[HN Gopher] CSAR: European Parliament rejects mass scanning of p...
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CSAR: European Parliament rejects mass scanning of private messages
Author : pera
Score : 426 points
Date : 2023-11-30 11:25 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (edri.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (edri.org)
| bad_alloc wrote:
| Finally. As a next step, we need mechanisms to prevent the
| constant rehashing of these attempts to break security.
| Otherwise, it will get through during a crisis or via fatigue.
| prox wrote:
| So it needs be enshrined in a constitution I wager.
| logicchains wrote:
| It's already enshrined in the constitution of at least one
| European country, the right to privacy.
| bonzini wrote:
| It is in Italy's ("Freedom and secrecy of correspondence
| and any other communication cannot be violated"), but I
| didn't think this was particularly unique?
|
| (Note that this article of the constitution doesn't include
| E2E encryption because there's a carve out for the
| judiciary to limit this freedom).
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| What's deeply funny is how Italy is also where a lot of
| police spyware industry got its start in Europe
| (HackingTeam and fellow travellers).
| phtrivier wrote:
| Well, the trick is, a surefire way to make voters angry in
| large part of the continents (or, well, large part of France
| anyway) it so put "Constitution" and "Europe" in the same
| sentence - so there is not much of a place to enshrine that
| at the EU level.
|
| Besides, every member state's constitution probably already
| has a variant of "privacy is a fundamental right except in
| cases defined by law".
|
| I will argue that we _definitely do_ want cases where privacy
| is not 100% respected (sadly, "investigating crime" is not
| always a red herring, newspeak, lobbying propaganda, etc...
|
| People really do that for a living, and in the common
| interest.)
|
| In the end, it will always be a policymaker's job to draw the
| lines.
|
| What I would love to enshrine in a constitution is that
| "People shall choose policymakers wisely.". But I'm not sure
| of how to enforce that :/
| dannyw wrote:
| I think the 4th amendment did a good job and is quite
| specific. The courts rewrote it judicially.
|
| > The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
| houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable
| searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
| Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by
| Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
| to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
| waterheater wrote:
| The Fourth Amendment protects the physical, yet other
| amendments also address privacy in different ways. The
| First Amendment protects the mind and arguably one's
| spirit, the Third Amendment is a specific type of
| physical protection, the Fifth Amendment also protects
| the mind, the Ninth Amendment protects the existence of
| privacy, and the Tenth Amendment lets states implement
| greater privacy protections as they see fit.
|
| Given privacy is fundamentally related to the expression
| of free will, it's not surprising so much touches it.
| smolder wrote:
| > The Fourth Amendment protects the physical,
|
| That's a narrow reading of it. "Papers and effects" ought
| to extend to our data as well, something the authors
| could not have called out more explicitly at the time of
| its writing. Call it inconvenient or impractical,
| whatever, but it's ridiculous to conclude their intent
| was that government can spy on presumed innocents as long
| as they don't make a physical mess.
|
| I think third party doctrine is also a pile of crap...
| and that data brokers shouldn't have a square inch of
| legal ground to stand on. GDPR sets a good example in
| that regard.
| waterheater wrote:
| I completely agree, and computing has flipped the table
| on our understanding of the Fourth Amendment. In fact,
| our technological development and privacy concerns are
| proportional, which says something quite profound. Are
| you familiar with Kyllo v. United States and Carpenter v.
| United States? If not, you'll probably find them
| intriguing.
|
| Third-party doctrine is indeed a pile of crap. Still, the
| fact remains that zero-cost (okay, effectively zero-cost)
| digital information breaks virtually all historical
| ownership models which legal systems protect. GDPR is
| okay, but compliance with it is so burdensome to small
| businesses that corporate-driven cloud infrastructure is
| the only way to survive.
| smolder wrote:
| I'll look into those cases, thanks!
| wuiheerfoj wrote:
| While I agree it does a good job, 'unreasonable' is a
| term that's up to the implementer
| eigenket wrote:
| It essentially is. The right to privacy is part of the
| Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is
| enshrined into law as part of the Treaty of Lisbon.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Yes, the Treaty of Lisbon plus the Charter act as the de-
| facto EU constitution.
| varispeed wrote:
| It should be illegal to even propose this and it should be
| equalled to hate crime.
|
| People who think this is okay, to the point that they want to
| enact this in law should be cast out of the society.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| It seems dangerous to make proposing laws in a parliament
| illegal, don't you think? Anything should go in a
| parliament. I'm also not sure hate speech could be illegal
| when a member of parliament speaks in parliament, typically
| parliamentary debate is more widely protected.
| chopin wrote:
| My favorite solution: Those who vote for legislation
| found to be anti constitutional by the respective courts
| lose their passive voting rights and must leave
| Parliament immediately.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| No rights enshrined in a constitution is guaranteed or
| respected, anywhere in the world. First, in come countries
| legislation breaching constitutional rights appear all the
| time and the burden is on the people to fight that
| legislation that is presumed valid. Second, people believe
| that some rights are no longer aligned with the modern times
| (see USA second amendment) and are willing to remove it.
| Third, constitutional rights that are not completely removed
| are brutally "regulated", with the same effect, and most
| people agree with that or actively support it.
|
| In summary, there are no rights that are guaranteed even if
| they are in a constitution.
| mhitza wrote:
| Per the article
|
| > At the same time, we are still far from the end of the
| legislative process. This means that we must stay alert to how
| the other two law-making institutions - the Council of EU
| Member States and the European Commission - respond
|
| To be able to fight these ludicrous attempts at privacy, we
| must put a spotlight on those behind these proposals
| (lobbyists). Coincidence or not, it wasn't transparent, but at
| least some journalists investigated
| https://privatecitizen.press/episode/160/
| Angostura wrote:
| The Parliament is very much the junior member compared with
| the Council and Commission
| toyg wrote:
| It still has ultimate veto powers.
| Angostura wrote:
| I've been unable to find an instance of the European
| Parliament vetoing legislation
| toyg wrote:
| Plenty. Some recent examples:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/european-parliament-
| scr...
|
| https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/13274/20
|
| https://www.thejournal.ie/emissions-trade-system-fit-
| for-55-...
|
| (Somewhat unsurprisingly, being currently dominated by
| right-wing parties, it happens often on "green"
| legislation...)
|
| It doesn't happen every day simply because 1) MEPs
| typically don't want to be seen as "Mr. No", and 2)
| plenary votes are the end of a long legislative process,
| involving several steps; the Commission will typically
| not bring legislation to the floor if it understands, in
| previous committees, that it will likely be voted down.
|
| The process is roughly this: EU Council (i.e. national
| governments) agree that "we should really do something
| about X"; the Commission drafts legislation to that
| effect, and brings it to Parliamentary committees; MEPs
| provide feedback and instructions on how to change
| things; Commission decides if the changes are acceptable,
| and if not they go back to Council asking "is this still
| ok if we do it in XY way?"; and back and forth they go,
| until the Commission decides to either withdraw it or put
| it to a plenary vote (in which case it's typically in a
| shape acceptable to Parliament, because nobody likes
| losing).
| Angostura wrote:
| But if you look at the first case, for example that was a
| rejection a first reading - not a definitive killing off.
|
| It's not quite clear what happens next - the Council of
| ministers may apparently decide to continue working on
| the legislation regardless of the Parliament's vote.
|
| In other words - it is not evidence of an "ultimate veto
| power"
| tormeh wrote:
| They can continue to work on it, but without the
| parliament's approval it cannot become law.
| toyg wrote:
| Council and Commission can work on whatever they want -
| if it's not ultimately approved by an EP plenary, it's
| not a Directive. Occasionally some governments will go
| ahead and introduce laws that they tried and failed to go
| past the EP, but that's just national politics in action.
| soco wrote:
| The entire irony of this is that all rightwingers are
| winning local elections by blaming the EU for wokeism,
| while they do have majority in all the EU organizations
| so whatever gets through against their tastes it's only
| through their own failures. But who cares about the
| truth, if the truth doesn't get you votes at home. It's
| just so disappointing that the regular Joe Voter, even
| though very loud about "doing their own research", never
| actually DO their own research, just swallow whatever
| they're told in their bubble.
| agent327 wrote:
| Here's an overview of the political composition of the
| European Parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
| an_Parliament#Elections
|
| How do you reckon it is "dominated by right-wing
| parties"? Those parties make up about 20% of the
| parliament, whereas left-wing parties make up some 35%
| (with the rest being centrists and 'other').
| toyg wrote:
| I guess your definition of "right-wing" is a bit
| different from mine. "Centrists" in post-WW2 Europe are
| largely conservative: fundamentally religious, pro-
| business, anti-immigration. That, to me, is right-wing -
| respectable, not touting nazi tattoos (mostly), but still
| fundamentally reactionary in nature. Those blocs are
| usually allied with "liberal" parties, a term which in
| Europe carries right-wing connotations because
| "liberalism" is meant in the original economic sense:
| free-trade, unbridled capitalism, etc. Occasionally they
| ally even with ultra-right parties, which often include
| real neofascist / neonazis.
|
| If you consider them like that, traditionally-
| conservative parties account for over 65% of current
| MEPs.
| agent327 wrote:
| Predictably, someone comes along to argue that anyone who
| is not fully in the left must therefore be right-wing.
| Don't you see that the word 'centrist' indicates people
| who are in the center, and therefore by definition not
| right-wing?
|
| Oh, and that 'mostly'? Take it down a notch. There are no
| actual nazis in the European Parliament.
| toyg wrote:
| Neonazi maybe not (yet), but neofascists for sure: https:
| //www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23248823.2023.22...
|
| The "centrism" framing, btw, is fundamentally useless. In
| postwar Europe, PSE parties are left-wing and PPE parties
| are right-wing; other parties are fundamentally defined
| by their primary relationship with one of these two. The
| "centrism" mantra is reactionary twaddle to justify one's
| ideological vacuum.
| nvoeiah wrote:
| If only EPP parties were really right-wing. I say this as
| an actual conservative. EPP parties generally are "our
| position is whatever the left espoused ten years ago".
| Which is, basically, a very progressive position.
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| "Centrists" are right wing in European politics.
| orwin wrote:
| EPP is a right-wing party. Its basically a mix of
| christian democrats (basically catholics), conservative
| (Les Republicains, amny others) and some liberals-
| conservatives (pro free-trade, anti union, pro-
| immigration if it makes labor cheaper, but also really
| conservative on according right to those migrants). It is
| also pro EU, in a weird way (Forza Italia is a member).
|
| ALDE-PACE is basically Emmanuel Macron's party, so more
| socially liberal, and by that i mean he does accept that
| gay people do exist and can do whatever they want, if
| they want (the bar is low). They also are very pro-
| immigration in sectors that boost economies, but accept
| that immigrant workers can have equal rights. Extremely
| pro-Europe. I'd call them right-wing, but to be fair,
| only its leader is, most party members are pretty much
| center, center-right (they would be liberal-democrat in
| the US), and they push a lot of the legislation the
| greens want to pass, for multiple reasons (the green are
| seen as an "acceptable compromise", citing an EPP member
| i ate with).
|
| I would not call the current Green left-wing either, its
| a torn party. I guess after the Covid and last summer,
| the wars and the resulting immigration, a lot of young
| people joined, and politically active young people are
| more left-wing, but the leaders are more center, center-
| left. But they hold major power on the left and can work
| with the other center party, and sometimes even the EPP.
| They are also on point (and have/propose good formations)
| with privacy and civil liberties, which might seems left-
| wing if you're in the US, but to me it's basically to
| political proposition of the old french party "les
| radicaux" which was so much in the center they split in
| two 30 years ago).
| jltsiren wrote:
| You have a weird definition of left and right.
|
| If you think that Social democrats (S&D; center-left) are
| "left", then Christian democrats and conservatives (EPP;
| center-right) are "right". Those two are the traditional
| mainstream left-wing and right-wing groups in Europe.
| With these, we have 141 seats for the left and 178 seats
| for the right.
|
| Then we have more radical parties with a clear position
| on the left-right axis. The inconveniently named The Left
| in the European Parliament have 37 seats, while their
| right-wing counterparts are ECR (66 seats) and ID (60
| seats). This brings the total to 178 seats for the left
| and 304 seats for the right.
|
| There are also two centrist-groups: Greens/EFA (72 seats)
| and ALDE (102 seats). The former is a weird amalgamation
| of greens, regional parties, independents, and pirates
| ranging from left to center. The latter consists of
| center to center-right parties that usually have some
| connection to the liberal tradition. But in some cases,
| the party in ALDE is more conservative and less liberal
| than their national counterpart in EPP. If we include
| these centrist groups in the calculations, the balance
| shifts further to the right.
|
| Finally there are 49 MEPs outside the major parties,
| bringing the total to 705.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Once i read an analysis comparing EP legislative action
| to action of national parliaments and it said that EP has
| much higher rate of rejecting legislation.
|
| It makes sense - in parliamentary democracy, the
| coalition in government has majority in parliament and
| government members are often party leaders (or other
| important people in parties), so legislature could be
| pushed through parliament by party lines.
|
| In EP there is much weaker connection between government
| (EU Commission) and EP, which makes EP more independent.
| xvector wrote:
| Finally, some good name and shame. I hope someone well-funded
| exposes these people for who they are and turns public
| opinion against them en masse.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Also, while the most egregious part might be cancelled, these
| type of bills often still bring along their slightly less
| bad, but still fairly ugly brothers.
|
| So private message scanning is off the table, we now just
| save meta data and build a communication graph for every
| citizen for the last 10 years.
|
| No idea if this bill includes such laws, but that is usually
| the strategy to get people distracted.
| jstarfish wrote:
| It's the sucker-punch of legal maneuvers.
| miohtama wrote:
| The engineers behind the scan laws
|
| https://twitter.com/echo_pbreyer/status/1721558597769818496
|
| Inc. people from Google. Deserve to called out.
|
| The shady politics and the corruptive US software companies
| that pushed for this:
|
| https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-
| the...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I didn't check all of the people but picked 2 names at
| random and they were policy people not engineers.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Your first link is a set of experts that the EU Commission
| consulted while developing their regulations. It does not
| mean those folks were necessarily "behind" the regulations,
| so I would not call out anyone on that list.
|
| Some of the folks on that list are certainly pro-scanning:
| it's an absurdly biased list. But to me that's reflective
| of the EU Commission having a desired policy from the
| start, then mainly seeking out experts who could help them
| achieve their goal.
| ratg13 wrote:
| The mechanisms are in place .. literally nobody was paying
| attention.
|
| They spent millions on campaigns advertising this stuff and
| asking for feedback only to get <100 views on youtube videos
| about the subject.
|
| They need to start working together with higher education
| institutions or something rather than just hoping that people
| will take an active interest, instead of everyone going about
| their lives and only finding out when the laws are being
| ratified.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Absolutely this. They just keep trying, one angle or another.
| They'll be back for another try in a year or three, with new
| arguments, and having purchased a few more politicians. In the
| worst case, they'll do something like the USA: institute secret
| programs that do whatever the heck they want, with no
| oversight.
|
| Part of the problem is that there are no negative consequences.
| Again, look at the US: Snowden reveals massive, illegal
| surveillance. Consequences to politicians and government
| officials: zero.
| g-b-r wrote:
| Forbid politicians to lie to and deceive the public, that's it.
| * Suddenly democracy works.
|
| * (except about personal matters)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Forbid politicians to lie to and deceive the public, that's
| it.
|
| Forbidding something is never "it". People do prohibited
| things all the time.
|
| "Prohibit" is not "magically prevent".
| g-b-r wrote:
| Of course forbid with very strong penalties and no statute
| of limitations...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| By whom are laws enforced, and by whom are those people
| appointed and to whom do they answer?
|
| Or, to take another angle, why don't the prohibitions in
| FISA effectively stop the government from abusing foreign
| intelligence apparatus for domestic spying?
| g-b-r wrote:
| Because the US are messed up on so many levels.
|
| Of course the judicial, legislative and executive
| branches should be independent and they're not that much
| right now.
|
| In any case, even in such a system the proposal might
| have more positive than negative effects, and maybe lead
| to gradual improvements to everything else.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Or it might make things even worse. After all,the FISA
| court system itself was created in response to abuses by
| the CIA and FBI (and others) as a way to check their
| power. Instead, it became a (secret and opaque) rubber
| stamp that approves over 99% of all warrant applications.
| g-b-r wrote:
| To be clear this would not prevent _every_ instance of
| lying, but the current state is in most cases manifest
| shameless lying or deceits that surface some years later,
| so it would be a stratospheric improvement, in my opinion.
| augustulus wrote:
| besides the fact that you're essentially running on a
| platform of "make crime illegal", you run into the obvious
| problem of who decides what a lie is? who decides whether a
| lie has taken place?
| g-b-r wrote:
| Lying is currently usually _protected_ for politicians, not
| illegal.
|
| Lies are obvious in most cases, and I think there are
| established judicial systems to assess if a crime has been
| committed or not...
|
| Of course investigations and indictments have to occur only
| with sufficient elements to suspect a malfeasance, we're
| not arguing for wiring politicians to mind readers
| freedomben wrote:
| Yep, the standard playbook on this stuff is to table it for 6
| months, at which point you reintroduce. Repeat ad infinitum
| until it passes. If at any point there's a crisis that can be
| used, reintroduce immediately.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| As shown by recent wiretappings, politicians have the most to
| lose if they give their chat logs away to a smaller, unelected
| group of people. It's a sure way of losing their power and
| becoming a puppet.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| Unless they team up of course
| almostnormal wrote:
| > As shown by recent wiretappings, politicians have the most to
| lose if they give their chat logs away to a smaller, unelected
| group of people.
|
| Surely the creators of the policy will not forget to exclude
| themselves from being affected.
| logicchains wrote:
| >It's a sure way of losing their power and becoming a puppet
|
| They're already blackmailed puppets to the spy agencies, that's
| why they keep pushing this stuff. There's a reason none of the
| people Epstein was accused of trafficking young girls to went
| to jail.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| That's half the battle.
|
| Now the real fight begins. We need every message sent or received
| by the politicians who supported this absurd proposal to be
| public record. The public's need to stop abuses of power
| outweighs privacy rights they do not value.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| Awesome day for privacy ! They'll try again with another name in
| three months and it'll pass tho
| Roark66 wrote:
| And that exactly is why we absolutely have to keep the veto power
| of member states in the EU. The only reason why they backed down
| is because few countries said "there is no chance in hell we're
| agreeing to this". If we were making laws based on simple
| majority few biggest countries plus a couple others forced/bought
| into submission could override everyone else.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Are you saying you think the EP voted to reject the mass
| scanning provisions because a member state promised to vote
| this?
| sofixa wrote:
| Not simple, but qualified majority, would be better than a
| single country being able to stop any process. The Polish
| Lithuanian Commonwealth learned this the hard way, where every
| Sejm member could veto any legislation, so the country
| stagnated until it was picked apart by neighbourds.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| There is no such thing as mass scanning. Because the cost of
| scaling anything digital is almost 0, every ability to break
| encryption or scan is mass by nature.
| tavavex wrote:
| No one would need to control every single bit that passes
| through the internet. The governments would just need to force
| most major social media and chat platforms to let them get a
| peek at user data, and that'd be more than enough to get
| information on most people.
| cabirum wrote:
| In some sense, a constant pressure from the lawmakers to
| compromise privacy is vital for encryption to evolve.
|
| No law should be able to break into private messages, and so I
| think CSAR should be passed, because as a consequence, new
| encryption schemes would be developed to counter it.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I think you don't understand what encryption is.
| dsnr wrote:
| For now. See you at the next attempt.
| yttribium wrote:
| EU governance structure is set up so that a EU parliament
| resolution has basically the status of a People's Choice Award.
| metalrain wrote:
| I mean, even if messages are encrypted in the wire, surely most
| platform holders will comply to law enforcement requests.
| Exposing your messages from databases, logs, analytics,
| installing keyloggers..
|
| Most of people use smartphones and there isn't secure smartphone
| platform. Even on PC, all you can do is to hope nothing in the
| chain leaks your messages.
| superjan wrote:
| I regret that the discussion about message encryption is so black
| and white. Encryption is being used to evade prosecution for
| crimes such revenge porn, CSAM and criminal conspiracy. For one,
| I would not mind if encryption was forbidden for group chats
| bigger than 10 people, or that large groups are forbidden to
| share encrypted images.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Would that put a stop to these types of criminal activity? (No)
| anthk wrote:
| They would just set groups of 5 people creating rings with
| token connected to outside networks. Did it solve anything as
| you said? No. On encryption, with base64 and rotations over
| text you get nonsense and still plain text.
| tavavex wrote:
| How's that justifiable in any way but "I feel like it'd be
| nice"? Like, what's the logical process that dictates that
| being in a group of more than specifically 10 people in likely
| to cause illegal activity? Why can I talk privately with 9
| people, but not 10?
|
| My point is that all this legislation is pushed as anti-
| criminal because it's the best spotlight to put mass data
| surveillance under. In reality, the powers that governments
| will reap from this ability stretch much further. Would you be
| okay with the exact same measures in real life? Should large
| gatherings of people require everyone to wear a wiretap, lest
| they conspire to commit something illegal? Should we mandate
| inspection of every postal package, just in case there are
| drugs or other illegal contents?
| anthk wrote:
| Then make everyone group >10 people go outside nude to any
| event/concert, just to be sure.
| spurgu wrote:
| Once you have it in place there's suddenly a good argument for
| "if 10, why not 9?" -> "if 9, why not 8?" etc etc. --> 5. --->
| 2.
| techwizrd wrote:
| I think the public outcry made this outcome inevitable, and this
| is good to see!
| nurple wrote:
| Mass surveillance is, like most absolute power, cancer of the
| soul. I have read your email, and your IMs; I know first-hand how
| it corrupts a person. I can, without hesitation, guarantee that
| the situation is like that in the movie Elysium[0]: "They will
| hunt you to the edge of the earth for this [capability]."
|
| The most salient point, I think, is that it is worthless, from a
| LEO perspective, to tap into communication systems used by the
| masses--whether through provider taps or client-side scanning
| like Apple's purported CSAM AI--unless what you're really after
| is a way to monitor the general public at large.
|
| There's no way in hell that a nefarious player with technical
| resources, or chops themselves, would use one of these public
| systems to communicate with their compatriots. There are infinite
| and myriad bespoke channels of covert communications that these
| laws would never be able to touch which are much more likely to
| be the hubs of serious malfeasance.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/qUQQerrs52w?t=54
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Here in Norway we (unfortunately) passed a law which allows our
| intelligence service to read all meta-data of traffic which
| crosses our borders.
|
| Which makes no fucking sense, as pretty much all data crosses
| borders now. When you use facebook/twitter/tiktok/gmail/whatever,
| you have zero knowledge what (geolocation) server instance the
| owners of those products are using.
|
| And even if one service uses one "local" (as in within borders)
| server, many of the others could very well not.
|
| This is of course in the name of fighting terrorism, which makes
| up for such a small percentage of all data traffic, that it might
| as well be ZERO.
|
| Terrorism and CP, the two things that will usher in lots of
| overreaching laws.
| goalonetwo wrote:
| That's why we need to continue developing apps that are
| cryptographically open and secure.
|
| Then it doesn't matter what the government wants, they will have
| simply no ways to read my texts.
|
| The issue is that only the technically and privacy savy will be
| able to continue to encrypt their message. The masses will
| happily comply and continue using facebook messenger/whatsapp or
| whatever new bigtech "cool app of the day" full of backdoor.
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