[HN Gopher] ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, ...
___________________________________________________________________
ChatControl: EU wants to scan all private messages, even in
encrypted apps
Author : Metalhearf
Score : 776 points
Date : 2025-09-25 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (metalhearf.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (metalhearf.fr)
| immibis wrote:
| This will never not be in the news, will it? I feel like it's
| been continuously for the past 10-15 years, under various names.
| jjice wrote:
| Just need to pass it once, unfortunately. And despite all the
| talk against it, they get a partial fresh start to the general
| public every time one of these is proposed.
| dekken_ wrote:
| The IRA quote to Thatcher comes to mind
| bigyabai wrote:
| Honestly, I fully expect that the scanning method is already
| implemented and used. The US has intervened with some pretty
| deep surveillance in the past (ie. Canada Sihk killing) and
| doesn't seem to need permission to get it.
|
| Sounds to me like the EU is looking to get a more formal
| approval to act on data they already have.
| EasyMark wrote:
| The people that want this to happen, really really really want
| it to happen. They are never going to give up, so people need
| to remain vigilent.
| haolez wrote:
| I think the challenge for society here is not to simply reject
| attempts like this, but how to prevent them from being pushed
| over and over until a specific context allows it to be approved.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Agreed. In this case, there needs to be some sort of 'privacy
| bill of rights'. Something fundamental where any law like this
| cannot be passed.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Laws don't stop men with guns. Men with guns stop men with
| guns. Laws not enforced and rights not protected don't
| matter.
|
| As the old saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal
| vigilance.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > Laws don't stop men with guns. Men with guns stop men
| with guns.
|
| Prove it. Every statistic I've ever seen shows the exact
| opposite of this to be true.
| logicchains wrote:
| Here's the proof: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_kill
| ings_under_communist_... . Those kinds of mass killings
| can only happen when the citizens are disarmed, because
| it's logistically impossible for a government to seize
| absolute power when a significant proportion of the
| citizens are armed.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Those kind of mass killings also happen in authoritative
| regimes, which typically emerge from violent societies.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > it's logistically impossible for a government to seize
| absolute power when a significant proportion of the
| citizens are armed.
|
| This is literally, and provably, untrue. For example:
|
| The Soviet Union: The Bolsheviks initially proclaimed
| that "the arming of the working people" was essential to
| prevent "restoration of the power of the exploiters". It
| was only later that they restricted private gun
| ownership.
|
| The Nazis: Contrary to popular gun rights narratives,
| Nazi gun laws actually relaxed restrictions for most
| Germans while targeting specific groups. Sometimes
| authoritarianism is the same as populism.
|
| Rwanda: Prior to the genocide, the government
| systematically distributed weapons to local
| administrators and militia groups while ensuring targeted
| populations remained defenseless.
|
| Myanmar: Armed civilian resistance groups formed, but the
| were essentially wiped out by the overwhelming advantages
| in air power and heavy weaponry that an actual organized
| military had. The firearms were useless. Arguably, worse
| than useless as those who fought back died in large
| numbers.
|
| Venezuela: The regime armed its supporters while
| systematically removing weapons from the general
| population. The population was well armed, they just
| couldn't fight back against an organized government
| response.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| >Men with guns stop men with guns.
|
| Really? Why does America, the country with the most guns by
| far, have the most gun deaths by far? It's very tiring
| arguing these very obvious points over and over.
| logicchains wrote:
| Nazi Germany, Communist China and Soviet Russia have by
| far the largest number of deaths by _men with guns_, over
| a hundred million people killed by their own governments.
| The guns of US citizens have so far prevented this kind
| of government-led mass citizen genocide from happening.
| The number of people killed by gun violence in the US is
| a rounding error compared to the number of people killed
| by Mao, Hitler and Stalin.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Most people killed by these regimes killed people as
| aliens. If truly want to compare the actions of the USA,
| you must also count there handling of there aliens (e.g.
| in wars).
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > The guns of US citizens have so far prevented this kind
| of government-led mass citizen genocide from happening.
|
| No they haven't. Our system of checks and balances has.
| At no point has there been a civil war in which the US's
| citizens attempted to fight back against the US military.
| If there were, the citizens would lose without even
| presenting a challenge.
| hollerith wrote:
| >the citizens would lose without even presenting a
| challenge.
|
| That's not true. The US Army spent 20 years and trillions
| of dollars trying to impose regime change on Afghanistan,
| but were defeated by a group (the Taliban) that had very
| little military capability beyond men with rifles and
| some explosives to make improvised bombs. (Yes, they also
| had decades-old weapons with which to shoot down
| helicopters.) Algeria's war of independence from France
| in the 1950s and early 1960s is another example where a
| group with very little in the way of military capability
| defeated one of the most powerful militaries in the
| world.
|
| I don't necessarily buy the argument that the US should
| continue with the gun status quo just because all those
| guns would come in handy in a revolution, but you haven't
| successfully refuted the argument.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| The Afghanistan bit is over simplified isn't it? My
| understanding is that the US military successfully
| imposed regime change between 2001-2003. I doubt those
| rifles slowed the tanks and bombers much at all.
|
| The fact that we packed up and left eventually doesn't
| really change the fact that the US rolled over the men
| with guns like they weren't there in the early 2000's.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| The Algerian war doesn't really prove much either, except
| that terrorism works.
|
| The Algerians hid within the population and gradually
| picked at the French, like flies biting a bull.
| Eventually the French got bored and wandered off to find
| a new form of entertainment. If anything the French lost
| to propaganda, not guns.
| hollerith wrote:
| >The Algerians hid within the population
|
| Yes, but we're discussing a civil war or revolution in
| the US, where the rebels or revolutionaries would be able
| to engage in terrorism and to hide within the population
| -- and where there are so many long guns in private hands
| that the defending force (the government) probably
| wouldn't be able to deprive the attacking force (the
| rebels) of long guns simply by punishing any civilian
| found with a long gun in their home.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| My point is that it wasn't the guns that saved the
| Algerians. Knives, bayonets, and IEDs would have been
| equaly effective for the sort of guerilla tactics that
| eventually won the war.
| hollerith wrote:
| I find it very unlikely that "knives, bayonets, and IEDs
| would have been equally effective". The ALN ambushed
| French convoys and patrols, raided isolated military
| outposts and police stations and defended themselves when
| their camps and zones were attacked. I doubt the ALN
| could have succeeded in those encounters even one tenth
| as often as they actually did if they had no access or
| much worse access to guns (with "success" meaning
| inflicting casualties on the occupier, avoiding taking
| casualties, capturing supplies (including guns) and
| disrupting the occupier's control).
|
| There is a reason people say, "don't bring a knife to a
| gun fight".
|
| The ALN got guns from donors and sympathizers in Egypt
| and other Arab countries. In later years, the Eastern
| Bloc and China also contributed supplies, including guns.
|
| Was there a single significant war, rebellion or
| revolution in the last 100 years where both sides didn't
| have a gun for every fighter or almost that many guns?
| I'm not sure, but I doubt it.
| layer8 wrote:
| This exists. But courts have to balance conflicting rights,
| so there is always room for interpretation.
| contravariant wrote:
| The accepted solution is to have a constitution that says
| otherwise.
|
| Which is a bit complicated here, as the EU has no real
| constitution and this 'law' (really a regulation) is a blatant
| violation of the constitutions of countries that did choose to
| establish secrecy of correspondence.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| isn't constitution easily changed by parlament?
| asmor wrote:
| Usually not "easily". I know Germany requires 2/3 majority.
| fsckboy wrote:
| fwiw, amending the US constitution generally requires a
| 2/3 majority in both houses of congress to propose the
| amendment, and then further ratification by 3/4 of the
| states make the amendment law. it's a fairly long
| process, and amendments sometime get bogged down and die
| in the 2nd phase.
|
| (there is another process which calls for a convention,
| but such a convention would have broad powers to change
| many things and so far the "two sides" (US rules tilt
| toward two parties rather than more) have been too scared
| of what might happen to do that)
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| > The accepted solution is to have a constitution that says
| otherwise
|
| And the willingness and ability to enforce it. The current
| iteration of ChatControl is pushed by Denmark, which is at
| present the President of the Council of the European Union.
| The Danish Constitution itself enshrines the right to privacy
| of communication [0], but this is not stopping Denmark from
| wanting to ratify ChatControl anyway.
|
| [0]: https://danskelove.dk/grundloven/72
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes but unfortunately courts are mostly reactive, not
| proactive
|
| Sometimes there are some mechanisms to block
| unconstitutional (or other regulation) laws from passing
| but they're limited
|
| Not sure how that would apply at the EU level or even at
| the Danish level
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| > Yes but unfortunately courts are mostly reactive, not
| proactive
|
| I think it's always the case, no? Unless the
| unconstitutional law is approved, there is nothing to
| dispute in court.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Correct. Imagine the number of challenges in court based
| on mere rumor of a law.
| spockz wrote:
| In the Netherlands we have the "Eerste kamer" (first
| chamber, also called Senate) that is responsible for
| verifying that the proposed laws are in accordance with
| our "constitution". They are elected of band with the
| normal government which should ensure that no single
| party is able to steamroll laws through both chambers.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| In theory the "Bundesprasident" in Germany is supposed to
| only ratify laws that are in accordance with the
| constitution, but I don't think it happens that he
| refuses to do this.
| rapind wrote:
| > but this is not stopping Denmark from wanting to ratify
| ChatControl anyway.
|
| What the TLDR of the motivation behind this? Is it just
| politicians playing to their base (think of the children)
| or corporate lobbying. or religion, etc?
|
| Seems to me that the negatives of passing something like
| this are super obvious and dystopian.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| If I was leading another western nation I would be
| looking at the right wing takeover of the US government
| in terror.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| For sure. Does anyone want Trump to know everything you
| write? Erdogan if Turkey ever does enter the EU?
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| I suspect it's a mix of many Danish politicians' own
| authoritarian tendencies/ambitions and corporate
| lobbying, though I have no proof of the latter when it
| comes to ChatControl specifically.
|
| _Generally speaking_ , there is a lot of dark money in
| Danish politics, and the EU has repeatedly flagged
| Denmark as a country lacking in transparency with regards
| to corporate lobbying:
| https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/eu-kritik-af-danmark-
| puster-...
|
| _Generally speaking_ , the Danish government also tends
| to behave in authoritarian ways. E.g., Denmark has
| wilfully violated EU regulations on data retention for
| many, many years. In 2021, a Danish court ruled that the
| Danish Ministry of Justice could continue its mass
| surveillance practices even though they were (and still
| are) illegal under EU law: https://www.information.dk/ind
| land/2021/06/justitsministerie...
|
| Currently Denmark is also trying to leverage its position
| as the President of the Council of the EU to legalise, on
| a EU-wide level, the form of data retention that Denmark
| has been illegally practising:
| https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-
| your-sa...
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| Interesting. I am not expert on politics of Denmark, so
| my question is: is this push universal across political
| parties or it's a feature of a specific political block
| that rules for the past X years and consistently worked
| in this direction?
| roer wrote:
| There was another thread on specifically our minister of
| justice, with comments that touch on the historical
| aspect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45248802
| drdaeman wrote:
| Generalized, this looks to me like a question about why
| humans sometimes get hell-bent about some idea and become
| blind to the side effects and ignorant when it comes to
| risk management.
|
| Sometimes it could be malice or personal gains.
| Sometimes, I think, it could be just a strong bias
| towards some idea that causes a mental blindness. Such
| blindness can happen to anyone, at any level of power (or
| lack thereof), politicians are not unique in this - the
| only difference is the scope of impact due to the power
| they have. And we aren't particularly filtering them
| against such behavior - on the contrary, I feel that many
| people want politicians to have an agenda and even cheer
| when they put their agenda above the actual reality, any
| consequences be damned.
| okanat wrote:
| EU has the Charter of Fundamental rights which is a part of
| the Treaty of Lisbon which is the constitutional basis of EU:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Right.
| ..
|
| In the charter, the protection of personal data and privacy
| is a recognized right. So chat control is also probably
| against the EU law.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm not familiar with EU law, but reading Title II article
| 7 and 8 makes me feel this could be an optimistic
| interpretation of what the Treaty of Lisbon guarantees. I'm
| sure the supporters of chat control would love to argue
| something like "ChatControl respects the private
| communications of an individual by protecting how the data
| is processed to ensure only the legitimate basis of
| processing the data is incurred by the law" in court.
|
| I would hope the EU courts would disagree, but I'm not sure
| if anyone can say until it's tested directly.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Even the EU council's legal service thinks the law as-
| proposed is probably incompatible with Article 7 and 8:
|
| > The CLS concludes that, in the light of the case law of
| the Court of Justice at this stage, the regime of the
| detection order, as currently provided for by the
| proposed Regulation with regard to interpersonal
| communications, constitutes a particularly serious
| limitation to the rights to privacy and personal data
| protection enshrined in Article 7 and 8 of the Charter.
|
| https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8787-202
| 3-I...
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think there are variants of the ChatControl proposal
| which were clearly problematic, but the different
| variations of the proposal try to toe the line since.
| This report talks to the 2022 era proposal.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Both the right to privacy and the right to protection of
| personal data appear to have pretty big exemptions for
| government.
|
| The right to private communications was modified by the
| ECHR to give an exemption for prevention of
| crime/protection of morals/etc.[1] and the right to
| protection of personal data exempts any legitimate basis
| laid down by law[2].
|
| I imagine they'd be able to figure out some form of Chat
| Control that passed legal muster. Perhaps a reduced version
| of Chat Control, say, demanding secret key escrow, but only
| demanding data access/scans of those suspected of a crime
| rather than everyone.
|
| Legal rulings also seem to indicate that general scanning
| could be permitted if there was a serious threat to
| national security, so once a system to allow breaking
| encryption and scanning is in place, then it could be
| extended to what they want with the right excuse.
|
| [1] https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/7-respect-
| privat...
|
| [2] https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-
| charter/article/8-protection-per...
| AAAAaccountAAAA wrote:
| > I imagine they'd be able to figure out some form of
| Chat Control that passed legal muster. Perhaps a reduced
| version of Chat Control, say, demanding secret key
| escrow, but only demanding data access/scans of those
| suspected of a crime rather than everyone.
|
| Isn't that pretty much excatly how it is done in Russia,
| which was ruled by ECHR to be illegal[0]?
|
| https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-2308
| 54%...
| kypro wrote:
| I've commented this elsewhere, but rights in the US are
| generally much more absolute than here in Europe.
|
| For example, in the EU you technically have the right to
| freedom of expression, but you can also be arrested if you
| say something that could offend someone.
|
| Similarly rights to privacy are often ignored whenever a
| justification can be made that it's appropriate to do so.
|
| I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but here in the UK
| you don't even have a right to remain silent because the
| government added a loophole so that if you're arrested in a
| UK airport they can arbitrarily force you to answer their
| questions and provide passwords for any private devices. For
| this reason you often here reports of people being randomly
| arrested in UK airports, and the government does this
| deliberately so they can violate your rights.
| realo wrote:
| "... expression, but you can also be arrested if you say
| something that could offend someone. ..."
|
| You probably mean hate speech.
|
| We have laws like that too in Canada. It is a good thing.
| happyopossum wrote:
| It all depends who's defining "hate". The people you like
| who are in charge today won't be there in 20 years, and
| if any kind of extremism leaks in to society, you could
| find yourself unable to advocate for your beliefs without
| getting arrested.
| hellojesus wrote:
| How on earth are hate speech laws a good thing? Or did I
| miss a /s?
| platevoltage wrote:
| For example, the US government is trying to label any
| posthumous criticism of Charlie Kirk "Hate Speech". You
| can see how dangerous this could be when the hate-mongers
| get to decide what is considered hate speech.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Honestly, the current administration baffles me. There is
| so much activity that flies squarely against the
| constitution in a not at all subtle or clever way; just
| blatant, "I don't care."
|
| It's one thing to be disruptive and enforce immigration
| law "by the books" but entirely separate to then go out
| of your way to not enforce it legally while at the same
| time violating or attempting to violate the constitution
| on pretty fundamental levels.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean Canada's a pretty depressing example of how bad
| those laws can be abused.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > For example, in the EU you technically have the right to
| freedom of expression, but you can also be arrested if you
| say something that could offend someone.
|
| So you actually don't have freedom of expression?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| No offendings are not an expression. What do you express
| with them, poor anger management?
|
| Your right to something ends were a right of someone else
| is violated. That's the case here.
| kyboren wrote:
| > Your right to something ends were a right of someone
| else is violated. That's the case here.
|
| Ah yes, that memorable trifecta: Life, Liberty, and the
| Right to Never Hear Mean Words.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Oral violence also has consequences. From invoking or
| reinforcing mental diseases over fear and isolation to
| blackmail and being socially judged on while being
| innocent. Do you accept random beatings when people feel
| like it on the street?
| latexr wrote:
| Freedom of speech is not absolute in the USA.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exc
| e...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Plenty of EU states already have a constitution in which this
| proposal would be de facto unconstitutional.
|
| The issue is what is the European Commission willing to do in
| order to guarantee that fat contract check goes to Palantir
| or Thorn or whoever has the best quid pro quo of the day.
|
| This is not Stasi this is Tech billionaires playing kings and
| buying the EC and Europol for pennies on the dollar and with
| it the privacy of virtually every citizen of zero interest
| for law enforcement or agencies.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As shown on the other side of Atlantic that is worthless when
| no one upholds the constitution.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I think of constitution as a contract between the citizens
| and the state and the (judiciary?)
|
| Like, constitution both defines the rights of citizens and
| the limits of those rights and the same goes for the
| states.
|
| I feel as if the creators of constitutions think that it is
| a set of checks and balances...
|
| Just as if how a citizen violates something written in the
| constitution, the state can punish it.
|
| In the same manner, I believe that the constitution thought
| that if the state violates some constitutional right of
| citizen, then citizens can point that out and (punish?) the
| state as the legitimacy of state is through that
| constitution which they might be breaking...
|
| I concur (fancy word for believe which I wanted to share
| lol) you are talking about america. The thing is,
| revolutions are often messy and so much things are
| happening in america that I think that people are just
| overwhelmed and have even forgotten all the stuff happening
| in the past... Like tarrifs were huge thing, then epstein
| news then this I think autism thing by trump.
|
| Like, the amount of political discourse is happening less
| and idk, oh shit, just remembered the uh person deporting
| thing which was illegal which was done anyway
|
| If these things happened in isolation, they would all have
| huge actions against govt. but they are happening back to
| back and so everyone's just kinda silent I think, frankly I
| believe overwhelmed.
|
| I believe that just as in nepal, in america everyone is
| whining on social media but nobody's taking action. Nepal
| blocked social media and so people in nepal were kinda
| forced to take action irl and it worked kinda nice in the
| end tbh
|
| So maybe its social media which is enabling this thing....
| which is funny to me as I am doing the same thing right now
| lol
|
| All for sweet internet points tho.
| gameman144 wrote:
| > I concur (fancy word for believe which I wanted to
| share lol) you are talking about america.
|
| Just a heads up but concur means "agree", not "believe"
| GLdRH wrote:
| I assent to that statement
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Made me have a good ol chuckle / laugh.
|
| Kinda liked it, so thanks lol
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| It was a grave tragedy and a miscalculation from my side.
|
| An error that should be discussed for generations :sob:
| /jk
|
| IN all fairness though, I don't know why I wrote concur,
| I just thought of it and thought it meant believe...
|
| What would be a fancier word of believe if I may ask ya
| that you would suggest me to use..
|
| Also I am sorry that I made a mistake tbh, I hope ya get
| it and thanks for correcting me!
| DangitBobby wrote:
| A large portion of the population either does not believe
| or does not mind the violations of our constitution to
| achieve their desired outcomes. As an American, it came
| as a surprise to me that we do not, in fact, have broadly
| shared values about our system of governance. This year
| has been a devastating blow to my confidence in our
| democracy and the ability of people to govern themselves
| generally.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| The thing I find most interesting about your reply is how
| it demonstrates that we live in wildly subjective
| realities.
| smcin wrote:
| Specifically, how? GP's claims can be factually
| substantiated. Pick whichever you claim can't.
| ux266478 wrote:
| He isn't calling the claim subjective, but underlining
| what the claim posits entails that we live in subjective
| realities.
| LexiMax wrote:
| > This year has been a devastating blow to my confidence
| in our democracy and the ability of people to govern
| themselves generally.
|
| The latter has been on my mind for quite some time.
|
| The logical conclusion of "people can't govern themselves
| generally" kind of gestures at religion as a solution -
| after all, if man cannot govern themselves, why not rely
| on a higher power to manage them?
|
| Of course, the problem with that point of view is that
| from the atheistic perspective, there is no higher power,
| and from the agnostic perspective, whatever higher power
| there is is inscrutable and beyond our ken.
|
| This then leads me to the conclusion that religion is
| ultimately a creation of men, and are thus prone to the
| same power-corrupting vices as any other institution
| created by men.
|
| Except that leaves no real solution the problem of the
| governance of people. And it's a quandary I see no
| realistic chance of escape from.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I agree to the same thing to a somewhat degree from
| another standpoint / a discussion worth tapping into.
|
| Its not that the logical conclusion is "people can't
| govern themselves generally"
|
| Its that, we have created a system which incentivizes
| corruption or basically evil things for the most part
| from TOP TO BOTTOM partially influenced by biological
| factors beyond our control.
|
| Sure, one answer to the "people can't govern themselves
| generally" is to decentralize the power.
|
| I live in India and I loathed my political system
| thinking that it wasn't good and I really appreciated
| american political system but the more I think about it,
| fundamentally Indian political system is one of the best
| actually.
|
| It has 3 levels of decentralization with Strong Right to
| information and uh multi party system with Even Universal
| basic income which I came to know from an american which
| is a real shocker I know.
|
| Yet I still see people begging and there being some
| chaos, My logical answer to it is corruption from TOP TO
| BOTTOM which I observed atleast.
|
| I sort of believe that the same thing happens everywhere
| to be honest if that can make sense...
|
| Like, there is corruption and human evils which is what
| people select in real life anonymous things as compared
| to true morality that one can reason through. Simply for
| one's own profit.
|
| It also might be one of those debates that India might
| have a good political system but simply the people don't
| have enough money or something and they want more or
| everyone does it which is a common answer that I actually
| hear.
|
| I believe that the reason why people can't govern
| themselves generally is that there is a biological answer
| to it in the sense that for people to govern themselves,
| we would prefer /need an altruist society and in an
| altruist society, and how the genes which favour a bit of
| evil in altruist society might reproduce more and spread
| sort of thus creating an equilibra of sorts and combining
| with that the idea on how interlinked/interinfluential
| each of us is to one other through language.
|
| It was a catharsis to me, The answer might be depressing.
| But its fundamentally logic. Life just sort of happened
| and then it got way too focused on spreading itself / the
| one which did survived and boom that's biology which then
| gets to this political thing...
|
| Like it was sort of meant to happen y'know? atleast
| that's my current understanding of it. Would love to
| discuss tho.
| ux266478 wrote:
| > As an American, it came as a surprise to me that we do
| not, in fact, have broadly shared values about our system
| of governance.
|
| It shouldn't, America is two very distinct nations. The
| shape and nature of those nations vary wildly in
| classical Baudrilliardian sidewinding progression, but
| it's rooted in the very early history of British North
| America. Two distinct primogenitor colonies and
| societies, Jamestown and Plymouth. Founded for different
| reasons, in different contexts, by different people.
| Understanding the disparity is key to understanding a
| great deal about America. This divide has always
| persisted. Jefferson was of Tidewater, Hamilton was of
| Yankeedom. Democrats vs Whigs. Dixie vs Yankeedom. This
| split persists in history, and is much the reason why
| America is ostensibly a two party system. Even if the
| regional divide is not as hard and fast as it once was,
| even if the matters in which they differ change radically
| over time, the divide itself will always persist. It's
| wrapped up in the pre-revolutionary context the country
| was founded on. America will always be two countries in a
| trenchcoat, two echoes of wildly different cultures set
| against each other for dominance. You should always be
| keen to remember that. The union isn't of 13 distinct
| colonies, but two distinct cultures always in tension.
| It's a fundamental structure within our larger cultural
| blueprint.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Of course I understood there were vast cultural and
| political differences causing tension. I just also
| believed that we had a shared system of fundamental
| values enshrined in the constitution and when push came
| to shove, we would all rally behind it. That's what I
| thought American patriotism meant; I genuinely thought I
| could count on Red voters to rabidly defend the
| constitution.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| That's a great insight and one for which I thank you for
| pointing out as I learned something new thanks to you
| today.
|
| My question is whether two different cultures can in fact
| coexist with each other for a single system of
| governance.
|
| Like, Why do we focus so much on our differences as a
| species that we forget how much common we are on
| literally everything.
|
| What is a solution to this problem that's kinda impacting
| the world right now. America moves in pendulum in a
| political cycle completely 180'ing but yet at the same
| time, I feel like no _real_ change is being made against
| lobbying /corruption which sort of infiltrates the world
| too.
|
| Bernie sanders and now maybe zohran are the two democrats
| who are genuinely tryna do something for america which I
| deeply respect tbh. Yet there wasn't really a way for one
| to vote for them _directly_ y 'know?
|
| Are these differences of cultures really that distinct to
| basically split a country in half in everything except
| the borders?
|
| Was there no way of integrating them without having them
| idk being the way that they are right now?
| quotemstr wrote:
| > The accepted solution is to have a constitution that says
| otherwise.
|
| Constitutions don't enforce themselves. The US constitution
| has a crystal clear right to bear arms but multiple
| jurisdictions ignore it and multiple supreme court rulings
| and make firearm ownership functionally impossible anyway.
| Free speech regulations have, thankfully, been more robust.
|
| The only thing that stops bad things happening is a critical
| mass of people who believe in the values the constitution
| memorializes and who have enough veto power to stop attempts
| to erode these values.
|
| The US has such a critical mass, the gun debate
| notwithstanding. Does the EU have enough people who still
| believe in freedom?
| fsckboy wrote:
| i think making your argument on free speech grounds would
| be stronger
| quotemstr wrote:
| How so? My point is that US constitutional protections on
| firearm ownership have undeniably eroded. The presence of
| text on the page did not prevent this erosion. I'm using
| gun rights as an example of a situation in which text
| granting a right becomes irrelevant if people stop
| believing in the values behind the text.
|
| People _do_ believe in freedom of speech in the US,
| thankfully, even if they 've stopped defending gun rights
| in some places.
|
| EU free speech protections are in the same position gun
| rights are in the US, and for surprisingly similar
| reasons.
| fsckboy wrote:
| when you are talking to a european audience, they tend to
| be in favor of gun control so they don't care about
| erosion of those rights (like the people in the US who
| also favor eroding them, wording of the rules be damned)
|
| HN is to a large extent a popularity contest, and people
| here are more in favor of free speech than guns. the US
| record on protecting free speech is very good.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > you are talking to a european audience, they tend to be
| in favor of gun control so they don't care about erosion
| of those rights
|
| You have accidentally properly identified the european
| problem and precisely the reason that chat control will
| pass: shortsightedness. If people only rise up to protect
| rights "they need", soon no rights will be left.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| In the EU you can have guns, you just must pass some
| tests, that you know how to use them and you need to
| store them in separate ways.
|
| But guns are vastly insufficient in this century to
| overthrow the state, you basically only harm your fellow
| citizens with them.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Most of the erosion is done _through_ court challenges.
|
| Historically, courts have maintained that legislation is
| pursued under "good faith". This was the justification
| for not overturning ACA on the grounds of it being an
| unconstitutional tax: the lawmakers didn't mean to make
| it an unapportioned tax, even though it effectively is,
| so it's okay yall. Washington St just did this with
| income taxes on capital gains in direct violation of
| their state constitution a year or two ago.
|
| Where I live, you cannot open carry. That is a direct
| violation of 2A, but the courts have said it's okay baby
| because it's not an undue burden to pay a fee and waste a
| day of your life. Pure nonsense. Just change the
| constitution for goodness sake.
| Aloisius wrote:
| This simply isn't true. If anything, constitutional
| protections have dramatically expanded since the
| amendment was passed.
|
| This is because until the 14th Amendment and the
| incorporation doctrine, the Bill of Rights only
| restricted the Federal government, not the States. Prior
| to the that, state and local governments could (and did)
| restrict not just firearms, but other rights as well.
|
| Hell, the Bill of Rights still hasn't been fully
| incorporated, so for instance, despite the 7th Amendment
| stating otherwise, you don't have the right to a jury
| trial in civil cases in every state nor the right to
| indictment by grand jury (5th Amendment).
|
| Of course, some states copied parts of the constitution
| into their own and had some form of protection, but it
| was by no means universal. Massachusetts even had a state
| church until 1833.
| platevoltage wrote:
| I'm not here to argue about the right to bear arms in the
| USA, but the 2nd amendment is anything but crystal clear in
| its language.
| GLdRH wrote:
| Seems pretty clear to me, although I'm neither an
| american nor a lawyer.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > The US constitution has a crystal clear right to bear
| arms
|
| It looks like it was drafted by an ESL speaker. It's by far
| the worst-drafted amendment, grammatically speaking:
|
| > A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security
| of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear
| Arms, shall not be infringed.
|
| It's not even a valid English sentence, and it certainly
| never bothers to define "Arms." Not to mention that, as
| written, it appears to make it illegal for me to tell you
| that you cannot come to _my house_ with a gun, because that
| 's me infringing your right. It doesn't constrain Congress.
| It constrained _anyone_ who wants to take away your right
| to bear arms.
|
| Sheer lunacy as written. Ungrammatical and implies some
| _insane_ shit.
|
| But no, you're right, it's crystal clear. Much like how the
| First Amendment says
|
| > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
|
| which in crystal clear terms makes it legal to mass-
| distribute child pornography. To prohibit it would restrict
| the freedom of the press.
| GLdRH wrote:
| Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works
| splendidly
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Ok, get a 2/3 majority of the House and Senate to approve
| a proposed edit removing those commas, and then get 3/4
| of the state legislatures to approve it.
|
| Until then, the commas are officially part of the text.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Comma rules change over time.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| But the text of the Constitution only changes through
| amendments.
|
| That said, the effective meaning of the Constitution is
| "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court agrees it is."
|
| And to a degree, given the power to impeach Supreme Court
| justices, "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court
| agrees it is, and with Congress sufficiently on board to
| not impeach sufficient justices to force a shift in the
| balance of the Court."
| 1718627440 wrote:
| I'm responding to:
|
| >>> Remove the first and last comma and the sentence
| works splendidly
|
| >> Until then, the commas are officially part of the
| text.
|
| > Comma rules change over time.
|
| Maybe the equivalence of the sentence at drafting, today
| is without commas?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| That depends on the opinions of 9 very specific
| individuals. How the text and its commas might be
| interpreted by you or I today is irrelevant.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| But you chose to tell us about your interpretation. :-)
|
| I had less the current legal interpretation and more the
| meaning at the time of writing down, as it would reveal
| itself in current text, in mind, which is relevant to
| this argument.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| I see the conversation differently.
|
| KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is
| not clear.
|
| GLdRH said "Remove the first and last comma and the
| sentence works splendidly".
|
| I said that modifying the literal text requires going
| through the amendment process.
|
| You said "Comma rules change over time."
|
| I reiterated that the literal text does not change except
| through the amendment process, and also noted that
| fundamentally the literal words don't matter much as it's
| up to a majority of the Supreme Court how to interpret
| any of it.
|
| You then brought up modern language usages of commas.
|
| I replied that how you or I today interpret the text is
| irrelevant because only the Supreme Court's opinion
| matters.
|
| At no point in this conversation have I expressed a
| specific interpretation of the text, so your indication
| that I chose to tell the discussion about my
| interpretation seems weird and maybe you're misreading
| usernames somewhere along the way.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > maybe you're misreading usernames
|
| Sorry for that.
|
| > KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is
| not clear.
|
| I thought me and GLdRH replied to KPGv2 stating that the
| 2nd amendment isn't valid grammar and this results in
| some of the unclarity.
|
| When you have this: X -> [grammar rules
| 18th century] -> 2nd amendment -> [grammar rules 21th
| century] -> ...
|
| , then when you want to discuss meaning issues due to
| grammar rules, you need to use 18th century grammar. I
| perceived GLdRH to use 21th century grammar to encode the
| same sentence. The literal text does not need to be
| modified, since it uses 18th century grammar rules. Only
| when you want to parse it with 21th century grammar
| rules, you need to preprocess it to adjust the grammar
| first. This preprocessing doesn't need to be written
| back, since the grammar rules of the text haven't
| changed. We are only circumventing the parser not
| supporting the texts grammar.
|
| > only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.
|
| This is purely about syntactic issues, not about
| semantics. The Supreme Court applies also semantics, such
| as the other legal system definitions of the time. I
| wasn't replying to that aspect.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| It also implies that the militia is regulated.
| rsynnott wrote:
| For practical purposes the EU does have a constitution, it's
| just a messy collection of treaties rather than a single
| codified constitution (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trea
| ty_establishing_a_Constitu... for why).
| zx10rse wrote:
| You are most definitely not right. The EU charter of
| fundamental rights is an agreement that holds legal binding.
| The institutions who are supposed to uphold the charter are
| CJEU, European Commission, FRA, NHRIs.
|
| The people who wrote this proposal said it themselves -
| "Whilst different in nature and generally speaking less
| intrusive, the newly created power to issue removal orders in
| respect of known child sexual abuse material certainly also
| affects fundamental rights, most notably those of the users
| concerned relating to freedom of expression and information."
|
| This proposal is illegal. The fact that CJEU at least haven't
| issued a statement that this is illegal tells you everything
| you need to know about the EU and its democracy.
| mtillman wrote:
| I'm convinced the people suggesting this type of thing are
| influenced or even compromised by their constituent's enemies
| and NOT the result of poor education on the topic.
|
| This policy for example would be most helpful to enemies to the
| EU. It would lower the cost of acquiring the data for China and
| Russia as it allows them to mass acquire data in transmission
| without incurring the cost of local operations. The easiest
| system in the world to hack is that of a policy maker.
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| > It would lower the cost of acquiring the data for China and
| Russia
|
| Yes, it would lower such barriers for countries that are
| commonly seen today as Europe's adversaries. But in this
| case, the U.S. (or rather, U.S. organisations and
| corporations) might be the primary bad actor pushing for
| ChatControl. See e.g.:
|
| _Thorn (organization)
| -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)_
|
| "Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve
| the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The
| goal of the program includes developing technological
| barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children
| online and deter sexual predators on the Internet. Various
| corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google,
| Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation,
| Symantec, and Twitter.[7] ... Netzpolitik.org and the
| investigative platform Follow the Money criticize that "Thorn
| has blurred the line between advocacy for children's rights
| and its own interest as a vendor of scanning
| software."[11][12] The possible conflict of interest has also
| been picked up by Balkan Insight,[13] Le Monde,[14] and El
| Diario.[15] A documentary by the German public-service
| television broadcaster ZDF criticizes Thorn's influence on
| the legislative process of the European Union for a law from
| which Thorn would profit financially.[16][17] A move of a
| former member of Europol to Thorn has been found to be
| maladministration by the European Ombudsman Emily
| O'Reilly.[18][19]"
|
| Additionally, it would not surprise me at all if Palantir is
| lobbying for this either. Many EU countries, like Germany and
| Denmark, have already integrated Palantir's software into the
| intelligence, defence, and policing arms of their
| governments.
|
| But at the end of the day, while it is convenient to blame
| external actors like U.S. corporations, ultimately the blame
| lies solely on the shoulders of European politicians. People
| in positions of power will tend to seek more, and I'm sure
| European politicians are more than happy to wield these tools
| for their own gain regardless of whether Palantir or Thorn is
| lobbying them.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| you have left out how it can be used to monitor violation of
| corporate copyright materials. And what it means for
| silencing political speech is enormous.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| There are no solutions to that which wouldn't sound absurd. But
| if you could get past absurdity...
|
| Politicians should agree to to be executed if they lose an
| election. Only those willing to risk their lives should be
| allowed to legislate. This also gives the voters the option of
| punishing those who pass onerous laws at the next election.
|
| If you need extra zing, this would also apply to recall
| elections, so they could even be punished early.
| raincole wrote:
| Yeah let's ensure only the craziest, most desperate for power
| type to be the regulators.
|
| Hitler knew if he had lost, he would have been executed.
| Didn't stop him from going war.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| One could argue that Putin won't stop the current war
| against Ukraine for the very same reason. He is obsessed
| with Gaddafi's undignified end in a ditch and cannot be
| seen as weak.
|
| The GP's idea is very bad. Quite to the contrary, losing
| power should _not_ come with disastrous personal
| consequences.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| If they can't be punished for continuing to push bad
| laws, then they will continue to push them... because
| they benefit from those when they inevitably pass. So
| there are no solutions. You live in a world where Putin
| still exists, is still doing these godawful things, but
| the suggestion that if a politician loses an election his
| life is forfeit makes you fear that the things that
| already happen would happen. Or something. It's sort of
| sad.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I think it would be better if they agree to be executed if
| they _win_ the election, after serving their term.
|
| Maybe a less extreme version of this is that if you become
| president you are stripped of all property and become the
| ward of the state after your term is over, enter a monastery
| sort of situation, for the rest of your life.
| gmuslera wrote:
| If only we could show them how this kind of things may go
| wrong. I don't know, the case of some leader of a nation they
| are having trouble with, abusing of a similar access with their
| data.
|
| But they will probably think that is only bad when others do it
| to them.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > If only we could show them how this kind of things may go
| wrong.
|
| We can. This has already happened with the fairly recent SALT
| TYPHOON hacks. China (ostensibly) abused lawful wiretapping
| mechanisms to spy on American (and other) citizens and
| politicians. The news at the time wasn't always explicit
| about the mechanism, but that's what happened.
|
| China wouldn't have been able to do this if those mechanisms
| didn't exist in the first place.
| brabel wrote:
| Wait, isn't that the law working exactly as planned?
| gmuslera wrote:
| The elephant in the room here is US.
| delusional wrote:
| > prevent them from being pushed over and over
|
| Solve the problem it's trying to solve, then it won't be
| proposed again.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| The problem it's trying to solve is mass surveillance...
| delusional wrote:
| You mean like the mass surveillance already implemented by
| Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon?
|
| That's already here. I think you should consider that this
| law might be aiming at some other goal.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > You mean like the mass surveillance already implemented
| by Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon?
|
| No, GP is referring to mass collection and analysis of
| all of your communications. Google, Apple, et. all don't
| have that capability today.
|
| Hell, apple can't even read my text messages, nor do they
| know I'm writing this - and I'm doing it on an iPhone.
| RajT88 wrote:
| You only believe that because you have chosen to believe
| it.
|
| Take Facebook end-to-end encrypted messages for example.
| There are certain links it won't let you send, enough
| though it is supposedly E2EE. (I've seen it in situations
| like mentioning the piratebay domain name, which it tries
| to auto-preview and then fails. Hacking related websites
| as well I've seen the issue with.)
|
| It likes to pretend it is a mysterious error, but if you
| immediately send a different link, it sends just fine. I
| don't use chat apps much these days, so I'm not sure if
| others see similar behavior, but I'd wager some do.
| Facebook is about the least trustworthy provider I'm
| likely to use, FWIW, so I expect a certain amount of
| smoke and mirrors from them.
| blacklion wrote:
| Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon cannot send
| armed men to my front door.
|
| Yes, they (well, google and amazon, I don't have accounts
| with other vendors) can terminate my accounts, but, to be
| honest, it is not big deal for me, especially comparing
| to be dragged out of my house by police, especially now,
| when I live in EU with residence permit and not full
| citizenship.
| brabel wrote:
| The motivation in Denmark was some big cases where
| organized crime was only caught due to a huge hacking
| operation where the police was able to monitor
| communication on the apps commonly used by the criminals.
| That allowed them to take very dangerous people off the
| streets and now they want to do more of that, more easily.
| I think the discussion can never be in terms of absolutes.
| If your family was murdered by some criminal that was never
| caught earlier , but could have been if the police had
| access to their chats, would you still be against it? We
| need to remember that we're making that decision for some
| future victim if we do agree that this will assist the
| police effectively. The other side says the police will
| undoubtedly abuse their powers. In which case how does the
| results compare?? If you think the answer is easy, one way
| or another, you are definitely wrong.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| But the CSAM regulation under discussion doesn't do any
| of the things you're claiming. It mandates content
| scanning for CSAM and other related messages. It does not
| call for key escrow and decryption of messages involving
| organized crime. So it's not clear how you would do much
| against serious organized criminals with this law.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Nobody here argues against wiretaps after court rulings.
| The discussion here is about mandating sending a
| transcript of every communication you do to the state
| (unless you work for the specific parts of the state).
| tomkarho wrote:
| The only way I see to prevent the constant pushing is that
| every single time some council or committee presents something
| like this every single of one of their private communication
| gets leaked for everyone to peruse at their leisure from
| whatsapp to bank statements.
|
| They want to erode people's privacy? Let them walk their talk
| first and see how that goes.
| Alejandro9R wrote:
| I like this idea frankly. Where are the hacktivists when we
| need them?
| goneri wrote:
| You can become an "hacktivist" by taking 15 minutes of your
| time to write an email to your MEP.
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home
| 1gn15 wrote:
| I think "hacktivist" here means hacking into the
| politician's inboxes and leaking the contents, like
| "politicians want to do this to you; let's see how they
| like it when it's done to them" sort of thing.
| ddalex wrote:
| No, you silly man, the politicians are protected from this
| law, this is just for the plebs.
| glenstein wrote:
| >The only way I see to prevent the constant pushing is that
| every single time some council or committee presents
| something like this
|
| Yes but.. it can't just be vague exhortations and
| generalities. I didn't know the pertinent bodies previously,
| but after GPT'ing on it, it looks like they include:
|
| One is "DG Home," an EU department on security that drafts
| legislation.
|
| Another is Europol, a security coordination body that can't
| legislate but frequently advocates for this kind of
| legislation.
|
| And then there's LEWP, The law enforcement working party, a
| "working group" comprised of security officials from member
| EU states, also involved in EU policy making in some
| capacity.
|
| I think the blocking states should be resisting these at
| these respective bodies too.
| ben_w wrote:
| Tempting though that is, I think that's the wrong way to
| resolve it: The people proposing it (law people) are a
| different culture than us (computer people), and likely have
| a funamental misunderstanding about the necessary
| consequences of what they're asking for.
|
| Two cultures:
| https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/05/25-12.04.31.html
| terramoto wrote:
| Why would they exclude themselves from the rule if they
| werent worry about it? Its not like theres no pedophiles in
| those positions. I wonder who are they going to offer the
| job of watching the photos of families with kids for this.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Why would they exclude themselves from the rule if they
| werent worry about it?
|
| They don't even understand that they haven't. Sure,
| they've written the words to exclude themselves (e.g.
| UK's Investigatory Powers Act), _but that 's just not how
| computers work_.
|
| The people who write these laws, live in a world where a
| human can personally review if evidence was gathered
| unlawfully, and just throw out unlawful evidence.
|
| A hacked computer can imitate a police officer a million
| times a second, the hacker controlling that computer can
| be untraceable, and they can do it for blackmail on 98%
| of literally everyone with any skeleton in the closet at
| the same time for less than any of these people earn in a
| week.
|
| The people proposing these laws just haven't internalised
| that yet.
| nextos wrote:
| > how to prevent them from being pushed over and over until a
| specific context allows it to be approved.
|
| We need more diverse mobile OSes that can be used as daily
| drivers. Right now, it's almost a mono-culture with the
| Apple-Google duopoly. Without this duopoly, centralization
| and totalitarian temptations would be less likely.
|
| There's GrapheneOS, which is excellent and can be used
| without Google, but it relies on Google hardware and might be
| susceptible to viability issues if/when Google closes down
| AOSP. Nevertheless, they are working on their own device that
| will come with GrapheneOS pre-installed, which is exciting.
|
| There's also SailfishOS, which has a regular GNU/Linux
| userland and almost usable at this stage with native
| applications. As a stopgap, it can also run Android
| applications with an emulation layer, and plenty of banking
| ones work just fine.
| simianparrot wrote:
| The only real option is to get your country to leave the EU. An
| unelected cabal of people making sweeping decisions for
| countless member states isn't democratic, so yeet it while you
| can.
| johnwayne666 wrote:
| > An unelected cabal of people
|
| European Commission: Commissioners are nominated by elected
| national governments and must be approved by the directly
| elected European Parliament.
|
| Council of the EU: Ministers are accountable to their
| national parliaments, which are elected by citizens.
|
| European Council: Composed of heads of state/government who
| were elected in their own countries.
|
| European Parliament: Members are directly elected by EU
| citizens every five years.
| Xelbair wrote:
| >European Commission: Commissioners are nominated by
| elected national governments and must be approved by the
| directly elected European Parliament.
|
| With so many levels of indirection, that citizen votes are
| irrelevant and they don't need to care about it - only
| about support of major political group at the top. And
| surprisingly enough Parliment is relatively stable.
|
| >Council of the EU: Ministers are accountable to their
| national parliaments, which are elected by citizens.
|
| same as above.
|
| i don't advocate for leaving the EU, but this needs to
| change. Those positions, which are the ones pushing for
| such legislation usually, need to be held accountable by
| citizens. At least EC.
|
| No more rotations, or other such bullshit.
|
| Right now EU is sitting in middle ground between federation
| and trade union, reaping(from citizens point of view)
| downsides of both systems.
| zx10rse wrote:
| Strip the privileges from the bureaucrats who are involved in
| any type of government work or activity. No immunities, no
| security.
|
| If you want to be a servant to the public be one.
| hartator wrote:
| Explicit digital privacy right in each country constitution?
|
| Priva rights are already there in most countries constitutions,
| but maybe adding the digital part will make it harder to push
| back.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I would argue that a surefire way of guaranteeing the right to
| privacy is to instead continuously push for absolute-
| transparency laws for politicians and governments. If they're
| going to demand every private citizen's records are always open
| for view, then the same should be said for governments - no
| security clearances, no redactions, no "National Security"
| excuse.
|
| Is it patently unreasonable? Yes, but cloaked in the "combat
| corruption" excuse it can be just as effective in a highly-
| partisan society such as this - just like their "bUt WhAt AbOuT
| tHe ChIlDrEn" bullshit props up their demands for global
| surveillance.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Can't be done. It's pushed by the Commission - the technocratic
| deep state.
| 6r17 wrote:
| This has to be written in the constitution somehow ; it has to
| comes down to the values of everyone - and i believe a lot of
| education has to do with it. Currently people are simply not
| tilted by it as much - or not in a way comparable to other
| topics.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| By implementing direct democracy via internet, which creates
| laws which disallow that.
|
| But, amongst a few others, there is a technical problem, how do
| we log in to vote? That mechanism must be unhackable,
| configurable by computer illiterates, and it must not invade
| privacy.
|
| Serious question.
| jMyles wrote:
| The prevention has to be in the underlying layer of physics /
| math / the internet such that the state is _unable _ to make
| (or at least enforce) such laws.
|
| We need to accept and celebrate a world in which the
| capabilities of states are constrained by our innovations, not
| merely the extremely occasional votes we cast.
| daemin wrote:
| I was just thinking that if something like this ever does get
| through and become law, then creating open-source alternatives
| which do not obey these laws would be quite trivial. What would
| not be trivial would be deciding where to host the servers and
| source code, and how to actually get this software onto people's
| devices.
|
| What country would be safe for hosting code that does this that
| people would also trust in general? Would this be hosted on the
| dark web or would someone actually be brave enough to host it on
| their private machines? Would there be DNS that could point to
| this?
|
| Then how would you install the software? You'd need a way to
| side-load it, which means you'd want a way to sign it. Which
| means either adding a new root signing authority or being able to
| have an existing root authority sell you a signing certificate
| and not revoke it.
|
| You kind of quickly end up in some weird dystopian cyberpunk
| setting thinking all of this through.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > You kind of quickly end up in some weird dystopian cyberpunk
| setting thinking all of this through.
|
| The most dystopian concept out of everything you mentioned is
| still "you can't install unsigned software" to me.
| simonw wrote:
| Good luck preventing people from loading up a web page that
| runs a pure JavaScript (or WebAssembly) implementation of
| common cryptography algorithms and lets people copy and paste
| each other encrypted messages.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Chat Control wants to require on-device scanning, so if
| this becomes common they can move to mandating scanning at
| the OS or browser level as well.
| __loam wrote:
| Good luck convincing American tech to take on a liability
| like this. There's a reason big tech is moving to e2e
| encryption like Signal and it isn't user privacy. Telling
| governments to fuck off because you don't have the data
| limits liability.
| bigyabai wrote:
| "Luck" wasn't what coerced American tech businesses into
| subsuming the PRISM program liability. Your naivete is
| admirable though.
| walterbell wrote:
| EU CRA disallows shipment of non-accredited binaries in
| "critical" software categories.
| __loam wrote:
| Okay so are they going to block foreign github repos? This
| seems totally unenforceable.
| roywiggins wrote:
| You just mandate the scanning into the OS, then mandate
| what OSes hardware is allowed to boot.
| brap wrote:
| You underestimate the power EU believes it has
| ceayo wrote:
| > believes
| walterbell wrote:
| Subset of industry feedback on EU CRA,
| https://github.com/orcwg/cra-hub/blob/main/product-
| definitio...
| dcanelhas wrote:
| I wonder where platforms like slack would land in all of this,
| and how would they go about akeeping people from just using their
| own encryption e.g. pgp over unencrypted channels? Is public key
| cryptography too weak to matter?
| naijaboiler wrote:
| This legislation makes every digital communication open to
| being policed at the source. It is far too overreaching and too
| rife for abuse.
| palata wrote:
| Slack is not end-to-end encrypted and belongs to a US company.
| So there is no need for ChatControl there: the US government
| already has access to everything that is written on Slack.
| Bender wrote:
| I believe they are referring to using GPG to encrypt data
| before putting it into Slack, much like using the out of band
| OTR. In that case all the data shared between those using GPG
| or OTR would only be accessible to those with the right out
| of band keys. There are probably not a lot of people doing
| this, or not enough for governments to care. I do this in IRC
| using irssi-otr [1].
|
| If that ever became illegal _because encryption_ then groups
| of people could simply use scripts or addons to pipe through
| different types of encoding to make AI fuzzy searches harder.
| They can try to detect these chains of encoding but it will
| be CPU expensive to do every combination at scale given there
| are literally thousands of forms of encoding that could be
| chained in any order and number.
|
| Mon -> base64 -> base2048 [2]
|
| Tue -> base2048 -> base131072 [3]
|
| ...and so on.
|
| [1] - https://irssi.org/documentation/help/otr/
|
| [2] - https://github.com/qntm/base2048
|
| [3] - https://github.com/qntm/base131072
| palata wrote:
| > I believe they are referring to using GPG to encrypt data
| before putting it into Slack
|
| In good approximation, nobody does that.
|
| And anyone who is capable of communicating over PGP won't
| be covered by ChatControl anyway. They can keep using PGP
| over whatever they want, or just compile Signal from
| sources.
|
| > If that ever became illegal because encryption then
| groups of people could simply use scripts or addons to pipe
| through different types of encoding to make AI fuzzy
| searches harder.
|
| I don't think that this makes any sense at all. This is
| some kind of poor encryption. Either you honour the law and
| you send your messages in plaintext, or you don't and you
| use proper encryption. There is nothing worth anything in-
| between.
|
| If encryption is illegal, those who really need it can
| still use steganography.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| I fear when its become illegal to not have a remote scanner
| on my computer broadcasting file contents, invoking GPG
| will be of much less use.
| luxcem wrote:
| If you really want to use encryption under a state where
| it's forbidden and communication are monitored you rather
| want to hide your encrypted messages inside cat pictures
| and tiktok videos. Because blatant obfuscation might
| trigger warning and draw attention.
|
| In the end it's not about making encryption technically
| impossible but illegal, and if you use it you'll be
| prosecuted.
| varispeed wrote:
| You are already looking for workarounds like people struggling
| under authoritarian regimes.
|
| This is completely unacceptable.
| astroflection wrote:
| Governments should be transparent and the people should be
| opaque. Any government that attempts to make things otherwise
| looses legitimacy.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Or as someone put it, "People shouldn't fear the government.
| The government should fear the people."
|
| I feel like we've lost the vocabulary we ought to be using to
| talk about the legitimacy and role of the state. More people
| need to read J.S. Mill (and probably Hobbes.) Even today, works
| by both are surprisingly good reads and embed a lot of
| thoughtful and timeless wisdom.
| tremon wrote:
| But isn't the government fearing the people exactly why
| they're relentlessly pushing ChatControl?
| Xelbair wrote:
| if they feared the populace, they couldn't push for
| legislation that entrenches their position without any
| benefits to citizens.
| thfuran wrote:
| US cops fear everyone else, and look what that gets us.
| EasyMark wrote:
| > _Governments should be transparent and the people should be
| opaque._
|
| I'm going to add this to my repertoire since it's a lot more
| concise than most of my rantings on the topic
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Governments need privacy. They literally investigate child
| mollestation cases. They hunt spies. They handle all sorts of
| messy things like divorce between couples with abuse.
|
| I'm not commenting on the government coming in at unveiling
| encrypted communications, but certainly a better approach than
| "governments should be transparent and the people should be
| opaque" would be "governments should be translucent and the
| people should be translucent too".
| kevincox wrote:
| There is a clear difference between specific activities that
| need privacy (especially if it is temporary privacy or cases
| where it is protecting the privacy of the citizens not the
| government itself) and privacy by default for most or all
| government work.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Yes, I love this idea. I've heard it framed as "Transparency
| for the powerful and privacy for the weak."
| ivape wrote:
| Can anyone try to explain to be how this is not a strain of mind-
| reading and thought crime? I mean, sure, we're several decades
| away from the big event where society will adjudicate thought-
| crime, but this appears to be one of the first skirmishes.
| brap wrote:
| Thought crime has been illegal in the EU/UK for quite some
| time. But only a certain kind of thoughts
| lioeters wrote:
| ThoughtControl 2030: EU wants to scan all private thoughts and
| communications. Encryption as a concept prohibited except for
| corporations with security clearance and political connections.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| This is (mostly) about Tech companies' money, namely:
|
| - Palantir Technologies
|
| - 'not-for-profit' Thorn
|
| > The Commission's failure to identify the list of experts as
| falling within the scope of the complainant's public access
| request constitutes maladministration. [0]
|
| > ... the complainant contended that the precision rate of
| technologies like those developed by the organisation are often
| overestimated. It is therefore essential that any technical
| claims made by the organisation concerned are made public as this
| would facilitate the critical assessment of the proposal. [1]
|
| > The Commission presented a proposal on preventing and combating
| child sexual abuse, looking in particular at detecting child
| pornography. In this context, it has mentioned that support could
| be provided by the software of the controversial American company
| Palantir... [2]
|
| > Is Palantir's failure to register on the Transparency Register
| compatible with the Commission's transparency commitments? [2]
|
| (Palantir only entered the Transparency Registry in March 2025
| despite being a multi million vendor for Europol and European
| Agencies for more than a decade)
|
| > No detailed records exist concerning a January meeting between
| European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of
| controversial US data analytics firm Palantir [3]
|
| > Kutcher and CEO Julie Cordua held several meetings with EU
| officials from 2020 to 2023 - before the former stepped down from
| his role - including European Commission President Ursula von der
| Leyen, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, and European
| Parliament President Roberta Metsola.[4]
|
| > The Ombudsman further concluded that Thorn had indeed
| influenced the legislative process of the CSAM regulation. "It is
| clear, for example, from the Commission's impact assessment that
| the input provided by Thorn significantly informed the
| Commission's decision-making. The public interest in disclosure
| is thus self-evident. [4]
|
| > EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly has announced that she has opened
| an investigation into the transfer of two former Europol
| officials to the chat control surveillance tech provider Thorn.
| [5]
|
| [0] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/176658
|
| [1] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/recommendation/en/179395
|
| [2]
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2024-00016...
|
| [3] https://www.euractiv.com/news/commission-kept-no-records-
| on-...
|
| [4] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-
| ombudsman-...
|
| [5] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-
| ombudsman-l...
| varispeed wrote:
| and if people point out EU is completely corrupt and we have
| complete breakdown of any agencies that should keep it under
| control, they get downvoted.
|
| EU turns into fascist (policies controlled by corporations)
| quasi state before our eyes.
|
| If you are working for any crime agency, put away biscuits and
| move your lazy arse to work!
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| No, I strongly disagree.
|
| The EU is by far one of the least corrupt and most
| transparent organizations in European History, by design and
| by process.
|
| The fact that I am able to produce all those reference
| documents in the previous comment is substantial evidence of
| this.
|
| The issue here is the European Comission. Both in the
| appointment of Commissioners as well as in the checks and
| balances against the Comissioners and President of the EC.
|
| To be anti-EU is throwing the baby with the bathwater and
| more seriously plays into the hands of every geopolitical
| player around us.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| What would prevent me from writing my own program to do something
| simple like sending encrypted messages? Or just emails...
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Good luck being a DOD contractor overseas, wtf?
| __loam wrote:
| Good luck having a bank account
| thewebguyd wrote:
| They'll push the scanning to the OS level, mandate that the OS
| does it. Hence the seemingly coordinated effort with Google on
| the sideloading changes, and enforcing play protect, etc.
|
| Like the TPM & Microsoft scare when TPM first started arriving
| in hardware, and we all thought it would be used to lock out
| other OSes. Only it's for real this time.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| > They'll push the scanning to the OS level
|
| I don't know if this is possible so easily. Does the OS scan
| the memory of all applications? How does it know what is text
| and image data?
|
| What if it is encryped or even just obfuscated? Does the OS
| then track all changes of memory etc?
|
| Or you think it'll just have a rolling keylogger so you can't
| type in s.th. malicious?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Everything a process does beyond touching memory is going
| through a syscall. The OS serves every key press to such a
| program.
| layer8 wrote:
| The proposed regulation only applies to publicly available
| services, and only binds service providers, not end users.
| There is nothing preventing you from sending encrypted emails,
| just as there is nothing preventing you from pasting encrypted
| messages into WhatsApp or storing and sharing encrypted files
| in Dropbox.
| Bender wrote:
| _What would prevent me from writing my own program to do
| something simple like sending encrypted messages?_
|
| Nothing. That is, nothing until your application becomes
| popular. I will keep encrypting my emails and they can pound
| sand once legislation for this makes it to my country. It
| should be a while before these shenanigans are in every
| distribution or kernel for Linux.
| izacus wrote:
| Same thing that prevents you form buying a knife and walking
| around stabbing people.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| So you think this is comparable to sending around some data
| over TCP or UDP?
| xp84 wrote:
| The people who are trying to install this kind of law
| basically do!
|
| They want to change the public perception from "Private
| encrypted communication is good and desirable" to
| "Encrypted is unsafe. Encrypted could be scary. Encrypted
| enables Bad People."
|
| In a vain attempt to inhibit access to non-broken
| cryptography, we will probably see operating systems that
| allow actual root access to the user -- or even just
| allowing non-manufacturer-signed executables to run! --
| being painted as "unsafe platforms." Apple has already
| transitioned most of the way to being fully in the "trusted
| computing" camp, since it takes a great deal of gymnastics
| to even modify the OS because of the Mac's sealed system
| volume, and out of the box all executables must be blessed
| by Apple, meaning governments can put their thumb on Apple
| to force them to disallow any non-broken crypto tools from
| being used. I know this can be changed in Settings for now,
| but that'll probably go away eventually.
|
| Microsoft will be next of course, and Linux will be
| portrayed as a "hacking tool" by contrast to the commercial
| OSs.
| croes wrote:
| I guess they don't know you can encrypt files before you send
| them. They don't even have to look like encrypted files.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Chat Control imagines your device being required to scan and
| report on all your plaintext.
| walterbell wrote:
| Encrypted data can be input via analog device sensors.
| vessenes wrote:
| This was precisely some of the motivation behind pushing RCS onto
| Apple. The RCS spec has a termination point between providers --
| a great spot to read some data for telecom providers and
| government agencies. Despite this, RCS is called "End to End" all
| the time. It's not. Use Signal or iMessage, depending on your
| security choices in iCloud.
| happyopossum wrote:
| RCS is not called "end to end" by anyone - even Apple and
| Google explicitly state it's not currently E2E encrypted. Apple
| has pledged to _add_ e2ee to RCS on iPhones but they're never
| claimed it's that way today.
|
| They go out of their way to warn you it's not the same level of
| security as iMessage.
| pona-a wrote:
| Google Messages shows "This chat is now end-to-end encrypted"
| between compatible devices today.
| hn-ifs wrote:
| Out of interest, what happens in the case of say an open source
| chat app developed outside the EU. Let's add that the developers
| are anonymous too, like truecrypt. What power does this
| legislation have then?
| layer8 wrote:
| App stores that operate in the EU are subject to EU law, and
| can be forced to remove noncompliant apps.
| happyopossum wrote:
| Ahh, but they've already mandated side loading to piss off
| apple! Bit of an own-goal there.
| roywiggins wrote:
| > Apps installed through alternative app distribution
| undergo a Notarization process to ensure every app meets
| baseline platform integrity standards...
|
| > Notarization for iOS and iPadOS apps is a baseline review
| that applies to all apps, regardless of their distribution
| channel, focused on platform policies for security and
| privacy and to maintain device integrity.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/118110
| shuckles wrote:
| Why do you think the EU hasn't opposed Apple's plan to
| notarize every app, even sideloaded ones? They like the
| censorship potential.
| roywiggins wrote:
| They can just mandate it at the OS level. I don't know if the
| proposal envisions that already, but if it becomes popular
| surely that would come next.
| nisten wrote:
| If you are a smart kid in europe learn to vibecode XChacha20 &
| ed25519 encryption keys for you and your friends to chat with so
| you can go tell your incompetent government to go fuck
| themselves.
| i_am_a_squirrel wrote:
| but then they'll make this a crime
| EasyMark wrote:
| exactly, this is just step 1
| nisten wrote:
| they're too slow,
|
| by the time they do the kids can just vibecode another chat
| app for themselve
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Then they're not encrypted apps.
| lovelearning wrote:
| Is CSA really that widespread in Europe that everyone's chat
| messages have to be monitored? And if it is that widespread,
| shouldn't they try to address it socially to prevent CSA as much
| as possible rather than try to catch just the subset of tech-
| savvy abusers, that too after they've already committed CSA?
| quotemstr wrote:
| Everyone in this debate understands that CSA is a pretext.
| Nothing is going to make any sense to you if you think
| ChatControl is an earnest and sincere to fight CSA in
| particular.
|
| The ultimate goal is for computers to run only authorized
| programs and to license and monitor development tools like the
| Soviets monitored typewriters.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| It's not about CSA, it's about illegal content. And laws change
| all the time.
|
| For example, an individual can generate AI images of Hollywood
| actors using Stable Diffusion and a decently powerful computer.
| Said individual had the right to share those images online with
| a community.
|
| Now however the sharing and distribution of said images is
| considered illegal in my USA state.
|
| So, are the images said individual created and shared three
| years ago subject to prosecution? Even if the law went into
| effect 3 months ago?
| NoahZuniga wrote:
| > Even if the law went into effect 3 months ago?
|
| No. The right not to be tried for actions that weren't crimes
| at the time is pretty universally applied in the west (I am
| not aware of the legal situation in other parts of the world,
| but I imagine it's honored there too). (Article 7 of the
| European Convention on Human Rights for the EU, Article I,
| Section 9 & 10 of the constitution for the US)
|
| > So, are the images said individual created and shared three
| years ago subject to prosecution?
|
| Generally, criminal acts are judged according to the rules of
| the jurisdiction where they happened, so I wouldn't be too
| worried about this. This isn't a universal rule though, so
| you won't find it enshrined in constitutions or treaties.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Of course not, it's just a pretense for passing this law
| because its political suicide to instead say "We don't want to
| do any actual police work and instead want to create a massive
| surveillance state and monitor everything you say and do so we
| can better control our populations."
|
| CSAM is just the excuse, as it is with any other laws of this
| nature in the past.
| antoniojtorres wrote:
| Agree completely. These laws are either a wedge for broader
| surveillance or a massive compromise on everyone else's rights
| to catch a subset of a subset of users.
| jenadine wrote:
| With the access to phones, underage teenager may be taking nude
| pictures of themselves. They should be put in jail where they
| belong. /s
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| They'll push for it repeatedly until they succeed and then it
| will be irreversibile.
| sys32768 wrote:
| They want the power to arrest you for your private thought crimes
| too.
| EasyMark wrote:
| and keep them forever to use them against you in the future, if
| you become a "problem"
| rvz wrote:
| Sounds like a complete tyrannical dystopian hell hole to live in.
|
| But nevermind, We love the EU! /s
| EasyMark wrote:
| My answer to "think of the children" is "I am thinking of the
| children"
|
| * of their rights to privacy
|
| * their right to live in a democracy
|
| * the value of warrant based search vs nazi SS style
|
| * I want them to enjoy at -least- as much privacy as I currently
| enjoy
|
| * I don't want rando creeps reading their personal messages and
| keeping them forever, there's a reason memory fades, it lets us
| grow as people
| palata wrote:
| Take it like this: your phone already "reads" absolutely
| everything you put on that phone. Apple or Google could do
| anything they want with that, but you trust them. You trust
| that they don't send everything that goes into your phone to
| their servers.
|
| ChatControl would run locally on your phone. It would compare
| the images that you receive/send to a list of illegal images,
| and if you happen to deal with one of them, it would report
| you.
|
| How is that destroying your democracy?
|
| Disclaimer: I am against ChatControl, but too many people seem
| to not understand what the problem with ChatControl is.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Because it's closed source so you have no idea of what is
| happening. You can then scan for other things, such as "hate
| speech", or "tax evasion" and then the slope becomes more
| slippery than a lube party on a vinyl sheet, and Kim Jong Un
| awaits you at the Ski Bar at the bottom.
|
| Those passive surveillance systems have a chilling effect on
| democracy, just like mandatory ID on social media, and
| provide politicians a lever so convenient that you know that
| it will be used, especially in the EU.
| palata wrote:
| > Because it's closed source so you have no idea of what is
| happening.
|
| Exactly! That's the problem!
|
| It's not killing the encryption, it's not sharing all your
| communications with the government. Those are invalid
| arguments. The problem is that whoever controls the
| proprietary part of ChatControl (and that includes the list
| of illegal material) can abuse it to e.g. detect political
| opponents, or whatever they can imagine.
|
| I am just asking that we use the valid arguments against
| ChatControl. I read a lot of invalid arguments that won't
| help convincing politicians that it is a bad idea. They
| need to understand why it is a bad idea, _the real reason_.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| I think that the correct sentence would be that it kills
| the purpose of encryption. Which is to prevent anyone
| aside of the recipient from reading your message.
| palata wrote:
| For the vast majority of people, the purpose of
| encryption is not to prevent a trusted law enforcement
| from reading the message.
|
| Say the police knocks at my door and asks me nicely to
| read my messages, I will show them. Doesn't mean I don't
| care about them being encrypted when I send them over the
| Internet.
| mnls wrote:
| The fact that EU politicians exclude themselves from the
| ChatControl is all you need to know about this.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Source on that?
| bapak wrote:
| From TFA
|
| > the proposed legislation includes exemptions for government
| accounts used for "national security purposes, maintaining
| law and order or military purposes". Convenient.
| kevincox wrote:
| I can buy the military exemption, and maybe some very top
| level government workers that are effectively military
| (example: POTUS). But the EU parliament has no reason to be
| excluded. It is definitely a terrible law if it is so bad
| that they won't pass it unless they are excluded.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Interestingly Parliament is _against_ Chat Control:
| https://edri.org/our-work/chat-control-what-is-actually-
| goin...
| pests wrote:
| > top level government workers that are effectively
| military (example: POTUS)
|
| POTUS is very specifically NOT a member of the military.
| Elected civilian control was the whole point. Even
| Eisenhower had to (temporarily) give up his general rank
| to serve as president.
|
| I do understand your core point tho.
| cuu508 wrote:
| Page 36, section 2a here: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/04/202...
| meta-level wrote:
| Can anyone explain to me what keeps anyone who doesn't want to be
| monitored from just sending PNGs (or similar) containing messages
| encrypted in each pixels LSBs?
|
| Doesn't all that just force everyone who has something to hide to
| use something else, less obvious?
| 1gn15 wrote:
| Probably friction. Will you be able to convince your friends to
| do that?
| meta-level wrote:
| No, probably not - but those bad guys with all their child
| porn and terrorist plans won't mind the friction (those will
| either encrypt or become EU politicians).
| palata wrote:
| You would be surprised.
|
| I mean, look at how many technically savvy people use
| Telegram and think it is "safe".
|
| Ever heard of top government officials mistakenly inviting
| a journalist in a group sharing top secret information?
| happyopossum wrote:
| Presumably the distribution of an app that facilitates that
| would become illegal as well.
| hellojesus wrote:
| But would that actually stop people? I can say with certainty
| a law such as this would encourage me to go out of my way to
| create and distribute such software.
| apexalpha wrote:
| Ugh, I hate this but literally no one is paying attention.
|
| Its hard because everytime this gets defeated all the EUSSR
| people just wait a year and try again...
| gverrilla wrote:
| The USA wants this to remain a monopoly.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Privacy for me and not for thee?
| netbioserror wrote:
| Unenforceable tripe. Do not comply.
| varispeed wrote:
| To me this is simply an act of terrorism. People who are behind
| those proposals should be charged and face trial.
|
| There is no excuse for this and it is a stain on EU history for
| even letting this go so far.
|
| Anyone proposing this should not only be sacked but also referred
| to de-radicalisation / anti-terrorism programme in their country
| and forever banned from holding any kind of public sector office.
|
| There is no excuse.
| varispeed wrote:
| Why downvote? Because the terrorists wear suits, speak in
| committees, are mostly white, and there's no blood on the floor
| (yet)? The method is different, but the aim is the same:
| intimidation and control of a population for political ends.
|
| If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to
| intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then
| "Chat Control" qualifies in substance.
|
| Violence doesn't have to leave blood. Psychological and
| coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive
| control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to
| bodies and minds.
|
| The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people
| too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a
| population, by design.
|
| It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping
| people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think,
| talk, and dissent.
|
| The only reason it's not "terrorism" on paper is because states
| write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms,
| the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism:
| deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
|
| You can argue legality if you like, but the substance matches
| the textbook definition.
| bapak wrote:
| Where is Apple in all of this?
|
| They're such proponents of privacy that they've actively started
| encrypting as much as possible _for decades_ but now that the EU
| is about to break _all that_ they 're silent.
|
| They raised such a fuss when the FBI asked to decrypt that single
| iPhone years ago, but now that millions are on the line...
| nothing?
| shuckles wrote:
| When Apple attempted to anticipate these laws and propose a
| system which tried to navigate a compromise, the "pro-privacy"
| faction was so politically dumb they spread FUD about it and
| actively made sure no reasonable compromise could ever be
| reached. Now the public with reap what these advocates have
| sowed, good and hard.
|
| With regards to the FBI incident, Apple said at the beginning
| of their statement, "This moment calls for public discussion,
| and we want our customers and people around the country to
| understand what is at stake."
|
| The EU is proposing a law. People assure me their laws are
| democratic and reflect the will of the people. Who is Apple to
| reject the outcome of public discussion?
|
| The FBI letter was written in a context where an agency was
| acting without the support of the public. That's why the
| framing was all about misuse of the All Writs Act and lack of
| Congressional blessing for the requested power.
| chickenimprint wrote:
| ChatControl is exactly what Apple did. It's client-side, so
| no one is able to see your messages. The police sees if
| content hashes match known CSAM.
| MaKey wrote:
| What would you call a "reasonable compromise" between
| encryption and privacy?
| derelicta wrote:
| I'm absolutely convinced now that anti-war stances will be soon
| included in the scope of this client side scanning. Peaceniks
| beware, citizens should crave war and dying for their elites.
| nikkwong wrote:
| Imagine a future where it becomes easier to commit terrorism
| because of some technological advancements--like smaller, less
| traceable bombs, or chemical weapons that are easily accessible
| and lead to higher casualties--like in the 1,000s or more.
| Imagine in that scenario, that the likelihood of you or someone
| you know becoming the victim of a terrorist attack is now non-
| trivial in your society. In a future where this becomes the norm,
| it would be interesting to see if individuals are more willing to
| adopt a level of increased surveillance as it seems like the only
| reasonable protection against terror.
|
| Right now this debate is oriented mostly around the fact that
| surveillance today is not a good deal--consumers give up their
| privacy and get nothing in return. But is there a tipping point?
| Technology draws us closer, day by day, and the threat matrix
| will become more sophisticated as time moves forward.
|
| Most individuals on HN are privacy absolutists but one should
| recognize that tradeoffs exist. That tradeoff is just not
| compelling _today_ , but that doesn't mean that will always be
| the case. If you go to China, where everything and everyone is
| surveilled, I think you'd be surprised to find that many Chinese
| don't mind. They feel incredibly safe and don't have to worry
| about being victims of crimes, having their packages stolen,
| walking around late at night alone, etc. Walking around in China
| with absolute peace of mind around my own personal safety is a
| very eye-opening experience as someone coming from the US. I've
| always advocated for stringent privacy protections; but when
| giving that up buys you _absolute safety_ in your immediate
| environment, that 's not an experience you forget.
|
| I'm certainly not saying I'm a proponent of living in a
| surveillance state--I'm simply noting that tradeoffs exist and a
| sort of re-balancing is constantly occurring, which is just
| interesting to be aware of.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > it would be interesting to see if individuals are more
| willing to adopt a level of increased surveillance as it seems
| as the only reasonable protection against terror.
|
| One presumes it would make terrorism easier if you could hack
| in and find out where your target is at any given time. What
| they're doing. What their plans are for this evening.
|
| Also I think one could probably point to the current US
| president as proof for why this is an insane idea. Imagine if
| he really did have access to everything we say.
| nikkwong wrote:
| Yeah, totally. Again not saying I'm advocating for it in that
| form or manner. I'm just saying, tradeoffs could occur, that
| reasonable people may start to weigh differently based on the
| level of threat they feel to their lives personally.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| did you write this message with ChatGPT?
|
| > .. like smaller, less traceable bombs, or chemical weapons
| that are easily accessible and lead to higher casualties ..
|
| it's very easy to build a bomb, you just need to "google" and
| make your shopping... Killing random people in the street is
| easy too, you have, among others, knifes - very easy to buy and
| commit a crime in side streets, etc.
| nikkwong wrote:
| No I did not use chatgpt. I've always written with a lot of
| em dashes, Chatgpt probably got it from me :-)
|
| > it's very easy to build a bomb [...]
|
| Yeah, what I'm saying though is that these attacks are not
| happening at a scale though that is large enough for people
| to need to worry about their own safety personally. Your
| personal chance of dying in a terrorist attack is so low that
| it's not worth thinking about (unless maybe you live in the
| middle east). I'm simply noting that this might not always be
| the case. It's easy to imagine, with better weapons, that
| terrorists become much more prolific in their ability to
| kill; under which scenario people could be willing to give up
| more to have more peace of mind.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Actually you can kill people just fine with only your hands.
| You just need to open a medicine book, there are a few spots,
| where a light hit achieves the intended effect.
| Xelbair wrote:
| this also assumes that criminals or terrorists will just follow
| the law.
|
| you can always establish encrypted channel via DH over
| stenography in plaintext messaging, and just use any encrypted
| protocol.
|
| if hardware is compromised a black market for such devices will
| surface.
|
| Worst case scenario you create gigantic one time pads and just
| use them.
|
| the whole idea is flawed as you get neither security nor
| privacy. in fact - it actually opens you to abuse if encryption
| is backdoored. Not to mention it being a gigantic slippery
| slope argument.
|
| and most importantly - how to you ensure that you can ALWAYS
| trust your government with such powers?
| nikkwong wrote:
| > a black market for such devices will surface
|
| Probably, but I think you are giving most bad actors too much
| credence. Tyler Robinson took several precautions to cover
| his trail in his assassination of Charlie Kirk--but he also
| told many individuals about his plan on discord, as well as
| other non-encrypted channels, etc. Not all bad actors are
| sophisticated in the same way.
|
| I wouldn't trust the government with the power. If the
| scenario I'm posing were to actually occur, it's only a
| matter of time until the gestapo starts showing up at the
| houses of innocent individuals. This sort of thing happens in
| China.
|
| Still, again, if the threat is big enough, I am curious to
| ponder what role individuals would want government to take in
| using surveillance to reduce actual human deaths in terror
| attacks (or any type of attack, for that matter).
| Xelbair wrote:
| >Probably, but I think you are giving most bad actors too
| much credence. Tyler Robinson took several precautions to
| cover his trail in his assassination of Charlie Kirk--but
| he also told many individuals about his plan on discord, as
| well as other non-encrypted channels, etc. Not all bad
| actors are sophisticated in the same way.
|
| you're comparing organized crime, which this is supposed to
| combat - with a lone gunman. Stupid criminals will always
| exist.
|
| >Still, again, if the threat is big enough, I am curious to
| ponder what role individuals would want government to take
| in using surveillance to reduce actual human deaths in
| terror attacks (or any type of attack, for that matter).
|
| the purpose of this isn't to stop deaths. It is to entrench
| state power, increase agencies budget... and as they have
| to demonstrate that they are useful it will turn either
| into totalitarian hellhole with plenty 'making example of'
| public cases... or some attacks will go through on purpose
| to justify their budget after cuts...
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| Better imagine a future where this old manufactured problem /
| manufactured solution brainwashing trick no longer works and
| devil's advocates get what they deserve
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >Imagine a future where it becomes easier to commit terrorism
| because of some technological advancements
|
| Imagine a future where aliens invade, and all of our civil
| rights have to be suspended in order for society to be re-
| focused on fighting an existential war against the invaders. I
| suppose this sci-fi hypothetical _could_ happen and if it did
| happen then the sacrifice might even be necessary. But it 's
| not happening now, and it's entirely reasonable to classify it
| as both (1) unlikely, and (2) an incredibly bad outcome we
| should hope that we never have to face.
| nikkwong wrote:
| I don't know if it's complete fearmongering to imagine a
| scenario in the future where chemical or biological weapons
| are easier to manufacture and therefore execute attacks.
| Hundreds of people died in Europe last year due to terrorist
| attacks, and compared to where our species will eventually
| be, many of the technologies used in these attacks are still
| in their infancy. The world may evolve, but the scriptures
| that evangelize future jihadists won't, so the incentive to
| be a martyr will always exist. I just looked it up and Europe
| has a very bad track record at stopping attacks--of 54
| planned terrorist attacks in 2024 only 19 were averted by
| intelligence. 35 were carried out successfully. The threat
| may come from factions other than just jihadists in the
| future, too. I agree that this is not something we have to
| worry about now, which is why I stated that I'm hypothesizing
| in the original comment. But I think it's a bit less far
| fetched than a near term alien invasion :-)
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| The ultimate surveillance state cannot keep you ultimately
| safe.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| This concept already exists. It has for centuries. It's
| called war.
| dent9876543 wrote:
| But China wasn't a honeypot for crime and fraud before they had
| the firewall, facial rec, and so on.
|
| It is true that many Chinese citizens don't give it a thought.
|
| But there's no demonstrable cause and effect going on there.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| It's not about the usefulness... it's that omnipotent
| surveillance creates a jarring imbalance of power between the
| surveillance state and the people.
|
| If the employees of the state were subject to the same exact
| surveillance, then maybe it might be palatable.
|
| Curiously, the Star Trek Universe exists in such a scenario. A
| common trope is asking the computer for evidence of a crime,
| where someone is at any time, etc. I've never heard complaints
| about this supposed contradiction between the utopia vision of
| Star Trek and the omnipotent, all-seeing computer.
|
| But we all know the reality... a tale as old as time. The state
| will exclude themselves from the surveillance, and it will
| eventually be used as a tool for authoritarianism. It's only a
| matter of time with something as powerful as this.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> They feel incredibly safe and don 't have to worry about
| being victims of crimes, having their packages stolen, walking
| around late at night alone, etc._
|
| Em. I think feeling incredibly safe has more to do with the
| media telling people that no crime exists and all criminals are
| caught, rather than a reality of zero crime.
|
| There is evidence that crime started being systematically
| under-recorded in China since they started assessing police on
| proportion of recorded crimes they solve.
|
| https://archive.is/20250624235740/https://www.economist.com/...
| budududuroiu wrote:
| I get your point, but this is baked into the social contract in
| China. You obey the party, give up some personal freedoms, and
| in exchange the party will make sure you live a prosperous safe
| life.
|
| The current EU political class has completely lost their
| Mandate of Heaven, they command 0 respect because they're
| spineless empty bureaucrats looking for a cushy consulting job
| after they're done being lobbied by their future employers.
|
| Even if your utopian idea makes sense, I don't trust the EU
| politicians to bring it to life, just virtue signal
| txrx0000 wrote:
| If murder is common in the populace, then that means the social
| norms of that society have already drifted to the point where
| murder is acceptable. In that society, the murderers are
| probably running the government.
|
| On your tangent about China, the people there are feeling so
| absolutely safe that they have the urge to install metal bars
| on every window of almost every home.
| htk wrote:
| What a classic "Think of the children!" excuse for abuse.
| tomsmeding wrote:
| I don't think ChatControl is a good idea. I also think that if
| you want to convince people of that, using the same misleading
| language tactics as the other side is not the way to go.
|
| > These scanning systems get it wrong most of the time. [...]
| Irish law enforcement confirms this: only 20.3% of 4,192
| automated reports actually contained illegal material.
|
| Wrong most of the time _that they report something_. Technically
| correct, although a somewhat tricky formulation.
|
| Literally next paragraph:
|
| > Even with hypothetical 99% accuracy (which current systems
| don't achieve), scanning billions of daily messages would
| generate millions of false accusations.
|
| This is a different accuracy percentage: here the author means
| 99% of _all_ messages, not only the reported ones, which the
| previous 20.3% referred to. Furthermore, these two paragraphs
| together sound very fishy: if current systems are not accurate
| enough to generate "millions of false accusations", presumably
| (?) they generate at least that. But with the 20.3% true
| positives fraction, that would mean hundreds of thousands true
| accusations per day.
|
| Which part am I misunderstanding?
| dionian wrote:
| Don't worry the governments would NEVER use this against you for
| political reasons later.
| baalimago wrote:
| So what if I host my own messaging service? As in: bring back
| IRC?
| aduwah wrote:
| The way I understand if your solution would become popular, the
| law can come after you to provide a log of messages in plain
| text.
|
| Also they will have the legal power to force the popular
| operating systems to enforce generic keylogging/packet
| capturing and whatnot.
| baalimago wrote:
| I don't see how they can come after anyone who's using a
| specific protocol [0] by law. Expanding on this thought: if
| Chat Control passes, it will just be the death of social
| media as a chat platform. People will swap to something more
| rudimentary where it can't be enforced. Primary reason why
| being that it simply will be so much faster/more convenient
| than the apps which are forced to use chat control.
|
| The same reason as why streaming services are being ditched
| in favor of piracy will happen to social media.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC
| xp84 wrote:
| From the article, the current flavor of "threat" this is being
| positioned to fight is CSAM.
|
| Does anyone believe that predators commit those heinous offenses
| _because_ of the availability of encrypted channels to distribute
| those products of their crimes? I sure don 't. The materials
| exist because of predators' access to children, which these
| surveillance measures won't solve.
|
| Best case scenario (and this is wildly optimistic) the offenders
| won't be able to find any 'safe' channels to distribute their
| materials to each other. The authorities really think every
| predator will just give up and _stop abusing_ just because of
| that? What a joke.
|
| More likely of course, those criminals will just use
| decentralized tools that can't be suppressed or monitored, even
| as simple as plain old GPG and email. Therefore nothing of value
| will be gained from removing all privacy from all communication.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| That's not a bug, that's a feature. They'll say that current
| surveillance tools are insufficient, and demand more.
| dekken_ wrote:
| Absolutely, evidence of abuse is secondary to the actual abuse.
|
| Plus, the fact you could use/make AI/LLM/etc generate nefarious
| content that is hard to tell is fake, tells you the abuse isn't
| even what they are interested in.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > Best case scenario (and this is wildly optimistic) the
| offenders won't be able to find any 'safe' channels to
| distribute their materials to each other.
|
| The theory is based on the documented fact that most crime is
| poorly thought through with terrible operational security. 41%
| is straight up opportunistic, spur of the moment, zero
| planning.
|
| It won't stop _technologically savvy predators who plan things
| carefully_ ; but that statistically is probably only a few
| percent of predators; so yes, it's probably pretty darn
| effective. There are no shortage of laws that are less
| effective that you probably don't want repealed - like how 40%
| of murderers and 75% of rapists get away with it. Sleep well
| tonight.
| nikkwong wrote:
| Exactly. Econ 101: why do consumption taxes work at all? By
| increasing the amount of pain associated with purchasing a
| particular indulgent product, you decrease the consumption of
| that product _on the margin_. When you increase the price of
| cigarettes by 20%, cigarette smoking in a society decreases.
| But for the most addicted, no consumption tax will probably
| act as a deterrent.
|
| Some individuals will find a way to distribute and consume
| child pornography no matter the cost. But other addicted
| individuals will stop consuming if doing so becomes so
| laborious because they are consuming or distributing _on the
| margin_. I.e, imagine the individual who doesn 't want to be
| consuming it, who knows they shouldn't--this type of
| deterrent may be the breaking point that gets them to stop
| altogether. And if you reduce the amount of consumption or
| production by any measure, you decrease a hell of a lot of
| suffering.
|
| But anyway, the goal of this legislation is not to drive the
| level of distribution to 0. The goal of policymakers could be
| seen charitably as an attempt to curtail consumption, because
| any reduction in consumption is a good thing.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Exactly my point, but also, to add to it:
|
| Let's say you're actually texting in a group. Even if you
| use perfect operational security, odds are terrible that
| _all_ members of your group will _perfectly_ uphold the
| same level of security _every_ time they share their
| content.
|
| One is going to slip up. He's going to get arrested. And
| he's going to turn the whole group in to reduce his
| sentence. Everyone else meanwhile has their operational
| security become proof of intent, proof of deliberation,
| proof of trying to evade authorities. They thought they
| were clever with the encrypted ZIP files, but the judge and
| jury are going to be merciless. I don't think most
| authorities have a problem with that.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| Wait. Are you calling child pornography an "indulgent
| product?"
| nikkwong wrote:
| Was referring to tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks etc
| InvisGhost wrote:
| They better ban password protected zip files too!
| guerrilla wrote:
| They will when they can.
| blindriver wrote:
| This has nothing to do with csam and arguing that point is on
| purpose, to distract people and the politicians can say "xp84
| supports child pornography!"
|
| It has everything to do with censorship and complete control
| over people's ability to communicate. Politicians hate free
| speech and they want to control their citizens completely
| including their thoughts. This is true evil.
| alkonaut wrote:
| But politicians are - in general - neither evil, nor do they
| have any real incentive to "control citizens' thoughts". It
| doesn't make sense. They can be gullible. Non-Technical.
| Owned by lobbyists. Under pressure to deliver on the apparent
| problem of the day (csam, terror, whatever). But I don't
| think there is a general crusade against privacy. That's why
| I think it's so infuriating: I'm sure it's not even
| deliberately dismantling privacy. They're doing it blindly.
|
| This is pushed by parties that have a good track record of
| preserving integrity. That's why it's so surprising.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| If they are "just doing their job" why are they asking for
| an exemption that would apply only to them? No, they firmly
| believe that safety should be gained at the cost of
| privacy.
| palata wrote:
| I could imagine that war orders may be interpreted as
| "illegal" and therefore reported. Which may not be
| desirable?
| Saline9515 wrote:
| So it's ok if the database containing my nudes leaks, but
| not if it contains state secrets? I feel really
| protected!
| palata wrote:
| Not saying that I agree, just saying that I can imagine
| it's not done in bad faith.
| palata wrote:
| > I'm sure it's not even deliberately dismantling privacy.
|
| But it is not even dismantling privacy. ChatControl would
| run client-side and only report what's deemed illegal.
| Almost all communications are legal, and almost all of the
| legal communications wouldn't be reported to anyone at all.
| They would stay private.
|
| The problem I see is that the "client-side scanner" has to
| be opaque to some extent: it's fundamentally impossible to
| have an open source list of illegal material without
| sharing the illegal material itself. Meaning that whoever
| controls that list can abuse it. E.g. by making the scanner
| report political opponents.
|
| This is a real risk, and the reason I am against
| ChatControl.
|
| But it isn't dismantling privacy per se.
|
| EDIT: I find it amazing how much I can be downvoted for
| saying that I am against ChatControl, but that argument X
| or Y against it is invalid. Do we want an echo chamber to
| complain about the principle, or do we want to talk about
| what is actually wrong with ChatControl?
|
| It's nice to say "those politicians are morons who don't
| understand how it works", but one should be careful to
| understand it themselves.
| demosito666 wrote:
| > But politicians are - in general - neither evil, nor do
| they have any real incentive to "control citizens'
| thoughts".
|
| As someone coming from authoritarian state, this is such an
| alien line of reasoning to me. By definition, those in
| power want more power. The more control over the people you
| have, the more power you get. Ergo, you always want more
| control.
|
| It's easy to overlook this if you've spent your entire life
| in a democratic country, as democracies have power dynamics
| that obscure this goal, making it less of a priority for
| politicians. For instance, attempting to seize too much
| power can backfire, giving political opponents leverage
| against you. However, the closer a system drifts toward
| autocracy and the fewer constraints on power there are, the
| more achievable this goal becomes and the more likely
| politicians are to pursue it.
|
| Oh, and also politics selects for psychopaths who are known
| for their desire for control.
| thfuran wrote:
| >The authorities really think every predator will just give up
| and stop abusing just because of that? What a joke.
|
| Yes, the framing is disingenuous, but so is yours. You're
| seriously suggesting that any policy that doesn't 100%
| eliminate a problem is a joke?
| like_any_other wrote:
| Well, what is "the problem"? Is it children being abused, or
| is it the distribution of CSAM?
|
| And if you say both - how would you rate the relative
| severity of the two problems? Specifically, if you had to
| pick between preventing the rape of a child, and preventing N
| acts of CSAM distribution, how big would N have to be to make
| it worth choosing the latter?
| jimbo808 wrote:
| I don't think they care what N is, they are just
| scapegoating a vile group they know will have no defenders,
| and they can use it to silence the critics by associating
| them with that group.
| mystraline wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| Today its the pedophiles and 15-17-philes (those are this
| fake group adolescent, which are also tried as adults
| when convenient).
|
| Tomorrow, its the adult sex workers.
|
| Then its the fringe group's topics that is on the outs
| with the majority.
|
| Then they come for you, and nobody is able to speak up
| because they banned protests.
|
| ... To paraphrase Martin Niemoller.
| jMyles wrote:
| > Well, what is "the problem"? Is it children being abused,
| or is it the distribution of CSAM?
|
| It seems obvious that it is entirely the former and not at
| all the latter. In other words, N is positive infinity. Am
| I missing something?
|
| I only care about kids being hurt. And I think this view is
| close to consensus.
| thfuran wrote:
| Ask anyone you know who has been sexually assaulted or
| raped what they think of the idea of pictures or
| recordings of that being both kept by the perpetrator and
| widely disseminated. I think you'll find very few who'd
| say that's totally fine. But given that there can be no
| CSAM without child abuse, the direct physical abuse is
| clearly the primary problem.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| What do you think it would be for you?
|
| What's worse for you? Being raped as a child. Or, having
| people sexually gratify themselves looking at images of you
| being abused; using those images to groom other children,
| or to trade and encourage the rape of other children?
|
| You might as well ask someone which eye they prefer to have
| gouged out with a blunt screw.
|
| Let's do both: try to stop child sexual abuse and try to
| stop images of abused children being used by abusers.
| amarant wrote:
| If the cost of the proposal is "let's throw democracy under
| the bus" as it is in this case, it better be damn close to
| 100% effective to be worth it!
|
| I have a hard time imagining this will be more than 10%
| effective.
|
| This proposal is a joke
| palata wrote:
| A few decades ago, all communications were unencrypted.
| Would you say that democracies did not exist then?
| buildbot wrote:
| This is completely untrue! Important communications have
| always been enciphered since language has been created
| I'd wager, whether that cipher is specific terms (grog
| means attack that person in 10 seconds!) or a book
| cipher, e.i. The first letter of a bible verse than the
| second letter of the next verse etc. Humans have been
| encrypting communication since communication was
| possible.
|
| It is now only recently possible to dragnet in mass many
| communications, store, and analyze them. The past decades
| have brought new threats to privacy democracy through
| breaking encryption at the state scale.
| palata wrote:
| > Humans have been encrypting communication since
| communication was possible.
|
| Were most people encrypting their handwritten letters?
| Were most people encrypting their messages before sending
| them by SMS or with WhatsApp? Really?
| thfuran wrote:
| Not most but some.
| Levitz wrote:
| No, because there was an expectation of privacy. That
| expectation is no longer there.
| palata wrote:
| Privacy from who? Law enforcement has been leveraging
| that forever.
|
| But ChatControl won't prevent the encryption for anyone
| who is not the receiver of the reports. And the receiver
| is the equivalent of "law enforcement", right?
| buellerbueller wrote:
| A few decades ago, few communications were tracked. When
| everything is tracked (as it is now), the only way to
| have privacy is with encryption.
| palata wrote:
| Snowden said otherwise, more than a decade ago.
| thfuran wrote:
| Which part are you disputing?
| palata wrote:
| The fact that ChatControl is killing democracies.
|
| It's a tool that could be abused, but I wouldn't say that
| it is enough to kill a democracy all by itself.
| amarant wrote:
| Are least where I'm from, there are pretty strong laws
| against reading snailmail post of others. To this day,
| any law enforcement that tries to open people's snail
| mail will laughed out of the courtroom, and quite
| possibly out of their jobs too!
|
| Today nobody uses snail mail. This proposal is the
| equivalent of proposing to read everyone's private
| letters back in the day.
|
| Technical details are technical details
| jMyles wrote:
| > You're seriously suggesting that any policy that doesn't
| 100% eliminate a problem is a joke?
|
| I think a more charitable reading is that any policy that
| doesn't 100% _target_ a problem is a joke. This policy
| doesn't have a plausible way that it will protect children
| from being victimized, so I think it's reasonable to remove
| the "think of the children" cloak it's wearing and assess it
| on the merits of whether encryption is beneficial for the
| social discourse of a society.
| palata wrote:
| > This policy doesn't have a plausible way that it will
| protect children from being victimized
|
| Of course it does. "It will detect and report messages from
| predators to children, therefore preventing the child to
| get to the point where they send revealing pictures or meet
| the predator in person". Done.
| jMyles wrote:
| Well, maybe the word "plausible" is doing too much work
| in my statement.
|
| Most abuse happens from people known to the child, and of
| that portion, most are family members. It seems like
| there is sufficient opportunity in-person comms to route
| around this limitation.
|
| Moreover, even the communications that do happen online
| can still easily happen through encrypted media;
| presumably the perpetrators will simply move to other
| ways of communicating. And kids, at least kids over 10 or
| so, don't seem like a demographic particularly likely to
| follow this law anyhow.
|
| There's another nuance worth considering: by and large,
| parents _want_ their kids to have access to encrypted
| communications. I'll happily assist my kiddo in
| maintaining good opsec - that's much more important to me
| than some silly and uninformed policy decision being made
| far away by people I've never met.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.n
| ucy...
|
| So, the kids are still going to be where the encrypted
| comms are. I still think it's reasonable to say that the
| protections offered to kids by criminalizing encryption
| are implausible.
| palata wrote:
| > Most abuse happens from people known to the child
|
| Sure, but it means that at least some happen from people
| unknown to the child. If ChatControl doesn't cause any
| problem but helps preventing those abuses, then it's
| worth it. The question is: what are the problems caused
| by ChatControl?
|
| Saying "only a minority of children get abused this way,
| so it's not worth it" won't go far, IMO. It's not a valid
| argument against ChatControl in itself.
|
| > presumably the perpetrators will simply move to other
| ways of communicating.
|
| The perpetrators have to contact kids over apps that the
| kids use. Like Snapchat or TikTok. It's not like the kids
| will routinely install a weird app to talk to weird
| people...
|
| > parents _want_ their kids to have access to encrypted
| communications.
|
| But ChatControl doesn't remove the encryption! It scans
| everything locally, before it gets encrypted and sent.
|
| > by criminalizing encryption
|
| It's not criminalizing encryption: it's forcing a local
| scan on your device. Just like there are already scans
| happening on clouds for non-E2EE data.
|
| Don't get me wrong: I am against ChatControl. For me the
| problem is that I see a potential for abuse with the
| "list" (whether it's a list or a sum of weights) of
| illegal material. This list cannot be made public
| (because it's highly illegal material), so it's hard to
| audit. So whoever has control over it can abuse it, e.g.
| to find political opponents. That's my problem with
| ChatControl.
| lukan wrote:
| Best case scenario would be, lots of children will be saved
| from abuse because the magic software somehow discovers that. I
| kind of doubt it though.
| EGreg wrote:
| No, you don't get it. Hosting or possessing CSAM has criminal
| penalties even if no children were involved. For example AI
| generated imagery.
|
| In fact, even if zero children are ever trafficked or abused
| going forward, and pedophiles only use old photos of children
| from 30 years ago, merely having these images is still an
| issue.
|
| Conversely, the vast majority of sexual abuse of minors
| doesn't involve images and goes unreported. "Considerable
| evidence exists to show that at least 20% of American women
| and 5% to 10% of American men experienced some form of sexual
| abuse as children" (Finkelhor, 1994). "Most sexual abuse is
| committed by men (90%) and by persons known to the child (70%
| to 90%), with family members constituting one-third to one-
| half of the perpetrators against girls and 10% to 20% of the
| perpetrators against boys" (Finkelhor, 1994).
|
| In short - if they wanted to reduce child abuse, scanning
| everyone's communications for CSAM would not be the most
| straightforward way to go about it.
| guerrilla wrote:
| How do they know it's unreported if it's unreported? They
| mean unreported to police but reported in scientific self-
| report surveys?
| palata wrote:
| > if they wanted to reduce child abuse, scanning everyone's
| communications for CSAM would not be the most
| straightforward way to go about it.
|
| * First, this is not what politicians do. What they want is
| to _look like_ they are fighting it.
|
| * Second, what is your more straightforward way to fight
| CSAM? Asking for a backdoor is pretty straightforward, I
| find. I would rather say that fighting CSAM is more
| difficult than that.
| lukan wrote:
| "No, you don't get it."
|
| Did you get my last sentence?
|
| "In short - if they wanted to reduce child abuse, scanning
| everyone's communications for CSAM would not be the most
| straightforward way to go about it."
|
| What would be the most straightforwand way? Install a
| camera in every home?
|
| Yes, abuse is usually more to be found inside families. And
| the solution kind of complicated, involving social workers,
| phone numbers victims can call, safe houses for mothers
| with children to flee into, police officers with sensitive
| training who care, teachers who are not burned out to
| actually pay attention to troubled kids ...
| jimbo808 wrote:
| The thing that is crazy to me is that they choose to go after
| Signal of all things. Certainly there would be higher priority
| targets than a messaging app that has no social networking
| features to speak of, if child predators were really the target
| here.
| palata wrote:
| This is nonsense. Anyone who has the smallest clue would use
| Signal for anything sensitive. Of course people would use
| Signal to talk about illegal stuff.
|
| I am against ChatControl. But I am amazed by all the bullshit
| arguments that people find to criticise ChatControl.
|
| If you have more control, obviously it's easier to track
| criminals. That's not the question at all. The question is:
| what is the cost to society? A few decades ago, all
| communications were unencrypted and people were fine. Why
| would it be different now? That's the question you need to
| answer.
| kypro wrote:
| You're all assuming that predators who are already
| deliberating using apps which are encrypted to share CSAM
| won't just move to something else where there is encryption
| - which will always be possible unless the EU fines a way
| to ban maths or reverts back to the pre-digital age.
|
| This might catch the odd moron sharing stuff on Facebook or
| on their phone, but I doubt it will stop the average
| offender was is already going out of their way to use
| encrypted apps/services.
|
| But okay great, at least you catch the morons I guess, but
| at what cost? Here in the UK it's pretty common to be
| arrested for tweets at it is. There's no doubt in my mind
| this will be used to catch individuals committing speech
| crimes who are currently getting away with it because they
| share their opinions behind closed doors.
| palata wrote:
| > but I doubt it will stop the average offender
|
| I strongly believe it will catch the average offender.
| The average human doesn't have a clue about cryptography.
|
| It won't catch all of them, of course. My point is that
| it is invalid to say that _it won 't catch anyone_.
|
| > but at what cost?
|
| EXACTLY! The problem is that whoever controls the list of
| illegal material can abuse it. We fundamentally cannot
| audit the list because the material on this list is
| highly illegal. There is a risk of abuse.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| "It won't catch all of them, of course. My point is that
| it is invalid to say that it won't catch anyone."
|
| Sure, but wouldn't they quickly learn once people are
| getting caught?
| palata wrote:
| No, they wouldn't. People were getting caught before
| encrypted apps. People are still getting caught on
| unencrypted apps _today_ , even if it's easy to install
| an encrypted app.
|
| And predators who get in contact with kids have to do it
| over social media that the kids use. Those ones would be
| affected by ChatControl.
| miroljub wrote:
| It was unencrypted and "it was fine" because it was
| technically nearly impossible to store and process all
| communications. Now, one small server cluster can analyse
| all communication channels in a country in real time. The
| only thing stopping it is the encryption.
| palata wrote:
| Ok, but with ChatControl, you still send your messages
| encrypted. They are scanned _on your device_.
|
| So all communications aren't stored outside of your
| device, right?
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| So ChatControl means that e.g. Signal would be obligated to
| automatically scan pictures and messages sent for CSAM.
| This is beyond encryption. And if they were to actually do
| that, it would mean it's non sensical for people spreading
| this material to use it as they would immediately be
| caught, so they would just use other tools.
|
| But people are talking about both - the ridiculousness of
| the premise that this would help combat this and
| additionally of course the cost of privacy.
|
| It's beyond encryption. Teenagers sending each other
| pictures could get flagged by AI etc. Any of your messages
| and images having potential to get falsely positively
| flagged.
| palata wrote:
| So what? If predators cannot talk to children over
| SnapChat, that's a win, wouldn't you say?
|
| The only valid argument I see against ChatControl is that
| fundamentally, you cannot know what it is reporting. It's
| not like if there would be an open source list of illegal
| material together with the hashes, right?
|
| If you cannot audit what is being reporting (with
| whatever means necessary to make sure it is doing what it
| should be doing), then whoever controls it could abuse
| it.
|
| That's the problem. That's the reason not to implement
| it. But it's completely overwhelmed by the flood of
| invalid arguments.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| I think that a world where underage children can't access
| tik tok and snapchat is an acceptable cost to keep our
| rights for privacy.
| demosito666 wrote:
| > The only valid argument
|
| Really? The only one?
| palata wrote:
| Really, yes. I am against ChatControl myself, and I am
| genuinely struggling to find credible messages against
| it.
| mystraline wrote:
| > The only valid argument I see against ChatControl is
| that fundamentally, you cannot know what it is reporting.
| It's not like if there would be an open source list of
| illegal material together with the hashes, right?
|
| By definition, they must state what is actually illegal,
| lest I be hidden laws with hidden punishments.
|
| And those lists of 'illegal' need to be publicly
| disclosed, so we are aware.
|
| At least in the USA a naked picture of someone who is
| 17y364d old is 'child porn', but that extra day makes it
| 'barely legal'. But yet, most USA jurisdictions say that
| 16y can have sex. Just that pictures are EVIL even if you
| take them yourself.
|
| Again however, I tend to more agree with Stallman that
| CSAM or child porn picture possession should either be
| legal or have a mens area attached, and not strict
| possession. Its proof of a crime, and shouldn't in of
| itself be a crime.
|
| But because a picture is a crime, we get these horrific
| laws.
| palata wrote:
| > By definition, they must state what is actually
| illegal, lest I be hidden laws with hidden punishments.
|
| I don't need to murder you in order to say that murdering
| you is illegal, do I?
|
| Of course they don't have to publish CSAM material in
| order to say that this is illegal CSAM material. If you
| could go get CSAM material at your local library, nobody
| would be talking about scanning it with ChatControl...
| jimbo808 wrote:
| Anyone using a mobile device for CSAM is in prison by now.
| palata wrote:
| Predators use mainstream social media to enter in contact
| with children.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Most victims of child abuse know their aggressor because
| it is part of their social circle: dad, mother, uncle,
| brother, sport coach or a friend of the parents/sibling.
| palata wrote:
| Most, not all of them.
|
| Or are you saying that we should not care about the
| others?
| zenlot wrote:
| > A few decades ago, all communications were unencrypted
| and people were fine.
|
| A few decades ago, a user base using whatever was available
| was about 99% lower than now. As well as governments were
| so illiterate that they could not read with the tech they
| had even those unencrypted messages.
| palata wrote:
| Snowden was more than a decade ago. The NSA was recording
| _everything_.
| op7 wrote:
| All communications were unencrypted because encrypting them
| would have incurred unduly burdensome processing. Nowadays
| computers can encrypt and decrypt on the fly for virtually
| free.
| palata wrote:
| Sure. Still people considered themselves free and living
| in democracies. Why wouldn't it be the case today?
| prmoustache wrote:
| People using online communication system were a niche,
| not the norm andost people didn't have the tool and
| knowledge to access someone else's digital communication.
|
| It is not the case anymore.
| palata wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am against ChatControl.
|
| > Does anyone believe that predators commit those heinous
| offenses because of the availability of encrypted channels to
| distribute those products of their crimes?
|
| Who says that? I don't think they say that.
|
| > The authorities really think every predator will just give up
| and stop abusing just because of that?
|
| Nope, they think they will be able to arrest more predators.
|
| > More likely of course, those criminals will just use [...]
|
| You'd be surprised how many criminals are technically
| illiterate and just use whatever is the default.
| Animats wrote:
| Is text-only CSAM even a thing?
| Saline9515 wrote:
| It is ! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_porn
| kleiba wrote:
| The is the n-th attempt to install some regulation that would (a)
| lead to increased surveillance of most of the population; and (b)
| is trivial to circumvent by those who the government is
| ostensibly trying to target. So clearly, the cost-benefit ratio
| is severely skewed for the EU population.
|
| Assuming that the regulators are fully aware of the above points,
| it's not very hard to speculate what the real intentions behind
| all of this are.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > The is the n-th attempt to install some regulation
|
| The sad part is that it would only take one attempt to codify
| the opposite into privacy laws as a basic right, should anyone
| ever bother to take up that gauntlet.
| bikemike026 wrote:
| Are the Europeans insane? The modern world is becoming a horror.
| I think I would rather live in a dark forest. Life is becoming
| pointless.
| topspin wrote:
| > Are the Europeans insane?
|
| I don't think so. If they were, it would actually be better:
| one can have sympathy for insanity, and at least isolate it, if
| not treat it.
|
| Instead, it's extreme insecurity combined with limitless regard
| for infallible authority. The thought that the hoi polloi might
| write or say things that are beyond scrutiny is intolerable.
| That's the insecurity part. And all intolerable things must be
| criminalized, because in Europe, laws infallibly fix
| everything. That's the authority part.
|
| That's not insanity. That's just how you behave when you
| imagine it is your mandate to perfect the world and indulge
| hubris sufficient to believe you have the wisdom to do so.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Oh, is this the infamous 'redacted list of attendees' when people
| inquired about who initially worked on this legislation/proposal?
|
| EU seems to be really good at some things, but this is an example
| of a legislation that can do way much harm than benefit.
| aborsy wrote:
| Anyone one who does anything private or illegal will bypass that
| with tools that will be popular as a result. The government is
| left with scanning the data of the remaining 90% of population.
|
| They choose something sensitive as a pretext to push their
| agenda.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| With Apple being able to forbid application on the App Store and
| Google now requiring developer to identify themselves before
| compiling app, and being able to block sideloading at any time, I
| don't see what choice is left if you want to bypass that privacy
| invasion.
|
| I mean for the actual legit user. Pedophiles will still be able
| to use encrypted mail, Android phone that are not Google
| certified and so free to sideload anything, or even just
| passworded zip.
| chinathrow wrote:
| The EU should rather look at the issues at the eastern border
| these days.
| tdiff wrote:
| I have a theory that everything that happens in regards of
| governmental control in China and Russia will eventually be
| copied in some form in western countries.
| tarwich wrote:
| Isn't this the same regulatory body that enforced GDPR to
| supposedly provide citizens with more rights as to what happens
| to their data? Amusing.
| mywrathacademia wrote:
| First they came for the Lockdown skeptics And I did not speak out
| Because I was not a Lockdown skeptic Then they came for the
| Social distancing skeptics And I did not speak out Because I was
| not a Social distancing skeptic Then they came for the Face mask
| skeptics And I did not speak out Because I was not a Face mask
| skeptic Then they came for the Vaccine skeptics And I did not
| speak out Because I was not a Vaccine Skeptic Then they came for
| the Vaccine passport skeptics And I did not speak out Because I
| was not a Vaccine passport skeptic Then they came for me And
| there was no one left To speak out for me
| niels8472 wrote:
| Ah, so we will fight child porn by detecting family pics of
| children in the shower (or w/e) and sending them off to a
| "trusted" 3rd party who will no doubt leak them at some point.
| Also, if I were a pedophile I know where I'd send my resume...
| pona-a wrote:
| The number of people in these threads defending involuntary
| bugging of every phone because you can devil-advocate it maybe
| might actually _save the children_ is insane for a forum called
| Hacker News. Either the contrarian population has been getting
| out of hand, or we have truly lost our minds and stand to lose
| what remains of our civil liberties.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| Dear citizens of the EU:
|
| If this gets pushed through, you will gradually lose control of
| your government much like how the people of the UK already lost
| control of theirs.
|
| What are you going to do when the government's interests
| inevitably drift out of alignment with yours? Start a political
| movement? You will have the police knocking on your door for
| criticizing the establishment.
|
| Start a revolution? You have no weapons. You can't even organize
| a resistance because all channels of communication are monitored.
|
| You have neither the pen nor the sword. There is no longer an
| incentive for the government to serve you, and so it eventually
| won't.
|
| No amount of protest will recover the freedom you once had.
| You're heading towards a society where everyone feels oppressed
| but no one can do anything about it.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Dear citizens of the US:
|
| Please stop funding, allying with and protecting the
| manufacturers of surveillance tools. Stop exporting Palantir
| products and importing privacy-destroying devices from
| businesses like Greyshift and Cellebrite. Insist that the US
| government stop shielding hackers-for-hire like NSO Group who
| indiscriminately lease their products for discriminatory and
| illegal purposes. Stop defending "OEM" control that we have all
| known is a stand-in for federal steering since the Snowden
| leaks. Stop marketing E2EE while backdooring server and client
| hardware for "emergency" purposes.
|
| Do that, and you'll never be accused of hypocrisy again.
| Signed, a US citizen.
| sph wrote:
| > Start a revolution? You have no weapons.
|
| LOL. People nowadays don't start revolutions not because of
| weapons or lack thereof. It's because they're thoroughly
| entertained and fed; even the entire political circus is a sort
| of morbid reality show: people tune in to the news to shake
| their head in disgust at today's latest antics, and will do so
| tomorrow, because it's all panem et circenses for grown-ups.
|
| The Internet has become the greatest instrument of mass control
| ever created in the history of the world. It's done. As long
| people have their Doordash and Netflix, and are too busy
| working or scrolling instead of thinking deep thoughts, and
| reading anarchist philosophy, the kings has nothing to fear.
|
| Also, no need to single out the EU. The entire government-as-
| reality-TV is well and truly an American creation, and your
| three-letter agencies don't even have to pass any laws to
| collect information about its citizens. We're all in the same
| shit, my brother/sister.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > and reading anarchist philosophy
|
| That's literally how we got here. People got a taste of
| unmitigated unprecedented freedom online for the last three
| decades, and found it so gross that they allowed things to
| swing the other way.
|
| Even one decade ago, the threat of SOPA/PIPA rallied the
| internet successfully. Just over a decade later, we're at the
| point of allowing age verification, for morality's sake,
| without hardly a peep. The cypherpunks are _losing, hard, and
| honestly, deserve failure_ for how well their utopia turned
| out.
| bigyabai wrote:
| How we literally "got here" was Section 230. You can easily
| stifle free speech by holding Facebook and X accountable
| for _every single post_ ever made on their platforms. But
| that would capsize the American investment economy, so we
| have to protect them just a little bit. It creates a
| perverse, bipartisan incentive to export the most
| reprehensible opinions that still qualify as legal.
|
| European citizens (and soon, American ones too) are
| discovering that they never held the cards. When you ask
| your OEMs, cloud providers and DNS resolver who's side
| they're _really_ on, it 's not yours. You, the customer,
| hold no guillotine over their head.
| demosito666 wrote:
| What exactly did those people taste that it got them upset
| so much and who exactly those "people" are? Last time I
| checked these laws are pushed through as covertly and
| sneaky as possible and no "people" asked for them. I can't
| recall any demonstrations with protesters asking to violate
| their privacy to keep them safe for those evil internet
| trolls that want to have a sexual intercourse with their
| relatives.
|
| You're trying to frame the classic authoritarian power grab
| and desire to fully control the plebs as push from the
| society. This doesn't sound convincing.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > You're trying to frame the classic authoritarian power
| grab
|
| Half of US states now have age verification for
| pornography; three will be requiring age verification to
| even download apps soon. There is indeed a push from
| society to get the internet under control, even if the EU
| is not necessarily connected the same way.
|
| This is a huge, unprecedented reversal of opinion over
| the last decade that has almost completely gone over HN's
| head. The EFF, TechDirt, HN, Reddit view of the world has
| been tried, found wanting, and is being rejected. The EFF
| which once rallied the internet against SOPA/PIPA...
| currently is yelling into a void. Nobody believes in a
| free internet anymore.
| vslira wrote:
| > Nobody believes in a free internet anymore.
|
| Civil liberties, like elections and liberal principles in
| general, are unfortunately only popular when the right
| side (coincidentally one's own) is winning
| potsandpans wrote:
| You keep saying things that are completely
| unsubstantiated as though they were fact. "Nobody
| believes..." _all people_ this, _complete failure_
| that...
|
| You're either a shill, an ideologue or arguing
| dishonestly.
|
| All three are bad equally.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Don't worry; HN makes such statements all the time, you
| can't accuse me of not grasping the format. On that note,
| _not once_ did I use the words "complete failure" or
| "all people" despite your quotation in this thread, so
| please don't argue dishonestly yourself.
|
| I cited a reality: We went from SOPA/PIPA over
| _copyright_ , to no question about age verification on
| _morality_ grounds. It shows a trend towards zero
| interest in free and open internet activism. Such a trend
| indicates something is severely wrong, and the idea of an
| open internet has become disconnected from popular
| belief, internationally, as something to strive for.
| Prove me wrong.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| There's no utopia. The value of unmitigated speech is in
| replacing unmitigated violence.
|
| The people you mention, whoever they are, are grossed out
| by human nature.
| maldonad0 wrote:
| You are exactly right. But most people will call you crazy
| and that you are a tyrant against "democracy" or "rights".
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| > _you will gradually lose control of your government_
|
| That happened the moment European countries surrendered their
| sovereignty to EU.
| gambiting wrote:
| Which of course never happened, as each member country
| retains full sovereignty in every possible way you can think
| of, which is actually fully enshrined in the way EU works.
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| > _Which of course never happened, as each member country
| retains full sovereignty in every possible way you can
| think of, which is actually fully enshrined in the way EU
| works._
|
| Which of course is false.
|
| > _The principle was derived from an interpretation of the
| European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law
| has priority over any contravening national law, including
| the constitution of a member state itself._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law
| gambiting wrote:
| And if you read literally one paragraph from the bit that
| you quoted:
|
| "The majority of national courts have generally
| recognized and accepted this principle, except for the
| part where European law outranks a member state's
| constitution. As a result, national constitutional courts
| have also reserved the right to review the conformity of
| EU law with national constitutional law"
|
| And guess why and how they are able to do that - that's
| right, by retaining full sovereignty of their own justice
| systems. Even obeying rulings of the ECHR is purely a
| matter of courtesy more than anything, as neither EU nor
| ECHR have any enforcement mechanism beyond withholding
| funding, as many EU member states have proven time and
| time and time again.
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| I'm looking forward to seeing this in practice when Chat
| Control passes.
| JohnLocke4 wrote:
| >You can't even organize a resistance because all channels of
| communication are monitored.
|
| One of the awful things about this proposed legislation is that
| what I quoted you saying is not true. Software like PGP is easy
| to use, and criminals already do. The government has absolutely
| no possibility of breaking RSA the way things are now, and as
| such scanning all messages will do nothing other than prove
| more definitively that criminals are still beyond their gavel.
| In reality, the only individuals who will get spied on are
| regular people who don't open their terminal just to send a
| text; exactly the people who should not be spied on in the
| first place.
|
| When the government realizes this invasive legislature is
| ineffective, they will probably crack down even harder. After
| all, what we are willing to accept from rulers has by the looks
| of it already increased dramatically. I wonder if it at some
| point it becomes illegal simply to posses encryption software
| on your personal devices, perhaps even possession of prime
| numbers that could theoretically be used in modern encryption.
| How far will the government go to take this illegal math from
| you?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Both apple and android are teeing their infra up to support
| deleting apps they don't like. Windows is moving towards e2e
| attestation, and Mac is basically already there. Once that's
| all done, you just need to enforce hardware manufacturers
| boot only into 'trusted' operating systems. No more Linux. No
| more unsigned execution. No more encryption.
| parineum wrote:
| If all of your messages can be read in plaintext, your going
| to have to transfer you keys some other way and it will be
| very detectable that you are sending encrypted messages which
| will be next on the chopping block.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Software like PGP is easy to use
|
| Criminalize encryption. Oh you're using cryptograhy? Well
| then _clearly_ you are a child molesting, money laundering,
| drug trafficking terrorist. No need to actually decrypt
| anything when cryptography is incriminating evidence unto
| itself.
|
| Computers are subversive. Cryptography alone can defeat
| police, judges, governments and militaries, and computers
| have democratized access to cryptography to the point even
| common citizens have it. They cannot tolerate it.
|
| It's a politico-technological arms race. They make their
| silly laws. We make technologies that completely nullify
| those laws. They need to increase their overall tyranny just
| to maintain the exact same level of control they had before.
| The end result is either an uncontrollable, ungovernable,
| unpoliceable population, or a totalitarian state that
| surveils, monitors and controls everything. There is no
| middle ground.
|
| We are rapidly advancing towards this totalitarianism, and we
| are eventually going to find out if the people have what it
| takes to resist and become ungovernable.
|
| One day we will need government signatures to run software on
| "our" computers. All the free software in the world won't
| help if we can't run it. The only way to resist that is to
| somehow develop the means to fabricate our own chips at home.
| Computer hardware fabrication must be made as easy as 3D
| printing random objects. Anything short of this and we're
| done for. Everything the word "hacker" stands for will be
| destroyed. Our privacy will be destroyed. Our freedom will be
| destroyed. It's over.
| troupo wrote:
| > Start a revolution? You have no weapons. You can't even
| organize a resistance because all channels of communication are
| monitored.
|
| Unlike which country? The US I presume? I see very much a lack
| of any revolutions in the US, and the most resistance done in
| the past few decades was done by people with no weapons.
|
| I'd say most revolution-like movements of any kind in the US
| since the Civil War happened without weapons.
| rfrey wrote:
| Even further, those who have traditionally been most vocal
| about second amendment rights are currently the biggest
| cheerleaders for the current authoritarian trend. Quite the
| plot twist.
| jansper39 wrote:
| >you will gradually lose control of your government much like
| how the people of the UK already lost control of theirs.
|
| As a UK citizen, can you explain your reasoning here? We
| haven't implemented anything like the chat control proposal and
| while a few politicians have brought up similar ideas, there is
| a lot of pushback against it.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Age verification, while trivial to bypass (for now), has
| brought you closer to further privacy-invading restrictions.
| Next, VPNs will be attacked. Then it will be unsigned apps on
| "untrusted" operating systems.
| dmix wrote:
| Two obvious ones come to mind, the UK age verification system
| laid the groundwork for internet IDs + ~12,000 people per
| year being arrested for online speech (a number that's grown
| exponentially) [1]. There's many other examples.
|
| [1] https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/uk-social-media-
| arr...
| txrx0000 wrote:
| The UK doesn't have the exact equivalent of chat control yet,
| but it already arrests people for politically incorrect
| posts. They're doing things in smaller steps, which is more
| likely to succeed.
| torified wrote:
| How many surveillance cameras does your government operate
| again?
|
| How much do you trust your current government with the
| extensive surveillance apparatus they have created?
|
| How much do you trust the next government?
|
| What about the government after that?
| chaosbolt wrote:
| It's already this dystopic, like any medium where people can
| talk freely gets eventually controlled by corrupt politicians
| etc.
|
| Anyways, the control of speech isn't only in surveillance, it's
| ingrained deeply in culture, taboos, education, etc.
|
| I have talked to religious people before, they all exhibited a
| certain characteristic, you could talk about somethings but you
| can't touch on other things, their mind won't accept it, so
| they bug and start saying nonsense.
|
| I've noticed the same thing with most people when it comes to
| certain subjects, you'd be talking to an educated person with a
| relatively high IQ and a mind that is capable to think
| critically in certain domains, yet once you point out something
| their mind has been trained to deem anti cultural (like for
| example who controls what), they turn into Agent Smith and they
| stop listening to reason.
|
| Anyways, this is HN so what I'm saying is that the control of
| the controllers is already absolute, it's been linearly
| increasing for years, they'd cause something then tighten their
| control of us for "our safety", until one day we get enough and
| some take out the guillotines and others the bald eagle etc.
| been happening for millenia, if we as a species were able to
| rebel on authority before s*it absolutely hit the fan, history
| would've been a lot cleaner.
| dekken_ wrote:
| > you will gradually lose control of your government
|
| Already happened. That this keeps getting put forward is the
| evidence. Representative democracy, is not a democracy at all.
|
| Sic semper tyrannis.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Start a revolution? You have no weapons. (...) You have
| neither the pen nor the sword._
|
| We still have Euros. As long as enough companies and rich folk
| are more on our side than theirs, the government still has some
| incentive to serve us.
|
| I know, I know - money and politics, wealth and power, they go
| together at the high end. But there is the oft forgotten long
| tail, the rich and powerful at the scale of a city, a
| neighborhood, a niche market. Those tend to side with
| communities they live in, and in aggregate they still have
| plenty of pull with the rulers (which in stable times they use
| to block all kinds of potentially useful legislation, but
| still, good to have them come the hard times).
|
| Weapons won't matter all that much anyway, for several reasons:
|
| 1) Life, especially in the EU, is not like in an American
| action movie;
|
| 2) Citizens here may be significantly less armed, but _the same
| is true of government officials_ , and even law enforcement is
| significantly less armed. It kind of evens out, unless military
| gets involved, but at that point all bets are off - no
| different than in the US.
|
| 3) Firearms have a habit of magically appearing in bulk the
| moment a revolution starts. When it happens, it's a good
| indicator you should GTFO somewhere far away, as you're being
| played by whoever is supplying the weapons to your side.
| ycombigators wrote:
| "much like how the people of the UK already lost control of
| theirs"
|
| What are you on about, mate?
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| I think many outside of EU dismiss this as an EU only thing and
| don't think much about it.
|
| 1. Have you ever texted someone from EU? You are now chat
| controlled too.
|
| 2. EU is pumping billions to foreign countries to promote EU
| values. How long until they condition this "help" with chat
| control?
| palata wrote:
| Most arguments I see against ChatControl sound like bullshit to
| me. How do we expect to convince anyone to go against ChatControl
| with those?
|
| I feel unease when it comes to ChatControl; I don't want my
| devices to run proprietary, opaque algorithms on all my data. And
| it feels like it fundamentally has to be opaque: nobody can't
| publish an open source list of illegal material together with
| their hash (precisely because it is illegal). That is why I don't
| want ChatControl: I would want someone to _formally prove_ that
| it cannot be abused, just because of what it means. The classic
| example being: what happens if someone in power decides to use
| this system to track their opponents?
|
| But most comments and most articles talk about anything but that,
| with honestly weird, unsupported claims:
|
| > It's the end of encryption
|
| How so? What appears on my screen is not encrypted and will never
| be encrypted, because I need to read it. We all decrypt our
| messages to read them, and we all write them unencrypted before
| we send them.
|
| > It won't fight CSAM
|
| Who are you kidding? Of course it will. It will not solve the
| problem entirely, but it will be pretty damn efficient at
| detecting CSAM when CSAM is present in the data being scanned.
|
| > With ChatControl, every message gets automatically checked,
| assuming everyone is guilty until proven innocent and effectively
| reversing the presumption of innocence.
|
| When you board a plane, you're searched. When you enter a concert
| hall, you're search. Nobody would say "you should let me board
| the plane with whatever I put in my bag, because I'm presumed
| innocent".
|
| > While your messages still get encrypted during transmission,
| the system defeats the purpose of end-to-end encryption by
| examining your content before it gets encrypted.
|
| Before it gets encrypted, it is not encrypted. So the system is
| not breaking the encryption. If (and that's a big if) this system
| was open source, such that anyone could check what code it is
| running and prove that the system is not being abused, then it
| would be perfectly fine. The problem is that we cannot know what
| the system does. But that's a different point (and one of the
| only valid arguments against ChatControl).
|
| > Proton point out this approach might be worse than encryption
| backdoors. Backdoors give authorities access to communications
| you share with others. This system examines everything on your
| device, whether you share it or not.
|
| How is it worse? Backdoors give access to communications, this
| system (on the paper) does not. This system is better, unless we
| admit that we can't easily audit what the system is doing
| exactly. Which again is the one valid argument against
| ChatControl.
|
| > The regulation also pushes for mandatory age verification
| systems. No viable, privacy-respecting age verification
| technology currently exists. These systems would eliminate online
| anonymity, requiring users to prove their identity to access
| digital services.
|
| This is plain wrong. There are ways to do age verification
| anonymously, period.
|
| > Police resources would be overwhelmed investigating innocent
| families sharing vacation photos while real crimes go
| uninvestigated.
|
| How to say you don't know how the police works without saying you
| don't know how the police works? Anyway, that's the problem of
| the police.
|
| > Google's algorithms flagged this legitimate medical
| consultation as potential abuse, permanently closed his account
| and refused all appeals.
|
| The problem is the closing and refusing of appeals.
|
| > The letter emphasizes that client-side scanning cannot
| distinguish between legal and illegal content without
| fundamentally breaking encryption and creating vulnerabilities
| that malicious actors can exploit.
|
| Then explain how? How is it fundamentally breaking encryption and
| creating vulnerabilities? Stop using bad arguments. If you have
| actual reasons to go against ChatControl, talk about those. You
| won't win with the bullshit, invalid arguments.
|
| > ChatControl catches only amateur criminals who directly attach
| problematic content to messages.
|
| Yep, that's an argument in favour of ChatControl: it _does_ catch
| _some_ criminals. How many criminals are professionals? Do you
| want to make it legal to be an amateur criminal?
|
| Don't get me wrong: I am against ChatControl. Because of one
| argument I believe to be valid: we fundamentally cannot know what
| the algorithm doing the scanning is doing, so those who control
| it could abuse it. Of all the discussions I have seen against
| ChatControl, I haven't seen another valid argument. But this one
| is enough.
|
| Stop saying bullshit, start using the valid arguments. And maybe
| politicians will hear them.
| Metalhearf wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. You've raised some interesting
| points, I'll take them into account and try to update some of
| my arguments.
| palata wrote:
| I didn't expect to be read by the author of the article!
|
| Just to be clear: thanks for talking about ChatControl and
| for bringing visibility to the topic! And I am on your side!
| AAAAaccountAAAA wrote:
| > Don't get me wrong: I am against ChatControl. Because of one
| argument I believe to be valid: we fundamentally cannot know
| what the algorithm doing the scanning is doing, so those who
| control it could abuse it. Of all the discussions I have seen
| against ChatControl, I haven't seen another valid argument. But
| this one is enough.
|
| It is not enough to know what the algorithm is doing. It also
| needs to be possible (for the average user as well) to stop it
| from doing reprehensible things. If a client-side scanning
| algorithm is actually searching for e. g. political content, it
| is possible to detect it via reverse engineering, but merely
| knowing it won't solve the problem, but instead lead into self-
| censorship.
| alkonaut wrote:
| This must be one of the least popular pieces of regulation ever.
| zkmon wrote:
| A nation is a concept that comes into existence only because
| people agree to lose some of their freedom, income and privacy.
| To what extent is the question. 100& privacy is not possible and
| it simply derails a nation, due to lack visibility and lack of
| control.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Indeed, the world was a chaotic place before the soviets
| invented CCTV and allowed therefore the creation of
| civilization.
| JohnLocke4 wrote:
| Interview from DR (Danish public news broadcast) with the Danish
| judicial minister Peter Hummelgaard, the politician who conceived
| the proposal:
|
| https://www-dr-dk.translate.goog/nyheder/viden/teknologi/ana...
|
| It is very obvious that he doesn't understand e2e, yet he will
| not listen. Bro couldn't even read the Wikipedia page
| jjcm wrote:
| The one thing that I never see answered in the proposals is a
| simple answer to, "what's stopping CSAM users from using open-
| source encryption?".
|
| You can ban this at a provider scale, but you simply can't track
| or enforce custom implementations at a small scale.
| blaze33 wrote:
| I regularly see similar articles with similar comments here, but
| there's one thing I still don't understand:
|
| From the European Convention on Human Rights[1]:
| ARTICLE 8 Right to respect for private and family life
| 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family
| life, his home and his correspondence. 2. There
| shall be no interference by a public authority with the
| exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the
| law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of
| national security, public safety or the economic well-being of
| the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for
| the protection of health or morals, or for the protection
| of the rights and freedoms of others.
|
| So I wonder, what is the legal argument solid enough to justify
| interfering with everybody's right to privacy?
|
| My layman understanding of the usual process is like, we want
| surveillance over those people and if it seems reasonable a judge
| might say ok but for a limited time. Watching everyone's
| communications also seems at odds with the principle of
| proportionality[2].
|
| [1]https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Convention_ENG
|
| [2]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12...
| palata wrote:
| > what is the legal argument solid enough to justify
| interfering with everybody's right to privacy?
|
| "... except such as is in accordance with the law"
|
| And the "interfering" coming from ChatControl is that "some
| algorithm" locally scans and detects illegal material, and
| doesn't do anything if there is no illegal material.
|
| > Watching everyone's communications also seems at odds with
| the principle of proportionality
|
| It's a bit delicate here because one can argue it's not
| "watching everyone's communications". The scanning is done
| locally. Nobody would say that your OS is "watching your
| communications", right? Even though the OS has to "read" your
| messages in order to print them on your screen.
|
| Note that I am against ChatControl. My problem with it is that
| the list of illegal material (or the "weights" of the model
| deciding what is illegal) cannot be audited easily (it won't be
| published as it is _illegal_ material) and can be abused by
| whoever has control over it.
| pests wrote:
| > Nobody would say that your OS is "watching your
| communications", right?
|
| No what? Everyone has been hating on the spying Microsoft has
| been doing in windows for years. How do you ask this with a
| straight face.
| palata wrote:
| That's not what I meant.
|
| Would you say that a minimal install of Linux or *BSD is
| "watching your communications"? It has to "read" your data
| in order to show them to you, but you wouldn't count this
| as "watching communications" or "surveillance". Siri
| running locally is not considered "surveillance".
|
| The problem is when your data is exfiltrated, which is what
| you complain about with your Microsoft example. But again
| that's not what I meant.
| blaze33 wrote:
| I understand but frankly "doesn't do anything if there is no
| illegal material" reminds me too much of the old anti-privacy
| argument "nothing to hide, nothing to fear".
|
| It is about control and purpose, "my OS watches my
| communications" is true but weird to say because there's an
| expectation, unless compromised, that the OS is under my
| control so no problem. A third-party controlling the local
| scan of all my data specifically to report whatever it wants
| is a huge problem.
|
| Too often are some specific issues left insufficiently
| addressed for too long and it seems like the answer ends up
| like, ok we give up, here's some collective punishment, that
| should do the trick.
| palata wrote:
| > A third-party controlling the local scan of all my data
| specifically to report whatever it wants is a huge problem.
|
| And that is exactly my point: you fundamentally can't audit
| what ChatControl is doing, because you don't have access to
| the "list of illegal material" (precisely because it is
| illegal). So whoever controls that list could abuse it.
|
| I see lot of weird arguments like "it's breaking
| encryption" and "it's destroying democracies". It's wrong.
| The problem is that it may be abused if your democracy
| doesn't work as well as it should. And it's good enough an
| argument to be against ChatControl.
|
| My whole point is that it's not constructive to throw
| baseless complaints at ChatControl: there is a valid
| argument against it (still looking for more), and we need
| to use it.
| NaQeeLPK wrote:
| Which political parties in which countries should one vote for?
|
| It's a good campaign, but let's say national elections are
| coming, one should know which politicians are in favour or
| against.
|
| How else can we let our opinion be known other than by voting for
| the right politicians?
| oddb0d wrote:
| Just remove the middleman & use https://theweave.social/moss/ p2p
| f/loss groupware
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| After reading the article I do not understand how this is
| supposed to work.
|
| The author says that "the system" will scan data. What "system"?
| Android? Windows? Linux?
|
| If system means "an application" - how would it come to my OS?
| Pre-installed? By whom? On Linux??
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