[HN Gopher] Mullvad VPN: "This is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt."
___________________________________________________________________
Mullvad VPN: "This is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt."
Author : janandonly
Score : 365 points
Date : 2025-12-21 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mastodon.online)
(TXT) w3m dump (mastodon.online)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| VPN is a trust exercise, but, I'm sure if Mullvlad isn't the best
| out there, they're far from the worst.
| charcircuit wrote:
| They are not the best because they no longer support port
| forwarding. Their IPs are low quality and get you flagged as
| suspicious.
| newdee wrote:
| Which VPN provider doesn't have their addresses flagged? I
| know a few offer "residential" IP addresses (for quite the
| premium), but as I understand it, these are a bit of a grey
| area and are also usually shared, so usually just a matter of
| time until they're banned or flagged as
| proxy/shared/anonymiser.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The financial incentives for VPNs as they get bigger cause
| them to both put as many subscribers on the same IP as
| possible and to share IPs over the entire subscriber base.
| It's possible for a VPN to sacrifice profit to avoid being
| detected as easily.
| friend-monoid wrote:
| Are you expecting a public IPv4 from a VPN?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Airvpn does it
| greatquux wrote:
| Yep they are great! Wireguard support on Linux too
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| I'm happy Airvpn is rarely mentioned in mainstream vpn
| lists and don't typically mention them myself (sorry
| airvpn folks, but here's my apology) because I suspect
| its relative obscurity is in great part the reason it
| works so well. Not only reputation - it's technologically
| good too, supports all the payment methods, good prices,
| lots of exit points, no nonsense. I've been using them
| continuously for several years.
| zrm wrote:
| A VPN provider could easily support Port Control Protocol /
| NAT-PMP without giving each VPN client its own public IPv4.
| dr00tb wrote:
| Can recommend https://njal.la if you still need port
| forwarding.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| how does it compare to mullvad?
| KomoD wrote:
| One reason not to choose Njalla is that they changed
| their legal entity without (to my knowledge) telling
| anyone. THat's a bit of a red flag for me.
|
| They were incorporated as 1337 Services LLC in Nevis (the
| Caribbean island) and recently it suddenly changed to
| Njalla SRL in Costa Rica. Looks like some guy wrote a
| post about it where he contacted them, they said
| "internal restructuring, nothing to worry about" and
| refused to elaborate further.
|
| I know Peter Sunde (of TPB fame) founded it but I don't
| know if it has changed hands now.
| edm0nd wrote:
| They had to disable port forwarding due to abuse and spam
| iirc.
| dheera wrote:
| Mullvad is one of the few that work in China today, any
| others? Or is it possible to run your own Mullvad server?
|
| Rolling your own L2TP/IPSec gets flagged by the China
| firewall these days
| endgame wrote:
| Which other VPN providers support the range of payment
| methods that Mullvad does?
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| > The EU Commission and several member states are also looking
| for new rules on data retention. In a new "Presidency outcome
| paper", the member states discuss metadata retention: which
| websites you visit, and who is communicating with whom, when and
| how often. The ambition is "to have the broadest possible scope
| of application" and this time some member states also want the
| proposal to include VPN services.
| holoduke wrote:
| I once liked the EU. Well still do it because of the east to
| travel without borders. But it's leadership is something
| dangerous and may shape to some form of dictatorship or entity
| that does not serve its people. But a small minority consisting
| out of some large companies.
| hkpack wrote:
| I think EU will manage without you liking it. But painting its
| leadership as the one trying to shape dictatorship is
| incredible ignorant.
|
| Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side, and
| betrayal by the US from the other.
|
| A country serving small minority of large companies is the best
| description of the US, not the EU.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| > Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side,
| and betrayal by the US from the other.
|
| Let's assume for a moment that would be true. And let's also
| ignore the lack of a nuclear weapons in most EU countries.
|
| How does breaking encryption for normal people help? Spies
| and Operatives will just use PGP and ignore these laws,
| because that's what spies do.
| true_religion wrote:
| Mind you I don't believe this, but the logic is if
| encryption is banned, then anyone using it will be easier
| to find like spies.
|
| Before online encryption, spies still used code books but
| having one in your house was essentially proof you were a
| spy.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Didn't spies just use common books like war and peace or
| the bible
| hexbin010 wrote:
| > Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side,
| and betrayal by the US from the other.
|
| Are you attempting to justify ChatControl with that
| situation? You might need to help us out with how you arrived
| at that exactly
| kace91 wrote:
| I'm as pro european as they come, but I think the author
| didn't deserve a downvote.
|
| If there is a moment when the EU could not afford to take
| hits to their popularity, it is now. And here we are, gifting
| free shots to anti-EU populists.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Measures such going dark and similar ones are wholly
| supported - and pushed - by police forces around europe,
| not by politicians. I do agree that the politician should
| grow a spine and trust computer scientists for one, since
| they're the ones making laws after all
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > I do agree that the politician should grow a spine and
| trust computer scientists for one
|
| Trust the computer scientists on how to prevent crime?
| Uh, well that's certainly creative.
| h4xx0r1337 wrote:
| Wow. I cannot fathom anyone thinking this, but also I am
| doubtful the EU pays for propaganda on HN so it is what it is
| I guess. After von der Leyen's corruption and the fast pace
| into totalitarianism against the will of the population
| nonetheless. Just wow.
| lawn wrote:
| Your description match the US as well.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| The EU leadership is the leaders of the 27 sovereign countries
|
| Now you can argue there is a democratic deficit in those
| countries, sure.
| Xelbair wrote:
| There's democratic deficit in the whole system as this issue
| wasn't part of most internal election campaigns, effectively
| circumventing democratic process, due to lack of input from
| citizens themselves.
|
| EU severely lacks checks and balances if it tries to be
| something more than trade union.
| izacus wrote:
| This is a proposal from one wing of polititians that still
| hasn't even passed a basic voting process in EU parliament.
|
| So what exactly are you screeching about? Which nation on this
| world has leadership that never proposes anything like this?
| Which one is 100% pure and noone even thinks about bad things
| to bring up to a vote?
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Like, whos is pushing this shit? Who exactly is it that _wants_
| this? Which individuals?
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| The same ones that pushed to scuttle Germany's nuclear
| reactors.
| NewCzech wrote:
| How would you like your censorship wrapped? Anti-terrorism or
| protecting children?
|
| https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/control-of-i...
| ori_b wrote:
| Until people lobby for these privacy rights to be enshrined in
| law, this will continue to be a problem.
|
| Defeating one bad law isn't enough.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| There are already MANY laws in the EU and Germany for me
| regarding privacy. All the proposals are blatantly illegal in
| Germany for example. Just recently our highest court declared
| large scale logging of DNS request as "very likely" illegal.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| > There are already MANY laws in the EU and Germany for me
| regarding privacy
|
| Which apply equally to the government?
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| Yeah, a lot of them apply explicitly to the government. In
| Germany at least most privacy laws flow from Article 10 of
| our constitution and for example Article 8 of the EU
| Charter of Fundamental Rights. Both of which have been used
| in the past to explicitly remove laws that violated privacy
| in the name of security.
| pavlov wrote:
| Germany has a history of its government using data
| collected about citizens against them.
|
| Much legislation was created after WWII to try to prevent
| that from happening again.
| rvnx wrote:
| It hasn't stopped the German Interior Ministry from
| campaigning for EU-wide chat control and pushing to
| reinstate mass data retention
| izacus wrote:
| That's because this campaign is about changing that very
| law. Saying that "this is blatantly illegal" misses the
| basic point of this proposal being a CHANGE of the law
| that makes that illegal.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Similarly, the 4th amendment to the US Constitution reads in
| full:
|
| "The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
| houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
| and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall
| issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
| affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
| searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
|
| "papers, and effects" seems to cover internet communications
| to me (the closest analog available to the authors being
| courier mail of messages written on paper), but the secret
| courts so far seem to have disagreed: https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| SCOTUS will simply say that since the constitution didn't
| explicitly state that electronic data and communications
| was protected, then it isn't.
|
| Even if it did explicitly say that this information is
| protected, SCOTUS would just make up a new interpretation
| that would allow surveillance anyway. Same as they made up
| presidential immunity, even though all men being subject to
| the law was pretty explicit purpose of the founding of
| america. I mean, they had a whole revolution about it.
| roenxi wrote:
| > all men being subject to the law was pretty explicit
| purpose of the founding of america. I mean, they had a
| whole revolution about it.
|
| I don't think it is a feasible claim. Revolutionaries, by
| definition it seems to me, believe some men and the
| enacting of their principles are above the law. A
| revolutionary is someone who illegally revolts against
| the current law.
|
| And formally recognising presidential immunity isn't
| really as novel as the anti-Trump crowd wants to believe.
| If presidents were personally subject to the law for
| their official acts, most of them wouldn't be in a
| position to take on the legal risk of, eg, issuing
| executive orders. If something is done as an official act
| then the lawsuits have to target the official position
| and not the person behind them. That is how it usually
| works for an official position.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Text, phone calls and emails which are not encrypted are
| the equivalent of a postcard. They don't need to seize
| the effects, only observe them.
|
| Encrypting, end to end, would be the equivalent of
| posting a letter. The contents are concealed and thus are
| protected.
| golem14 wrote:
| Except, wiretapping was considered very illegal in the
| USA.
| pcrh wrote:
| A decent example being Article 8 of the European Convention
| on Human Rights:
|
| >1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and
| family life, his home and his correspondence.
|
| >2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with
| the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance
| with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the
| interests of national security, public safety or the economic
| well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or
| crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the
| protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
|
| Specifically:
|
| >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]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv.
| ..
| delusional wrote:
| Fix the problem the proposal tries to fix, and the proposal
| goes away. Until you fix the problem, the only proposal that
| exists will keep being the only one that exists.
|
| I suppose you could be politically nihilistic enough to think
| there's no reason for this law to exist, or that it's primarily
| some authoritarian suppression agenda, but I find that
| preposterous. Bruxelles is a lot of things, but authoritarian
| is not one of them. Child sexual exploitation is a problem, and
| it does demand a solution. If you don't like this one, find a
| better one.
| timschmidt wrote:
| The Epstein debacle seems to indicate that child sexual
| exploitation is a preferred method of entrapping,
| blackmailing, and controlling world political and science
| leaders and the wealthy. And implicates the same intelligence
| agencies calling for mass surveillance.
| trueismywork wrote:
| Its like govt banning bleach and when chemical companies
| protest, the govt tells them to fix problem of people mixing
| bleach and vinegar. Its a problem, it has to be solved. If
| you dont like this, find another solution govt says.
| delusional wrote:
| It's also a bit like when the government bans opioids
| because they're an addictive narcotic, but then allows
| their use in specific circumstances where the benefit
| outweighs the downsides, and then works with the industry
| to try and make it harder to abuse them.
|
| It's like a lot of things.
| trueismywork wrote:
| But they aren't working with industry here.
| delusional wrote:
| We aren't at that part of the EU legislative process yet.
| First the commission agrees on a framework, then the
| working groups work with industry to fill out the details
| of the framework. That's standard EU process.
| Xelbair wrote:
| I find it preposterous that anyone defends this agenda that
| flips concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' on it's head
| by collectively punishing everyone for POSSIBLE crimes of
| some individuals.
|
| In a way that any criminal will be easily able to circumvent
| by not following the law, so it doesn't even achieve it's
| goal.For example with one time pad exchanged outside of Eu's
| control + stenography messaging, bundled into 'illegal' app
| that works as VPN over HTTPS.
|
| I find it preposterous that this issue is pushed without any
| input from citizens in most of member states - as it wasn't a
| part of political campaign of either internal elections nor
| EU ones!
|
| i can keep going on and on. This isn't anything inevitable,
| this isn't anything that needs to be even solved. This is all
| done by a single lobbying group trying to push this for
| years.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| And I find it _exceedingly_ annoying how all this heated
| discussion about the dangers of chat control is held oh so
| far from the actual text of the proposals.
|
| For example: there is _no actual proposed_ text for
| "ProtectEU", the name references a project to provide
| updates to legislation with a focus on security. All this
| talk about criminals circumventing the proposed law using
| VPN is just dreams you have.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Which lobbying group?
| MrNeon wrote:
| I'm curious, what would you personally consider to be a step
| too far in the fight against CSAM?
| delusional wrote:
| Thank you so much for asking the question instead of
| assuming an answer.
|
| I don't think I have an ideological limit. I'm pro weighing
| alternatives, and seeing what happens. If law enforcement
| misuses the tools they are given, we should take them away
| again, but we shouldn't be afraid to give them tools out of
| fear of how they might misuse them.
|
| I think my limits are around proper governance. Stuff like
| requiring a warrant are hard limits for me. Things like
| sealed paper trail, that are too easily kept away from the
| public, are red flags. So long as you have good ways for
| the public to be informed that the law isn't working, or
| being misused, I don't have many hard limits, I don't think
| democracy really allows for hard limits.
|
| At the very broad level. I believe that Big Tech (Meta,
| Google, etc.) are already surveilling you. I believe that
| government should have at least as much ability to surveil
| you as companies. If you are willing to hand over that data
| to a company, you should be willing to hand it over to your
| government (specifically YOUR government, not the one the
| company is based in).
| delichon wrote:
| > If law enforcement misuses the tools they are given, we
| should take them away again, but we shouldn't be afraid
| to give them tools out of fear of how they might misuse
| them.
|
| That sounds like you prefer to rely on revolution over
| constitution-style constraints. Or do you expect an
| unlimited government to be limited with respect to
| elections?
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's something that can't be fixed, so rather than trying to
| cure it through bad privacy invading laws we should be
| looking in how to mitigate the problem through good
| reporting, accountability laws, and therapy laws.
|
| A few examples of how mitigate the problem
|
| * Require 2 adults at all times when kids are involved.
| Particularly in churches and schools.
|
| * Establish mandatory reporting. None of this BS like "I'm a
| priest, I shouldn't have to report confessionals." That sort
| of religious exemption is BS.
|
| * Make therapy for pedophiles either fully subsidized or at
| least partially subsidized.
|
| * Require adult supervision of teens with kids (one of the
| more common sources of child sexual abuse).
|
| CSAM will happen. It's terrible and what's worse is even if
| the privacy invasion laws could 100% prevent that sort of
| content from being produce, that just raises the price of the
| product and pushes it to be off shored. No amount of chat
| control will stop someone from importing the material via a
| thumbdrive in the mail.
|
| The problem we have is the truth of "this will happen no
| matter the laws passed". That truth has allowed politicians
| to justify passing extreme laws for small but horrific
| problems.
| izacus wrote:
| This is a way more sick proposal of authoritarianism than
| any law that would allow cops to read chat messages with a
| warrant.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Which part exactly?
| atq2119 wrote:
| This framing is extremely counterproductive, though.
|
| Most societal problems cannot be fixed entirely. There will
| always be child sex abuse just like there will always be
| murder, theft, tax evasion, and drunk driving. It makes sense
| to see if things can be improved, but any action proposed
| must be weighed against its downsides. Continued action by
| police is a good thing, but laws for that have been
| established for a long time, and the correct answer may well
| be that no further change to laws is required or appropriate.
|
| (Ab)using child sex abuse to push through surveillance
| overreach is particularly egregious considering that by all
| objective accounts most of it seems to happen in the real
| world among friends and family, without any connection to the
| internet.
| delusional wrote:
| > It makes sense to see if things can be improved, but any
| action proposed must be weighed against its downsides.
|
| This is that. What you are seeing, repeated attempts to
| discuss a proposal, is the process by which the EU
| bureaucracy weighs the downsides. When you see it being
| pushed, that's evidence that some member states do not find
| "the correct answer" to be "no further change". That will
| eventually necessitate a compromise, as all things do.
|
| > (Ab)using child sex abuse to push through surveillance
| overreach is particularly egregious
|
| You are editorializing to a degree that makes it impossible
| to have a rational discussion with you. You HAVE to assume
| the best in your political adversaries, otherwise you will
| fail to understand them. They are not abusing anything, and
| they don't think it's "surveillance overreach". They
| believe it to be just and fair, otherwise they wouldn't
| propose it.
| Uvix wrote:
| The people proposing it believe it to be to their own
| personal advantage. They don't necessarily believe it to
| be just and fair.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The commissioners are porposing
|
| > We will build resilience against hybrid threats by
| enhancing the protection of critical infrastructure,
| reinforcing cybersecurity, securing transport hubs and
| ports and combatting online threats.
|
| for their own personal benefit? What? (Quote from the
| ProtectEU document)
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Fix the problem the proposal tries to fix, and the proposal
| goes away.
|
| Bullshit. We are by far - by FAR - the most surveilled we
| have ever been in history, including under the worst of the
| Stasi, yet they lie to us about "going dark". The most
| minuscule scrap of privacy is a problem to be solved to them.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Yeah, the Irish really should step up their GDPR
| enforcements.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Fix the problem the proposal tries to fix, and the proposal
| goes away.
|
| Only it doesn't. Even if you _completely_ solved CSAM,
| authoritarians would still be proposing things like this to
| go after "terrorists" or copyright infringers or what have
| you. Claiming that people can't have privacy unless there is
| zero crime is just claiming that people can't have privacy,
| and that'll be a _no_.
|
| Moreover, _this proposal_ wouldn 't completely solve CSAM. If
| the standard is that it has to be 100% effective then this
| won't work either.
|
| Whereas if the standard is that something has to be worth the
| cost, then this isn't.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| But ProtectEU stuff is about organised crime, terrorism,
| cybersecurity, and countering Russian sabotage operations,
| not sure why you brought up CSAM.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Fix the problem the proposal tries to fix, and the proposal
| goes away. Until you fix the problem, the only proposal that
| exists will keep being the only one that exists.
|
| Unfortunately, politicians and lobbyists are a hard problem
| to solve.
| BlackjackCF wrote:
| These should be enshrined into law... and there needs to be
| some sort of rule to prevent lawmakers from trying to ram
| through laws with the same spirit without some sort of cool
| down period. The fact that lawmakers have tried to push the
| same crap multiple times in the last 4 years despite a ton of
| opposition and resistance is ridiculous.
| goda90 wrote:
| People need to do a better job of voting out people who push
| such laws.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| That is how it's supposed to work. Civic engagement and
| average level of education make this unlikely though.
| Representatives as disconnected from their constituency as
| those in the US are a serious threat to democracy, and
| there's no silver bullet fix, just a lot of obvious reforms
| that are really hard to pass. (Campaign finance, ranked
| choice voting, education funding, punishing politicians who
| break the law...)
| amelius wrote:
| Good luck convincing people not to vote for anti-
| immigration measures instead.
| Uvix wrote:
| Election cycles are unfortunately too long for that to
| work. Would need to reduce office terms to 2-3 months for
| "vote them out" to be viable.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > there needs to be some sort of rule to prevent lawmakers
| from trying to ram through laws with the same spirit without
| some sort of cool down period
|
| This doesn't make any sense as policy. It's often the case
| that the first crack at a law has oversights that come to
| light and cause it to fail. Then a reworked version that
| takes those issues into consideration is brought forward and
| passes. That's the process functioning correctly.
|
| What might make sense is something akin to the judicial
| systems "dismissal with prejudice". A way for the vote on a
| law to fail and arguments to be made to bar similar laws from
| being resubmitted, at least for a time. So one vote to
| dismiss the bill, and another can be called to add prejudice.
|
| That sounds good to me. I'm not sure if it would actually
| yield good results in practice.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Well the italian constitution says that freedom and secrecy of
| correspondence and any other form of communications are not to
| be violated.
|
| Not that anyone gives a shit, apparently. Laws are useless when
| governments aren't interested in applying them.
| hkpack wrote:
| To be honest, I think VPN businesses and specifically politically
| charged ones like Mullvad is doing disservice for the security of
| the country and specifically EU in this case.
|
| I think the right course of action should be a political
| activism, not a technological one. Especially when the company
| doing it makes a fortune.
|
| The course, when one can just disengage from participating in
| society by sidestepping the problems by either using VPNs in
| terms of censorship or by using Crypto in case of regulations is
| very dangerous and will reinforce the worst trends.
|
| Finally such person will still have to rely on the community
| around for physical protection to live.
|
| So instead of speaking from the high ground, please, tell us what
| your solution about mass disinformation happening from US social
| media megacorps, Russia mass disinformation, mass recruitment of
| people for sabotage on critical infrastructure.
|
| Tell us, how can we keep living in free society when this freedom
| is being used as a leverage by forces trying to destroy your
| union.
|
| I just want to remind you that dismantling EU is strategic goal
| of the US, Russia and China.
|
| Please, give us your political solutions to the modern problems
| instead of earning a fortune by a performance free speech
| activism.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| What? You don't need VPNs to do anything of that, we have
| political parties and journalists doing the job from within
| already
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| > So instead of speaking from the high ground, please, tell us
| what your solution about mass disinformation happening from US
| social media megacorps, Russia mass disinformation, mass
| recruitment of people for sabotage on critical infrastructure.
|
| Education. Education. Education. The only thing that ever
| worked. is Education. Censorship and a total surveillance state
| aren't an option. Why bother protecting freedom and democracy
| if you have to destroy freedom and democracy to do so?
|
| And in case of sabotage of critical infrastructure, the answer
| is three-fold: 1. Apply the law to the saboteurs. 2. Retaliate
| in asymmetric fashion. We can't sabotage their hospitals but we
| can stop buying russian oil and gas, take their money and 3.
| arm ukraine.
|
| > Tell us, how can we keep living in free society when this
| freedom is being used as a leverage by forces trying to destroy
| your union.
|
| Are you or have you ever been a communist? We surveived the
| cold war and the warsaw pact. We can survive a third rate
| petrol station masquerading as a state.
|
| > Please, give us your political solutions to the modern
| problems instead of earning a fortune by a performance free
| speech activism.
|
| Who is earning a fortune here?
| quantummagic wrote:
| > Education. Education. Education.
|
| The problem is that many of the most highly educated people
| are the ones fully supporting censorship in the fight against
| disinformation. Higher education has become a bastion of
| illiberal ideology.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| I think it's because once you educate yourself, you see how
| the masses behave and it's like the ultimate revelation.
|
| They are consumers. Feeders. They want to be told what to
| think.
|
| Most people don't even have an internal monologue and many
| people say they don't even think much, not even a thought.
|
| You thought for yourself. You used your brain. But you are
| outnumbered. Vastly.
| pxc wrote:
| > Most people don't even have an internal monologue
|
| Is there any scientific indication that whether private
| thoughts are automatically verbalized actually has an
| impact on cognitive activity or function?
|
| Also where do you get this idea that most people lack an
| internal monologue? Afaik research indicates that totally
| lacking verbal thinking is very rare.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| There is a person thinking about how to solve actual
| problems at the bus/rail stop. The other person is
| totally reactive (someone FaceTimes them), mostly glued
| to doomscrolling (consuming non stop). There are
| disproportionately more of the latter than the former.
|
| There's nothing wrong with that it's just how humans are
| wired. It's pretty obvious.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Just because some education implementations have problems
| doesn't mean education itself must be excluded from the
| solution.
|
| Public education and universities played a large role in
| freeing me from generations of magical thinking and
| religious indoctrination.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Universities may have cured us of some forms of
| indoctrination but exposed us to others: for example,
| nuclear power was demonized for decades is academia and
| our avoiding it has set us back as a civilization.
|
| The "answer" here isn't education per se. A would-be
| censor might look at the spread of an inconvenient idea
| and conclude the education isn't working and therefore
| harder measures are justified.
|
| The answer is epistemic humility and historical literacy.
| A good education instills both. They teach us that one
| can be wrong without shame, that testing ideas makes us
| stronger, and that no good has come out of boost ideas
| beyond what their merits can support.
|
| Specifically, I want universities to do a much better job
| of teaching people to argue a perspective with which they
| disagree. A well-educated person can hold the best
| version of his opponent's idea in mind and argue it
| persuasively enough that his opponent agrees that he's
| been fairly heard. If people can't do that at scale,
| they're tempted to reach for censorship instead of truth
| seeking.
|
| Another thing I want from universities (and all schools)
| is for them to inculcate the idea that the popularity of
| an idea has nothing to do with its merits. The irrational
| primate brain up-weights ideas it sees more often. The
| censor (if we're steelmanning) believes that coordinated
| influence campaigns can hijack the popularity heuristic
| and make people believe things they wouldn't if those
| ideas diffused organically through the information
| ecosystem.
|
| This idea is internally consistent, sure, but 1) the
| censorship "cure" is always worse than the disease, and
| 2) we can invest in bolstering epistemics instead of in
| beefing up censorship.
|
| We are rational primates. We can override popularity
| heuristics. Doing so is a skill we must be taught,
| however, and one of the highest ROI things we can do in
| education right now is teach it.
| quotemstr wrote:
| In the history of humanity, it's never been the side attempting
| to restrict expression and the flow of information that's been
| in the right.
|
| You don't "solve" the spread of "disinformation" because it's
| not a real problem in the first place. What you call
| "disinformation" is merely an idea with which you disagree. It
| doesn't matter whether any idea comes from the west, from
| China, from Russia, or Satan's rectum: it stands on its own and
| competes on its merits with other ideas in the mind of the
| public.
|
| An idea so weak that it can survive only by murdering
| alternative ideas in the cradle is too fragile to deserve
| existing at all.
|
| When you block the expression of disagreement, you wreck the
| sense-making apparatus that a civilization uses to solve
| problems and navigate history. You cripple its ability to find
| effective solutions for real but inconvenient problems. That,
| not people seeing the wrong words, is the real threat to public
| safety.
|
| As we've learned painfully over the past decade, it is
| impossible for a censor to distinguish falsehood from
| disagreement. Attempts to purify discourse always and
| everywhere lead to epistemic collapse and crises a legitimacy.
| The concept is flawed and any policy intended to "combat the
| spread of disinformation" is evil.
| 63stack wrote:
| >So instead of speaking from the high ground, please, tell us
| what your solution about mass disinformation happening from US
| social media megacorps, Russia mass disinformation, mass
| recruitment of people for sabotage on critical infrastructure.
|
| Why is the onus of explaining this on the people opposing it?
| Did any of the proposing politicians ever explain how their
| plan is going to solve any of these, rather than just being a
| massive power grab packaged up in "think about the children"?
| There are plenty of explanations on why this is _not_ going to
| stop crime, why do you want more explanations and solutions
| from people telling you this is not going to work, rather than
| asking the people proposing "how is this going to work"?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| How long before the EU comes out with a social credit system like
| China?
|
| How long before the EU has its own version of China's Great
| Firewall?
| jasonsb wrote:
| Not long, but the muppets in this thread will downvote you to
| hell for even having the guts to express your opinion on this
| matter.
| squigz wrote:
| They're downvotes, not bullets. GP isn't brave for enduring
| them.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I love The Internet, it came into my life as I became an adult,
| I've watched it change the world, and I find attempts to lock it
| down to be abhorrent.
|
| I also grew up in a world where intelligence fieldcraft was an
| in-person activity where it was _just about_ possible for one
| side to keep track of the other side, or at least hold some kind
| of leverage, counter-leverage, and counter-counter-leverage to
| stop the Cold War getting out of control.
|
| The internet, as well as giving us all this freedom to
| communicate, also gave the Controls of this world -- high level
| intelligence officers based in their home countries but directing
| operations overseas -- a wonderful new lever to influence,
| harass, and sabotage. Why burn an agent when you can find a
| useful idiot in a foreign country to agitate on your behalf?
|
| I sympathize with nation states' urge to be able to see what's
| going on online, but I hate the way they're going about it. How
| do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on
| foreign influence?
| Xelbair wrote:
| >I sympathize with nation states' urge to be able to see what's
| going on online, but I hate the way they're going about it. How
| do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on
| foreign influence?
|
| and more importantly - whose influence? how do we pick whom do
| we ally ourselves with and who we go against? How do we prevent
| such system from being abused to just entrench current powers
| that be, and stifle genuine opposition?
|
| If it is done behind closed doors, there's not much difference
| in EU becoming like Russia or China, with a coat of liberal
| paint instead.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Security services qualitatively have as many fuckups to their
| name as they do successes. I was listening to a podcast last
| week about British undercover police fathering _children_
| with the women they were undercover with. If the position of
| the anti-Chat-Control people is that we should reject not
| just the backdoors but also -- on the basis that they just
| can't be trusted -- the whole idea of a national, secret
| security service, then they should be open and say so.
| Zealotux wrote:
| In the ancient Greek colony of Locri, any who proposed a new law
| would do so with a rope around their neck, if the law was voted
| down, they would get hanged.
|
| Food for thought.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I don't think that system would have the desired results in a
| world where most people have already voted to hang themselves.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Zaleucus [0] from Locri wrote the first law system in the 7th
| century BC. Might be connected to what you have shared.
|
| Today's Locri is in Calabria, a region in Italy that many
| consider infested with mafia-like organizations, which is of
| course sad, but also ironic.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaleucus
| quotemstr wrote:
| Once social trust (or assibiyah, to use Ibn Khandun's term)
| in a region collapses, it often returns slowly or not at all.
| Sadly common pattern in history. I think one could plausibly
| argue that in this way, Calabria never recovered from the
| collapse of antiquity, the Gothic wars, and generations spent
| as a Christian-Muslim war zone.
| zen928 wrote:
| Intentionally misinformed citizens continued to charge the
| streets demanding "essential services" like barber shops need
| to be reopened and to intentionally dismantle and resist
| against all government protections on public safety during the
| pandemic (like wearing a mask during an active spreading
| event), literally while their grandparents and relatives slowly
| and painfully died on respirators in hospitals largely agreeing
| with the same notion of covid prevention measures being
| "pointless". They then attacked the institutions that provided
| either medical treatments or provided assistance, and continue
| to promote that culture. Lemmings to a cause they dont
| understand for a message they know is false.
|
| That is to say, there's always someone ready to make zealots
| die for a cause. IMO, that change would only shift in favor of
| the most radical extremists who see human life as expendable
| rather than cause anyone in power to think twice about pushing
| their ideologies onto masses.
| LtWorf wrote:
| When governments push out clearly nonsensical regulations,
| like you must go to the office even if you can work from
| home, but you cannot go hiking, yes people do tend to get
| mad.
| 7bit wrote:
| This food is rotten. Do better.
| moralestapia wrote:
| So, they succeed and repeal it a third time. What can be done to
| stop them from trying again and again and again until they get
| away with it?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Not much really, unless the EU takes a big turn to the left.
| Which is unfortunately not something that's likely to happen
| anytime soon.
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| The left? The authoritarian politicians pushing this
| legislation in the EU are more leftist than right.
| LtWorf wrote:
| They're usually liberals, so right wing but they don't
| specifically hate homosexuals.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| There would need to be some form of punishment towards them for
| their failure to deter them.
|
| The most 'accessible' options to a disgruntled populace (or a
| small portion of it, down to N=1) are generally recognized as
| extreme things that very few sane people are on board with,
| because they are recognized widely as bad precedents for
| societies. Things like issuing death threats, assassinations,
| or burning down parliament buildings. To state what I hope is
| already obvious - this is not an endorsement of violence. For
| one Japan's history of 'government by assassination' was
| incredibly ugly and helped lead to extremism which helped lead
| to Imperial Japan's conduct becoming notorious as they did.
|
| There are other far more peaceful options to be considered but
| they would require high degrees of coordination and agreement.
| For an example, the classic Amish shunning - if legislatures
| faced utter social ostracism for their attempts then they would
| be unlikely to attempt it again.
|
| I'm not sure what policies could even provoke such extreme
| responses as those listed (violent or otherwise) in the first
| place, but for better or worse Chat Control isn't one of them.
| My most realistic guess would be that trying to abolish the
| pension/retirement system altogether.
| in_a_society wrote:
| GDPR for thee, but not for me.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| And hopefully this gets voted down like all the other laws. Even
| if it passes, it will probably be repealed or just not enforced
| within some member nations.
|
| At least this is talked about and discussed... unlike in China,
| or Russia, or the US's own 20+-years-and-still-going-patriot act.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| A reasonable point about the discussion, but I doubt it is a
| meaningful one. The intention of these international agreements
| is that they circumvent the laws by moving data out of
| jurisdiction and have someone else do the surveillance, right?
| I have to assume that the EU is doing metadata analysis. All
| the talking is just about bringing it in house.
|
| On another topic, I don't know how mullvad intends to avoid
| compliance.
|
| "If VPNs are included, and if Going Dark becomes law, we will
| never spy on our customers no matter what."
|
| Saying "we can't give you logs because we don't have them" just
| means that they need to start logging or gtfo of the EU.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| They'll probably take it to court in the regions within the
| EU where this would be illegal, for example Germany. This is
| kind of what I meant by this law would be ignored/repealed as
| it goes against member nations own laws. I would expect there
| would be a lot of civic push back too. This law hasn't passed
| before, I'm not confident it will pass this time either. The
| real issue here is that the EU is not good at handling band
| faith actors - the same law in different wrapping should not
| be allowed to persist.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| If Mullvad could bother to _link_ to this supposed "Presidency
| outcome paper" that would be great, after extensive searches on
| Concilium and eur-lex I have no idea what that is supposed to
| reference.
|
| In any case here's the actual "ProtectEU" text the Comission sent
| on the first of April which contains most of the text Mullvad is
| quoting from the "presidency outcome paper": https://eur-
| lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
|
| As a bonus, here's input report listing the problems that are
| supposed to be solved: https://home-
| affairs.ec.europa.eu/document/download/05963640...
|
| This is from the introduction:
|
| > Access to this data is understood as access granted to law
| enforcement subject to judicial authorisation when required, in
| the context of criminal investigations and on a case-by-case
| basis. As a rule, in the cases where such judicial authorisation
| is necessary due to the sensitive nature of the data in question,
| it represents an integral part of the applicable legal and
| operational framework for facilitating access to this data by law
| enforcement. Access to data on behalf of law enforcement
| authorities must be achieved in full respect of data protection,
| privacy, and cybersecurity legislation, as well as the Court of
| Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case-law on these matters
| and applicable standards on procedural safeguards.
| kkfx wrote:
| Well... Until people will react protecting their own interests we
| will only go in a death spiral.
|
| Only recently have we witnessed, particularly in the EU but also
| in the US and Canada, the blocking of personal bank accounts of
| individuals who were simply "inconvenient" to the ruling class,
| from Wikileaks to OnlyFans creators, Francesca Albanese, Frederic
| Baldan, Jacques Baud, and various players in the crypto world,
| all without trial, without any crime committed, just unwelcome.
|
| This makes it clear that for Democracy to exist, a balance of
| power is needed, including internal balance, which requires that
| the population remains outside the potential control of the State
| to preserve a significant degree of freedom. Privacy is one of
| these fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech, because the
| ideas circulating can be dangerous, but it is far more dangerous
| to have someone with the power to prevent ideas and news from
| circulating.
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