[HN Gopher] Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 a...
___________________________________________________________________
Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now
undecided
Author : nickslaughter02
Score : 284 points
Date : 2025-07-31 11:54 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (digitalcourage.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (digitalcourage.social)
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| Full post:
|
| Leak: Many countries that said NO to #ChatControl in 2024 are now
| undecided--even though the 2025 plan is even more extreme!
|
| The vote is THIS October.
|
| Tell your government to #StopChatControl!
|
| Act now: https://chatcontrol.eu
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| That website is pretty bad. Don't say "act now" with a link
| when the link has no concrete actions listed.
|
| "Ask your government not to do that" means absolutely nothing.
|
| There should be a list of what people should do step by step
| based on their country.
| neilv wrote:
| This link is full of the usual self-promoting priorities of
| politicians, and the modern "influencers" who mimic them.
|
| 1. Redirects to someone's personal-name Web site.
|
| 2. The top heading on the page is their personal name and
| what seems to be personal logo.
|
| 3. Immediately below that logo the navbar entry for "ABOUT ME
| / CONTACT".
|
| 4. The last entry in the navbar is "GET INVOLVED", and the
| first entry of that menu is "Follow Me".
|
| 5. The first entry in the navbar is "WELCOME" and redirects
| to a page with a huge photo of him, followed by a heading
| that starts "Patrick Breyer - Digital freedom fighter and
| former Member of European Parliament for the German and the
| European Pirate Party" subheading "Europe's voice of privacy
| and the free Internet".
|
| 6. Then the page below all this has some information.
|
| I think this is one reason that positive revolutions can't
| happen anymore: the potential leaders/actors see no non-
| corrupt role models for how to operate. It's a very fuzzy
| line between self-promotion in service of the mission
| somehow, and self-promotion in service of power/influence for
| its own sake.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| In a representative democracy there is nothing nefarious
| about a representative presenting himself as a person who
| would stand for certain policies.
| neilv wrote:
| This is purporting to be an issue thing (see the link).
| But it can't help be a personal brand thing.
|
| I'm using this as an example of a problem with modern
| activism. Everyone wants to do their videos of themselves
| posturing like influencers, and building their brand, and
| the issue looks like a vehicle.
| Gud wrote:
| On the other hand, Patrick Beyer is doing more for internet
| freedom than any other person I know.
|
| Who else is fighting chat control and informing the
| population as well?
| normalaccess wrote:
| With the way the world is I wouldn't be suppressed if it's
| been infiltrated and is controlled opposition designed to
| fail.
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| Leaked record of a meeting on 11/07/2025:
|
| Original:
|
| https://netzpolitik.org/2025/internes-protokoll-eu-juristen-...
|
| Translated to English:
|
| https://netzpolitik-org.translate.goog/2025/internes-protoko...
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| I am Danish and I fucking hate my government for this.
| Nationally, the minister of justice Peter Hummelgaard is also
| pushing for a law which gives the police intelligence agency
| (PET) the right to basically do mass surveillance of everyone
| without prior suspicion of any criminal activity. If passed,
| they will be allowed to build a database of everyone which
| correlates social media activity with health care data and any
| other data collected via surveillance. This will be a machine
| for automatically generating suspects.
|
| Peter Hummelgaard basically says yes to every new tool that the
| police asks for. He also is a staunch advocate of increasing
| punishment for every type of crime that happens to catch his
| attention, even in a time where our prison system is in
| shambles and has way too many inmates. A true authoritarian.
| anthk wrote:
| Public Unix server will get a Reissanance. Tons of folks will
| learn to live under small Nix account to chat privately under
| remote Tox accounts or over I2PD. This will only boost up
| populace's knowledge.
|
| Kinda like in Spain tons of people learnt to either burn
| cards with microcontrollers in order to pirate TV top boxes
| or run Nagra and satellite decoders with keys dumped fron
| sketchy sites to be read with Kaffeine. And, often, it was
| more fun to decode the signal than to watch the actual TV
| schedule.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| These things won't magically boost populace's knowledge.
| People are born every day and they don't know anything.
| Each year the burden of things you need to know to be an
| adult increases. The populationbon general will not get
| hands on with something optional.
| anthk wrote:
| Give the Southern Europeans ways to watch 'free soccer'
| for people over 40's and you'll find tons of people would
| have been good technicians if they had some motivation to
| build complex tools.
| delusional wrote:
| > This will be a machine for automatically generating
| suspects.
|
| According to proponents, this is untrue. The intent of that
| database is that looking into it will still require a
| warrent, and will thusly require the suspect to already have
| been identified.
|
| I'm no expert, but that sounds reasonably similar to how we
| treat other investigative means.
| mrtksn wrote:
| How do you prevent a misuse or switching to "let's just
| start looking into this without warrant until this popular
| issue(i.e. immigrants, USA, Russia, religios tensions,
| ethnic tensions) is solved" when the next political crisis
| hits?
| rockskon wrote:
| There is no reason to believe it wouldn't eventually be
| used to generate leads as opposed to needing a warrant to
| sift through.
| crinkly wrote:
| Once you have collected the data it won't be uncollected,
| to paraphrase Pink Floyd, when the right one walks out of
| the door.
| fn-mote wrote:
| See recent article [1] about a municipality (?) violating
| its own law and state law to share surveillance data
| (license plates) with almost 300 agencies.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44747091
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| At the same time, proponents have said that the whole idea
| of the database is to detect people with suspicious
| behavior.
|
| Also, this is still nothing like getting a warrant to a
| wire tap - any suspicion will reveal YEARS of private
| information about you to the investigators. Furthermore,
| knowing that this can be used to identify suspects, surely
| it will have an effect on peoples behaviors.
|
| They propose to include health records! What if you like to
| read about bomb making out of curiosity, have a relative
| who is in jail for violence, and you start seeing a
| psychiatrist? How many boxes have to be ticked before a
| flag is raised, and how is that going to affect what you
| tell the psychiatrist about how you really feel?
|
| I also don't trust the police to not make mistakes or
| behave unethically enough to be comfortable with this.
| Denmark is not a very corrupt country, but we still see
| misuse of power. Just recently it was revealed how a police
| handler explicitly instructed an informant to lie in court
| and frame someone else, just so the handler could keep his
| source. Are these the kind of people who should have access
| to my search history and health data? No fucking thanks.
| mrtksn wrote:
| What is the motivation behind this? Do you have some issue
| that in Denmark its deemed solvable only through that? Can
| you provide some context maybe? Is it like cultural thing?
| zo1 wrote:
| I think that's a great idea. I for one want to enable our
| governments to track down criminals and punish them for it.
| If they're not doing everything they can do so in this
| technological and digital age, then they are breaking their
| part of that pesky "social contract" I am being upheld to.
|
| And to people like you that oppose this and propose even more
| _authoritarian_ laws that prevent me as a citizen from
| protecting myself: You don 't speak for all of us.
| mrtksn wrote:
| What do you plan to do when definitions of crime start
| getting fuzzy? Crime is not just petty crimes where it's a
| clear cut to tell if someone did something bad in
| definitive terms.
|
| Other crime types exist that are crime only within a
| structure. The crime of sharing copyrighted files is a
| crime within a framework of intellectual rights but then
| training AI on the same files and and producing alternative
| files bypassing the IP is not a crime. Then you get into
| political crimes, i.e. it can be a crime to deny the
| Armenian genocide, denying the Jewish genicide and
| protesting against the extermination of the Palestinians at
| this very moment. It can be crime to hide from the US
| embassy that you are not completely in support of
| extermination of Gaza people. Your government might cut a
| deal to save Greenland from US invasion that makes certain
| things a crime that the current US administration doesn't
| like.
|
| This all can change as politics evolves. Do you intend to
| support whatever the current position the current
| government has?
| mystraline wrote:
| Crime has ALWAYS been political in nature.
|
| I steal $100 from the cash register. Cameras are pulled,
| and I'm arrested and charged criminally.
|
| Company edits timecards and steals $100 from me. Its
| instead a civil matter, and maybe I might get paid back.
| Then again, probably not.
|
| Person shoots and kills a home invader. Murder trial
| ensues, and they spend piles of money to defend
| themselves.
|
| Cops shoot and kill person (likely black). They get away
| with it with 2 week suspended-with-pay because 'I thought
| I saw a weapon'.
|
| Insider stock trading is illegal, unless you're congress.
| Then completely legal.
|
| Highway patrols (read: state sanctioned gangs) confiscate
| cash for no reason. You have to sue the cash and prove
| good intent. You usually lose.
|
| Illegal immigration: ICE goes to places including
| workplaces and arrests (in various legal issues) illegal
| immigrants for illegally holding a job. None of the
| managers or owners are ever charged with immigration
| fraud, identity theft, or similar laws.
|
| There are 2 types of laws in our system: for those in
| power, and for those who don't have power.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| You speak as if there is a perfect equivalence between
| morality and law, and that every action that can be done to
| increase the rate at which crimes are solved is a good
| thing. I think that is a bit simplistic and naive.
| Gud wrote:
| Do you see any drawbacks with giving our authorities total
| information about you me and everybody else?
|
| Perhaps potential for misuse?
|
| Because as I understand the world, the people who hold the
| most power are generally not the best people.
| chuckadams wrote:
| I wonder how much support it would have if it was called "Speech
| Control" instead. Probably still a depressing percentage...
| exasperaited wrote:
| It has been given the name "Chat Control" by its detractors,
| no?
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, it's real name is CSAR.
| consp wrote:
| The fact it's named after a know autocrat (squint your eyes
| to view the name) should give you enough to think about.
|
| Let's hope the opponents are from a small village of
| resistance and have some magic potion because it's going to
| be needed.
| thrance wrote:
| How much support does it have anyway? Outside of Parliament, I
| mean.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| ChatControl!--because Orwell was a rabble-rousing fool
| baal80spam wrote:
| Who would have thought?!
| scythe wrote:
| Is this an active "undecided" or a "we restarted the count so
| everyone is undecided again" situation? France flipped, but
| Macron is more geopolitically mercurial than the average world
| leader.
| thrance wrote:
| He's riding that right wing populism wave like everyone else.
| If the crazy brown authoritarians from the far right want this,
| then why not cave in? (I despise him).
| cocoto wrote:
| The far right in France doesn't want ChatControl. In fact I
| think only the soft left, middle and soft right want
| ChatControl (and it is not even a consensus for among these
| groups).
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| The left is pushing for it. The commissioner in charge of the
| 2024 version of Chat control is/was a communist. I don't mind
| critizing the far right when it is necessary but this push is
| not coming from them at all.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Aw, Jeez, not this shit again.
| Havoc wrote:
| Entire world seems to be making a pivot to surveillance state :(
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| China has shown the world the way and most countries likes it.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| No, people don't like this.
| jeltz wrote:
| Most ordinary people don't but they still vote for
| authoritarian politicians who like it.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Most politicians don't support explicitly such measures.
| This is a technocratic law, result of a weak consensus in
| the EU. You don't vote for your Homeland Secretary
| minister. EU PM don't usually campaign for such issues.
| This is a failure of representative democracy.
| sneak wrote:
| A lot of people feel they have nothing to hide and don't
| feel strongly one way or the other on privacy, but they do
| like feeling safe and secure from crime and "bad things".
|
| It's a dangerous and destructive worldview, because they
| benefit immensely from the small percentage of society that
| absolutely does need privacy.
| consp wrote:
| > A lot of people feel they have nothing to hide and
| don't feel strongly one way or the other on privacy
|
| People think that, but once you tell them they will lose
| their drivers license since they chatted to their spouse
| about bad eyesight they bark differently. Or shrug it off
| with "that will never happen to me" and you can start the
| "and then they came for the [next group], but I did
| nothing" line of talk.
|
| Everyone has something to hide, they might just not know
| yet what it is but they will when the option to hide it
| has gone away. There is a reason my country stopped
| recording religion since 1946 in the citizen records, it
| was fine to do so decades before.
| andrepd wrote:
| People don't but those with power (i.e. the people who
| matter) do.
| mcdonje wrote:
| lmao, like every other major power has been a bastion of free
| speech until China came up. McCarthyism, what? Politkovskaya,
| who?
| tavavex wrote:
| Censorship and killing people who were too "out of line"
| were staples of human civilization ever since we started
| figuring out governance. What's unique about China is that
| it was a pioneer in capturing this new technology and using
| it to their state's advantage. Never before in human
| history could you monitor all the things people said to one
| another, all the money that got exchanged, all data that's
| uploaded and downloaded, and have automation that ensures
| that everyone's information is looked at. The internet had
| become a tool of centralized control, China just was
| successful at realizing it first.
| LexiMax wrote:
| They seem to be missing a critical piece - for the horrors
| that China inflicted on its own population, it also become a
| preeminent world power and pulled millions out of poverty.
|
| What seems to be happening elsewhere is an organized robbery
| of state institutions by politicians and oligarchs, with
| oppression and censorship used to keep people from pointing
| out the obvious.
|
| Maybe they're not paying attention to the part of that cycle
| where they start falling out of windows.
| betaby wrote:
| > pulled millions out of poverty
|
| but firstly the policies of the very same party put
| millions into poverty and famine
| rockskon wrote:
| Becoming a preeminent world power was orthogonal to them
| instituting mass domestic surveillance, public humiliation,
| and selective ethnic cleansing.
| LexiMax wrote:
| I upvoted you because you bring up a good point and I
| want to make clear that I'm not excusing their horrendous
| behavior or trying to imply that the good necessarily
| requires or even outweighs the bad.
|
| I'm merely pointing out that at the very least, there was
| _some_ upside to go with the downside, at least for a
| while, and the upside was a planned outcome by its
| political leadership.
|
| I don't think it was always that way, and it's too soon
| to tell if its current leadership is similarly wise or
| just coasting off of past successes.
| rockskon wrote:
| I was saying their domestic mass surveillance is not
| directly tied to them becoming a preeminent world power.
| That their rise could've just as well happened without
| it.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| The entire world realized that now that the Internet has killed
| off all of the third places / IRL meetings, and social media
| killed off the decentralized Internet, it's quite easy to fully
| control the discourse around any topic, since only a few social
| media organizations effectively decide what everyone sees (even
| if you're independent, Social Media decides which ideas/content
| gets traffic).
|
| Question is, how do we get ourselves out of this tar pit?
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Question is, how do we get ourselves out of this tar pit?
|
| Simple:
|
| A Cypherpunk's Manifesto
|
| by Eric Hughes
|
| written 9 March 1993
|
| https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
| prophesi wrote:
| I don't think there are actionable items in that manifesto,
| and was written during the RSA munitions debate.
| atoav wrote:
| I'd argue the actionable things are already happening:
| Hackers and cryptographers creating technical solutions
| that defy governmental control, people trying to sway
| public opinion (or trying to get people to realize that
| being surveilled isn't just about their secret it is
| about a fundamental balance of powers between
| companies/governments and individuals).
|
| All of those things are pushed by people right now. Maybe
| the scale isn't right, maybe the effort needs you as
| well.
| kpcyrd wrote:
| The actionable items are "write code" and "build
| systems". The cypherpunk scene is still alive and
| evolving, but it's fairly niche, and a tough environment
| for people driven by external validation while 'things
| are well'. But there are still people around making sure
| the necessary pieces are in place in case they become
| necessary.
| prophesi wrote:
| The privacy-preserving systems have been built and are
| finally making it into the mainstream, only to be
| uprooted by politics. Not that we no longer need to build
| more of such systems, but the root of the issue lies
| elsewhere.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > The actionable items are "write code" and "build
| systems".
|
| Indeed. At the parent page of
| https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
| (https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/), you can read:
|
| "if you want to write code, go to OpenPrivacy.org":
|
| > https://www.openprivacy.org/
|
| This website perhaps gives you some inspirations.
| spencerflem wrote:
| My solice is that it's all temporary, as climate catastrophe
| will bring down whatever system they're building before too
| long
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| When will you nuts finally realize that the many headed
| hydra of capitalism regains 2 heads for every 1 you cut
| off?
|
| Boom-bust cycles, including environmental ones don't do
| anything to harm capitalism. Rather, they just make it
| stronger. AI systems have locked in existing power
| structures forever and guarantee that we will
| technologically advance fast enough to solve for or at
| least adapt to climate change.
|
| I'd argue that the whole climate movement for the last 20
| years stymed and significantly harmed the left as a result.
| The anti-nuclear and some anti-vax positions taken by parts
| of the green left in particular were anti-scientific and
| have cost that portion of the party the support of many
| scientist types.
|
| Scare porn about what will happen if you don't de-develop
| society and reduce your CO2 footprint just makes folks want
| to eat even more burgers. Same reason why the majority of
| non cyclists hate cyclists.
|
| It's the same thing when you show a ton of kids how a
| chicken nugget is made. They all go "eww" for a moment,
| then you ask them "who wants chicken nuggets?" and
| literally every hand goes up[1] . We want our slop. We
| don't care that it's slop, and these days, emotions of
| cruelty, subjugation, and schadenfreude are political
| dominant and in the zeitgeist.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/mKwL5G5HbGA?t=148
| spencerflem wrote:
| Anti vax is nutty, anti nuclear makes some sense if the
| goal is worldwide disarmament. I agree AI is an
| incredible boon for surveillance and censorship but I'm
| highly skeptical that it will solve climate change and
| currently seems to be making it worse by measurably
| increasing power usage. XAI is using diesel for theirs
| and the air quality in town is measurably worse now.
|
| I'm with you that cruelty and domination is winning right
| now, and that a sizable fraction of people are
| fundamentally evil and an even more sizable fraction
| basically don't care. I still eat meat and acknowledge
| that it's immoral to do so.
|
| Just think that whatever happens after climate
| catastrophe / the water wars will likely be worse but it
| feels natural that it will at least be a different type
| of worse. I don't see the global internet as being
| extremely relevant then.
|
| Idk, as an individual there's nothing much I can do and
| arguing here won't help anything so I guess agree to
| disagree.
| tavavex wrote:
| The scale you're talking about is total societal collapse,
| shutting down "the system" as it exists today requires
| nothing short of a worldwide apocalyptic event. It's not
| something I'd be hopeful about, especially since by the
| time it gets this bad, most people will already be dead. Or
| we might not even be old enough to see that happen, if
| we're lucky.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Was it really the internet that killed third places?
|
| Among all candidates, it seems the least likely here. It
| didn't even happen at the same speed the internet grew.
|
| (The issues with monopolized editorial powers are still
| valid, it's just this one that I think is wrong.)
| bondeau wrote:
| Say more?
| tavavex wrote:
| > Question is, how do we get ourselves out of this tar pit?
|
| I feel like it might be impossible. The people agree with the
| tar pit makers.
|
| Pass a mass surveillance law, 10% will be outraged, 80% will
| say "Well I don't have anything to hide. Oh well."
|
| Pass a censorship law targeting legal but
| unpopular/controversial material. 10% outraged, 80% say
| "Good, I never liked it anyway."
|
| Pass a preemptive policing law, 10% outraged, 80% claim "If
| it makes me safer, I like it. I'm not a criminal after all, I
| don't have anything to fear."
|
| Pass a law that codifies your nation's most popular religion
| as something to be promoted and enforced. 10% outraged, 80%
| cheer it on, because it agrees with their views.
|
| The 80% is illustrative here, but it seems like the people
| who agree with the above statements are a very solid and
| overwhelming majority. So why it did take us so much time to
| creep up to deliberate censorship and surveillance? As
| someone who was born in the 21st century, the freedom to
| access and do things on the internet had only ever been on
| the downhill, any small wins are overwritten by inevitable
| losses that make things more controlled, more 'safe'.
| Gud wrote:
| By increasing the level of democracy and decentralizing the
| government.
|
| Generally the more democratic a country is, the less hostile
| the government is against the people, from my observations.
|
| If you decentralise, any damage will be localised and would
| affect fewer people.
| maldonad0 wrote:
| And there is no non-violent solution
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I really don't get it. It's against the German constitution and
| yet there are still politicians pushing for that, again and
| again. We should make it mandatory that when something is clearly
| against the constitution you loose your job as a politician. It
| won't work anyway. It's the same spiel wasting so much money and
| time. Do we know which lobby group/party is pushing for that yet
| again?
| betaby wrote:
| > It's against the German constitution
|
| No one cares. Like anywhere in the world.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Just saying "It's unconstitutional" doesn't really cut it.
| It's a question for the courts to decide (based on the
| constitution).
| bee_rider wrote:
| A constitution is the basic big-picture law of the country.
| The court's interpretation should be easy to guess.
| Otherwise, the people won't feel like it is their document.
|
| Rule of law is aided by laws that people know how to
| follow.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| At least in America, a classic go to for Republican and
| democrats alike for opposing legislation is "that's
| unconstitutional!"
| bee_rider wrote:
| Sure, I'm from the US as well. In our case, I think this
| stems from multiple problems--the popular understanding
| of the constitution and the letter of the thing have
| diverged, and also the Supreme Court has gone in a third
| totally unrelated direction. So it becomes a convenient
| rhetorical meme. (IMO, we should the thing once a
| generation and have the populace re-ratify it with a high
| consensus, so we're all on the same page).
|
| I'm not sure if that's the case in Germany though.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| as the constitution doesn't have that high of a place in
| our identity it's more something for constitutional
| lawyers and higher courts. I think there's more tension
| between our constitutional law and that of the EU's law.
| for most people that's background noise I guess.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| They did already, multiple times now. Hence my original
| comment.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I think your comment was taken as "no one cares about
| Germany"/being snarky. But it can also be read as "those who
| should do not respect the constitution, like anywhere in the
| world". I assume the latter, am I correct?
| betaby wrote:
| 'Constitution' arguments are used by ones in power only to
| server their agenda. Constitution argument won't save us
| from the surveillance. Most of the time western countries
| play 'national security' and 'think of the children' to
| circumvent the constitution and have ~100% success rate.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I don't feel like that's true in Germany. The
| constitutional court would like a word I guess. They have
| a pretty big history regarding surveilance and such.
| betaby wrote:
| So shouldn't be a concern then for Germans? Somehow I
| don't buy that. See for example
| https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-artikel-5-e-v-
| anot... and that's not an isolated event. Before that
| were jabber chat nodes.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| So did they go to court? I think that would be crucial to
| rectify that. If not, they let the rogue agents have a
| free hand.
| betaby wrote:
| Be involved in the legal battle (especially with the
| government) is a punishment already. The state has
| unlimited power to haras and do that frequently.
| graemep wrote:
| Is it clearly against the constitution?
|
| What happens when the constitution clashes with EU law?
|
| Can the constitution be amended and is it likely if there is a
| clash with EU law on this issue?
|
| Enormous pressure can be brought to bear in politicians over
| something like this. The most prominent British politician to
| oppose the Online Safety Act in the UK is being labelled as
| "helping people like Jimmy Saville" by the government (Saville
| was a TV presenter and notorious child abuser) .
| dmesg wrote:
| It is against it and the law was revoked twice already by
| liberal politician SLS: 2nd March 2010 - 1 BvR 256/08 I don't
| like this rhetorical style were easy to prove facts are
| denounced with questions to evoke uncertainty.
|
| If you now say this is not applicable as this is about
| storing connection data you don't understand the issue in
| full: This is a deeper incision than just storing connection
| logs. This violates a more fundamental right. We are talking
| about chats here. Not what IPs you connected to at what time
| (and that law was canned as violating the entire
| constitution, which i cited with the state's decision above).
| There is no middleground here.
| graemep wrote:
| No, I am not arguing anything, I was just asking.
| dmesg wrote:
| Right sorry the topic is very exhausting and I
| extrapolated my frustration, assuming you are interested,
| it came back in 2015 and was canned again in 2019: https:
| //de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorratsdatenspeicherung_in_Deu...
|
| I am tired of Germany needing constant chemos because
| unconstitutional laws grow back. They pass faster into
| action, than you can excise them in Karlsruhe. The
| mechanism for Germany to self-heal is very very slow.
| This is an imbalance that makes it hard to fight such
| laws. They change a miniscule detail and it can pass a
| 3rd and 4th time.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| As I understand it, the pressure for a surveillance state
| comes from the EU, right? While Germany and countries in
| their cultural sphere like Austria are fundamentally
| opposed to that. If that's the case, it won't ever change
| unless the EU changes
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I'm afraid Germany ('s government) is not opposed at the
| moment and there is enough internal pressure as well. We
| had our fair share of moments getting surveilance like
| that and fighting it. I bet my ass off, that Ursula von
| der Leyen, the c... who tried to make it German law had
| her hands in that as well.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| If any other country should know better, you'd think it
| would be Germany. Ursula in particular married into a
| family which was both persecuted as Anabaptists and
| participated in persecution by being Holocaust enforcers,
| so how on Earth is she not aware of the slippery slope
| here?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| the UK essentially does not have a constitution nor any
| significant judicial authority over lawmaking
| arlort wrote:
| > What happens when the constitution clashes with EU law?
|
| Usually a standoff based on whether the EU was delegated
| authority on the topic. If the delegation happened then EU
| law has precedence but depending on the topic national
| constitutional courts might ignore that which becomes a
| constitutional crisis
|
| In this specific case it's much more likely that the ECJ
| shoots down the chat control part of the law before it gets
| to that anyway
| derelicta wrote:
| A constitution is just a piece of paper. The ruling class can
| discard it as they wish.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The current ruling class consists of people who did well in
| (somewhat, at least) transparent rule-of-law conditions. They
| can discard the laws if they want I guess, but they should
| take a lesson from Putin's Russia--they are rich now, but
| without laws some intelligence officer can chuck them out of
| windows until someone in their family tree is willing to pay
| up. (Not that they need to look to Russia for an example, it
| is just a recent one, their own history books are full of
| these guys).
|
| Actually, I think they are aware of that, which is why they
| keep trying to do the paperwork properly.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Time to move to self hosted messaging platforms or go back to GPG
| encrypted messages.
|
| And politicians complain that democracy is losing it's appeal!
| What's the difference between what the EU wants to do and what is
| being done in autocracies like China and Russia?
|
| Snooping on all messages and conversations, even the Stasi did
| not have this much power!
| supermatt wrote:
| It doesn't matter what you use. It is your device that will be
| doing the snooping - i.e. client-side scanning
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| The CSS in the proposal is implemented on an app level, like
| Whatsapp or Signal does the detection before sending the
| encrypted message, not at the OS level.
|
| If you use an app that connects to your own xmpp server,
| there will be no snopping.
|
| Same if you encrypt your message and post it in Whatsapp.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| I'm worried that as soon as this is implemented, someone
| will make a patched version of the signal client which
| doesn't do the scanning, and soon after all the affected
| apps will be forced by law to use remote attestation like
| Play Integrity.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Signal said that they will the EU market if push comes to
| shove, so there won't be a Signal client to patch because
| there won't be a Signal app.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| There will still be an APK which can be sideloaded, and
| you could continue to use it through a VPN.
| vaylian wrote:
| > Time to move to self hosted messaging platforms or go back to
| GPG encrypted messages.
|
| That works only if all your contacts are technically educated
| enough. It's more important to look for political solutions
| than technical workarounds. We need to protect the
| communication of everyone by preventing this law from passing.
| normalaccess wrote:
| Nothing can stop the ratchet like progress clamping down on
| information control. These policies have been war gammed by
| think tanks decades in advance. The enemy is vast and deep
| with the control of nearly every nation-state on earth.
|
| The overwhelming majority will be swept into a Neo-Dark Ages
| where truth is locked away and Dogma rules supreme. For a
| time the lockdown will be universal and complete but after
| the system is in place for a time I believe people will find
| a solution and break off the shackles.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > It's more important to look for political solutions than
| technical workarounds. We need to protect the communication
| of everyone by preventing this law from passing.
|
| More important, yes, but we still need the technical
| workarounds, and to educate people about them, for when
| preventing these laws ultimately fail. It's becoming crystal
| clear that "we the people" have no power anymore, and the way
| we can take some of that power back is by not participating
| in their laws - self hosting, use services outside of the
| jurisdictions where backdoors are mandatory, educating and
| helping others do the same.
|
| Make the internet a digital no man's land. Make alternative
| networks, stuff like Yggdrasil and meshtastic.
|
| When preventing the laws from passing fails, we still need to
| make it as difficult as possible to enforce.
| vaylian wrote:
| > More important, yes, but we still need the technical
| workarounds, and to educate people about them, for when
| preventing these laws ultimately fail.
|
| I agree. But for now, we still have a window of opportunity
| to stop the law on the political level.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| There is no political solution in sight when even the
| countries that have been subjugated to the the horrors of
| communism and the secret police have decided that this is
| good thing.
|
| If even these states agree that surveilling their entire
| population 24/7 after 50 years of communist rule is good then
| where do you see a political solution emerge from?
|
| You would think that Eastern European countries would have
| learned their lesson but no, it seems that we are just
| trading one surveillance state for another.
| McDyver wrote:
| They make it really difficult to fight any of this.
|
| You have to, individually - find a representative, their contact
| info, state your case, hope it's the correct person, hope your
| mail doesn't go unnoticed, hope that it will be properly read,
| hope it changes their mind.
|
| This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to
| fight organised lobbying.
|
| This is a barrier that puts lots of people off, even if they have
| strong feelings about it.
|
| I wish there was an easier way for people to say they are against
| this
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| One of the failings of most modern democracies is that if a
| measure doesn't pass, nothing prohibits it from being
| introduced again immediately. I've seen ballot initiatives
| simply get copy pasted onto each election by city council until
| they happen to pass.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| A well-funded institution will always outlast an individual
| or smaller organization in a war of attrition. I think a
| modern Constitution needs to consider 19-20th-century
| concepts such as game theory if it has any hope of preventing
| eventual corruption.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| The same game theory that could make a modern constitution
| so robust could also be used by the bad guys to thoroughly
| corrupt the drafting of any modern constitution you could
| get enacted.
| rolandog wrote:
| I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to
| prevent this type of attrition of democracy -- death by a
| thousand papercuts -- will be lead to catastrophic
| tipping points.
|
| As a ChemEng, I can't help but compare the current
| coordinated attack on the democratic rule of governments
| worldwide to having multiple batches of emulsions
| undergoing phase-inversion [0]: only so much fascism can
| be added before things collapse into a greasy turd.
|
| That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good
| nor something worth aspiring to. I would argue that the
| root cause of the sad state of democracies is the fact
| that we were coaxed into a snafu by virtue of accepting
| the false equivalence of capitalism and democracy: the
| first does not warrant the other; in fact they are most
| times at odds.
|
| I am also reminded of the Behind the Bastards podcast and
| their episodes on Adolf Eichmann's careerist pursuit
| enabling the Holocaust... leading me to wonder how many
| people are burning the world down as part of a KPI... Or,
| in other words, are our economic systems and forms of
| government vulnerable to the paperclip problem?
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_inversion_(chemi
| stry)#In...
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to
| prevent this type of attrition of democracy
|
| I'm not a fan of democracy. You wouldn't be either, if
| you thought about it for very long... you just can't help
| yourself, it was championed as some sort of virtue ever
| since you were old enough to realize that governments
| existed. From kindergarten or pre-k.
|
| The things you'd claim you like about democracy aren't
| even things that make it a democracy. The one (and only)
| criterion of democracy is "can you vote". And there are
| better ways to get all the other things than voting...
| voting/people do not scale. It is the undoing of
| democracy, people get what they deserve from it. Good and
| hard.
|
| >That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not
| good nor something worth aspiring to.
|
| It does not scale. You're aspiring to something that not
| only does not and cannot work, but you're trying to make
| it even bigger, true "the beatings will continue until
| morale improves" style. If I can figure out how to strike
| out on my own and be a million miles away from you when
| you rally for your most ambitious attempt yet, that's
| what I will do.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Defining something in the negative is always tricky. What
| are some better designs, or design principles?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Sortition. If no one can vote, then there can't be any of
| the chicanery that comes from that. Political parties
| couldn't exist, because a party can't help someone get
| elected. We no longer have the problem of the only people
| in office being those who _wanted_ to be in office enough
| to go to the trouble. No need for term limits (people are
| unlikely to win office twice, let alone more often).
|
| And yet it preserves everything you like about democracy.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I get the impression myself that no singular approach is
| perfect. They've all been tried and all have flaws. That
| and different functions of government might actually
| benefit from different methods.
|
| This is why most practical real world systems tend to be
| a hybrid of several different designs.
|
| Eg... the US constitution gives us Direct elections
| (congress) , indirect elections (president via electors,
| though that has been somewhat undermined), Sortition
| (juries), lifetime appointment (judges), appointment
| based on merit (civil service), and probably a few more
| that I've missed. One can even argue -if one would like
| to try- that separation of powers counts as anarchistic
| (certainly it is anti-archon).
| deaddodo wrote:
| Look at SOPA/PIPA. They simultaneously pushed the same bill
| through both chambers to try and guarantee it would pass.
| Grassroots efforts led to it being overwhelmingly blocked
| in both cases. And then they just slowly slipped most of
| it's provisions through other legislation over the years.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| That's what constitutional amendments are for, right? (or in
| this case ECHR updates)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Not really. There have been multiple times that California
| passed ballot initiatives that violated their own
| constitution.
|
| At the federal level in the US we have the annoying problem
| that effectively everything is interstate commerce.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Meanwhile, they make the dismantling of legislation near
| impossible. You have to go through the same process, but in
| inverse; and hope that miraculously the representatives in
| gov't become altruistic with a desire for less power.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The deck is stacked. They only have to win once, and it's
| law. You have to win over and over every time it's
| introduced.
| sneak wrote:
| Heinlein in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress proposed a
| bicameral legislature, where one half needs a 66% majority
| to pass a law. The other half's only job is to repeal laws,
| which they can do with a 50% majority.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This is a dumb and outrageously anti-democratic idea, and
| is a much worse cure than the disease it's attempting to
| fix. If 65% of the population supports a law it's favored
| by 30 points-- far higher than the margin of most
| elections-- and yet would not exist under this system.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There's nothing magical about 50%. The bar for "this
| policy should be inflicted on _everyone_ " should be very
| high--I'd argue much higher than 50%. At the same time,
| the bar for "we should stop inflicting this policy on
| everyone" should be extremely low. I'd argue a 1/3
| _minority_ should be enough to repeal a law. If one out
| of three people feel they are harmed by something, maybe
| the government shouldn 't be doing it.
| Arainach wrote:
| This doesn't work in practice. Look at how Senate
| Republicans have weaponized the filibuster in the last 20
| years. A 40% veto is conceptually similar to your repeal
| process and it results in gridlock and nothing getting
| done.
|
| It is harder to build than to destroy. If laws can be
| trivially repealed no one will be willing to commit to
| long term things. We're seeing that right now with the
| destruction of US soft power, economic power, and global
| leadership.
| nucleardog wrote:
| It's an interesting thought, but as presented that sounds
| fairly dysfunctional. If it takes 2/3 to pass and 1/3 to
| repeal, you may as well just say it takes 2/3+1 to pass,
| as otherwise anything passed can be, and likely will be,
| just immediately repealed.
| lupusreal wrote:
| At the end of that book, the protagonist explains that
| all the high minded Luna libertarian values broke down
| and were more or less abandoned in the years following
| their revolution, and they returned to more normal
| political processes.
| Bluestein wrote:
| It's analogous to information security.-
|
| PS. Maybe there's something there ...
| noqc wrote:
| This system would make a lot more sense if the number of
| people you had to get to agree to a bill with a bunch of
| riders was more than 50%.
| mc32 wrote:
| It'd be nice if bills were one item only and on failure or
| passage, there would be a timeout before it could be brought
| to vote again either to try to pass it again or to repeal it.
| Like at least a year. For some things maybe five years.
| afarah1 wrote:
| Same for any legislation piece.
|
| A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with
| $1M.
|
| Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 nor
| the time.
|
| And at the same time, very profitable for the 100 to spend
| hundreds of thousands and great effort lobbying for.
|
| It's just the power structure of any representative
| legislature.
|
| "In vain do we fly to the many"...
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| A possible countermeasure could be to make the life of
| politicians (which we will of course all name individually)
| who voted for such laws a hell on earth ...
| afarah1 wrote:
| Which is costly to do...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| How do you get to them to force them into submission? Did
| Americans get the child rapists off the Epstein list yet?
| And the unelected EU leader Ursula VDL has had private
| security since she was a child.
|
| They're untouchable by the plebs, they have zero
| accountability.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Other than shooting them? But they hire security... it's
| quite hard to hit them without hitting anyone else.
| squigz wrote:
| What does that mean, precisely?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Plato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history)
| and every justification in that book and every book citing it
| is trotted out to argue for how bad direct democracy is.
|
| Now we act like it's not good because Athens got its shit
| pushed in by Sparta during the Peloponnesian war.
|
| Direct democracy is good. One person one vote, on all
| legislation, actually could work. We haven't even tried at
| scale in thousands of years.
|
| It's telling that my boy Smedly Butler (ask your US marine
| friends who he is and they will recite his story perfectly or
| else their bootcamp will have smoked them for it) advocated
| for a military draft where the draft eligible are only drawn
| up from the list of folks who voted yes on the war.
| maldonad0 wrote:
| The average person (and more if younger) is illiterate
| these days and unfit to hold any position of significant
| power. Source: I work with them.
| Arainach wrote:
| It's impossible for people to know about every topic. That
| was true in Plato's day and is dramatically more true now.
| People defer to what someone on TV or Tiktok told them and
| have no time to look into facts or primary sources.
|
| Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound
| emotionally appealing but do not work. That or gridlock
| where you can't get 50% to agree on anything.
|
| If you ask people "do you want A, B, C, or D" a majority
| may well say to do each. If you only have budget for one,
| getting them to come to consensus is impossible at the
| scale of direct democracy.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I say only the patriarchal heads of households should get
| votes. Isn't that pretty much how Athens did it? No votes
| for slaves, women, anybody with mixed non-Athenian
| ancestry, no poors allowed to hold a political office...
|
| Anyway, I'm all for putting the sons of politicians on the
| front line, but don't think that will stop wars. The
| British Empire was infamous for putting nobleborn men
| directly in harms way, they would proudly stand up right in
| the thick of combat making themselves tempting targets and
| were routinely cut down. In a society with a strong martial
| tradition this doesn't turn people into peaceniks, if
| anything it gets people even more excited for wars.
| mrnotcrazy wrote:
| If you think the republic is one of the worst books in
| human history I would ask what makes a good book? When
| there are plenty of implementation issues for direct
| democracy it feels strange to blame Plato... Particularly
| when the world has benefited from the republic in so many
| ways.
| staunton wrote:
| Have you ever read the (full) text of any bill that has
| been passed during the last couple of decades? How about
| reading all of them?
|
| So are you proposing people vote on them without reading
| them? Or that we write very short bills aimed at a non-
| lawyer audience, effectively leaving most decisions up to
| the interpretation by courts? Or something else?
| cortesoft wrote:
| This is the case for so many things... it is why every
| attempt to make filling out your taxes in the United States
| fails completely.
| staunton wrote:
| What does it mean "to make filling out your taxes"??
| datameta wrote:
| The omission was likely in that the failure is in trying
| to make filing taxes simple.
| darkmighty wrote:
| On the other hand, a legislator is elected by a large number
| of people, so in theory he has incentives to act on their
| behalf. But I'm sure lobbying can tip the scales a lot.
|
| Maybe outright outlawing lobbying would help. Also, I think
| campaign donations and monetary influence should be extremely
| limited (to not make someone have too much influence *cough
| cough Elon Musk cough*), maybe to $100 or so. If lobbying is
| to be allowed, probably something like that should hold as
| well: each individual could give at most something like
| $100/yr to a special interest group, and those should be
| closely watched.
|
| From wiki:
|
| > Lobbying takes place at every level of government: federal,
| state, county, municipal, and local governments. In
| Washington, D.C., lobbyists usually target members of
| Congress, although there have been efforts to influence
| executive agency officials as well as Supreme Court
| appointees. Lobbying can have a strong influence on the
| political system; for example, a study in 2014 suggested that
| special interest lobbying enhanced the power of elite groups
| and was a factor shifting the nation's political structure
| toward an oligarchy in which average citizens have "little or
| no independent influence"
|
| Campaign donations, per this website:
|
| https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-
| committees/candidate...
|
| It seems individuals can total $132k "per account per year"
| (I assume there can be multiple accounts for different
| roles?). Even the $3500 per person per candidate per election
| seem a bit oversized to me.
|
| Of course, legislators also have an incentive to allow
| lobbying to make their lives easier and earn all sorts of
| benefits, further complicating things.
|
| It's really not clear to me lobby should exist at all. Like
| probably legislators could simply fund their own apparatus to
| understand the issues of their country/region in an equitable
| way.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Maybe outright outlawing lobbying would help.
|
| Outlaw communicating with legislators to try to get them to
| adopt a position on legislation?
|
| Or do you mean outlawing _paid_ lobbying on behalf of third
| parties?
|
| The first would obviously be deeply problematic even if it
| was possible to police, the latter would probably generally
| be ineffective however you managed to operationalize it.
| darkmighty wrote:
| > Outlaw communicating with legislators to try to get
| them to adopt a position on legislation?
|
| Of course not. Communicating with legislators isn't
| what's considered lobbying I guess (at least as far as I
| understand it). Lobbying as far as I understand (or
| rather, object) is when special interest groups (usually
| funded by large corporations) fund people to talk to
| legislators for them, including buying fancy dinners,
| "conferences" and stuff. Basically, the opposite of
| grassroots.
|
| See here:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/22/lobbyists-flout-
| eth...
|
| Calling/emailing your chosen congresspeople of course is
| totally fine by me, it's actually very healthy to do so
| if you have a legitimate concern.
|
| > the latter would probably generally be ineffective
| however you managed to operationalize it
|
| How would it be ineffective? I suppose it depends on
| oversight, but it should be fairly easy to prevent it
| seems.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > It's just the power structure of any representative
| legislature...
|
| ... Under capitalism.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The proposing side can be centralised and organised; the
| opposition diffuse and disorganised. Hence the continual growth
| of all forms of legislation.
| wyuenho wrote:
| The UK has a petition website. It logs the signatory by
| constituency. Once a threshold os signatory has cross, the
| government has to respond and parliament will have to consider
| a debate on the topic.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| And just because they respond, it doesn't actually mean
| anything will result from it.
|
| "No more something!" "We have seen your petition. Fuck off,
| peasants".
| crinkly wrote:
| This exists only to pacify people and make them think someone
| has listened to them.
| atoav wrote:
| There is a German Verein called digitalcourage who lobbies for
| this: https://digitalcourage.de/en
|
| You can toss some money to the European Digital Rights
| initiative (EDRi) as well: https://edri.org/
|
| All of those are doing good work in the digital rights space
|
| (Edit: there is probably more but those are the ones that came
| to mind)
| MPSFounder wrote:
| This, I believe, is the only issue with our form of gov. Lack
| of referendums. In the US, much of the current unpopular issues
| (Abortion ban, support for Israel's genocide using American
| taxpayer's taxes, lack of regulations on data harvesting) could
| be circumvented. I believe the optimal way to avoid these is 1)
| an educated populace and 2) referendums. The people who were
| given objective facts, free of propaganda and private
| interests, decide accordingly. If the majority believes in
| something, then we the people decide. Congress and the senate
| have been too bought up by private interests, that starts with
| campaigning (you receive x millions, from a lobby group (AIPAC
| for instance), and every legislation that affects their
| interests has to go through them). I dated a girl who was a
| lobbyist in DC, and relocated back home. It is unbelievable
| what goes on behind the scenes. Much of us do not recognize for
| instance the extent to which fossil fuels or car dealerships
| dictate how we live our lives. We may be aware of it, but there
| is a bureaucratic apparatus built in DC, at least 50x the size
| of congress, that strips We the people of power.
| sevensor wrote:
| > an educated populace
|
| Wherever someone attacks public education or free libraries,
| you know where they stand on government by the people.
| FabHK wrote:
| It's equally difficult to support it, no?
| miohtama wrote:
| The only way to stop it is to have positive rights written in
| law, like right to online privacy and privacy of
| communications.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| Historically, the window to enshrine broad positive rights
| like those is only briefly open in the wake of a revolution,
| civil war, or at best significant civil unrest. It's not a
| pleasant future to look forward to, we all have a lot of work
| to do!
| mystraline wrote:
| Yes, like the Soviet Union.
|
| Whereas the West has predominantly negative rights, the USSR
| had positive rights. And due to their campaign, even got the
| UN declaration of human rights to mostly include USSR's
| positive rights.
|
| https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/regional_perspectives_on.
| ..
|
| Part of USSR constition indicating positive rights: https://w
| ww.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02....
|
| Women and men have equal rights in the USSR.
|
| Citizens of the USSR of different races and nationalities
| have equal rights.
|
| Citizens of the USSR have the right to work (that is, to
| guaranteed employment and pay in accordance wit the quantity
| and quality of their work, and not below the state-
| established minimum), including the right to choose their
| trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with
| their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with
| due account of the needs of society.
|
| Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure.
|
| Now, that isn't to say the USSR was blameless. We know it
| wasn't. However, we can take their successes and failures in
| what we propose and build next. Negative and positive rights
| both are needed. But the West is allergic to those.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| While the idea is great I'm not convinced that the Soviet
| Union is the best example to demonstrate the concept. Yes
| they had a "right for leisure", unless the State decided
| that you were a slave and sent you in Siberia to knock hard
| rocks for the rest of your life. Or your "rest days" were
| in fact forced, unpaid labor (subbotnik), no different than
| their previous feudal serf system.
|
| Same for a "right to a house", where the State provided you
| with a filthy, overcrowded slum and call it a day.
| lupusreal wrote:
| _Article 35: Citizens of the People's Republic of China shall
| enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association,
| procession and demonstration._
|
| https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20.
| ..
|
| Constitutions are just paper. It doesn't matter how they're
| written if the guys with the guns don't care to respect it.
| pcrh wrote:
| On the other hand, elected politicians (senators, MPs, etc) are
| supposed to represent what the populus wants, else be ejected.
|
| So in theory, they should be paying as much heed to lobbyists
| as to their constituents.
|
| The question arises, then, as to why they do not. There's no
| ground swell of public opinion in favour of being continually
| monitored.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > The question arises, then, as to why they do not.
|
| There are huge bodies of research out there on voting
| behaviour. If you look at it, it's a lot less surprising.
|
| The means by which we're supposed to hold the elected
| officials accountable for not representing our best interests
| is voting. It doesn't work.
|
| Most people don't, as individuals, hold any sort of stable
| policy positions to begin with. People have a poor
| understanding of the candidates' position on various topics
| (strongly correlated with not having a stable policy position
| themselves). Candidates themselves have influence on people's
| view of subjects. People tend to take some of their views
| from the candidate they've decided to support, and project
| their own views onto the candidate in other cases making them
| seem more aligned/preferable.
|
| The entire model is basically set up assuming that:
|
| 1. People have a view on policy which they decided on.
|
| 2. People will understand the candidates' positions and vote
| for the ones most closely aligned with them.
|
| 3. If an elected representative does not follow through on
| their positions and views, the people will hold them
| accountable by voting them out of office.
|
| 4. Therefore, in aggregate and over the long term, the
| elected representatives represent and enact the will of the
| people.
|
| For the vast majority of issues in the vast majority of
| cases... one and two do not hold true to a level that's
| meaningful or significant.
|
| That means the third step falls apart. In practice, there's
| little accountability to the electorate for the elected
| representatives.
|
| Which means the fourth falls apart.
|
| Given the elected officials aren't really beholden to the
| electorate, what else would guide their position? On an
| individual basis, there are a lot of opportunities for wealth
| and power. Unless it's anything particularly egregious, the
| only real impediment to them taking advantage is their own
| personal ethics and morals. The kinds of people that want to
| put their life on hold to run a campaign so they can maybe
| take a shit job with mediocre pay where a bunch of people
| will be pissed at them no matter what they do... are
| unfortunately often not in for the mediocre pay and anger.
|
| And here we are. It's not whether there are enough people
| that support being continually monitored, it's about whether
| there's enough people and enough money _against_ it to stir
| up enough people to care to stop them. There's almost
| definitely not.
|
| And just to make it entirely hopeless--even if you are a
| well-informed voter with considered and consistent views on
| policy... Many countries have very little in the way of
| options for who else to vote for. Is this important enough to
| enough people to make them a single issue voter? Would they
| vote for the hypothetical "We Support Murdering Kittens"
| party if they were against the spying? Probably not--they'll
| probably hold their nose and vote for the "We Love Kittens"
| party as the lesser evil.
| pcrh wrote:
| This paints a depressing picture, which also has some
| support in empirical evidence.
|
| However, democracy is not as feeble as this analysis would
| suggest. After all, we can see that major shifts in
| political support for policy positions are possible, and
| these do require public support (democracy) to occur.
|
| For example, in the US the civil rights movements of the
| 1960's and 1970's. Or more recently the Brexit referendum
| in the UK or populist anti-immigrant positions that have
| arisen in recent years and acquired major political
| support. Whether you agree with these or not, they are
| politically impactful, and democratically supported.
|
| Issues surrounding civil liberties have often attracted
| strong political and popular support. So the question here
| is how such support can be generated for privacy, which
| itself a right under numerous legal regimens including the
| US constitution and the UN Declaration on Human Rights.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Argh, red and green colors are not great for accessibility, I had
| to look hard to find the countries that were opposed/neutral
| (Poland, Austria and Netherlands, afaict)
| radicalbyte wrote:
| NL should be because, at least so far, they've been listening
| to the experts (many who are ex-colleagues & friends of mine).
| We have elections later in the year and that can change
| (although they're looking positive so far).
| derelicta wrote:
| Can't wait for my phone to report me for spreading anti govt
| propaganda or calling for a general strike.
| oytis wrote:
| Are they going to vote on that every year until it passes?
| normalaccess wrote:
| Yes, there is no stopping it with the current structure and
| tools. They will push until the people give in. Best to prepare
| for it's existence and figure out how to use the good old
| sneaker-net.
| arlort wrote:
| No, the reason there's an article like this every 6 months is
| very specifically that it never gets to a vote
| andrepd wrote:
| Yes, and when it does that's it, forever. Because the EU
| """parliament""" cannot propose laws, meaning it cannot repeal
| existing laws either.
|
| It's like the IRA said to Thatcher: you have to be lucky every
| time, we just have to be lucky once.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| Selfhosting Matrix might be a solution if this passes. The
| surveillance is to be installed at the app level, imposed on the
| distributing companies (say, the Signal front-end), this is not a
| ban on. But if you're booting up your own application, it might
| at the very least be a legal grey area whether or not you need to
| implement chat control, so you could just not and the data will
| still be E2EE in travel for now. Easier than asking everyone you
| know to use GPG
| crumpled wrote:
| It's not a solution if it passes with "Client-side scanning".
| Basically a AI bot watching your screen all day. You're gonna
| need a whole secure deviant device.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| If that passes it's over for the european internet, IMO. I
| would just shut off all personal online devices completely
| and go banking and work only on a cheap Xiaomi
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| That is not what the law is about.
|
| It is client side scanning embedded in the apps themselves.
| Each app will have to deploy their own mechanism to intercept
| the messages. This is not (yet) an OS level scan so there is
| no AI bot watching your moves on your device yet. Furthermore
| the AI part will run on their own servers, not on the device.
|
| Precisely, the way it has been described, is when you hit the
| send button, it will the send the message in clear text to
| the authorities and then send the encrypted message to the
| recipient, hence the stupid narrative from the proponents of
| Chat control that it does not break encryption because it was
| never encrypted in the first place.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| That seems like it will be largely useless. Sure, the
| masses will continue using a bugged WhatsApp. But anyone
| with actual interesting/llegal things to say will switch
| over to an open source messaging app that hasn't been
| bugged.
| EGreg wrote:
| The war on end to end encryption is far bigger and more global
| than you think, and you're the boiling frogs. Here is the
| evolving map:
|
| https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-en...
|
| It is very unlikely that E2E encryption will be available
| anywhere except decentralized protocols. You should already have
| been assuming any centralized actors are just pinkyswearing. The
| real question is -- what do you really need E2E encryption for,
| in the sense of being resilient against ALL actors?
| elric wrote:
| More money for militarization, 5% NATO tax, money towards buying
| fossil fuels from the US. More moves towards surveillance of its
| own people. Europe is starting to look pretty unappealing.
|
| I've been fighting for our right to online privacy since the late
| 90s. And frankly, I feel burnt out. Politicians keep coming up
| with the same harebrained ideas. Their slippery slope is never as
| slippery as that of the oppressive regimes of yore. They will
| always use their powers for good. They will protect us, whereas
| the evil regimes wanted to control us. Sigh. And who knows, maybe
| they actually mean well .... but the slope remains just as
| slippery.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Hell is paved with good intentions.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Aside from the infamous privacy aspects, I'm wondering about the
| feasibility and the energy cost of running continously ML algos
| to scan content on a phone.
|
| Given that the private malware providers aren't accountable for
| it, I guess that it will noticeably degrade the average battery
| life for phones in the EU.
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