[HN Gopher] The disguised return of EU Chat Control
___________________________________________________________________
The disguised return of EU Chat Control
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-through-th...
Author : egorfine
Score : 798 points
Date : 2025-11-14 17:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (reclaimthenet.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (reclaimthenet.org)
| randomtoast wrote:
| The problem is that they can repeat this game indefinitely, Chat
| Control 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 231.24, ... Just slightly modify the
| initial Chat Control proposal, make it sound less harsh, and then
| resubmit it until they achieve a sufficient majority in the EU
| Parliament, while the general public gets too tired of the topic
| to create sufficient resistance.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| This might keep happening if nobody knows who "they" are. Those
| individuals need to be found and publically shamed.
| squarefoot wrote:
| fightchatcontrol.eu published the complete list of all
| countries stance on Chat Control and all representatives.
| They can be contacted via mail directly from the site.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| Thanks for the link. While it will help to pressure
| undecided representatives and see who not to vote for in
| the future, the root cause of the problem remains
| unaddressed. Why do these proposals exist? Who/what is
| motivating them? It seems like nefarious actors are
| coordinating in secret, and they need to be exposed.
|
| We should also try to minimize the number of useful idiots
| who are genuinely concerned about children's safety. There
| are two excuses being used to push these surveillance laws:
| CSAM scanning and content moderation for children. These
| are bad excuses and we need to call them out as such in
| every conversation.
|
| CSAM scanning ignores the actual problem, which is the
| process by which CSAM is created. The root problem is the
| trafficking of children in physical space, not the tools
| used to transmit and store child porn, which are general
| purpose tools used to transmit and store anything. Our
| efforts and resources, as a matter of priority, should be
| spent on preventing children from being trafficked in the
| first place.
|
| The under-16 social media ban ignores the actual problem of
| parental responsibility. We could implement configurable IP
| filters on the device itself at the OS level, with the
| setting being protected by a password parents can set, and
| this could be done completely offline. It would be way
| easier to implement and will work better than any of these
| remote solutions. And as a matter of principle: it is the
| responsibility of parents to decide how to raise their own
| children.
| squarefoot wrote:
| The purpose has never been to protect children; it's just
| a convenient motivation against which nobody would dare
| to object, just like mandating age restriction for porn
| sites is nothing more than an excuse to pushing further
| for elimination of anonymity, which started with porn
| sites exactly because nobody would dare exposing
| themselves for objecting to it. As I already wrote
| elsewhere, this happens while thousands of children are
| murdered in various wars, to their complete silence
| because going anywhere beyond the usual empty public
| condemnation followed by nothing would put them against
| very powerful foreign governments.
| demarq wrote:
| That the EU has these "closed door" processes doesn't sound
| very democratic.
|
| The frequency, aggression and coordination around chat control,
| both in the Uk and Eu tells me there is a single entity.
|
| It's not just by chance
| archerx wrote:
| The "you voted wrong and will make you keep voting until you
| get it right" type of "democracy".
| moogly wrote:
| "Not right now", "Remind me later"
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Writing about yourself in third person like this is really odd.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| The site is in his name but it has a lot of content - I don't
| think he writes it all. The stuff I've seen from him directly
| is mainly in German so I think often people on his team write
| e.g. English summaries and quote what he said as a translation
| thw_9a83c wrote:
| Apparently it didn't work last time, so why not try again with a
| more vague language, an expanded scope and even slapping the age
| verification on top of it? And all of this while still preserving
| our privacy.
|
| This time, we should feel 100% completely reassured (from the
| proposal): Regulation whilst still allowing for
| end-to-end encryption, nothing in this Regulation should
| be interpreted as prohibiting, weakening or circumventing,
| requiring to disable, or making end-to-end encryption impossible.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| This.. seriously
|
| "Digital House Arrest": Teens under 16 face a blanket ban from
| WhatsApp, Instagram, online games, and countless other apps
| with chat functions, allegedly to protect them from grooming.
|
| For which I agree.
|
| "Digital isolation instead of education, protection by
| exclusion instead of empowerment - this is paternalistic, out
| of touch with reality, and pedagogical nonsense."
| johnisgood wrote:
| I completely disagree.
|
| I would not know English or anything about computers, and my
| childhood would have been quite sad were there such a
| retarded ban[1]. I do not care about WhatsApp and Instagram,
| but online games and apps with chat functions? Come on now.
| "Allegedly" is the keyword.
|
| At any rate, see Roblox and Discord. Do something with those
| platforms first. :)
|
| [1] I was around 12 years old when I met an older guy IRL who
| I have met in an online game initially. Can you imagine the
| safety? :D He showed me his laptop on which he had a Linux
| distro installed, and the rest is history.
| eldgfipo wrote:
| So many attempts over the years to infringe upon citizens privacy
| and civil liberties, I don't know about the rest of EU population
| but I'm done with it.
|
| Might as well let it go pure evil so when the time comes, the
| people will be less hesitant to get rid of the whole EU
| bureaucracy and the armies of corporate lobbyists altogether
| r14c wrote:
| I'm curious about this mindset. Wouldn't it be easier to reform
| your system before it has gone "pure evil"? Or do you expect
| nobody cares enough to do that without the threat of impending
| doom to motivate them?
| kennykartman wrote:
| I believe people will typically not stand for their rights
| (even less so for other's rights) unless they are
| significantly bothered or led to think the situation is dire.
| This is not great, but it is also natural for the human
| condition: unless one is well-informed and especially
| conscious about the issues that come with reduction of
| rights, they will not even realize what is happening until it
| is happening.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I poked my Europarliamentarians. But it's -like- already almost
| 15:00 on the european mainland, so I'm not sure how much it still
| helps.
| kennykartman wrote:
| Same here. I got no answer. Ahhhh, no: I got one! An automated
| answer from a deputy on vacation.
| dfawcus wrote:
| These things are rather pointless, as one could always use a
| standalone encryption app, and copy&paste text to and from a non
| encrypted chat app. i.e. how one originally made use of PGP.
|
| The difficulty which PGP had of key exchange could be handled
| somewhat like Signal does now, via a personal physical sync of
| the phones.
|
| At which point, the authorities will still be able to make use of
| "traffic analysis" as they always have. So they'll be able to
| tell which parties are communicating, but not what is being said.
| dfawcus wrote:
| I find it sadly amusing that the proposed "compromise text"
| document is marked as "(Text with EEA relevance)" - i.e. they
| want to push it on the EEA states.
| nik_ca wrote:
| Do you know where there is no chat control possible? XMPP /
| Jabber [1]. Private, convenient, reliable, distributed, free.
|
| [1] https://xmpp.org/
| whynotmakealt wrote:
| Isn't the same true for matrix as well?
|
| I appreciate xmpp as well but I have actually seen uses of
| matrix in open source community etc. a lot more so what are
| your thoughts on it?
|
| Note for anyone interested in matrix, to not use the main
| matrix.org but other instances as well to actually have more
| decentralization/distribution
| nik_ca wrote:
| Yes, you're right, matrix too. However, I've tried ruining
| servers for both, synapse for matrix and prosody for xmpp and
| I should say matrix felt very sluggish and limited, while
| prosody is fast and insanely flexible. In addition, client
| software for XMPP is more diverse and feature-rich, I'm
| particularly impressed by movim (web) and conversations
| (android). Also, there are variety of bridges for everything,
| e.g. matrix <-> whatsapp or xmpp <-> telegram, so one is not
| limited too much while committing to a certain messaging
| tech.
| mrsssnake wrote:
| Unless you are going to self-host, you would be required to
| provide government ID for registration on a server.
| Caius-Cosades wrote:
| It's a foregone conclusion that it will pass. There is no such
| thing as saying "no" to EU power encroachment.
| kaboomshebang wrote:
| This makes me feel pissed off. I used to be Pro EU, now I'm not
| so sure. (Suddenly I understand Trump voters.)
| mrighele wrote:
| Same here. If this pass, I may start voting for Anti-EU
| parties, regardless for my disgust for them. This is too much
| of an important issue.
| Itoldmyselfso wrote:
| The eu skeptic partiers, unfortunately, seem to be on quite solid
| footing on claims of EU bypassing democracy in their decision
| making. How can the same bill effectively be struck down so many
| times and then get passed through the back door?!
| nowaymo6237 wrote:
| Privacy needs codified! The illusion of safety is not worth it
| for the fascist regime who turn keys it into a panopticon.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Eternal vigilance is needed to stop this. Good luck! It will take
| just one (manufactured) crisis.
| ryandrake wrote:
| We have to win every time. They only have to win once and it's
| game over.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Why can't we put up legislation to repeal over and over until
| it is repealed?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| "Over and over" is the hint.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Power/wealth asymmetries. The incumbent organizations are
| powerful, have many resources and actively work to prevent
| other organizations from achieving the same level if
| competency.
| dymk wrote:
| Because legislation like this is a ratchet.
| pembrook wrote:
| The number of laws/rules added vs. removed in any given
| year is like 100:1.
|
| New rules lead to profitable business opportunities (and
| future lobbies), incumbents get to entrench their positions
| using the new rules, and people get stockholm syndrome and
| just end up accepting the new normal.
|
| Modern representative democracy is Parkinson's law at work.
| Government is the purest form of bureaucracy and monopoly.
| Thus, it finds ways to grow itself every year regardless of
| what happens.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why can 't we put up legislation to repeal over and over
| until it is repealed?_
|
| We can. It's just easier to throw a wrench in a legislative
| process than to start it. (By design.)
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| There is also an alternative, which is the way problems with
| governments used to get solved in the past. Not that we should
| aim for that to be necessary, but it often seems that our
| politicians are hellbend on getting there quickly. I guess it's
| all "to hell with the consequences!" for them.
| latexr wrote:
| That argument is so tiring. Yes, we know, we all understand
| this, that's true of every draconian law proposal. What's the
| point of repeating that over and over every time? If you want
| to give up, do, but let others fight without needless
| discouraging. If everyone thought like you, this would have
| passed first time.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908672
| api wrote:
| They will keep trying until some version of it passes.
| Humorist2290 wrote:
| (6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of
| information society services offered in the Union by providers
| established in third countries. In order to ensure the
| effectiveness of the rules laid down in this Regulation and a
| level playing field within the internal market, those rules
| should apply to all providers, irrespective of their place of
| establishment or residence, that offer services in the Union, as
| evidenced by a substantial connection to the Union.
|
| The article links to the text of the revised proposal. It reads
| like they're openly planning to push it again, and soon, and
| worldwide. The UK and EU seem to be setting aside their
| differences at least.
| josteink wrote:
| So they're asking American companies to repeal the first
| amendment rights of American citizens on all websites
| accessible in the EU.
|
| How this not a declaration of war?
| progval wrote:
| Neither the EU nor American companies are Congress, so they
| are not bound by the 1st amendment.
| pksebben wrote:
| Wait, Congress is bound by the first amendment?
|
| Someone should tell Congress.
| petcat wrote:
| "First Amendment Rights" only applies to the State, not
| private companies.
|
| For example, Hacker News has no obligation to preserve your
| "First Amendment Rights" on this website. They are free to
| mute you, ban you, or even just surreptitiously change what
| you say without you knowing.
| josteink wrote:
| That's just semantics.
|
| If a website which otherwise wouldn't censor you begins to
| censor you because of threats from foreign nations, that's
| a foreign nation pressuring an American company into
| suppressing rights of American citizens.
|
| That's a foreign nation imposing on your rights. In the
| past that used to require an invasion, so it was a bit more
| obvious what was happening, but the result is still the
| same.
|
| Yes it's through a website, which is owned by a company,
| which technically speaking owes you nothing.
|
| In the digital age though, where are you going to use your
| speech, if not on a website?
|
| What you (and others) are doing is trying to reduce the
| significance of a major transgression over a minor
| technicality. Way to miss the forest for trees.
|
| The EU can stuff it on this one. And I supported (still
| support!) the GDPR.
| petcat wrote:
| Semantics are important when talking about matters of
| law. Very important, in fact.
| josteink wrote:
| So you're just going to accept a digital invasion
| happening and not care, because of some semantics and
| details somewhere in a document which was penned 200
| years prior to the internet being invented?
|
| I don't know about you, but to me that seems kind of
| naive and short sighted.
| rstat1 wrote:
| You can still care about forthcoming invasions of one's
| privacy and while still understanding that the 1st
| Amendment to the US Constitution is only intended to
| prevent state and federal governments from censoring you.
| Not corporations.
|
| Semantics are very important when it comes to legal
| matters.
| macintux wrote:
| You can object to the "digital invasion", but using the
| phrase "freedom of speech" as some sort of magical shield
| is pointless.
|
| > 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; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
| petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
|
| The U.S. federal or state governments, courtesy of that
| amendment, have very limited authority to control your
| speech. That's where the legal authority ends.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > That's where the legal authority ends.
|
| So you see no problem with using jurisdiction washing
| like Five Eyes to remove our rights?
|
| If we don't tolerate a government we elect abridging our
| freedom of speech, why would we accept a foreign
| government doing that?
|
| When foreign governments try to force conpanies to
| abridge free speech by Americans on American soil, that
| is an attack on something that we deem important enough
| to have enshrined in our constitution.
| ghurtado wrote:
| > accept a digital invasion
|
| It looks like the possibilities are endless once you
| throw semantics out of the window, so I could see why
| you're so fond of doing so.
| ghurtado wrote:
| Semantics are literally the only reason we write laws
| down and argue endlessly about exactly which words to use
|
| Outside of law, I have never once heard "that's just
| semantics" in a context that made sense, or said by an
| intelligent person. Not once. Maybe it turns out
| semantics are never "just semantics", and instead it's
| something that always matters.
| saubeidl wrote:
| It isn't your right to comment on somebody else's
| website. Your argument makes no sense.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I was under the impression that the strong and independent
| Americans had thicker skin than this.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| luckily, this is a sample size of one (1)
| latchup wrote:
| I am going to assume your question is genuine and not
| rethorical hyperbole.
|
| Every sovereign nation has legal supremacy over its own
| territory. Any company doing business in the EU, no matter
| its origin, must follow EU laws _inside the EU_. However,
| these laws do not apply anywhere else (unless specified by
| some sort of treaty), so they are not forced to comply with
| them in the US when dealing with US customers.
|
| If they still abide by EU law elsewhere, that is their
| choice, just like you can just choose to abide by Chinese law
| in the US -- so long as it does not conflict with US law. If
| these rules do conflict with the first amendment, enforcing
| them in the US is simply not legal, and it's up to the
| company to figure out how to resolve this. In the worst case,
| they will have to give up business in the EU, or in this
| case, prohibit chat between US and EU customers, segregating
| their platform.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| I mean this (mostly) as a joke, however, I kinda wish US
| businesses would just firewall off the EU at this point
| (yes, I know this would mean losing some
| customers/marketshare and thus would never happen).
|
| But the near daily proposals getting tossed out in their
| desperate attempt to turn their countries into daycare
| centers is just annoying to people trying to build things
| for other adults.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > I kinda wish US businesses would just firewall off the
| EU at this point (yes, I know this would mean losing some
| customers/marketshare and thus would never happen).
|
| This would involve them taking about a 30% hit to revenue
| (or more, depending on the company), so yeah, entirely
| implausible.
|
| But, it's also worth noting that the US constantly does
| stuff like this. Like, the entire financial services
| panopticon of tracking is driven almost entirely by the
| US, and has been around since the 70s. Should the EU then
| wall off the US?
|
| Personally, (as an EU citizen), that would really hurt if
| they did, but getting completely off the dollar based
| financial system would remove a lot of the US's control
| (and as a bonus/detriment reveal to the US how much of
| their vaunted market is propped up by EU money).
|
| Most governments are bad, and these kinds of laws are
| international, so I'm not sure walling off the EU would
| make your life much better.
|
| And let's be honest, you should expect the tech industry
| to end up as regulated as the financial industry over
| time, the only difference will be how long it takes to
| get there.
| layer8 wrote:
| > worldwide
|
| Laws targeting service providers usually always apply to all
| providers providing services in the respective jurisdiction. It
| would be unusual if it was any different.
| btown wrote:
| From https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/council-presidency-lewp-
| csa-r... pp 35:
|
| (f) 'relevant information society services' means all of the
| following services: (i) a hosting service; (ii) an
| interpersonal communications service; (iii) a software
| applications store; (iv) an internet access service; (v) online
| search engines.
|
| And via https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... pp 8:
|
| (2) 'internet access service' means a publicly available
| electronic communications service that provides access to the
| internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points
| of the internet, irrespective of the network technology and
| terminal equipment used
|
| ===
|
| Calling it Chat Control is itself an understatement, one that
| evokes "well I'm not putting anything sensitive on WhatsApp"
| sentiments - and that's incredibly dangerous.
|
| This bill may very well be read to impose mandatory global
| backdoors on VPNs, public cloud providers, and even your home
| router or your laptop network card!
|
| (Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. But it doesn't take a
| lawyer to see how broadly scoped this is.)
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > (6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse
| of information society services offered in the Union by
| providers established in third countries.
|
| It's quite wild to see child sexual abuse continue to be cited
| as a justification for far-reaching, privacy-invading
| proposals, allegedly to empower government actors to combat
| child sexual abuse.
|
| Meanwhile, we have copious and ever-increasing evidence of
| actual child sexual abuse being perpetrated by people with the
| most power in these very institutions, and they generally face
| few (if any) consequences.
| andybak wrote:
| This is an asymmetric conflict. The factions who want this to
| pass have more resources, time and background influence and can
| keep pushing this until they get lucky.
|
| And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.
|
| How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic
| process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
| frogperson wrote:
| We stop allowing the rich to become so rich. Billionares are
| not compatible with democracy or the greater good.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| What happens when you get what you want, and rather than
| magically solving every problem confronting society, it
| doesn't solve anything at all, and in fact creates several
| more problems, as generally happens when such ideas are put
| into practice?
|
| What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?
| snek_case wrote:
| Also how do you avoid billionaires _worldwide_? Not
| everyone lives under your government. Even if you could,
| how do you know for a fact that some people don 't secretly
| control hidden assets? Is Xi openly a billionaire? China is
| a "communist" country on paper. How does he hold so much
| power?
|
| The sad reality is that the world has a nonzero percentage
| of power-hungry narcissists. We need governments that are
| more democratic and robust. We all know that the current
| government processes are broken and corrupted.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| We iterate.
| tock wrote:
| > as generally happens when such ideas are put into
| practice
|
| Is this true? Lots of countries with high living standards
| have high taxes. It doesn't need to solve every problem but
| it does help solve the problem of one unelected person
| holding too much power and influence.
|
| > What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?
|
| 1B = 1000M. I think thats high enough. Don't see why you
| need to make it 1000x smaller to try and make a point.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _It doesn 't need to solve every problem but it does help
| solve the problem of one unelected person holding too
| much power and influence._
|
| It does? Really?
|
| What _are_ they teaching kids in school these days?
| According to the books I studied, nominally-egalitarian
| leaders racked up an eight-digit body count in the 20th
| century alone.
| tock wrote:
| > It does? Really?
|
| Yep.
|
| > nominally-egalitarian leaders racked up an eight-digit
| body count in the 20th century alone
|
| You don't believe in democracy and equal rights? Anyway
| billionaires love their 10 digits not 8.
| criley2 wrote:
| Taxes are ~irrelevant to billionaires. When you say "you
| can't be a billionaire" what you're saying is "you cannot
| own any significant amount of a large business" because
| billionaires aren't liquid, their status is based on
| their assets and primarily their shares in large
| businesses.
|
| I agree that wealth inequality is horrible and taxes on
| the wealthy should be much higher. But if someone owns
| 10% of a trillion dollar company, that's $100B in shares.
| They can sell off 900M$ worth of shares and "not be a
| billionaire" in terms of income and money (and thus
| taxation). So what do you do?
|
| - Seize control of their shares and thus their control
| over private industry
|
| - Or, accept that billionaires exist
|
| This is basically the core fight between capitalism
| (private ownership of the means of production) and
| communism (government control of the means of
| production).
|
| Most people hate the idea of billionaires, but people
| generally also hate a centrally planned government where
| the government owns a controlling stake in all businesses
| preventing any insider from having any real control.
| tock wrote:
| > So what do you do?
|
| We should be discussing strategies to tackle this. Not
| just go "oh lets just accept it".
|
| Just how many people have 100B+? Do you see them trying
| to interfere in governance and elections? Maybe we can
| have annual wealth taxes. Just like property taxes. There
| are many ways to tackle this. That's what we should be
| discussing. Not just giving up. Absurd wealth inequality
| will cause societal collapse.
|
| > This is basically the core fight between capitalism
| (private ownership of the means of production) and
| communism (government control of the means of
| production).
|
| No it isn't. It's taxation. Does the presence of property
| taxes and inheritance taxes make the west a communist
| region? Communism is the govt "owning" a company. Some
| rich guy selling his shares on the stock market to pay
| his taxes doesn't mean the govt owns the company.
| criley2 wrote:
| > "Annual wealth taxes"
|
| So, the government steals a percent of private businesses
| every year? What does the government do with this? Are
| you suggesting that the government forces business owners
| to liquidate their own shares to give to the government?
| So on a long enough time line, no one is allowed to own a
| business.
|
| > No it isn't. It's taxation. Does the presence of
| property taxes and inheritance taxes make the west a
| communist region? Communism is the govt "owning" a
| company. Some rich guy selling his shares on the stock
| market to pay his taxes doesn't mean the govt owns the
| company.
|
| The business is already paying taxes (i.e. property
| taxes). You're proposing a new tax on top of the existing
| taxation scheme, an ownership tax that likely requires
| the owner to reduce their ownership. Imagine if you had
| to sell 1% of your house every year because "home
| ownership is unfair". Most middle class folks would never
| end up owning their home.
|
| Communism is when you're not allowed to own private
| businesses, and the wealth that is problematic is the
| ownership of private businesses. Skin this cat however
| you want, but if you want a skinned cat, the skin has to
| come off.
|
| Again, I agree that billionaires are bad. I don't think
| taxation or incentive structures will fix it. I do think
| that revolution/wars that destroy the oligarchy and reset
| wealth are the only times in history that the middle and
| working class truly prosper. It is what it is. In an
| ideal world, business ownership is broadly spread across
| employees and wealth and power are shared broadly. But
| that's not an outcome that is ever achieved without
| significant force.
| tock wrote:
| > So, the government steals a percent of private
| businesses every year? What does the government do with
| this? Are you suggesting that the government forces
| business owners to liquidate their own shares to give to
| the government? So on a long enough time line, no one is
| allowed to own a business.
|
| All tax is theft by that argument. Whether they liquidate
| or not is up to them. They just need to pay x tax. They
| aren't selling their stake to the government. They are
| free to pay the tax from their general annual income or
| by selling their stocks in the market like they do today
| every year.
|
| > Imagine if you had to sell 1% of your house every year
| because "home ownership is unfair". Most middle class
| folks would never end up owning their home.
|
| How are folks paying property taxes today? They are
| paying x% of the properties annual value yearly.
|
| > Communism is when you're not allowed to own private
| businesses, and the wealth that is problematic is the
| ownership of private businesses. Skin this cat however
| you want, but if you want a skinned cat, the skin has to
| come off.
|
| If stock is being sold to pay tax its being sold to
| someone else in the market not the govt. The govt is not
| owning the business.
|
| > I do think that revolution/wars that destroy the
| oligarchy and reset wealth are the only times in history
| that the middle and working class truly prosper. It is
| what it is. In an ideal world, business ownership is
| broadly spread across employees and wealth and power are
| shared broadly. But that's not an outcome that is ever
| achieved without significant force.
|
| I agree. But I don't share the sentiment that nothing can
| be done. None of what I said is radical. Its reality in
| many european countries. And wealth equality is far less.
| eg. an annual 1% wealth tax. 1% of 1B is 10M. That's
| peanuts to them. Heck their stocks appreciate far greater
| than that yearly.
| criley2 wrote:
| >Its reality in many european countries. And wealth
| equality is far less. eg. an annual 1% wealth tax. 1% of
| 1B is 10M. That's peanuts to them. Heck their stocks
| appreciate far greater than that yearly.
|
| Ah yes Europe, where businesses are largely uncompetitive
| globally and the countries are more than ever completely
| at the mercy of global superpowers. I'll also point out
| that the most competitive and richest european countries
| also have the largest wealth inequality, and the european
| countries pulling down the average are the poorest ones
| and most irrelevant globally. Their stock market is also
| considered mediocre and many European prefer to invest in
| US markets instead.
|
| Just pointing out that "more taxes" isn't some panacea
| and there's a real cost to competitiveness going this
| route. If the US went this way, the BRICS nations
| especially China would eclipse the western world within a
| generation on the back of more absuive practices, and
| become the global superpowers easily pushing the west
| around.
|
| I suppose that's nicer for this generation of citizens,
| although potentially catastrophic for the generation
| afterwards. And I don't necessarily envy the geopolitical
| reality of Europe right now, even if I do envy many of
| their healthcare systems.
| tock wrote:
| European businesses are uncompetitive because of excess
| regulation. Not the ultra wealthy having to pay more tax.
| I'm pointing out they have wealth tax and haven't turned
| into a communist hellhole. None of the things you
| complain about whether its Europe refusing to build up
| their military or its business competitiveness is because
| of wealth tax. The USA has an annual property tax based
| on the properties value and isn't a communist nation.
|
| > I'll also point out that the most competitive and
| richest european countries also have the largest wealth
| inequality, and the european countries pulling down the
| average are the poorest ones and most irrelevant
| globally.
|
| This isn't even true. The US has the same inequality as
| Russia. Every top EU country is far far lower. Maybe we
| are communist after all.
|
| Your entire argument is that 900 people out of
| 350,000,000 people in the US having to pay more tax is
| going to drive the US into the ground.
| criley2 wrote:
| >Your entire argument is that 900 people out of
| 350,000,000 people in the US having to pay more tax is
| going to drive the US into the ground.
|
| Talk about a low-faith strawman! Let me eviscerate this
| garbage argument.
|
| The 900 billionaires in America control around $7.8
| trillion USD in assets (US yearly GDP is over $30
| trillion, for reference)
|
| Let's tax 1% of that yearly, meaning we just gained $78
| billion dollars per year! Congrats, with a $7 trillion
| yearly federal budget, your +$78 billion covers about 1%
| of federal spending.
|
| Pack it up boys, we completely solved wealth inequality
| and will be a glorious european nation with our $78
| billion dollars! If we applied that to nationalized
| healthcare (estimated cost $3 trillion per year) we just
| paid for 2% of the healthcare system!
|
| Or maybe we just redistribute that $78 billion. That's
| $588 dollars per US household per year. Problem = solved.
|
| Great argument.
| tock wrote:
| > Let's tax 1% of that yearly, meaning we just gained $78
| billion dollars per year! Congrats, with a $7 trillion
| yearly federal budget, your +$78 billion covers about 1%
| of federal spending.
|
| Excellent point. I'm glad you see how much of a pittance
| 1% annually is. Though I've made the same point
| before(remember I said 1% of 1B is just 10M, thats a joke
| for billionaires). Increase the % as you wish. 1% does
| nothing for inequality given stock gains are far higher
| yearly.
|
| My whole point is that its a problem that needs to be
| solved. How we can solve it is a great thing to discuss.
| Your entire argument so far is that it can't be solved.
| Which I don't agree with.
|
| And for some reason you just ignore some points. eg.
| property taxes: "in 2023, approximately $363 billion in
| property taxes was collected on single-family homes
| across the United States. Property taxes generally
| account for about 10-11% of total U.S. tax revenue.". You
| said "Most middle class folks would never end up owning
| their home.". Turns out thats not true.
|
| Tax the billionaires. You seem to think the current trend
| is bad as well. You just happen to think my suggestions
| to fix it is bad. That's fine. But I think its a better
| constructive use of your time trying to think of better
| ideas than give up.
| criley2 wrote:
| >Increase the % as you wish.
|
| 1% is your number. Feel free to tell me the magical
| wealth tax % that fixes all income inequality and
| maintains strong ability to own private businesses. This
| is your argument and it's lazy to tell me to do your work
| for you.
|
| >My whole point is that its a problem that needs to be
| solved. How we can solve it is a great thing to discuss.
| Your entire argument so far is that it can't be solved.
| Which I don't agree with.
|
| Yes, I think that your wealth tax cannot solve the
| problem unless it tips away from capitalism towards
| socialism, e.g. destroy billionaires ability to have
| control over private industry and broaden the base of
| ownership or make it public. Maybe you have a magical %
| wealth tax that fixes everything, I'll wait for your
| thesis.
|
| >And for some reason you just ignore some points. eg.
| property taxes: "in 2023, approximately $363 billion in
| property taxes was collected on single-family homes
| across the United States. Property taxes generally
| account for about 10-11% of total U.S. tax revenue.". You
| said "Most middle class folks would never end up owning
| their home.". Turns out thats not true.
|
| This is not a place to have expansive multi-point
| debates. I'm not ignoring anything, I'm having targeted
| discussions on major points. Again, property taxes are
| NOT universal in the US and are largely balanced by
| income taxes. States with high property taxes generally
| have low/no income taxes and vice versa. And yes,
| property taxes have had a strong effect in lowering home
| ownership. In China, over 70% of millenials own a home
| (no property taxes). In America, less than half of
| millenials own homes (high property taxes).
|
| Another point I neglected to reply to because these
| replies get way too long: European regulation is bad on
| businesses _because corrupt billionaires aren 't in place
| to stop it_. Can't you see that regulation and private
| power go hand in hand? A government strong enough to
| force billionaires to not get richer and instead spread
| the wealth is a government strong enough to regulate the
| heck out of businesses. Given power, it will be used.
|
| >Tax the billionaires. You seem to think the current
| trend is bad as well. You just happen to think my
| suggestions to fix it is bad. That's fine. But I think
| its a better constructive use of your time trying to
| think of better ideas than give up.
|
| We do tax billionaires and the wealthy! The top 1% of
| Americans pay 25% of all revenue. The bottom 50% pay
| roughly 3% of all revenue.
|
| Please forward your taxation thesis that 1) solves wealth
| inequality 2) preserves the ability to own large
| businesses. And no, forcing a business owner to sell
| their shares to retail investors and hedge funds does not
| preserve business ownership, it guarantees that citizens
| will eventually be forced out of their own businesses
| that they start.
|
| My thesis is simple: Skin the cat. Blow up their
| ownership. Prevent them from owning large businesses. Use
| the power of government to jail them and disappear them
| until they bow before a government of the people. Or
| accept the system for what it is. But half measures?
| Fiddling with minor taxation numbers? Get real, that's
| controlled opposition that prolongs their reign.
| afarah1 wrote:
| This seems to be more about political power and government
| overreach than money. The narrative seems to be focused
| solely on concentration of the later, lately.
| dymk wrote:
| Money is political power. A billionaire can afford to lobby
| and "donate" as much as they want.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| I expect economical and political power to get along well.
| You normally acquire both organically; except in some
| cases, suddently acquiring much of one will buy some of the
| other.
|
| TLDR: Billionaires hold political power.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Billionaires inherently get political power. When they're
| more socially adept than Musk, they can even have the power
| without having the plebs notice.
| lazide wrote:
| Yup, going full autist in public is a good way to get the
| public angry at you and try to find a way to make your
| life more difficult.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| You mean, going full asshole. Not all autists are
| assholes.
| lazide wrote:
| The issue isn't that he was being an asshole - plenty of
| politicians can be assholes and be cheered for it.
|
| He was being straightforward, direct, matter of fact,
| technical, and an asshole.
|
| You gotta lube up the plebes, or they get butthurt, and
| that is what is causing the issue.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| You see this happening a lot where criticisms of capitalism
| gets laundered in with criticisms of political power as a
| means to deflect.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| It's too bad we can't withdraw our votes for a politician
| continuously, with the politician having to leave office if
| the vote changes enough.
|
| I'm not sure it can be solved without everybody writing down
| their vote, but this would be one way that would make pushing
| through unpopular policies, whether because of changing
| opinions, mismatches where politicians misrepresent their
| plans or corruption, much more difficult.
| layer8 wrote:
| That would just strengthen the incentives for continual
| populism and propaganda.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| If not continuously, there needs to be mechanisms to recall
| a politician (or an entire government), and re-hold
| elections for both failing to govern and failing to
| represent the interests of the people over the interest of
| billionaires.
|
| To use the recent US shutdown as an example. Passing a
| budget is like one of the basic requirements of governing.
| If the current government cannot accomplish that, it should
| immediately dissolve and elections be held. Every single
| position in power at the time, gone, the whole thing gets
| re-elected because they have proven that the current group
| cannot adequately govern.
|
| The ability to recall needs to work similarly. Vote should
| be able to be initiated by the people at anytime, and a
| successful vote means the government dissolves and new
| elections are held.
|
| We could also have a "cooling off" period after a piece of
| legislation (like chat control) fails. It failed the first
| time, it should not be able to be immediately reintroduced
| whether in the same or a different form. There should be
| some sort of cooling off period where that piece of
| legislation (or its goals) cannot be reintroduced for x
| number of years.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| These are good ideas, but they do have some pretty big
| sticking points. The ability to trigger a re-election has
| the same problems we're trying to avoid in the larger
| thread: If a bad actor (say a business) wants a
| politician out, they can just continually issue recall
| votes until they wear out the population and get lucky.
| Unfortunately, I think the only solution here is exactly
| what we have: Politicians have to be re-elected every
| couple of years.
|
| The cooling off period also has problems, because
| sometimes a piece of legislation is a good idea, but has
| a major flaw that causes people to vote against it. What
| happens when people want a law passed, but not in the
| form it's presented in?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Re-election every couple of years does not solve the
| issues, as demonstrated by most elected governments
| around the world. People are too lazy, uninformed,
| stupid, to vote for their own good, and will be made to
| vote against their own interest, time and time again. As
| societies we are mostly not ready mentally to vote
| properly. This is in the interest of the people in power.
| Have stupid and confused subjects, so that you can rally
| them for whatever cause you need them to rally for.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Passing a budget is like one of the basic requirements
| of governing. If the current government cannot accomplish
| that, it should immediately dissolve and elections be
| held.
|
| It's important to note that this is a basic principle,
| almost _the_ basic principle, of English-style
| parliamentary democracy. You have a monarch who makes
| decisions (through their chosen government, ever since
| the English cut off a few heads), and the rest of the
| Parliament (a bunch of nobles, clergy, and eventually
| representatives of commoners) is there to withdraw
| financing from that government when they disapprove.
|
| > We could also have a "cooling off" period after a piece
| of legislation (like chat control) fails.
|
| We usually do, it is called a "session." The problem is
| the inability to pass negative legislation (which also
| has a pretty long history) i.e. we will _not_ do a thing.
| Deliberative assemblies explicitly frown on negative
| legislation, and instead say that purpose is served
| simply by not doing the thing.
|
| The problem is that individual rights are provided by
| negative legislation _against the government_ : think the
| US Bill of Rights. Instead, we have systems where
| exclusively positive legislation is passed by majorities,
| and repealing that legislation takes _supermajorities_.
| The only pragmatic way to create new rights becomes to
| challenge legislation in courts, and get a decision by
| opinionated, appointed judges that X piece of legislation
| is superseded by Y piece of legislation for unconvincing
| reason Z, and this new "right" is about as stable as the
| current lineup of the sitting justices.
|
| What we need is to pretend like "democracy" is a
| meaningful word rather than an empty chant, or more often
| simply a euphemism for the US, Anglosphere, Western and
| Central Europe, and whoever they currently approve of.
| Democracy is rule by the ruled, and the exact processes
| by which the decisions are made _define_ the degree of
| democracy. Somehow, elites have decided that process is
| the _least_ important part of democracy, and the most
| important part is that elites get their preferred
| outcomes. Anything else is "populism."*
|
| Decisionmaking processes in "democracies" need to be
| examined, _justified,_ and codified. The EU needs either
| to cede a lot more leverage to its individual members
| (and make that stupid currency a European bancor, rather
| than a German weapon) OR become more directly responsive
| to European _individuals._ If you 're not serving the
| individual states, and you're not serving the individual
| citizens, you're _exclusively_ serving elites.
|
| * A term made into meaningless invective by elites who
| hated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(Unite
| d_States), a party who believed in things that were good.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> It 's too bad we can't withdraw our votes for a
| politician continuously, with the politician having to
| leave office if the vote changes enough._
|
| I think that would empower ill-conceived (and/or ill-
| willed) populist & short term movements, with everyone in
| constant fear of being "un-vote bombed" by armies of easily
| led, and likely make the lobbying problem worse.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I have had this idea for a long time: An online realtime
| voting platform, where you can change your mind about
| policies at any time, and what the people want needs to be
| implemented. And of course all issues and policies must be
| put on the platform for people to vote on.
|
| Of course initially we would have to learn, that changing
| our minds too often will lead to things not getting done at
| all. And it is doubtful, that a lot of people are even
| capable of becoming informed and reflecting beings, not to
| be swayed by a hip populist radical, and thus causing shit
| to happen. Also the sheer number of issues and policies
| would be so many, that most people couldn't make up their
| mind on everything. But that's OK, since people can raise
| awareness and simply vote later, when they became aware.
| Another issue would be what the choices are that people
| have on the platform. How to give all relevant opinions as
| choices? How to know what is relevant? Or can voters apply
| for adding a new opinion? But then who grants the right to
| add a choice? How to prevent spam?
|
| So there certainly are huge issues with the idea. But
| maybe, over time, we would develop into politically
| reasonable societies and politicians would have to fear the
| opinion of the people, because one scandal uncovered, and
| they could end up kicked out tomorrow. Maybe it could also
| better designed, so that there is some minimum time between
| being able to change ones stance about something. Or some
| maximum of policies one can have an opinion about per day.
|
| Even initially to have such a platform without real
| political consequences of voting, would be super
| interesting, because you could lookup what the current
| opinions of the people are.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| It seems more likely to me this is being pressed by
| intelligence agencies than billionaires. Billionaires have
| secrets too.
| bergfest wrote:
| But they have ways to evade the law. And my dystopian inner
| oracle tells me, that when the pervasive online
| identification will soon be reality, certain people's IDs
| will have a special "all access, no logs" status that will
| allow them stay under the radar.
| imglorp wrote:
| The States are learning the hard way that the disproportionate
| accumulation of wealth is an irresistible force which will
| eventually erode all checks and balances, corrupt all systems,
| and ultimately capture the entire government. We we were doing
| mostly okay with "constrained capitalism" but as soon as we let
| our guard down, money flooded into politics and that was the
| end of restraint.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| Chat Control isn't something being pushed in the States
| though, so your criticism just seems like you're taking a
| random shot at the USA rather than accepting the
| uncomfortable truth that the EU is becoming increasingly
| authoritarian.
| imglorp wrote:
| No, I was directly responding to parent:
|
| > How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the
| democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in
| many areas.
|
| Relating our experience in the US, we planned for exactly
| this, it went okay for a while, until it didn't. The answer
| to parent is "do this but a little better" :-)
| HPsquared wrote:
| Constitutions are a pretty common way to say "no to this kind
| of thing".
| yoz-y wrote:
| Indeed. It seems that the only way out is to elect a
| government that would have that on their program. Dubious
| that this will happen.
| xxs wrote:
| Governments don't change constitutions pretty much
| anywhere. More also constitution changes are notoriously
| hard from requiring 75% of parliament votes, to 66% in two
| consecutive parliament assemblies (need to pass an
| election), and all versions in-between (or not having a
| codified constitution).
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Governments don 't change constitutions pretty much
| anywhere._
|
| They do sometimes manage to just ignore parts that they
| don't like sometimes, at least temporarily, as the recent
| and continuing mess in the DPR-US illustrates.
| egorfine wrote:
| Constitutions have a lot of "except in cases prescribed by
| the law" exceptions which makes it possible to pass into law
| all kinds of abuses.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| > How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic
| process?
|
| Other than hoping for a large meteorite or the second coming to
| end this misery, or stirring up the bloodbath a la Nepal -
| then, by recognizing the power of large numbers of people doing
| little things, like sabotaging the system at the personal
| level. But that implies unity, and unity and mutual support
| have been deliberately annihilated in this society for too
| long. Thus, this outcome is even less probable than the first
| two.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I'm downvoting you because complaining against downvotes like
| this is against site guidelines. Your comment would have a
| better foundation if that part was omitted.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| Now that's some recursive self-fulfilling prophecy, my
| friend! But thanks for chiming in.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Agree completely. We're like sheep that are cluelessly
| watching other sheep being slaughtered.
| enricotr wrote:
| This.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic
| process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
|
| A lot of society wants this. A lot of parents are asking for
| this.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| That doesn't mean anything, because they're not necessarily
| educated on the topic, and yet are making decisions that
| affect everyone.
|
| When it's so cheap to enact mass propaganda, selective
| omission and manufactured intent, it becomes impossible to
| just say, "well, the people want it." Their decision making
| process is compromised by the same people pushing these
| policies through.
|
| Democracy is indeed broken, and we have to take that
| seriously if we're going to fix it.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Please quantify "a lot". What percentage of the population
| wants all private communication between adults to be
| monitored and censored by a government agency? Can we put it
| to a vote - right after publicly discussing (debunking) all
| of the false beliefs that its proponents have?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| The question that is at the core is "police can wire tap
| calls but they cannot wire tap chats. Should this change?"
| The details are not all that important to people.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Legal interception requires a court order, Chat control
| is mass surveillance.
|
| Trying to build support for mass surveillance by
| misrepresenting it as targeted tool with checks and
| balances is exactly the kind of bad faith discourse I'm
| talking about.
| alex1138 wrote:
| This is true and yet we managed to kick SOPA to the curb (one
| of Aaron Swartz's finest hours)
| echelon_musk wrote:
| That was more than a decade ago. Think how many normies have
| come online since then that have only ever used a smartphone.
| Sadly the average computer literacy of those times are gone.
| tharne wrote:
| > Think how many normies have come online since then that
| have only ever used a smartphone. Sadly the average
| computer literacy of those times are gone.
|
| I remember a few years ago, being shocked to see that over
| 50% of applicants for a software engineering role applied
| directly from their smartphones. So it's not even just
| normies who see their phone as "the computer".
| egorfine wrote:
| Did you notice that SOPA reappears every couple of years
| since then?
| whitehexagon wrote:
| >How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic
| process?
|
| Swiss style democracy with public referendums?
| egorfine wrote:
| "Think of the children" buys a lot of votes of common people.
| iso1631 wrote:
| plebiscite -> populism -> bad outcomes
|
| People are not able to be experts in everything they are
| asked to vote on, thats why we delegate it, just like people
| delegate their healthcare, plumbing, flying to a holiday
| destination, growing food, etc.
|
| People en-mass are just as easy to manipulate as elected
| members, if not easier.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Can you point to examples of bad outcomes in Switzerland's
| referendums? I mean unequivocal examples, of the sort that
| would convince everyone here that that model is undesirable
| as a whole.
| latchup wrote:
| How about that time in 2020 the Swiss voted in favor of
| an immigration restriction proposal that was so
| fundamentally incompatible with existing EU treaties, the
| government was forced to bullshit their way out of
| implementing entirely because doing so would have
| basically ended Switzerland as a nation? This is the
| kinda thing that _really_ cannot happen in a working
| system. The only reason the government is not sued into
| following through is because the courts have conspired
| with other branches to shut down any attempt at doing so.
| Real democratic.
|
| Generally speaking, people are stupid. Really REALLY
| f-cking stupid. Giving the average Joe this kind of
| unmoderated power in a modern world that almost entirely
| eludes his understanding is no different from handing him
| a loaded gun; eventually, someone will get hurt real bad.
| As someone living in Switzerland, the main reason things
| are as stable as they are is because:
|
| * Changing anything significant requires a referendum,
| which is a huge pain in the ass. So politicians just
| kinda _avoid_ important changes that require referenda,
| finding other ways to enrich themselves and leaving
| society stagnating. This means that actually important
| changes come about very slowly or not at all. Read up on
| how long it took for women 's suffrage to become
| universal - and the outright threats of internal military
| action the federal government resorted to...
|
| * Whether the Swiss like it or not, Switzerland is mostly
| a loud, spoilt economic annex of the EU. It will remain
| stable for as long as the EU is, and well off for as long
| as the EU wants to be seen as a peaceful and magnanimous
| partner in international relations. After all, "bullying"
| tiny and surrounded Switzerland into agreeing to anything
| - which the Swiss will cry about at any opportunity you
| give them - is a bad look.
|
| So yeah, Swiss direct democracy is not all it's made out
| to be, and really not all that great up close. Admirers
| remind me a lot of Weaboos, strangely shortsighted in
| their admiration of a system they know little about.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| They have the eight highest MEDIAN wealth per capita, USA
| is in place 15th.
|
| 42 homicides year 2021, so an extremely safe country too.
|
| Calling people too dumb to handle democracy sounds a tad
| facist. They are literally in top 10.
|
| I can tell you our politicians where usually picked up
| from high school, never been to college, and had worse
| grades than the general public.
|
| So direct democracy might be like capitalism... the worst
| system besides all the others.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Switzerland is not in the EU.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic
| process?
|
| By choosing "people-vs-individual-politician" fight over
| "people-vs-government-system". Like, literally, make
| politicians personally responsible for this bs.
| blibble wrote:
| > And once in place repealing it will be tremendously
| difficult.
|
| as in: not possible
|
| the EU parliament can't legislate to remove it, at least not
| without permission from the two organs (commission, council)
| that keep pushing this
|
| EU parliament is the only legislature in the world that needs
| permission to legislate
| iso1631 wrote:
| On paper the UK house of commons can pass a bill. In reality
| bills are driven by the executive. The same executive that
| (until brexit) drove the bills via appointing the EU
| commissioner and being the EU council.
|
| The reason that EU Parliament can't pass bills is because
| constituent governments don't want to lose power to
| parliament.
| Muromec wrote:
| >EU parliament is the only legislature in the world that
| needs permission to legislate
|
| It makes sense, because EU _law_ is mostly technical stuff
| that commission has to draft and all the national governments
| have to agree to.
|
| With the commission being elected by the parliament itself
| and vote of no confidence being a thing, it's not like the
| parliament doesn't have power -- the power is intentionally
| nerfed to not overreach where national governments don't want
| it to.
| blibble wrote:
| > With the commission being elected by the parliament
| itself and vote of no confidence being a thing
|
| you only need 50%+1 to appoint the commission, but 66% to
| vote them out
|
| so practically impossible
| Lutzb wrote:
| The people that push this agenda reside on secrecy. We need to
| expose the people involved and let the press do their jobs.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Which press? The same that keeps this war in the shadows?
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| Agree, but it's rather "expose the people involved and DON'T
| let their pocket press puppets do their jobs!"
| nom wrote:
| It's just Ashton Kutcher trying to save our children.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| For one, we can try to get laws passed that point in the
| opposite direction: explicitly ban the things being proposed
| here as broadly as possible.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I've seen this strategy many times in the US. For example, in
| blue states they will repeatedly propose the same gun control
| laws that restrict the rights of law abiding citizens and
| violate the constitution, which guarantees a right to own
| firearms. Each time such a law is proposed, people have to show
| up to hearings, submit comments, pressure legislators, protest,
| and all of that. Those laws may then be pulled back, but the
| same laws will get brought up every single legislative season,
| and citizens who have other responsibilities in life have to
| give up time and money repeatedly to fight for their
| constitutional rights.
|
| I'm sure there are other examples of such legal abuse of
| different political biases - I'm just using this as an example
| because there is such a long history of it. Eventually,
| legislators will pass whatever they want anyways. And then your
| recourse to regain rights is to go through an expensive years-
| long legal battle that ultimately requires the Supreme Court to
| take the case. This type of "attack" is a serious flaw in many
| modern democracies.
|
| I think the fix is to have _personal_ consequences for
| legislators, judges, etc that make bad decisions that violate
| the constitutional rights or fundamental rights of citizens.
| The idea that people are immune from consequence just because
| they're serving in an official capacity is insane. This
| shouldn't be the case for anyone serving in political office or
| other public roles - as in, you shouldn't get immunity whether
| you are a lawmaker or policeman or teacher or whatever else.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic
| process?
|
| You need a means for citizens to hold the powers that be
| accountable. Unfortunately, the EU is largely designed without
| such a mechanism, as its initial scope and ambition was much
| smaller than the superstate it is growing into it wasn't deemed
| necessary.
|
| Every branch except for the European Parliament risks
| consequences only if they fuck up so badly that the majority of
| EU citizens in their home countries (or in some cases, _the
| majority of_ member states) deem their actions so reprehensible
| that they consider punishing the EU more important than
| electing their own national government, since it 's effectively
| the same vote.
|
| This is technically still a means of accountability, but it's
| not really a threat in practice.
| pokot0 wrote:
| Honestly I think privacy is lost. Regardless of what side you
| were (big fan of privacy here) I feel we have nothing to do but
| move on and think how to live in a world without privacy.
|
| I never wanted privacy anyway: I wanted no discrimination,
| inclusion, healthy democracy, etc, etc.
|
| Privacy has always been a tool for me.
|
| At this point, selective privacy like we are experiencing today
| (we cannot know what's in the epstein files, but google can send
| a drone and look into my backyard) serves none of the things I am
| interested in!
| whatshisface wrote:
| The basic structure of your argument is equivalent to, "I've
| given up on being allowed to leave my house, I just want to go
| to the places I need to go."
| binary132 wrote:
| what a ludicrously insane take. how can you not believe in
| privacy? do you think what you do in your home should be
| private, or do you think it's fine for someone to put cameras
| in there? If you do, please feel free to invite them to do so;
| do not feel free to invite them to put cameras in my home.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Whether you or I want it or not is irrelevant
|
| Over the last 5000 years it's been very rare for plebs to
| have any privacy. For a brief period from ww2 through to the
| early 21st century power shifted to the plebs, but since the
| 1980s that power has shifted back to the feudal barons, and
| our rights will eventually regress.
|
| But the SP500 will be at record highs so everyone will be
| told they should be happy.
| g-b-r wrote:
| What??
|
| For 5000 years there were no surveillance cameras or ways
| to surveil communications! (other than the little that was
| said by mail)
| binary132 wrote:
| What I'm taking issue with is that you said you never
| really cared about privacy. I care about my family's
| privacy. I'm not asking you to care about yours. I'm sorry
| you've given up on something that wasn't important to you
| anyway, or whatever.
| pokot0 wrote:
| I think you misunderstood him for me. Regardless, giving
| up is not something I mentioned. You guys just inferred
| it. I just feel we need to approach the battle very
| differently. What we have been doing it's not working.
| pokot0 wrote:
| Privacy for me is not that important. I have nothing to hide,
| nothing I am ashamed of. For me it's more of a way of
| protecting from abuse that a need of its own. I realize it's
| just me and I do advocate for privacy, but if you look
| around: we lost. Our data is everywhere and there are no
| consequences whatsoever. PS: I did mention in my original
| comment that Google and many others already send drones with
| cameras to spy on your backyard and that is considered
| "fine". I am not inviting them to come to your house; they
| are already doing it. Just check Google Maps.
| latexr wrote:
| > Privacy for me is not that important. I have nothing to
| hide
|
| "Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to
| hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech
| because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden
|
| It's a very privileged position to believe you have nothing
| to hide and not be worried about the consequences.
| Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky. Many people live
| in fear for their freedom and lives for elementary things
| they can't change and shouldn't have to hide, such as one's
| sexual orientation. We should think of them as well.
| binary132 wrote:
| what is it they're so concerned about people talking about these
| days exactly anyway?
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| Gotta make sure you aren't saying the wrong things, like
| criticising rich and powerful people.
| binary132 wrote:
| people have been doing that for a long time, but the level of
| urgency from the system hasn't been at this level.
| AngryData wrote:
| Yeah but was it to the same extent? People are regularly
| posting guillotines these days and our economic outlooks
| for much of the world, and especially the US, is not all
| roses and sunshine.
| sph wrote:
| It's because they have finally found the perfect trojan
| horse--"think of the children!"--in a time when people are
| too busy entertaining themselves to death.
|
| This is their best chance for them to enact mass
| surveillance, before the hoi polloi crack and finally get
| out of their couches.
| Muromec wrote:
| The urgency comes from having the actual war on the East
| side of the EU and whatever the hell is happening down
| South with refugees and what not. Then in the EU proper --
| sabotage acts, ammunition dumps being blown up, cabels cut
| and drones flying above the military bases hosting nuclear
| fucking warheads, Chinese and r===an spyies in the
| parliament, armed nazis in the military, etc, etc.
|
| The shit has hit the fan about a decade ago already and not
| calming down at all, but intelligence gathering capability
| of secret services of all EU countries are being
| continiously degraded, because everything is E2E by default
| and money flows are obscured too.
|
| Nobody likes to see shit being on fire and having all the
| dashboards down.
|
| Another happening happens, the services are asked why they
| didn't prevent it or report it being likely -- what do they
| answer? "We can't read the damn messages, so we can't know
| if there is a cell that plans to do it again".
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| It's the establishment putting measures in place to
| entrench their position with an uncertain future coming
| towards us, fast. They are setting up systems to prevent
| revolution.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| That they're so damn tired being milked and oppressed by the
| organized crime groups calling themselves governments, maybe?
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| That strain of libertarian rhetoric is overwhelmingly
| encountered on American-dominated fora. I won't say it
| doesn't exist in Europe, since Europeans can pick up on
| American internet culture, too, but it is too marginal in
| Europe to affect politics much. There is no significant
| libertarian party in the EU. Some of the far-right parties
| stoking and benefiting from popular discontent even promise
| to uphold the welfare state, but simply deny it to
| immigrants.
| sph wrote:
| Are you aware that anti-big-government and pro-privacy
| political philosophy is not limited to (the joke that is)
| American right-libertarianism?
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Not as a major political force to which Denmark's Chat
| Control could be responding as the OP claims. Moreover,
| expressions like "milked and oppressed" ring American
| libertarianism to the ears of this European poster who is
| familiar with long years of European cypherpunk activism.
| sph wrote:
| Cypherpunk activism is closer to anarchist ideals, and
| criticism of the State and its coercive power is central
| to its ethos. Yes, citizens are being milked and
| oppressed against a state and a political caste that has
| grown too powerful.
|
| American right-libertarianism is a joke that originally
| started as an anarchist branch and has degenerated into
| getting in bed with the state to further its selfish
| ideals. Criticism of the state has nothing to do with
| those posers, as their goal is solely to become the state
| (i.e. the oppressor), rather than truly pursue the ideal
| of a free society.
| pcrh wrote:
| Half of Europe has living memories of oppressive
| governments, from fascism in Franco's Spain to communism in
| East Europe.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Must be why they're so itching to get it back
| Muromec wrote:
| The usual stuff.
|
| - members of opposition of the wrong kind (as defined by
| incumbent);
|
| - journalists investigating the government;
|
| (if the incumbent is brazen enough, those above can be _and
| already are_ selectively targeted with paid exploits)
|
| - political opponents of the wrong kind (aka the extrimists,
| which kinda overlaps with #1);
|
| - actual enemy combatants (aka the terrorists), spys and
| traitors;
|
| - organized crime of the day with unwarranted delusions of
| grandeur (R. Taghi, his antics and aspirations to kill the
| Dutch PM);
|
| - immigrants and immigrants to be of the wrong kind and people
| who smuggle them;
| Havoc wrote:
| Dystopian BS. It's unfortunate that we've got people in society
| that are keen on mass surveillance
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| This Chat Control 2.0 nonsense has to be killed off once for all.
| pcrh wrote:
| The right to privacy is enshrined in the European Convention on
| Human Rights, article 8 [0].
|
| It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to violate
| this.
|
| [0] https://fra.europa.eu/en/law-reference/european-
| convention-h...
| pfortuny wrote:
| Think of the children.
|
| You want the police to solve crimes, right?
|
| If you are against this it is because you have something to
| hide.
|
| Also it is more than possible that those politicians do not
| agree with that Convention.
| crest wrote:
| Only boring people have nothing to hide.
| ntoskrnl_exe wrote:
| Wow, it's always crazy how the folks who have nothing to hide
| get mad when the lock on the stall door in a public bathroom
| doesn't work...
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| "having something to hide" or defending a human right. who
| cares. easy to tell where this one gets their feed
| 0_gravitas wrote:
| I assumed the post was sarcastic, but Poe's Law I suppose,
| sadly..
| karhuton wrote:
| _"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."_
|
| Are we reading the same thing?
|
| This linked statement clearly authorizes invasion of privacy by
| public authorities, in the name of any of the very vaguely
| listed reasons - as long as there's some law to allow it.
| pcrh wrote:
| Mass surveillance has already been ruled to be in
| contravention of the Human Rights act:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv.
| ..
|
| > _A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United
| Nations ' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights
| condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation
| of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and
| conventions and makes a distinction between "targeted
| surveillance" - which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior
| suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" - and
| "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of
| Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and
| e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users
| and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with
| particular websites". *Only targeted interception* of traffic
| and location data in order to combat serious crime, including
| terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the
| European Court of Justice.[23]_
| wmf wrote:
| The loophole there is "targeted" so they'll declare that
| Son of Chat Control is to be targeted.
| spwa4 wrote:
| A decision by the European Court of Justice or any other
| court does not apply to any legislative branch like the EU
| commission (not parliament), when making new laws. New laws
| simply override old laws (to be interpreted as
| specializations, more or less exceptions, to the old laws)
| BartjeD wrote:
| That's not true, because there is a hierarchy of
| legality.
|
| If a principle of the EU legal order is at stake, such as
| the right to privacy, then that constitutional imperative
| can very well override a new law.
|
| The commission and parliament are well aware of this
| risk. They often choose to have laws advised on by the
| courts, in advance. To avoid a legal mess.
|
| This is normal in a functional democracy. To avoid abuse
| of power / overreach by any institution.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah the whole thing is full with these loopholes. Your
| rights are rights only as long as we wish at some point to
| add laws that inhibit them.
| yesco wrote:
| It's weird how "rights" went from "the government can't do
| X to you" to "the government can force private actors to do
| Y (but these rules don't apply to us)."
| avmich wrote:
| Maybe it's because rights should be "government CAN do X
| to you", and whatever isn't listed in rules government
| CANNOT do?
| ekianjo wrote:
| Basically a useless document.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| Companies like Flock and Clearview have set up gigantic
| dragnets in the US.
|
| I'm not happy with everything the EU does, but to call it
| useless is to be ignorant of the rest of the world.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's perfectly sufficient to have laws against that sort
| of thing. As governments are above the law (in that they
| can just add new laws that say they can do whatever they
| want), you need something else. A bill of rights is such
| a something else.
| realusername wrote:
| It depends the version of the declaration, the french one has
| zero exception listed.
| pcrh wrote:
| It's the same in French (obviously), though equally this
| does not permit mass surveillance:
|
| > _Article 8 de la Convention europeenne de sauvegarde des
| droits de l 'homme et des libertes fondamentales:_
|
| > _Droit au respect de la vie privee et familiale_
|
| > _1. Toute personne a droit au respect de sa vie privee et
| familiale, de son domicile et de sa correspondance._
|
| > _2. Il ne peut y avoir ingerence d 'une autorite publique
| dans l'exercice de ce droit que pour autant que cette
| ingerence est prevue par la loi et qu'elle constitue une
| mesure qui, dans une societe democratique, est necessaire a
| la securite nationale, a la surete publique, au bien-etre
| economique du pays, a la defense de l'ordre et a la
| prevention des infractions penales, a la protection de la
| sante ou de la morale, ou a la protection des droits et
| libertes d'autrui._
|
| --
| realusername wrote:
| I'm talking about the 1948 version which has the
| following:
|
| > Article 12
|
| > Nul ne sera l'objet d'immixtions arbitraires dans sa
| vie privee, sa famille, son domicile ou sa
| correspondance, ni d'atteintes a son honneur et a sa
| reputation. Toute personne a droit a la protection de la
| loi contre de telles immixtions ou de telles atteintes.
|
| And that's it, no other additions.
| mod50ack wrote:
| > arbitraires
|
| That's the key word.
| realusername wrote:
| Since all chats would be monitored regardless of the
| citizen, this fullfills the definition.
| Muromec wrote:
| ECHR is a convention with a court hearing the cases, as
| opposed to declarations which is just good vibes PR. Of
| course the actual working instrument has loopholes.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Is that the same France which arrested the CEO of a E2E
| chat provider (without even trumped up charges) and forced
| them to make backdoors for them?
| realusername wrote:
| I never said the country follows it though
| Muromec wrote:
| The way it's written and the way ECHR court works, the
| government has to actually argue it's way, not just say
| "national secirity".
|
| ECHR court however can't repeal the law, only fine the
| governmemt for actual violation of convention rights.
| pcrh wrote:
| Is there any mechanism for preventing the introduction of a
| law that violates the ECHR? It would seem obvious that that
| should be the case, no?
| Muromec wrote:
| Not under ECHR, which has twice as much signatories as EU
| has members and the other half is twice less chill
| compared to the EU.
|
| I don't remember whether the EU top court can repeal EU
| laws, but general answer is no. It's politics -- if the
| government is full shitheads that somebody voted for and
| then haven't protested hard enough to boot out -- then
| they can ignore constitution, jail judges, behead
| journalists in a forest and send army to shoot at
| protesters of the wrong kind.
| pcrh wrote:
| Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be
| relevant to privacy?
|
| It seems axiomatic that legal systems contain provisions
| that prevent their violation. However, democracy requires
| that laws are voted on by elected representatives or
| plebiscites, which can of course mean repealing prior
| laws.
|
| However the EU institutions are not sovereign, which
| might be the loophole here?
|
| Edit: I'm aware that the EU is only afforded
| "competences" given to it by treaties, so perhaps human
| rights don't fall into any of these...?
|
| However, I also wonder if legislation such as Chat
| Control, etc, might fall outside its competences.
|
| In the end, the question is whether there is a legal
| mechanism by which the introduction of laws such as those
| in question here can be prohibited?
| Muromec wrote:
| There is no loophole really, EU can repeal it's own laws
| the same way it passes them -- it needs to get the
| commission, the parliament and enough national
| governments on board.
|
| >Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be
| relevant to privacy?
|
| Doesn't matter really. No right in any treaty is
| absolute. Not even the right to life itself -- the police
| can and does shoot people and it's legal for them to do
| under specific conditions. And of course the chat control
| law says that whatever it is supposed to be doing should
| be done in the most privacy respecting way possible.
|
| In theory the court (any court really) can weight whether
| the measures are proportionate and whether negative
| obligations (not invade privacy) are in a balance with
| positive obligations (you know -- protective children is
| _also_ important) and whether the balance is appropriate
| of a democratic society.
|
| The problem everybody is trying to not see - there is no
| right to E2E encryption under any law right now. There is
| no right to have a communication channel that government
| _can 't possibly listen to_. It's not a thing. The same
| way there is no right to have your house unsearchable by
| police and your freedom unbound by a court that can jail
| you. There are strict limits when any of those things
| happen, but they do fact happen all the time for good
| reasons and for bad ones too.
|
| Add: if I would attack it from a legal standpoint, I
| would not focus on privacy so much, but rather say that
| creating mass-scaning capability is a threat to the
| democracy itself.
| pcrh wrote:
| Most rights are held in balance, as you describe.
|
| However, mass surveillance cannot reasonably be held in
| balance with detection of crimes, as most people are not
| criminals
| Muromec wrote:
| It's not that I like chat control or think that mass
| surveillance can lead to any good.
|
| What I'm saying, is -- just because the balance isn't
| where you want it to be, and the policy is bad, that
| alone doesn't mean the law is unconstitutional, against
| the EU treaties or ECHR or should be impossible to pass
| through the legislative.
|
| It's just bad because it's bad.
| bergfest wrote:
| That's what I'm wondering too. I still hold out hope that
| the EU and the ECJ cannot override the fundamental rights
| guaranteed by the constitutions of the individual member
| states.
|
| It is generally assumed that the ECJ has ultimate
| precedence over national constitutional courts, but I
| have my doubts. As a thought experiment, imagine it
| wasn't the EU, but the Chinese CCP with whom the treaties
| were concluded. It then quickly becomes clear why a
| national constitutional court fundamentally cannot accept
| the unconditional transfer of jurisdiction to a foreign
| entity.
|
| The German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) already
| stated in its judgment on the Public Sector Purchase
| Programme (PSPP) that it is prepared to intervene in the
| event of an exceeding of competences (ultra vires).
| Furthermore, the BVerfG has repeatedly defended the
| fundamental rights to privacy against the government in
| the past. I am relatively certain that the warrantless
| chat control would not succeed at the national level in
| Germany. The question is how the BVerfG will react if the
| ECJ gives the green light to chat control. As I said, I
| still have hope.
| pcrh wrote:
| In this regard, note that the EU can only propose
| legislation that falls under one of its "competences".
| For example, national militaries, income tax, education,
| most of foreign policy, etc, do not fall under EU
| control.
|
| The ECHR itself is independent of the EU, it is national
| governments that have signed up to this treaty.
|
| So perhaps the EU institutions do not need to directly
| refer to the ECHR, only national governments should???
|
| .... It would be interesting to hear knowledgeable legal
| opinion in this!
| Muromec wrote:
| >So perhaps the EU institutions do not need to directly
| refer to the ECHR, only national governments should???
|
| Correct. EU is not a party of the convention, member
| states are, so EU law can be ruled on by ECJ and national
| law and actions of national governments by ECHR.
|
| Then at the end of the day it's the national government
| that would look at your chats and "I'm just following EU
| law" would not be an especially great excuse for the ECHR
| court.
| jayess wrote:
| Good god what a meaningless "right" where all of the
| exceptions eat the rule.
| encom wrote:
| First time?
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Gotta find those with illegal opinions somehow.
| rambojohnson wrote:
| it escapes you because all these treaty clauses read like
| safeguards, but in practice they're just friction. Once a
| government decides it needs mass surveillance for 'security,'
| the law bends. The real question isn't what the ECHR allows...
| it's why people still think legal frameworks can meaningfully
| restrain a state that has already decided not to be restrained.
|
| it escapes me hwo so many can be so naive.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > it's why people still think legal frameworks can
| meaningfully restrain a state that has already decided not to
| be restrained.
|
| The EU isn't really a state, though. The members are states,
| but not the EU.
| brigandish wrote:
| As the saying goes, "A rose by any other name would smell
| as sweet"
|
| EU law and its constitution have primacy.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Sort of. It's not quite like anything else. The EU has
| mostly trade and standardization powers, and lots of the
| other stuff is an outgrowth of that.
|
| But mostly, EU law just sets a baseline, and almost all
| execution of it is devolved to the member states.
|
| Edit: the EU does not have a constitution but a
| constitution shaped update of the Treaties. Now, lots of
| politicians are happy to blame the EU for unpopular
| stuff, but the council is the national politicians and
| they basically run the EU.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to
| violate this.
|
| There is no penalty for doing so.
|
| If something is outlawed but there is no negative consequence
| for doing it, then it's not really outlawed in practical terms.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to
| violate this.
|
| You make use of the silent assumption that politicians are
| _not_ criminals. :-(
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| And it's not just EU politicians who ignore their constitution.
| US politicians have been ignoring the US Constitution for oh
| _(checks history books)_ at least 85 years.
| kalterdev wrote:
| You can't defend any rights by reference to legal authority. As
| long as it's a legal domain, any exceptions are permitted, even
| on the "human" rights level. Rights can only be defended on
| moral grounds, like rights to freedom or self-defense.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Because they don't get banned from being able to either take a
| sit in a political position for life after they went to jail
| for a few years for high treason agaisnt the people.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The idea of constitutional guarantees, which should be defended
| absolutely and in their strongest sense only exists inside the
| US.
|
| Especially the EU, with limited democratic oversight, does not
| have to be too concerned about things like this.
| some_random wrote:
| You have no right to privacy from authorities. In fact, you'll
| find that Europeans have very few actual rights.
| layer8 wrote:
| Article on Breyer's own site: https://www.patrick-
| breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-through-th...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks, we'll put that in the toptext as well.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Society can't win this without fighting the personalities who
| drive it. In the end, there's a individual that pushes this, so
| this very person should be targeted personally.
|
| Someone said it's an asymmetric conflict, so we need to pull it
| to our (human-size) level and fight on our chessboard.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Denmark has a month and a half as EU presidency to go. I still
| don't get why they want this to be their legacy so badly.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Denmark mostly has authoritative politicians in government.
| Pragmatic and without ideology. The misguided tools believe
| they are doing us all a big favor.
|
| They handwavingly dismiss all privacy-related criticism with
| "well our experts say something else!" and insist there are no
| privacy issues - but at the same time require exemption for
| their own caste.
| dmix wrote:
| The EU and European parliaments are very much on the
| technocracy side, where they defer to experts and studies for
| everything instead of focusing on the popular interests of
| the public
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy
| squigz wrote:
| Look at America to see what happens when things are decided
| based on the popular interests vs actual data and
| expertise.
| 0dayz wrote:
| One does not take out the other, balance is always the
| best.
| squigz wrote:
| I agree; that's just not the impression I got from GP.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| I would not categorize Denmark as particularly
| technocratic, on the contrary. Many politicians here go
| against science and research because "I simply disagree".
|
| Populism largely runs Denmark.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Denmark is a strange nation with regards to liberty and
| personal belongings:
|
| https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/4963/Denmark:-Exemptin.
| ..
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| This was done to appease the racist voters, who are
| unfortunately a relatively big factor here.
|
| The law was installed in 2016, (colloquially called
| "Smykkeloven"/The Jewelry Law) after Syrian refugees walked
| up through Europe and Denmark, and a myth arose about super
| rich refugees with bags full of gold.. in 2022 this law had
| been used in 17 instances.
|
| I cannot roll my eyes enough at the policians here.
| eastbound wrote:
| Denmark is pretty famous for the fact that people consider
| themselves pretty centrist and moderate, while the policies
| they implement, each analyzed separately, are the most
| leftist of all the EU on all modern topics (ie not
| classical communism of course - just climate change, women,
| immigration etc). But when you're surrounded with
| likeminded people and little diversity of the press, it
| sounds logical.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| I respectfully disagree that Denmark is left-leaning wrt.
| immigration. 20-30 years ago that was true, today not at
| all.
|
| From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2lknr2d3go.amp
|
| "UK seeks Danish inspiration to shake up immigration
| system"
|
| "Shabana Mahmood will model some of her new measures on
| the Danish system - seen as one of the toughest in
| Europe."
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Presumably someone is paying really well to push this over and
| over again.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| There are monied interests and special interest groups behind
| it. No matter who is at the head, it will continue to be pushed
| by these interests.
|
| Europol, Julie Cordua (CEO of Thorn), Cathal Delaney, former
| Europol who now is on Thorn's board, Alan Parker, billionaire
| and founder of the Oak Foundation that's been bankrolling the
| fake charities lobbying for chat control, Chris Cohn, another
| billionaire and hedge fund manager who has been funding anti-
| encryption lobbying in both the US and the EU, Sarah Gardner,
| former Thorn employee and part of the network of fake charities
| lobbying to ban encryption. SHe also focuses on lobbying in the
| US as well, and Maciej Szpunnar, Polish Advocate General and
| the European court of justice, wants to use chat control for
| prosecuting copyright infringement.
|
| And don't forget Peter Hummelgaard: "We must break with the
| totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil
| liberty to communite on encrypted messaging services."
|
| So you have a few billionaires running lobbying organizations
| disguised as fake "for the children" charities that operate in
| both the EU and the US, Europol, and a group of powerful people
| that are fundamentally opposed to privacy.
| phba wrote:
| Adding to that from
| 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.
|
| Apparently Thorn scratched that list from their current
| website, but the Wiki page has an archive link.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Worth noting that Thorn also makes scanning software and
| would stand to profit greatly from chat control.
|
| As with all these types of legislation, always follow the
| money.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| Genuine question: is that Denmark reintroducing this proposal?
| It's not clear when it's mentioned "the EU commission's revised
| proposal..." - and second question, if it's "Denmark", who from
| Denmark has the authority to do so? Any elected Danish member
| from the EU council?
| Muromec wrote:
| EU council works like US senate worked before senators were
| elected. So the right answer for who is Danish PM.
|
| Not to be confused with EU parliament which is elected by
| popular vote and EU comission, which is the executive branch
| of EU and us voted in by Parliament
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Denmark holds the EU Presidency. That means they chair the
| Council of the EU, set the agenda, organize meetings, and
| drive forward legislative work in that period.
| shevy-java wrote:
| I remember that back a few weeks ago on reddit, before I left it,
| I warned people about this.
|
| Well - colour me not so surprised. The lobbyists are back at it.
|
| I think we need to permanently crush them now. They attack us
| here. This is a war.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| My Europe doing european stuff...
| xyzal wrote:
| The GDPR, DMA, DSA are good.
| varispeed wrote:
| This is an ongoing terrorist attack and authorities fail to stop
| it. Please report these people to the police as attempted
| terrorist attack. People behind Chat Control should be arrested.
|
| A snippet I posted before:
|
| 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.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think hyperbole is
| the solution.
|
| This legislation, while reprehensible, is not terrorism.
| Defining terrorism is particularly difficult (the UN has been
| trying since the 60s and is trying again this year), but if all
| intimidation for political gains is terrorism then so is every
| other political ad from the last 30 years. Banksy would
| probably argue that regular advertising also qualifies - after
| all, that's what the "F" in "FOMO" stands for and beauty
| products are definitely pushing an ideology.
|
| You don't have to like the official definition of terrorism,
| but that doesn't mean that you alone get to decide what it
| should be.
| varispeed wrote:
| The irony is that we only get stuck in semantic arguments
| because the authorities refuse to treat this as the kind of
| act it actually is. If prosecutors applied their own
| standards consistently, we wouldn't be debating vocabulary on
| a message board.
|
| Germany's criminal code already recognises coercion of a
| population for political ends as a serious offence. If a
| private organisation tried to impose a system that eliminated
| private communication, criminalised encryption defaults, and
| created a permanent climate of fear around ordinary speech,
| they wouldn't get a policy debate. They'd get an arrest
| warrant.
|
| The only thing making this "controversial" is institutional
| hesitation. Everyone knows issuing warrants against EU-level
| actors would cause political embarrassment, so we pretend the
| behaviour is something milder, something safer to
| acknowledge. That gap between what the law says and what the
| state is willing to enforce is exactly where tragedies start.
|
| This isn't about inflating the meaning of terrorism. It's
| about refusing to downgrade coercion just because it comes
| from people in respectable offices. Words shouldn't shrink to
| protect those in power. They should describe what is
| happening.
|
| edit: and whilst we are at the semantics - the word
| "terrorism" comes from the French Reign of Terror, where the
| state used fear as an instrument of governance. The original
| meaning was quite literally state-driven intimidation of an
| entire population to enforce ideological conformity.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| If I'm an EU citizen, who do I call and email to yell at about
| this? I assume my relevant MEP, but anyone else?
| butz wrote:
| https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#contact-tool
| klabb3 wrote:
| This can backfire bigly for the EU. The whole union is sustained
| on shared values and interests. Sneaking in surveillance is
| extremely offputting for the sentiment towards EU in many
| circles. Every member state has plenty of skeptics who want to
| brexit and this is gasoline for them. And rightly so. This isn't
| a fluke from some misinformed non-technical stray politician who
| "wants to save the children" (yes, they exist too), but rather a
| deliberate anti-democratic sabotage of core human rights.
|
| In a nation state, it's easier to pull off authoritarian shifts,
| because citizens will not usually revolt over such things alone.
| But the EU relies on sustained support and a positive image.
| There are already at the very least 10s of thousands EU skeptics
| created from the last wave alone, and probably much much more to
| come.
|
| Zooming out, I think this is the time when the EU is needed the
| most, given the geopolitical developments. Both Russia and China
| are drooling about a scattered Europe consisting of isolated
| small states. That makes it more infuriating. Someone, ideally
| the press, needs to dig into the people behind this and expose
| them.
| ntoskrnl_exe wrote:
| This legislation has a potential to "radicalize" a lot of
| people. I don't agree with many of the decisions by the EU, but
| at the end of the day the pros do outweigh the cons and in a
| hypothetical Brexit-like referendum I wouldn't consider
| agreeing with leaving.
|
| If this passes, however, the pencil in my hand would definitely
| hover above the YES checkbox for a while and, actually, maybe
| even tick it. This alone would be enough of a straw to break
| the camel's back.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Unfortunately I don't think so, it'll be more the writing on
| the wall or the canary ik the coal line but it wont
| radicalize a lot of people I think because this legislation
| won't rock the boat enough unless they fuck it up a la UK age
| verification law.
| andix wrote:
| The UK normalized surveillance for decades. In most other
| European countries this is a completely different story.
| The backlash would be far stronger than in the UK.
| andix wrote:
| If they really ban everyone under 16 from texting, this would
| also become kind of a time bomb. A lot of those affected
| teens will be allowed to vote very soon. And they might have
| a very different mental image of the EU than the generations
| before. The EU used to be a gate to all of Europe, free
| traveling, no cell roaming fees, Erasmus student exchange.
| The next generation of voters might perceive the EU as some
| dystopian institution that takes away fun and freedom.
| pcrh wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The strength of the EU is based on the EU institutions _not_
| having too much power. It 's why the EU does not attempt to
| expel, hopefully temporarily, reprobate nations such as
| Hungary.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| After Brexit no one's ever leaving the EU
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| I guessed the term Chat Control had to be made up by opponents of
| the legislation, so searched for the real name. The official name
| of the legislation is: "Proposal for a Regulation of the European
| Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and
| combat child sexual abuse" (COM/2022/209 FINAL). It is often
| referenced more simply as the "Child Sexual Abuse Regulation"
| (CSA Regulation).
| cheschire wrote:
| Oof good luck trying to convince a popular vote against that.
| MrNeon wrote:
| How Could You Possibly Be Against This?!?!? Regulation
| psychoslave wrote:
| Good, where do we start our "Proposal for a Regulation of the
| European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to
| prevent and combat mass surveillance and protect children from
| authoritative abuses through legislative threats on their
| fundamental right to grow in democracy"?
| baal80spam wrote:
| It _will_ eventually pass, it 's EU after all.
| christkv wrote:
| I guess pretty much all of us will become criminals if this
| passes. Have a phone that is running GrapheneOS you are a
| potential criminal. Running linux probably also a potential
| criminal.
| esbranson wrote:
| The "risk-mitigation" loophole in EU Chat Control uses the same
| vague, discretionary language in the Digital Services Act that
| Elon Musk and others warned lets regulators coerce platforms into
| censorship and surveillance.
|
| I think "oops" or "d'oh" are the phrases we're looking for here.
| mk89 wrote:
| Elon Musk said just the truth about EU until now. Why did he do
| that, I don't care, but that's a fact.
|
| Plus, when you see politicians react the way they did, it's
| like a code smell.
| oever wrote:
| The original article says: "The legislative package could be
| greenlit tomorrow in a closed-door EU working group session."
| That was November 12th.
|
| On the 13th, Breyer wrote:
|
| > Yesterday, EU gov'ts rejected changes to mandatory backdoor
| #ChatControl & anonymity-destroying age checks.
|
| https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1155418089245415...
| isodev wrote:
| Nothing greenlit in a "closed-door EU working group session"
| can become law. These things need to go through all phases of
| legislation including the approval of parliament.
|
| So yes, if you don't like chat control, talk to your MEPs and
| stop voting in populist ministers and council
| members/presidents.
| mk89 wrote:
| It seems it was a matter of time.
|
| Germany first voted against chat control 2.0, then they clarified
| why they were against it, became "undecided". And now "Denmark"
| came out with a (lighter) version "some others" are more willing
| to vote for. [0]
|
| What a joke. In front of our eyes.
|
| Then they wonder why people hate their guts and are becoming
| increasingly violent, euro-skeptical, etc.
|
| [0]: https://euperspectives.eu/2025/09/germany-backtracks-chat/
| hollowturtle wrote:
| > to scan every private message, including those protected by
| end-to-end encryption.
|
| Then it's no end to end, or at least end to end while traveling
| but easily collectible at rest, I mean it already is, who would
| stop meta from collecting messages in clear on the whatsapp ui?
| We should opt for a peer to peer solution or implement one
| Cupprum wrote:
| I sort of hope someone will leak all private information about
| Peter Hummelgaard. He is one of the people behind this proposal,
| just so he would get a taste of his own medicine.
| wmf wrote:
| That would only "prove" that government officials should be
| exempt from government surveillance.
| mszcz wrote:
| Isn't it (ChatControl) also ,,marketed" as ,,safe and
| secure"? If they (politicians) don't have their comms
| backdoored and still get their data stolen, then why would I
| trust them to secure (read ,,safely snoop on") mine or even
| know what they're talking about?
| Cupprum wrote:
| God, thats a hard fight in that case :(
| trallnag wrote:
| This shady approach of trying it again and again is so disgusting
| to me. Just be upfront about. If you will do it anyway at some
| point, just fucking do it. It's not like other countries like
| China that are much further than we are in this regard are in
| constant turmoil over it. I guess we won't be either.
|
| Instead we take a moral high ground over Russia banning and
| blocking what are basically non-compliant messaging platforms and
| pushing Russian citizens to Max, which is controlled by the
| government. All the while these legislations in Europe will lead
| to the same end result.
|
| How am I supposed to to argue against chat control in Russia when
| we are doing it too, just with a different twist.
| bergfest wrote:
| I second this. And it would only be half as bad, if there was a
| chance to democratically undo this, when people realize the
| consequences. But no, this will stay forever and only become
| worse.
| amarant wrote:
| Again? Seriously? We shut them down, what, last week? They really
| are going for the activism fatigue approach aren't they?
|
| I wonder if one could train an LLM to automatically protest all
| the new chat-control? This is getting ridiculous.
| tomsmeding wrote:
| > According to Breyer, the existing voluntary system has already
| proven flawed, with German police reporting that roughly half of
| all flagged cases turn out to be irrelevant.
|
| A failure rate of only 50% is _absurdly good_ for a system like
| this. If we have to:
|
| > Imagine your phone scanning every conversation with your
| partner, your daughter, your therapist, and leaking it just
| because the word 'love' or 'meet' appears somewhere.
|
| then apparently either there are so many perpetrators that
| regular conversations with partners etc. are about as common as
| crime, or such regular conversations don't have such a high risk
| of being reported after all.
|
| I don't think chat surveillance is a good idea. But please use
| transparent and open communication. Don't manipulate us just like
| the enemy does.
| Humorist2290 wrote:
| It is probably a reference to the report mentioned in this
| article from September https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-chat-
| control-false-reports... According to the
| Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), 99,375 of the 205,728
| reports forwarded by the US-based National Center for Missing
| and Exploited Children (NCMEC) were not criminally relevant, an
| error rate of 48.3%. This is a rise from 2023, when the number
| of false positives already stood at 90,950.
|
| Indeed 50% false positive rate sounds surprisingly good, but
| this is under the "voluntary scheme" where Meta/Google/MS etc
| are not obligated to report. Notably missing from the article
| is the total number of scanned messages to get down to 200k
| reports. To my knowledge, since it's voluntary, they can also
| report only the very highest confidence detections. If the
| Danish regime were to impose reporting quotas the total number
| of reports would rise. And of course -- these are reports, not
| actually convictions.
|
| Presumably the actual number of criminals caught by this would
| remain constant, so the FP rate would increase. Unless of
| course, the definition of criminal expands to keep the FP rate
| low...
| bbarnett wrote:
| I feel this is a good place to add something...
|
| I recall a half decade back, there was discussion of the quit
| rate of employees, maybe Facebook?, due to literal mental
| trauma from having to look at and validate pedophile flagged
| images.
|
| Understand there is pedophilia, then there's horribly
| violent, next level abusive pedophilia.
|
| I used to work in a department where, adjacently, the RCMP
| were doing the same. They couldn't handle it, and were
| constantly resigning. The violence associated with some of
| the videos and images is what really got them.
|
| The worst part is, the more empathetic you are, the more it
| hurts to work in this area.
|
| It seems to me that without this sad and damaging problem
| fixed, monitoring chats won't help much.
|
| How many good people, will we laden with trama, literally
| waking up screaming at night? It's why the RCMP officers were
| resigning.
|
| I can't imagine being a jury member at such a case.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Because of this issue, many departments put in much
| stricter protocols for dealing with this kind of material.
| Only certain people would be exposed to classify/tag it,
| and these people would only hold that post of a limited
| period of time. The burden on those people doesn't change,
| but it can be diluted to mitigate it somewhat.
|
| Its a real and sad problem, but not one that I think can be
| fixed with technology. To much is on the line to allow for
| a false positive from a hallucinating robot to destroy a
| person(s) life.
| qnleigh wrote:
| I read about that here: https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-
| myanmar-part-i-the-setup
|
| This remains one of the best things I've found on HN.
| gus_massa wrote:
| OK, 50% "not criminally relevant".
|
| How many of the other 50% were guilty and how many innocent
| after an investigation?
| beefnugs wrote:
| Absurdly good? What are you talking about, it means entire
| company processes of trying to identify this has cost so much
| time and effort and tracking and lost trust from the public and
| finally reporting... and then they still screw it up half the
| time
| periodjet wrote:
| But I was told that the EU was the good guys...
| srcreigh wrote:
| Isn't there precedent for many other governments secretly or
| openly doing exactly this? Snowden etc?
|
| There's an arms race element to this that I don't see people
| discussing.
|
| Do EU citizens have any privacy from US tech? Is there anything
| to protect?
|
| Do we want the USA to have exclusive right to spy on the world?
|
| Is it better to have 1 Big Brother or 10?
| psychoslave wrote:
| It's better to have zero big bully. It's actually the sole sane
| desirable state of affairs.
| rambojohnson wrote:
| the comment thread here is obnoxiously naive, and speaks to the
| privilege some people having been raised under the calm of
| supposedly democratic societies.
|
| you're all arguing about the syntax of rights while governments
| rewrite the grammar. once a state decides ubiquitous surveillance
| is necessary, it'll find or fabricate a justification. the "law"
| doesn't restrain power, power instructs law where to kneel.
|
| stop treating the ECHR like some talisman that keeps the wolves
| at bay, as if authoritarian drift politely obeys paperwork. stop
| playing with this whole "actually, the loophole is X," "no, the
| loophole is Y," like you're debugging a bad API instead of
| staring at the obvious: when a state wants to expand
| surveillance, it does, and the justifications are retrofitted
| later, be it "public safety", or "keeping your children safe."
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _once a state decides ubiquitous surveillance is necessary,
| it'll find or fabricate a justification_
|
| This is defeatist, fatalist nonsense.
| squigz wrote:
| How?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It's had to return. "Disguised."
|
| It was defeated once. It can be again. What might change
| that is lazy nihilism masquerading as wisdom.
| squigz wrote:
| I really don't see how GP's comment is lazy nihilism.
| There's plenty of that in this thread, but I felt GP made
| good points.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don 't see how GP's comment is lazy_
|
| It's arguing why something that just happened is
| impossible. It's justifying not doing anything because
| doing anything is pointless. Nihilism justifying
| laziness.
| demarq wrote:
| You do realize the headline matches what you just quoted?
| pksebben wrote:
| Alternative take: OP meant that we ought not to trust any
| justification for the expansion of surveillance like posted.
| thrance wrote:
| > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
|
| No, this is just being pragmatic and realizing that against a
| sufficiently powerful authoritarian push, legal arguments
| fall short. Until you address the root causes of something
| like Chat Control being tried again and again until it
| passes, any victory is just a brief respite.
|
| You need political will to ensure freedom is respected and
| wanted by all. After decades of media and reactionary
| propaganda about crime scaremongering, it's hardly surprising
| that politicians are able to draft such laws with a straight
| face.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Let's be pragmatic about this. Chat Control and this new thing
| are not post-hoc rationalizations, they are attempts to justify
| a proposed change.
|
| If this posited wannabe-surveillance state wanted to institute
| ubiquitous surveillance, it would just unilaterally do so a la
| PRISM. To our knowledge, they have not done this and are
| instead trying to rationalize the creep of surveillance
| somehow, which indicates that public opinion around these
| initiatives still matters. Public opinion is something we can
| all influence. Maybe discussing the legalese is a waste of
| time, but discussing the rhetoric and how to combat it
| definitely isn't
| pksebben wrote:
| I don't think it's about public opinion so much as pushing
| the goalposts. The whole erosion of privacy since the 60s
| (maybe further but at least since then) has been a 'boiled
| frogs' situation.
|
| What I think the endgame is here is to be able to do
| surveillance out in the open, so you can have more human
| resources doing it, and so you can use that surveillance
| legally more often. If you have a clandestine surveillance
| operation, you can only employ people you trust not to squeal
| and you have to engage in parallel construction (or resort to
| extralegal execution of force).
|
| A lot easier if you can just point to a piece of paper and
| say "but you said we could"
| psychoslave wrote:
| States are not all mighty entities acting without any
| restriction. Wannabe rulers have to go through that kind of
| abstract notions to manipulate people at scale, but they have
| limited skills and abilities to use these tools that people
| about m accept only under certain conditions.
|
| ECHR is on same ontological level as the notion of state. If no
| one concrete is willing to enforce it, it has zero agency.
|
| Politicians can ignore constitutions like citizen can ignore
| laws. Politicians can send military forces on manifesters, and
| people can make politicians meet the guillotine.
| andix wrote:
| I just don't believe they would be able to roll it out. A lot of
| messaging services won't implement chat control. If half of the
| messaging apps are getting blocked, people will get angry.
|
| There will be massive backlash towards EU. Texting is just so
| embedded to the daily life, if the EU causes inconveniences or
| trouble with texting, this might create massive anger. It could
| start off Brexit-like campaigns in some countries.
|
| I'm not saying that it is impossible this is going to be
| implemented. But I think it's just some bureaucrats dreaming.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| >A lot of messaging services won't implement chat control.
|
| Why not?
| andix wrote:
| Signal already announced they won't add back doors, even if
| it means they are going to be blocked.
|
| Which is really funny, because the EU commission recommends
| to their employees to use Signal for texting.
| psychoslave wrote:
| But MEP will be exempted, so they can continue to use
| Signal. Rules for thy.
| AlgebraFox wrote:
| No. Signal will pull out their services from EU. Nobody
| will be able to download or access Signal.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Well, unless https://github.com/signalapp becomes
| inaccessible, I guess that "all you have to do" is run a
| bunch of new instances of the server by ourself. Not sure
| how complicated it is though.
| andix wrote:
| I don't think they will actively "pull" their services.
| They are based in the US, and don't specifically target
| EU customers. I guess they just won't comply and might be
| blocked.
| andix wrote:
| Will it possible to "DDoS" those systems?
|
| It can't be illegal to role-play a grooming situation between
| consenting adults in a private conversation. If millions of
| people do that, they must be buried in reports.
| squigz wrote:
| If you can coordinate millions of people to do... that,
| couldn't you coordinate them to do something arguably more
| productive, like voting against politicians/parties that try to
| enact this stuff?
| andix wrote:
| There are millions of people voting against that stuff. But
| it would require hundreds of millions to stop it.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| A device-side IP filter locked behind a password that parents can
| configure in the device's settings would be much more effective
| and easier to implement than censoring the Internet. This should
| be the default solution, yet it's not proposed by governments.
| These online content censorship laws for kids are wrong in
| principle because parents are supposed to be in control of how
| they raise each of their own kids, not the government or other
| people.
|
| The other excuse being used to push these laws is CSAM scanning.
| But CSAM scanning ignores the actual problem, which is the
| trafficking of children in physical space, not the tools used to
| transmit and store child porn, which are general purpose tools
| used to transmit and store anything. A society's efforts and
| resources, as a matter of priority, should be spent on preventing
| children from being trafficked in the first place.
|
| These attempts for more surveillance and control are being pushed
| under the guise of these very bad excuses, and we need to call
| them out in every conversation to reduce the number of gullible
| dorks that might vote for it.
|
| People need to actually understand that governments are very
| close to having the tools needed for authoritarian governance all
| around the world. It might not happen immediately, but once the
| tools are built, that future becomes almost inevitable.
|
| We can't just hope to rely on technological measures because we
| can't out-tech the law at scale all of the time. But we can and
| should fight back on both fronts. On the technological front, the
| first step is securing VPN access to ensure anonymity on the
| Internet. The best effort at the moment IMO is SoftEther, which
| is VPN over Ethernet wrapped in HTTPS.[0] It's open-source. It
| has a server discovery site called VPNGate.[1] You can host a
| server to let somebody else use, then use a server someone else
| is hosting.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftEther_VPN
|
| [1] https://www.vpngate.net/en/
|
| We're really only missing a few things before there's
| decentralized VPN over HTTPS that anyone in the world can host
| and use, and it would be resistant to all DPI firewalls. First, a
| user-friendly mobile client. Second, a way to broadcast and
| discover server lists in a sparse and decentralized manner,
| similar to BitTorrent (or we may be able to make use of the BT
| protocol as is), and we'd have to build such auto-discovery and
| broadcasting into the client itself. Third, make each client
| automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its existence
| for other clients to discover.
|
| If we can make and keep the Internet a free place, these
| discussions can keep happening without fear of censorship and
| prosecution, and people can coordinate to fight authoritarianism
| and create better technologies to guard against it in the future.
| This is very much doable if we tried. So let's ensure the free
| flow of information is not a temporary blip in the long arc of
| humanity's history.
| NumberCruncher wrote:
| I wish I would not have a standard post for topics like this:
|
| Every time a surveillance system and violation of privacy rights
| is advertised in the EU as a solution against child abuse and
| trafficking I ask myself how such a system could have changed the
| outcome of a case like Dutroux. Would have been the dozens of
| witnesses and police officers involved in the investigation
| suicided a way sooner, later, more silently, or at all? We will
| never know...
| themafia wrote:
| Surveillance, as typically deployed, cannot _stop_ the acts of
| abuse. It may be helpful in locating evidence that they
| occurred, but by that point, you've already allowed nearly
| irreparable harm to a child.
|
| Even if it did work it would be completely ineffective at
| reducing the number of victims. Even if it somehow did by proxy
| then criminals would simply get smarter and find new ways to
| completely evade this system.
|
| I have a large amount of disrespect for people who should know
| all this yet push these types of solutions anyways.
| Vera_Wilde wrote:
| Grateful for Breyer's consistent excellent work tracking and
| opposing these proposals.
|
| The Zombie proposal just keeps rising from the dead. The
| technical/mathematical objections don't change.
|
| I still haven't seen a counter-argument stating why a mass-
| scanning architecture should be expected to work, given the base
| rates and error rates involved.
| zkmon wrote:
| So, you want to negotiate on how much privacy you are willing to
| give up in order to have a strong state-level control. But what
| do you have at your disposal, to influence that negotiation?
| Vote? Technology? Tariffs?
| martin82 wrote:
| At this point I 100% see the EU as a failed experiment and I
| would love to witness a mass exodus of the slavic countries, and
| then Germany and France. Burn this thing to the ground. Nothing
| good came out of it.
| bradley13 wrote:
| They just try and try again. They only have to succeed. Once. The
| people who care about privacy have to succeed every time.
|
| The only real solution is to counterattack. Get legislation
| through the EU parliament that _guarantees_ a right to privacy
| and anonymity.
|
| Dunno if there's any chance of that happening.
| xcf_seetan wrote:
| How about applying this kind of surveillance to the government?
| After all we are paying for them to rules us, so why not publish
| all government, politicians, law enforcement, military messages
| for everyone to read? Why everybody must be treated as a
| criminal, because they cant do their job of keeping us safe?
| Snild wrote:
| We have that in Sweden and Finland:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_public_access_to_...
|
| The principle says that information is non-confidential by
| default, rather than the other way around.
|
| We can request almost any information held by government
| agencies, including copies of communication like email and
| documents.
|
| One thing that has surprised European acquaintances is the fact
| that this includes government-held info about individuals, e.g.
| address and tax returns.
| Gud wrote:
| Although this has been eroded, at least in Sweden.
|
| https://www.publikt.se/debatt/insynen-maste-varnas-26420
| CrazyStat wrote:
| When I was in Sweden many years ago I was very surprised that
| you could just call a phone number and they would tell you
| the name and address of the person or company a vehicle
| license plate was registered to.
| nicce wrote:
| Current Finnish governent is trying hard to hide what they
| can, unfortunately.
| xaxaxa123 wrote:
| Is the EU still democratic? serious question...the public is
| obviously against it, but they want this authoritarian law, no
| matter what.
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