|
| For example, one might imagine that eIDAS 2 isn't backed by
| a consortium of would-be spies but is more likely backed by
| a small consortium of crappy CAs that are sick of being
| forced to comply with CA/B Forum rules and want regulation
| to override the rules.
|
| (The CA/B rules are very specific and extremely
| aggressively enforced. It's not like the GDPR where you can
| apparently get away with messing around for quite a while.
| Multiple fairly large companies have had their CA
| operations effectively shut down by the CA/B Forum for
| noncompliance.)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I'm sorry, but Occam's Razor isn't a perfectly clear
| guide.
|
| A 1984-like law for wiretraping every citizen looking for
| double-plus-ungood speech is way too evil to come from a
| motivation of selling more wiretraps.
|
| The people pushing it are societal vandals. That kind of
| thing should be persecuted as treason. You don't do
| treason just to increase your workplace bottom line, it's
| absurd.
| derefr wrote:
| > You don't do treason just to increase your workplace
| bottom line, it's absurd.
|
| Did you not hear about the Russian tanks that fell apart
| on their way to Ukraine because Russian soldiers had been
| looting parts of them to sell for vodka?
|
| Most treason isn't called out with a big neon sign and a
| confirm dialog reminding the actor that they're
| committing treason. From the inside, most treason just
| feels like workplace fraud/embezzlement, or like
| laziness, or like "office politicking" where your office
| happens to be "the state legislature." It's almost always
| just _petty_ crime, that happens to have _big_
| consequences.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does this mean because we've become accustomed to
| ignoring the petty crime treason, when the treason with a
| giant neon sign and an alert popup that says "THIS IS
| TREASON" shows up, we're too numb to take action on it?
| lazide wrote:
| The petty crime isn't treason, generally. The poster is
| wrong.
|
| We're used to ignoring the pop-ups because of the steady
| escalation and increasing exhaustion. We're being frog
| boiled.
| lazide wrote:
| Treason (in the US) has a specific meaning, which is
| knowingly aiding a (formal) enemy of the country you are
| a Citizen of - or explicitly committing acts of war
| against said country.
|
| Those soldiers selling tank parks for vodka weren't
| committing treason, they were corruptly selling military
| parts (to presumably NOT the enemy) to get drunk. Which
| is pretty terrible, and would likely get you shot or
| imprisoned in most armies. But isn't treason.
|
| Aiding a known spy of the enemy? Yes. Sending military
| supplies to the enemy? Yes. Working on behalf of the
| enemy (knowingly?) Yes, maybe. Depends on what you do.
|
| That might be Espionage, or being an unregistered agent
| of a foreign power. Both with serious penalties on their
| own.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| It's so disappointing, how very little it takes to get so
| many to sell out. Murder for hire for a couple hundred.
| Selling votes for a thousand. Betrayal for a little
| nookie.
|
| People are so much more venal than we give them credit
| for.
| johndunne wrote:
| It's a numbers game. A leader can find people poor/greedy
| enough to do nasty things for money, and then same leader
| can go find people who want nasty things done for hire.
| In an unequal society, there's always going to be people
| 'available' for this side of the system.
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| The CA/B rules are - as the name suggests - largely
| written by CAs themselves.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| We are living in a global society that has been structured
| around the singular principle of individual enrichment, and
| have been for about 230 years, depending on where you live.
| The answer to almost all modern mysteries of human behavior
| will lie in that incentive structure one way or another.
|
| Why do people steal of defraud? The potential individual
| enrichment is higher. Why engage in corrupt short-
| termerisms like accepting bribes? individual enrichment.
|
| This is all the result of "greed is good" ^1 and its not
| sustainable.
|
| 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/gre
| ed-i...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's not "greed is good", it's "specialisation is an
| n-way mutual win".
| partitioned wrote:
| Who is the winner in this case?
| riversflow wrote:
| Is it good when people specialize in destructive things?
| There are people who specialize in human trafficing,
| different types of fraud, etc. Is that an n-way mutual
| losss?
| thereisnospork wrote:
| People love to bemoan greed but it is by far the best
| economic optimization algorithm humanity has managed to
| come up with[1].
|
| [0]An AGI-led command economy is certainly interesting
| though.
| derefr wrote:
| What would the motivation be, for the rest of the actors in
| this conspiracy?
|
| If anything, I'd say the "conspiracy" -- or at least, the
| _tacit collusion_ -- is on the other side of this battle.
|
| What few demographic studies we've done on the prevalence
| of pedophilia, say that something like 10% of men express
| some level of attraction toward children. (With almost none
| of them ever acting on this attraction, or mentioning it to
| anyone other than a psychiatrist.)
|
| So potentially 10% of men everywhere -- scattered all
| throughout industry and government -- have clear motivation
| to push back against the creation of laws that would see
| their proclivities discovered and persecuted.
|
| Of course, such people wouldn't out themselves by just
| defending the "rights of pedophiles" in any direct way. But
| they _would_ act on any opportunity to ensure that
| mechanisms for "complete privacy" exist; and they would
| also stand behind others when they see them doing the same;
| and they would also learn all the rhetoric used by privacy
| advocates, and use it.
|
| (Yes, there are other people on the side of "no wiretaps"
| besides pedophiles. I'm not saying "we can ignore the
| people against wiretaps because they're all just pedophiles
| anyway." What I'm saying is more that, insofar as "10% of
| men" is an accurate measure, that's a _big_ implicit voting
| interest bloc! Probably one larger than all the world 's
| egalitarian "privacy advocates" put together! And so there
| has always -- and _will_ always -- be this group with their
| thumb on the scale, tipping any democratic action in
| society _away_ from panopticons, for that group 's own
| protection.)
| partitioned wrote:
| This doesn't seem correct. Someone who has these desires
| but never acted on them wouldn't need privacy because
| they never did or intend to violate a law.
| shwaj wrote:
| Or, it assumes that the only reason they didn't act on
| this inclination is due to the fear of punishment. Which
| omits the possibility that they don't do it because they
| know it's wrong.
|
| Edit: typo
| kmeisthax wrote:
| There's a very obvious anti-wiretap argument that also
| happens to be very anti-pedophile: _Children don 't like
| to be watched_. A panopticon would be the perfect device
| _for a pedophile to abuse_.
| sylware wrote:
| "consulted bastards"? you mean that's why EU web is Big Tech
| only? Or you have to fill in dynamic PDF forms to get access
| to some critical services?
|
| You know the EU digital regulator should have been an US
| citizen from Big Tech...
| 14 wrote:
| Security through obscurity has proven time and time again to
| not work.
| omginternets wrote:
| I can't help but wonder what it would take for Europeans to
| develop a sense of mistrust in top-down governance.
| masswerk wrote:
| For most of the time, the Commission seemed to be a
| reasonable (as in "voice of reason") counterweight to
| regional governments and their insanities. Having said that,
| the EU appears to be wearing off in weird directions,
| lately...
| bradley13 wrote:
| Um, no. The EU parliament has occasionally been a
| counterweight to insanity. The EU commission has always
| shown its innate authoritarian tendencies. Wannabe little
| dictators, they are.
|
| Now that lobbiests have more effectively gotten their teeth
| into the parliament, I am honestly pessimistic about EU
| governance.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The commission isn't even "wannabe dictators", it's just
| where national governments policy-launder all their
| unpopular bills to. If something is going to piss off
| their citizens[0], they make the Commission make them do
| it, then blame the EU.
|
| The specific reason why policy laundering is possible is
| because international organizations are only accountable
| to their member states and not citizens. Making them
| accountable to citizens means getting rid of those member
| state vetos and having direct elected Commissioners
| instead - i.e. moving closer to a federal model of
| Europe.
|
| In America, we used to _appoint_ Senators rather than
| electing them, as a vestige of pre-federal America where
| states were supposed to actually be co-sovereigns. The
| result was that - once Americans figured out how to use
| their political power effectively - every state
| gubernatorial race became a proxy vote for Senate
| _anyway_. I suspect we need something like this to happen
| in the EU, where politicians precommit to specific
| Commissioner appointments, until this becomes enough of a
| problem that the EU decides to make Commissioners
| elected.
|
| [0] And, more generally, all EU citizens
| omginternets wrote:
| I beg to differ, but that's also missing the point. The
| more important point is how profoundly undemocratic the EU
| is as an institution, and how you'd expect a continent with
| recent experience of totalitarianism to be very careful
| with such things.
|
| Have we already forgotten that a fair few countries
| rejected the EU constitution by referendum, only to have it
| shoved down their throats? Have we forgotten that Europe
| managed to produce some of the most brutal totalitarian
| states, and this within living memory? Are we really going
| to write this off as mere "maladministration"? Have we
| learned nothing?
|
| I can already hear the objections. "But omginternets, this
| time the government is enforcing the _right_ ideas! "
|
| We're going to end up proving the Americans right. Let that
| sink in.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Yeah but the EU is relatively progressive & promotes
| immigration & multiculturalism, so they can't be
| totalitarian.
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| The sad, awkward and near-unspeakable problem is that
| totalitarianism flourished in 20th century Europe partly
| because the culture was tolerant of it. That culture
| wasn't totally erased by the Allies at the end of WW2,
| which is why the EU's history is full of WTF moments like
| when Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled a giant statue of Karl
| Marx and then gave a speech defending him, claiming
| communism wasn't his fault [1]. Were European national
| leaders up in arms about this? No, not really :( The
| primary objections came from the Brits, some Hungarian
| MEPs, and, um, US Congress, three members of whom wrote
| to Mr Juncker reminding him that Marxist ideology led to
| extreme violence and the oppression of eastern Europe.
|
| I think many Americans don't realize what the EU's
| history actually is. Juncker's honoring of Marx wasn't
| unexpected. The original proposal for the EU was made by
| communists imprisoned on an island during WW2. The
| Ventotene Manifesto specifically called for a socialist
| federation [2]. Spinelli devoted his life to the
| construction of the EU and spent 6 years as a member of
| the Commission, during which time he was actually a
| member of the Italian Communist Party! There is a major
| building in Brussels named after him, in his honor.
|
| This attitude can be seen in the many disturbing quotes
| from major EU figures, like these from [3].
|
| Juncker:
|
| - "When it becomes serious, you have to lie"
|
| - "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."
|
| - "Britain is different. Of course there will be
| transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to
| draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"
|
| Vivian Reding (a VP of the Commission)
|
| - "We must now embark on the road to a United States of
| Europe."
|
| - "When people ask politicians today "What will become of
| Europe?" or "Where is European integration heading?", we
| usually give an evasive answer. "We don't want a super
| state" that is generally the first thing we say. I must
| admit that I have in the past often resorted to this kind
| of thing myself.
|
| Helmut Kohl, former German Chancellor
|
| - "The process of Union is like the Rhine flowing into
| the sea. Anyone who stands in its way is crushed"
|
| Guy Verhofstadt, MEP chosen to represent the EP in Brexit
| negotiations
|
| - "The world order of tomorrow is not a world order based
| on nation states or countries. It's a world order that is
| based on empires."
|
| Jean-Luc Dehaene, former Belgian PM and VP of the EU
| Convention
|
| - "More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will
| probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has
| to be Yes."
|
| Raymond Barre, former French PM
|
| - "I have never understood why public opinion about
| European ideas should be taken into account."
|
| etc etc.
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-chief-defends-marx-
| controv...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventotene_Manifesto
|
| [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/OutCampaign/comments/36ofm0/
| quotes_...
| masswerk wrote:
| Opposing origin narrative: The prewar, Christian
| "Paneuropa" movement. (There's even an obscure arguement
| over the matter, whether the 12 golden stars emblem on
| blue background is the emblem for Mother Mary or not.)
|
| Please do not see "Marxists" everywhere, where it's not
| solely about unregulated capitalism. In actuality, the EU
| has been criticised quite a bit in the past for being the
| very spearhead of deregulation and denationalisation in
| Europe (compare the Maastricht agreement), which is
| probably not that Marxist, at all.
|
| You may also check your "Marxists":
|
| - Jean-Claude Junckers: Christian Social People's Party
|
| - Vivian Reding: Christian Social People's Party
|
| - Helmut Kohl: Christian Social People's Party (CDU)
|
| - Guy Verhofstadt: Liberal Democrat (moved from
| neoliberalism more closely to centrisism)
|
| - Jean-Luc Dehaene: Christian Social People's Party
|
| - Raymond Barre: UDF (center right policies)
|
| These are all conservatives, mostly Christian
| conservatives!
| cultureswitch wrote:
| The Commission _is_ the governments of the member states.
|
| Which makes it ironically the most corrupt and undemocratic
| part of the EU, despite being literally made of people
| elected through national elections. People who say member
| states are more democratic than the EU tend to have a
| problem with this one.
| masswerk wrote:
| Hum, the governments of the member states convene in the
| European Council, actually. (The Commission is more like
| a civil servants organisation, second rank to this and in
| delicate balance with the European Parliament.)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's funny how these people are so concerned with their
| reputation. They're using children as political weapons to make
| citizens accept anything. They drag the reputation of anyone
| who opposes their total surveilance through the mud by accusing
| them of supporting heinous criminals.
| dpedu wrote:
| Are enough people going to care, though? Apple already pulled
| off exactly this on iOS and didn't receive much public heat at
| all.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| It is possible to detect CSAM in end-to-end encrypted messaging
| by doing it on-device on the client side before it is encrypted
| and/or on the receiving client side after it is decrypted.
| iMessage already does this in the latest release. Most smart
| phones have AI-enabled chips that would be able to run
| images/videos against classification algorithms. The tricky part
| would be enforcing that users use clients which do this, so the
| task becomes regulating allowed messaging clients, which might be
| impossible. That being said, one could probably knock out 80% of
| the problem by legally forcing the hand of all the major
| platforms to do client-side scanning. At that point, only the
| truly dedicated would move their comms to another platform.
| Mobile users are very susceptible to nudges.
| andersa wrote:
| If the app is processing data in a way you do not want before
| sending it, especially one that will no doubt be constantly
| argued to scan for more and more things they find
| objectionable, then it defeats whole point of end to end
| encryption, and you might as well just not do it at all.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Please don't AI detect CSAM. That is a disaster waiting to
| happen.
| vacuity wrote:
| It works great! Until it doesn't, and then someone gets put
| into jail and the court doesn't bother reviewing the AI's
| verdict because how could it go wrong?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It's not that you would end up in jail (although granted,
| that level of fuck-uppery is possible), it's just that
| anyone flagged would go through hell with real-world
| consequences before everything is cleared up.
| figglestar wrote:
| Even if no one charges you it still creates a mess for the
| accused. We already saw how google handled a verified false
| positive scan that the police determined was innocuous.
| unaindz wrote:
| And do not hash detect it either. If you mass scan eventually
| you are gonna hit a collision .
| majke wrote:
| I think the problem is different. This is not about a technical
| possibility. This is about who will submit and manage the CSAM
| fingerprints. With the technology it will be trivial for
| oppressive governments to query which citizens have a copy of a
| particular image on their phone.
|
| Consider a scenario:
|
| - you use whatsapp, end-to-end encrypted by an USA company
|
| - someone, perhaps a random stranger, sends you an image in
| which there is a criticism to a ruling party in Dabujistan
|
| - your whatsapp has turned on the feature to save images on
| your phone
|
| - you happen to transfer via Dabujistan
|
| With CSAM tech, and fingerprints managed by the governments,
| you might be subject to jail.
| JCharante wrote:
| The unfortunate part about a centralized CSAM list is that
| now you need a committee to review every CSAM addition (not
| just the hashes but the source material to confirm it's CSAM
| and not political) and the committee has to have enough
| people to make sure the committee isn't all in kahoots
| mordae wrote:
| > This is about who will submit and manage the CSAM
| fingerprints.
|
| Not it's not. It's about "Why the fuck should I be under
| constant surveillance?"
|
| Our computers are practically brain extensions at this point.
| I don't want anyone wiretapping my thoughts or coming close
| to it by wiretapping my private conversations with my family.
| Fuck off.
| 4bpp wrote:
| Do you imagine that a significant proportion of CSAM is shared
| by users who are so casual about it that they would be "very
| susceptible to nudges"?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I suspect that a large portion of CSAM is nude selfies that
| might be susceptible to "nudges" in the behavioral economics
| sense.
| salawat wrote:
| To hell with your "nudges". It It's a cutesy way of saying
| "flex of State power", and everyone effing knows it.
|
| No. It's not appropriate.
| 4bpp wrote:
| This may well be true according to the legal definition,
| though a system that matches against a fixed list of
| hashes, perceptual or otherwise, rather than working on
| magical AI, would not catch those. However, if this is all
| that the measure would be effective against then this is
| rather at odds with the proponents' narrative which makes
| this out to be about pictures produced and shared by adults
| with criminal intent.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I think that it's only going to get faster, easier, and more
| accurate to generate sexualized pictures and videos of
| someone younger than 18.
|
| Whether you or I consider that "real" CSAM, is moot. What
| matters is that more and more girls are going to be deepfaked
| into content they didn't consent to (and in fact _can 't_
| consent to due to their age.
|
| The proliferation of that content will lead to new laws
| driven by parents and politicians eager to "think of the
| children". However impractical, I could see image generators
| being treated like drugs or firearms and being highly
| restricted or banned.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's a happy or sad thing how unaware most
| people, even the technically-savvy crowd, are about the
| extent of human trafficking and slavery in 2023. Is it proof
| that civilization is working how so many don't need to
| concern themselves with hunting and gathering, fighting wars,
| fighting crime, or fighting in general to survive, and are
| free to spend their time on recreation and the pursuit of
| happiness instead of survival?
| AJ007 wrote:
| A greater point here is that end to end encryption in this
| context is almost entirely a lie.
| stephen_g wrote:
| iMessage does not do this in any release, that plan was
| abandoned due to legitimate privacy concerns. The feature that
| is implemented is a parental control that can be enabled on the
| devices of minors, that blurs any detected nude images with a
| warning 'do you want to see this'.
|
| It's _not_ possible to detect CSAM without breaking the
| security model of the system for everyone, if the system can
| make any kind of report of detected content to an outside
| entity. If the system scans messages client side and then sends
| anything to do with the message to authorities, _that is
| breaking the end to end encryption_.
|
| This is either done by 'AI', which means huge numbers of false
| positives that are actually legal, private and probably
| intimate get sent to authorities (hence breaking the end-to-end
| security model for that legal content), or by a secret, un-
| auditable collection of hashes - which are still fuzzy matched,
| so there would definitely be false positives (again, breaking
| the security model for legal content), but potentially also
| Governments could start to add other, legal material to the
| database, such as certain political material to detect
| dissidents. Since it's un-auditable, there is no way to know
| whether it's actually just illegal material in the database.
|
| So whether it's AI or PhotoDNA or whatever, there's _no way_ to
| do it that doesn 't break the security model and cause more
| danger to innocent people, including _destroying the privacy of
| children_ as well as adult, law-abiding citizens.
| sneak wrote:
| It is worth noting that due to endpoint key escrow on by
| default in the non-e2ee iCloud Backup, iMessage is already
| presently broken and not e2ee as Apple has endpoint keys
| available to them to decrypt almost all iMessages that
| transit the service (Messages in iCloud) in realtime.
|
| Even if you enable iCloud backup E2EE, or disable iCloud
| entirely, iMessage is _still_ not E2EE as your conversation
| partners are escrowing (to Apple) the keys from the other
| endpoint.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Why should my phone be acting like I'm a criminal? That's like
| searching the bags of everyone who exits the supermarket, or
| police doing door-to-door house searches "just in case". What's
| next? Verify every photo I take with my phone?
| buildbot wrote:
| Yeah that's what this person wants, to scan every photo you
| take...ick.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Or make everyone go through metal detectors and millimeter
| wave scanners at the airport, take their shoes off, treat any
| liquid over whatever the small limit is like it's bomb-making
| material (but still let that person fly; checkmate, would-be
| bomber!)...it's all security theater. Notice how they don't
| release their testing rates on how many of the test weapons
| and threats make it through TSA security, because then it
| would be too easy to point to that and rightfully assert that
| they utterly fail at their mission while wasting untold
| lifetimes worth of human time and make travel that much more
| miserable. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/rea
| ssessing_a... (2015) is a good read on that if you don't
| already know.
|
| My point is that when politicians do something "to save the
| children", it's rarely about actually helping anyone but
| themselves.
| razakel wrote:
| How do you plan to do that without having a database of known
| CSAM on the device?
| didntcheck wrote:
| What classification algorithm can detect CSAM, given that
| humans cannot reliably determine someone's age? [1] [2]
|
| [1] https://www.eldia.com/nota/2010-4-23-actriz-porno-salva-a-
| fa... [ES]
|
| [2] anyone who still gets ID'd for alcohol despite being well
| over 18, and often over 25 too
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Yeah, no one who's actually had to work with this on a
| technical level would seriously suggest our current GPT-4
| level of AI for detection. It's hash-based with some sugar on
| top.
| Phil_Latio wrote:
| 25000 lobbyists. If they don't deliver, what are they good for?!
| Despegar wrote:
| The only way for this system to work would be if the database of
| CSAM were managed by consensus by geopolitical rivals. That is,
| it would have to include Russia and China. This is the only way
| to ensure that Western governments don't abuse their access in
| the future to surveil dissident groups.
|
| Trusting that NCMEC can't be compromised is a nonstarter. I would
| trust a system where Chinese, Russian, American, British, etc
| police agreed that the database only includes CSAM.
| 4ugSWklu wrote:
| This does already exist somewhat as the INTERPOL Baseline list
| - https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Crimes-against-
| children/Bloc...
|
| Does this meet your threshold?
| Despegar wrote:
| If national legislation by Western governments provided that
| only signatures from this org could be included, then I'd
| support it. But I don't know anything about this INTERPOL
| list, does it actually require consensus by all of these
| countries? Or can one country influence what's included in
| practice? There has to be an effective veto by all the
| countries involved for anything to be included.
| 4ugSWklu wrote:
| "To be included in the Baseline list, child abuse images
| and videos must be recognized as such by our specialist
| network of investigators, and meet specific criteria in
| terms of the severity of the image content, for example
| those believed to feature children aged 13 and under.
|
| The strict criteria ensure that the Baseline list refers
| only to images and videos which would be considered as
| illegal in any country."
|
| INTERPOL has a very large membership, including Russia and
| China. The baseline list is reviewed so only media that is
| illegal in every country INTERPOL operates in is included.
|
| I'm not sure how a veto system as you're suggesting would
| work practically, but this might be the closest thing.
| Despegar wrote:
| The veto system would have to require that the equivalent
| of Russia and China's NCMEC agrees that the image/video's
| signature that's going to be included in the database is
| actually CSAM at a low level operational level. Without
| that consensus, it should be technically impossible for
| anyone to include a signature.
| 4ugSWklu wrote:
| I think in a perfect world that would be great.
| Unfortunately, it's difficult to see how a system like
| that could ever be implemented within our lifetimes.
|
| I personally think Baseline is a good pragmatic approach.
| It includes only known media, where they retain the
| originals for sense checking, and only includes things
| judged to be CSAM by trained experts. It's probably the
| lightest touch possible solution that is still somewhat
| effective.
| Despegar wrote:
| I don't see why it's impossible. It requires coordination
| and millions of dollars in funding by all the respective
| governments, but if the world thinks CSAM is a serious
| problem, then it's a drop in the bucket.
|
| CSAM doesn't need to be added to the database in real-
| time. It can be done quarterly, giving each national
| agency time to deliberate on the content.
| omginternets wrote:
| If you'll forgive this tangent, I am not sure it is a good
| idea to maintain a "worst of" list. I can already imagine
| pedos competing for first place.
| fragmede wrote:
| That sounds as effective as, oh, I don't know, the UN security
| council. Why not just argue against having the whole thing
| entirely?
| Despegar wrote:
| This is the only compromise I would accept, otherwise I'm in
| favor of E2E with no backdoors. People who care about
| preventing CSAM and prosecuting pedophiles should consider
| this an improvement over the status quo.
| 4ugSWklu wrote:
| I'm unsure what you're saying here, can you clarify?
|
| Is it that Baseline seems overly bureaucratic and will be
| ineffective, or that people should not support any CSAM lists
| at all?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The UN security council is hardly a non-entity. They aren't
| great at addressing certain kinds of geopolitically
| contentious problems, but UN peacekeepers have 12 active
| deployments. (https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/where-we-
| operate)
| lazide wrote:
| The UN security council is VERY effective at what it's actual
| purpose is, which is preventing all out nuclear war between
| the major super powers. That is why the confirmed nuclear
| powers are the only ones with veto powers (minus
| Pakistan/India/NK, interestingly).
|
| Everything else is quite explicitly window dressing.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Mutually assured destruction does that. The security
| council has nothing to do with it. Also, at the time of its
| founding, the US was the only country with nukes, so that's
| not the logic behind who the permanent members are.
| jstarfish wrote:
| The hyperbole around the issue of CSAM is starting to outweigh
| the threat itself. The crimes committed against a minority of
| the population isn't worth this much drama. We don't even pay
| this much attention to _murdered_ children.
|
| This isn't going to unite international rivals against it any
| more than an asteroid hurtling toward the planet. Only the
| western world gives a shit about it, which means it's easily
| weaponized by anybody outside of it.
|
| Rather than backdooring every device on the planet, a more
| practical solution would be to just take away kids' phones and
| chain them to the radiator. To protect the children from CSAM,
| _lock them up_.
|
| We don't like to admit it but face the facts: children are
| property as far as the State is concerned. Same as any other
| asset, livestock and firearms, they can be "taken" away from
| you and "given" to others for dividends (which, when you think
| about it, describes the act of trafficking itself).
|
| You don't protect your home by unlocking everyone else's. That
| sort of "solution" makes you an actual menace to society.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > to just take away kids' phones
|
| Absolutely. Just the first part, seriously. No need for
| chains and radiators. Let's ban kids under 16 from access to
| phones and the open Internet. It would MASSIVELY improve just
| about everything about childhood and mental health of the
| young.
|
| There are plenty of technologies emerging with the density of
| memory and GPT type compression (that's what neural networks
| really do... compression) to facilitate "curated education in
| a box", and small network (family and friends) communication.
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| > It would MASSIVELY improve just about everything about
| childhood and mental health of the young.
|
| Honestly it'd make the internet a lot better for adults
| too.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Sure. I was exaggerating to make my point-- in no context
| has "safety through disarmament" ever been a thing.
|
| The Louvre doesn't respond to people stealing paintings by
| disabling all the security cameras. Prisons don't protect
| the public by being free-range. Nuclear disarmament is too
| complex to go into here, but hypocrisy abounds. Barring
| that one incident, the Mint doesn't protect the money
| supply by storing it in the middle of a Walmart parking lot
| (predictably, _it got stolen_ ).
|
| Every time we seek to secure anything, we make the coveted
| object more inaccessible to pursuers. That's how Protection
| works.
|
| Anyone telling you lowering your guard and becoming
| vulnerable will somehow _increase_ anyone 's safety is one
| distraction away from slipping a roofie into your drink.
| It's the sort of gaslighting one expects from a pervert or
| voyeur.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Not sure I understand you. Are you seeing smartphones as
| a weapon? Something that is empowering?
| ritzaco wrote:
| > Suggestion for improvement
|
| > 26. Given the Commission's failure to identify the list of
| experts despite the complainant's clear interest in it, the
| Commission should register this now as a new request for public
| access to documents and handle it in accordance with Regulation
| 1049/2001.
|
| I know the ombudsman doesn't really have power and can only
| provide recommendations but surely "and the people who initially
| denied the request should be fined/fired/imprisoned" or some such
| language would have been OK to add? Seems like 'we can ignore the
| law until someone jumps over the substantial hurdles to complain
| about us ignoring the law and then we can follow the law' is not
| good for democracy.
| gpvos wrote:
| CSAM = child sexual abuse material
| jmyeet wrote:
| Sadly, this sort of thing isn't new. Governments around the world
| are trying to avoid any kind of public scrutiny for what they're
| doing.
|
| I'm reminded of the Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") from ~8
| years ago. Very few people were even allowed to see the text of
| the treat [1] yet the people's represntatives had to ratify this
| when their own constituents weren't allowed to see it? Wikileaks
| and others leaked drafts and it was as bad as people thought it
| was going to be.
|
| Defenders argue that trade negotiations need to happen in secret
| so as to not worsen our negotiating position. This really
| translates to "we don't want to afford the public the opportunity
| to oppose it". The EU now is finding some BS rationale for
| operating in the shadows.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/14/40667...
| cultureswitch wrote:
| Did we ever stop to consider the theory of harm of CSAM
| circulating in private communications? Because I don't see how
| bytes being copied around in secret actually hurts children in
| any meaningful way.
|
| Obviously it is wrong to create child porn intentionally. But
| that's already illegal and people who do this are laughably bad
| at ITSEC. Like seriously, read the stories of CSAM making
| "studios" who got caught. Either law enforcement is so bad that
| any remotely shrewd criminal defeats them, either the criminals
| are just not all that technically savvy. Either way, the tools to
| catch actual child molesters are effective and adequate.
| omginternets wrote:
| I think you're right that we should be able to debate this
| question, but I also have a hard time believing that
| circulating CSAM has no detrimental effect whatsoever. I find
| it quite credible that the production and distribution of
| original child-abuse content can earn a social reward for
| pedophiles, and in so doing, encourage them to continue or
| expand their practice. I also find it credible that it can form
| the basis of a "street cred" system that binds online
| communities of child abusers together.
|
| On car forums, you're cool if you're the first to do a
| particular mod. In pedo communities, I'd expect you to be
| "cool" if you violate a new, hitherto-unseen kid, or violate
| one in a new and creative way.
|
| >But that's already illegal and people who do this are
| laughably bad at ITSEC. Like seriously, read the stories of
| CSAM making "studios" who got caught.
|
| Separately, this doesn't follow. Catching criminals with
| laughably bad OPSEC doesn't exclude the existence of successful
| criminals with very good OPSEC.
| falserum wrote:
| Rhetorical, but relevent, question: Will new measures help
| catch people with good opsec capabilities?
|
| I have doubts, that new measures will move the needle much.
| naasking wrote:
| > but I also have a hard time believing that circulating CSAM
| has no detrimental effect whatsoever
|
| Some studies have shown that availability of animated CSAM
| reduced recidivism among child molesters. That we treat these
| two categories of CSAM the same, along with the assumption
| that it encourages more harm, are some of those conversations
| that need to happen.
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| Supply and demand dictates that more CSAM is made the more it
| is watched, no?
| falserum wrote:
| Usually it is the opposite mr. Cunningham.
| aqme28 wrote:
| This has nothing to do with criminalizing the creation of CSAM.
| It's fingerprints on existing material that has been identified
| by law enforcement. "New" material won't have been
| fingerprinted yet.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Any argument not addressing the fundamental issue which is the
| general right to private communication and storage in the
| digital age, concedes that argument.
|
| Instead of debating smokescreens and planted arguments, we
| should be forcing the conversation to stay on the topic of
| fundamental privacy and avoid the entire gamut of
| CSAM/piracy/terrorism arguments typically employed.
| sneak wrote:
| None of this is actually about CSAM. That's just the
| unassailable cover story for implementing society-wide
| surveillance.
| Footnote7341 wrote:
| Isn't it illegal to save, view, or post, the new zealand shooting
| in NZ and Australia. Add those hashes to the list too why not...
|
| the exact same twisted logic that we use in this crusade surely
| it would apply to videos of people getting killed not just raped
| right?
|
| or is there a unique puritanical weirdness that allows CSAM to
| get a pass to where states should be violating all of our devices
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