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Big difference between de jure and de facto. We already have de facto surveillance in the US and the 5 eyes jurisdictions. Some of the other EU countries are al

Big difference between de jure and de facto. We already have de facto surveillance in the US and the 5 eyes jurisdictions. Some of the other EU countries are also in on it. They just want to add a de jure veneer to it. For de facto leadership follow the US example. For de jure leadership follow the Australian/Chinese model.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
There is a big difference. The secret surveillance can't be used in a normal court of law. Especially here in Europe as we don't have secret courts. But there is another big difference: Currently services they can't tap into will be forced to make arrangements for this to be possible. Not sure how they will do this with the more decentralised platforms like Matrix but they will probably find a way :(
- decebalus1 5y ago
  > The secret surveillance can't be used in a normal court of law. Especially here in Europe as we don't have secret courts. You don't have secret courts.. yet. Anyway, it doesn't actually matter if you have secret courts or not, for high profile targets. The US has them and the US also has extradition treaties. And if you do have legislation against spying on your own citizens, your allies don't, they can do it for you and then share intelligence. This whole effort is to short-circuit all of that and streamline an existing process.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    I doubt it's really the high-profile targets they're after though. It sounds more like they want to make this the bread & butter of policing. Having an AI looking over our shoulders to see if we're up to anything bad. Of course not just the content of our conversations, but GPS locations etc. Basically like Apple was proposing but here they are already targeting a much wider range than just CSAM. Because if it was only the high-profile cases the intelligence services already have huge permissions in terms of hacking, infiltration etc.
    - decebalus1 5y ago
      I agree with you about the general direction but you're hinting at preventive policing which I don't believe it to be the case. I mean just look at the US and the amount of surveillance since 9/11.. I think the goal here is to monitor dissidents or to help post-factum in investigations.
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        Not really preventative. It's just that if you start collecting conversational data from everyone, you need AI to go through it. It's simply not possible to do it manually. And once you get AI involved, scope creep is guaranteed because of the huge advancements being made in that area. There's no way we can stop AI from being built but we can still stop some of our data from going into it.
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  You can't use illegal surveillance in court, but you can show it to the judge who issues the search warrant ( or however you call it ) In exchange, the police staff, their corporate friends and their political masters can know what you are doing in the restroom when you take a roll of toilet paper with you, or when you negotiate a business agreement in a bar.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    A judge cannot issue a search warrant based on illegal surveillance. I'm not sure where you got that idea. What actually ends up happening is called "parallel construction" where the evidence collected illegally is passed on to another party who "legally" builds it up to be accepted by the court.
    - catlikesshrimp 5y ago
      In the US a judge needs to provide much less to the public, "probable cause". My tinfoil/ CSI tv experience/ common sense tells me you can show a fellow human being something naughty, like illegal sting results, in private if you exert good judgement before, during and after the meeting. Edit: Where I live, search warrants aren't required by the police. Which is a good thing (for regular people) provided the inaccessibility and corruption of the judicial power.
      - jaywalk 5y ago
        The legal bar for probable cause in the US is higher than almost anywhere else in the world. If you're saying that cops and judges collaborate to get search warrants based on evidence they both know was obtained illegally... sure? It probably does happen on occasion, but I doubt it happens nearly as much as you seem to think it does.
        1cvmask 5y ago
        There is no bar for FISA courts which is essentially a rubber stamp court: FISC meets in secret, and approves or denies requests for search warrants. Only the number of warrants applied for, issued and denied, is reported. In 1980 (the first full year after its inception), it approved 322 warrants.[27] This number has steadily grown to 2,224 warrants in 2006.[28] In the period 1979–2006, a total of 22,990 applications for warrants were made to the Court of which 22,985 were approved (sometimes with modifications; or with the splitting up, or combining, of warrants for legal purposes), and only 5 were definitively rejected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla... - As for probable cause they just sidestep such niceties all the time using many many tricks including buying data from your carriers and credit card providers. https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/stingray-new-frontier-police-surveillance https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/stingray-new-frontier-p...
- moffkalast 5y ago
  But if we had secret courts, how would we know about them? They're secret.
  - biztos 5y ago
    Beyond the amusing tautology, I think the US offers a pretty good example of how you can end up with non-secret courts issuing secret judgements based on secret proceedings, and still say "rule of law" with a straight face. I'm sure the power-hungry in other democracies want this too, because having secret secret courts is a liability.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      They only made them semi-secret because of Snowden's revelations though :) They didn't have a choice. But I think secret courts won't fly on a large scale. People have connections and they will pipe up eventually. Maybe not every time but it will happen.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

There is a big difference. The secret surveillance can't be used in a normal court of law. Especially here in Europe as we don't have secret courts. But there is another big difference: Currently services they can't tap into will be forced to make arrangements for this to be possible. Not sure how they will do this with the more decentralised platforms like Matrix but they will probably find a way :(

decebalus1 5y ago
> The secret surveillance can't be used in a normal court of law. Especially here in Europe as we don't have secret courts. You don't have secret courts.. yet. Anyway, it doesn't actually matter if you have secret courts or not, for high profile targets. The US has them and the US also has extradition treaties. And if you do have legislation against spying on your own citizens, your allies don't, they can do it for you and then share intelligence. This whole effort is to short-circuit all of that and streamline an existing process.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I doubt it's really the high-profile targets they're after though. It sounds more like they want to make this the bread & butter of policing. Having an AI looking over our shoulders to see if we're up to anything bad. Of course not just the content of our conversations, but GPS locations etc. Basically like Apple was proposing but here they are already targeting a much wider range than just CSAM. Because if it was only the high-profile cases the intelligence services already have huge permissions in terms of hacking, infiltration etc.
  - decebalus1 5y ago
    I agree with you about the general direction but you're hinting at preventive policing which I don't believe it to be the case. I mean just look at the US and the amount of surveillance since 9/11.. I think the goal here is to monitor dissidents or to help post-factum in investigations.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Not really preventative. It's just that if you start collecting conversational data from everyone, you need AI to go through it. It's simply not possible to do it manually. And once you get AI involved, scope creep is guaranteed because of the huge advancements being made in that area. There's no way we can stop AI from being built but we can still stop some of our data from going into it.
catlikesshrimp 5y ago
You can't use illegal surveillance in court, but you can show it to the judge who issues the search warrant ( or however you call it ) In exchange, the police staff, their corporate friends and their political masters can know what you are doing in the restroom when you take a roll of toilet paper with you, or when you negotiate a business agreement in a bar.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  A judge cannot issue a search warrant based on illegal surveillance. I'm not sure where you got that idea. What actually ends up happening is called "parallel construction" where the evidence collected illegally is passed on to another party who "legally" builds it up to be accepted by the court.
  - catlikesshrimp 5y ago
    In the US a judge needs to provide much less to the public, "probable cause". My tinfoil/ CSI tv experience/ common sense tells me you can show a fellow human being something naughty, like illegal sting results, in private if you exert good judgement before, during and after the meeting. Edit: Where I live, search warrants aren't required by the police. Which is a good thing (for regular people) provided the inaccessibility and corruption of the judicial power.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      The legal bar for probable cause in the US is higher than almost anywhere else in the world. If you're saying that cops and judges collaborate to get search warrants based on evidence they both know was obtained illegally... sure? It probably does happen on occasion, but I doubt it happens nearly as much as you seem to think it does.
      - 1cvmask 5y ago
        There is no bar for FISA courts which is essentially a rubber stamp court: FISC meets in secret, and approves or denies requests for search warrants. Only the number of warrants applied for, issued and denied, is reported. In 1980 (the first full year after its inception), it approved 322 warrants.[27] This number has steadily grown to 2,224 warrants in 2006.[28] In the period 1979–2006, a total of 22,990 applications for warrants were made to the Court of which 22,985 were approved (sometimes with modifications; or with the splitting up, or combining, of warrants for legal purposes), and only 5 were definitively rejected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla... - As for probable cause they just sidestep such niceties all the time using many many tricks including buying data from your carriers and credit card providers. https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/stingray-new-frontier-police-surveillance https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/stingray-new-frontier-p...
moffkalast 5y ago
But if we had secret courts, how would we know about them? They're secret.
- biztos 5y ago
  Beyond the amusing tautology, I think the US offers a pretty good example of how you can end up with non-secret courts issuing secret judgements based on secret proceedings, and still say "rule of law" with a straight face. I'm sure the power-hungry in other democracies want this too, because having secret secret courts is a liability.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    They only made them semi-secret because of Snowden's revelations though :) They didn't have a choice. But I think secret courts won't fly on a large scale. People have connections and they will pipe up eventually. Maybe not every time but it will happen.